POV: marasi
Summary
Marasi sleeps a few hours in the front seat of her truck as the convoy rolls south through the bleak dark beyond Elendel. When she wakes, the sun is rising over the suburbs of Bilming — a city she has never visited despite it being only a few hours along the coast by train, and which she knows mostly through its politics. As Elendel's traffic has become overwhelming, Bilming has become an essential port. Its position on the coast lets it trade with other seaside towns outside Elendel's railway monopoly, and it is the chief port for the Southern Continent trade still moving by ship rather than airship. Wealth has followed; with wealth, power; and Bilming is now the one city in the Basin that can plausibly rival the capital. Elendel gossip likes to call it a backwater of half-educated sailors. Marasi knows better.
She passes neat suburbs and great fenced-off tracts still waiting to be built on. The half-finished developments have a curious quality — houses in many different styles, no two roof-lines or doorways matching, yet a strange unifying symmetry she can't quite name. Downtown is the same story scaled up: half-built skyscraper pillars rising like a modern echo of the mythical Kredik Shaw, a dominant tower at the centre already seventy or eighty stories tall. The aesthetic mixes sleek modern lines with fortress weight; raw girders show; even finished buildings wear metal roofs and patinated steel siding. A circular elevated rail rings the city, parts in operation, parts still missing. The effect is *plan*: industry, forward thinking, accomplishment. Billboards along the way push *self-reliance* and *sovereignty* — barely-coded independence from Elendel.
Her driver — a woman in her jacket with the collar turned up, a cap shadowing her face — abruptly opens a small unrelated conversation. *Have you ever noticed,* she says, *how kids always draw houses the same way?* Square box, triangular roof, door dead-centre, two windows, often a chimney even though fewer and fewer homes have one. What house actually looks like that? *Almost none.* Maybe they aren't drawing a house, then, the driver suggests. Maybe they're drawing someone else's *picture* of one. An icon. *That's an interesting observation, Constable — what was your name?* The driver gives it as *Moonlight* — a code name, she says, since her organisation likes those — and observes that Marasi would not have heard the word here, since this world has no moon. She leans back, her sleeve creeps up, and bared on her forearm above the wrist is a red tattoo: the same three-diamond sigil from the cavern note.
Marasi slips her fingers to the pistol under her arm without drawing it. *Where's the constable who should be driving this truck?* *She's fine,* Moonlight says, amused that this was the first thing Marasi asked rather than anything about herself. *Maybe get your priorities straight.* Marasi tests her: *was that you in the cavern, in a white mask?* *Black,* Moonlight corrects, passing the test. *Yes. That was me.* She is one hundred percent human, she says, but not a local; she pulls off her cap and reveals straight black hair in a ponytail, prominent cheekbones, a shape to her eyes Marasi has never seen on a person of the Basin or, by Moonlight's own admission, of the Southern Continent.
Moonlight talks about the city as they drive. She has always hated Bilming — there is real thought in the design, yet the underlying message disturbs her: every building strains to be individual, but the way they come together is too deliberate. The artistry feels hollow. The reason, she says without preamble, is *Trell's influence*. Marasi leans forward — *tell me, please* — and Moonlight only half-smiles. *So hungry,* she observes. Her organisation does not always share answers with outsiders. Marasi threatens arrest for interfering with constable business, then for withholding information vital to an investigation. *Strange how similar cops are, regardless of the planet,* Moonlight remarks easily, returning her eyes to the road. *Regardless of the planet.* Marasi sits with that. The kandra have always told her there were other planets, but accepting it is still hard.
At a stoplight, a beggar comes to her window per the notebook's instructions and slips her a paper in exchange for a few boxings. *Biggle Way, in the industrial district* — Moonlight knows it. The truck takes the lead and the rest of the convoy falls in behind. At the next corner, Wayne's truck pulls up beside hers, and his driver turns out to be the man known to Wax's household as Hoid, the family coachman. He glances over and nods — past Marasi, at Moonlight. Moonlight reflects dryly that she can no longer tell if she is keeping watch on him or he is keeping watch on her; realistically they are both watching the same third parties. Marasi is gobsmacked — how much of her career has she been spending on bank robberies while *this* moved past her unseen?
