Chapter Text
Many years, two explosions, and much refinement later, Jasnah still kept the ten-Essence vein pattern in every new version of her arms. Her mother would occasionally present her with less... customized arms, still works of art in performance (and now, in beauty too; Navani had gotten very, very good at making arms over the last nineteen years), and Jasnah would take them and smile and rip them apart to add in her usual set of adjustments by the end of the week.
This was about to be a very good move, if not necessarily a wise one.
“Look,” Amaram said. “You need to get married to someone. I’m the best choice.” She scoffed and turned to leave. He grabbed her arm. “I’m talking to you.”
“Don’t touch me,” Jasnah snapped. Amaram had grabbed near the top, unfortunately, and the outer plate blocked him from hitting any of her gemstone veins. She snarled and yanked her arm out of his grip, turning it carefully so that the veins were in view. “I’m warning you, Meridas,” Jasnah said, hoping her icy tone would cover the slight shake in her voice. “Leave. Me. Alone.”
Amaram’s face twisted in a scowl. She turned to leave, keeping her arm carefully positioned so it was the easiest thing to grab for.
And like the fool he was, he grabbed it.
Amaram screamed in immediate agony and more than a little regret as the ruby veins lit up and a jet of flame burst from her fingertips, searing his face. “You--”
“I warned you,” Jasnah snarled. “Take this lesson to heart, and do. Not. Try. This. Ever. Again.”
He was too busy whimpering in pain to respond. Jasnah strode out, spine straight and shoulders held stiffly.
Her five-year-old cousin reminded her a lot of herself, or at least what she was told she’d been like at his age--the quiet intensity, the endless curiosity, and the ability to poke into exactly the places he really shouldn’t be poking at.
She had underestimated him, or perhaps overestimated his innate common sense, and wasn’t paying all that much attention as she let a fascinated Renarin play with one of her older arm models while she tinkered with her usual set. She had some ideas for this one.
There was a soft fwomph.
Jasnah spun around and yanked the spare arm away from Renarin’s face, the jet of flame scorching the floor instead. Renarin had burned off one of his eyebrows, but it looked like she’d caught it before any lasting damage was done.
Jasnah held her breath, waiting for him to cry. She would be in so much trouble with her mother.
Instead, Renarin poked at his face for a moment, then giggled. He reached for the arm again, and she yanked it away before he seared off his remaining eyebrow.
“You are a very strange child,” she informed Renarin matter-of-factly, picking up a more ornamental set with delicately inlaid patterns for him to mess with instead. He looked disappointed by the loss of the fire-arm, but accepted the substitute happily enough.
He looked up at her. “S’pretty arm,” he informed her solemnly, patting the one she’d given him, “but fire’s prettier.”
...Storms, her baby cousin was Jasnah’s favorite person.
The screaming was an immediate indicator that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
She spun immediately, pressing a finger into a small amethyst set into the top of her arm. A foot-long, razor-sharp blade extended from her wrist as she rushed towards the source of the noise.
She rushed by a Makabaki man with a scar on his cheek and another man she didn’t have time to process, who moved aside for the woman with a foot-long blade protruding from her arm.
She rounded the corner and hesitated.
Her shadows were being pulled towards the Stormlight lamps on the wall.
A shadow in the intersection up ahead stirred, then stood, taking the form of a man of prismatic blackness, as though he were of some liquid painted with a veneer of oil. He unsheathed a sword as he strode towards Jasnah.
Jasnah pressed a vein on her arm and the matching gem set into her blade’s base, and the sword lit on fire with a soft whumph . She met the thing’s glare and brandished her blade.
It stepped back. Satisfaction curled in Jasnah’s gut as she stepped forward menacingly, doing her best to hide the terror pounding just under her veneer of icy calm.
The wall lamp nearest Jasnah went dark, its Stormlight consumed by an unseen source.
Then the palace disintegrated into millions of glass beads.
She fell along with the beads through an unfamiliar dark sky as the strange being--defying gravity as he floated where he had stood before--sheathed his sword, still looking down at her.
She crashed into a sea of those strange glass beads as the others that had formed the palace rained down around her.
Being Radiant hadn’t magically grown her a pair of flesh-and-blood arms.
Frankly, Jasnah was relieved. She wouldn’t know what to do with “normal” arms if she had them. Being able to feel with her arms as easily as she could with other parts of her body seemed like it would be strange and unsettling, too much sensory input. Besides that, she rather liked her self-made arms. Flesh and blood couldn’t set things on fire or stab things with a flick of the wrist, among other abilities she had in her casings.
It had changed some things, though. She could feel with her arms now--not much, not enough to be overwhelming, but she definitely had some sensation. Her range of motion was slightly more limited, because she knew how arms weren’t supposed to bend. She didn’t have any more odd “glitches,” either; before, her joints would sometimes stop moving, or a fabrial she’d laced into her arms would malfunction. Now everything worked perfectly as intended on the first try.
Most importantly, she could still remove her arms without having to deal with them trying to stitch themselves back on. That would have been bad.
The girl’s eyes caught on her arms, and Jasnah saw her stifle a gasp. She held back her own sigh. Every single time a girl came to petition for wardship, there was that moment of shock as they found out that--surprise, surprise--Jasnah’s arms being intricate fabrials was not an elaborate joke.
Admittedly, what she was not expecting was for the girl to follow up with a soft, “Oh, Brightness, those are amazing. ” The girl’s eyes widened. “How were they made? How did you make them so beautiful, they’re stunning .”
Logically, Jasnah knew the girl was probably flattering her, trying to convince Jasnah to take her on by showing interest in her work. That didn’t stop her from preening internally. “Flattery will get you nowhere, child,” she said out loud, extending her right arm to allow the girl--what was her name, Shallan? Shallan Davar, yes--to examine it as she continued working with her left. “I made them myself with years of practice.”
“That, that’s incredible , Brightness,” Shallan said, mouth opening in awe, “and I don’t mean this to, to get in your good graces, it truly is incredible. Could you perhaps teach me how you made them?”
Jasnah blinked slowly. “You are presuming that I will teach you at all,” she said. “Your wardship has not been accepted, child. This is only an interview.”
That seemed to ground Shallan. She blinked in surprise, stiffening and drawing back from her examination. “What? But I--it took me so long to find you! Wasn’t that the challenge?”
Jasnah kept her face impassive. “No.” She began to collect her materials. “And I don’t have time for wards now anyways. I have my own research to do, my own projects. Find another woman; there are plenty of clever ones in this city.”
She left the girl standing open-mouthed behind her.
Later, she found that same girl curled up in a nook she’d specifically reserved, sketches scattered around her and a letter placed on top of a pile of books.
A point in Shallan Davar’s favor: she was just stubborn enough to make Jasnah accept her.