POV: marasi
Summary
Marasi, three hours after the rolling disaster that the warehouse sting became, sits in a bleak yellow-walled interrogation room inside the Bilming Constabulary with Wax, Wayne, and VenDell. She has signed off the casualty report: two constables dead, a dozen wounded, the Sequence and the dead Cycle's successor still loose, and the only Set members they captured likely to walk straight back out of Blantach's custody and into the Set's hands the moment paperwork allows. Cali Hatthew had begged to come — a constable of two years — and Marasi feels the weight of her name on the page. Wayne sleeps on the floor with his hat over his eyes; VenDell sits exhausted against the wall, his bones still lumpy where he stitched himself back together with sinew after the warehouse, the patched skull holding its shape only by force of will. They have been allowed four chairs and disarmed; only Marasi sits.
Wax crouches beside her and tells her plainly that she planned well, that this enemy outmaneuvers everyone, and that two good people died trying to prevent the deaths of millions. Asked what *his* job is, he straightens and names it for the first time without hedging: *Harmony's sword. Recently taken off the weapon rack, the dust blown free.* The frame is religious. Marasi has heard it from priests with less authority than Wax carries now, and remembers — though he has never told her the whole of it — that he died once, briefly, in a forgotten shrine and met Harmony there. Whatever happened in that meeting shapes him still.
She drags the conversation back to leads. The men Wax and Wayne each fought were spiked; the Cycle Marasi killed was spiked. Every one of those spikes required the death of a Metalborn — which connects directly to the long string of kidnappings the Set has been running for a decade, women with strong Allomantic lines vanishing out of the Roughs where nobody files reports. They have followed that thread before and hit dead ends. Marasi asks whether Harmony cannot tell them where the abducted people went; even something he saw before he was blinded would help.
VenDell answers softly from the wall. Harmony can be cryptic, yes — but the truth is harder. When Wax and Marasi were hunting the kidnappings and wondered why their god gave them so little, the answer was that he had nothing to give. Harmony has been unable to see the secret parts of the world for some time, and has been *concealing* this from his own kandra. There is worse. VenDell, his skin going transparent and greenish with strain, says that when he listens for his god he sees *a dark shadow behind him.* Something is wrong with Harmony himself. Marasi folds her arms — *what good is having God on your side if he does nothing?* — and Wax answers that Harmony *did* do something. He sent them. It is the lesson Harmony keeps trying to teach. VenDell agrees, and promises to ask for more aid.
The door opens. Captain Blantach has changed into a clean uniform and combed her hair, but she is frazzled — because she has not come alone. Behind her walks the lord mayor of Bilming. *Oh hell,* Marasi thinks. *She brought the mayor.*