Moonlight offers a parable about art. Each new movement, she says, consumes the one that came before, chops it up, drapes new skin on the old bones. Every new piece is in some way a parody of what preceded it. Then a test: *suppose you held one of sixteen extremely rare pieces by the same artist. What would you do to make yours the most valuable?* Marasi thinks: build mystique around it, hide it, let the other fifteen wear themselves out in public, and let the story of *the one no-one has seen* do the work. Clever, Moonlight allows. Her own answer: *steal the other fifteen — then you control the market entirely*. Ruthless. *Not as ruthless as other options.* The pieces exist, she tells Marasi, and your planet's god holds two of them — Ruin and Preservation. That makes Harmony the most Invested being in the cosmere, the most valuable piece on the market. One of the other sixteen — Odium — chose to raise his stock by *destroying* the others, and managed it in a few cases. Trell is not Odium. Trell — Autonomy — has a different scheme.
She nods at the buildings. *All pieces of a larger art installation.* The grand creation is impressive but it is not the homeowners'. The straight lines and reflective panels are from a *Taldain* movement called brutalism, and the *fake individualism* the city radiates — every house distinctive only in a way that fits the architect's plan — is the Autonomy pattern in miniature. It is freedom that looks like freedom but is corporate uniqueness, an advertisement telling people to *go their own way, be their own person — by buying this product*. Marasi absorbs as much as she can. The picture has gone fully cosmic now: a being from another planet leading this city with plans for her world.
Moonlight sketches Autonomy's goal. Autonomy does not engage other gods directly; she edges them out by filling the cosmere with versions of herself. Crowd out the competition, like an invasive plant. *Trellism* is the remnants of an ancient religion she founded on this world long ago, a seed planted against the day she moved in; that day is now. Autonomy is looking for a mortal to fully take up the role on this planet — someone who bears some of her power, who sees to her interests, who is in many ways a piece of her soul. Moonlight confirms what Wax has just heard from Harmony himself: the one she has *likely* chosen is a woman named Telsin — *Wax's sister*. There is rivalry in Autonomy's ranks; Telsin will have to prove she is the strongest, and Autonomy rewards grit and vision. The Bilming skyline is itself meant as a flex for her god — all of it designed by one gifted architect Telsin elevated five years ago. The homeowners get a manufactured *individual* house. They impress nobody.
Why explain so much, Marasi asks, *now?* Because Marasi has impressed her organisation, Moonlight says. They have to move carefully — there are forces on this world, Harmony included, that could crush them if they take a wrong step. They do not, Marasi realises, work for Harmony either. That gives her pause.
Off the highway, they head along the northern outskirts past more uniform, manufactured neighbourhoods. Moonlight points at a billboard reproducing the same stylised drawing of Bilming — *PRIDE IN PROGRESS, Outer Cities Self-Reliance Movement* — and complains about the crassness of art that can be reproduced. Marasi argues back: art doesn't stop being art because it is replicated; she sounds like an elitist; if she truly cared for the beauty she would want more people to see it. *Well argued,* Moonlight allows. *I'll admit my distaste for Autonomy might taint my opinion.*
They lead the convoy onto Biggle Way and slow to single-file. A man in a red jacket falls in alongside, per the notebook's instructions — *third building on the right, across the Grand Motorway*. The Motorway is six lanes wide, the widest road Marasi has ever seen, planning for a much bigger Bilming than the one already half-built. They cross during a lull in the traffic; behind, the other nine trucks have to wait their turn. Marasi asks if Moonlight intends to interfere with the operation. *No,* Moonlight promises. Can Marasi talk to her afterward? *Yes. But I can only say so much to an outsider. For now I'm just here to watch.* And if bullets start flying? *I'm not a constable, as you pointed out. So yes.* She smiles, *an external admirer of your work*, and pulls into the cavernous warehouse. As soon as the rest of the convoy is across, the sting can begin.