WINTER SCHNEE
Mikol Zimnyak was dead.
I kept reading the same few lines of Tsagaan's report, but not a word of it was coming through. All I could think of was the day Mikol had accompanied my father to one of my fencing school's exhibitions. Ostensibly, they were meeting to discuss Company affairs in a fresh—and non-surveilled—setting, but I don't recall that they actually talked very much. I had just turned twelve.
My father had saved his criticism for later that evening. Mikol had waited, but only until our bodyguards came to distract Father with a security update, to share some thoughts of his own. A smile had creased his face behind his close-trimmed beard, and he'd whispered, as if sharing a secret, "The fates gave us emotions for good reason, Miss Schnee. Don't be afraid to use them, because they will happily use you." I hadn't been in the mood for yet more advice at the time, but it had flashed through my mind again during a lesson a month later, and I'd kicked my instructor halfway across the hall. That had been the beginning of the end of one of the "plateau periods" in my training, and the principle behind it had become one of the key threads in my fighting style as it matured.
I cleared a space in front of me, until I was facing one blank sheet of notepaper on the bare glass of the desktop. Setting down my own thoughts on Tsagaan's work would increase my chances of retaining the information, and force me to keep track of my progress through her report. I'd need to lock away my notes (or destroy them) when I was finished, but writing them on a hard surface would avoid creating any impressions that might be discovered later.
Initial recruitmt. at disused commercial prop. on Altstadt St., 5th night of Sickle Month. Ownership by Baltys-Ilgis Corp. appears legitimate; company repr. Mamikbash has confirmed that property briefly stood empty from 3rd to 8th of month, w/ no security incidents. Obtain employee roster; identify Faunus empls. who worked at this location shortly before Si/3rd. Identify sec. firm contracted for this prop.; obtain empl. roster.
I wasn't looking forward to browbeating Mamikbash into giving me access to his employer's records: he was willing enough to help the investigation, but he seemed…conceited. I'd need to put on the Schnee Mask and put the fear of the dark into him, to put a stop to his nascent efforts to "charm" me, and to dissuade him from boasting in the pubs about his encounter with a real, live Specialist.
Obtain energy-usage record for Altstadt property during Sickle Month as soon as avail.; compare to previous year's. If poss., identify human empls. sympathetic to Faunus-rights cause.
The energy record would most likely provide little or no useful information, but determining whether the Fang had used the building's own systems to heat and light it during the meeting could indicate how familiar they were with the site, or with Baltys-Ilgis facilities in general. Presumably, the attendees could have conducted their business in the dark if necessary, but Tsagaan confirmed that the main room in which the meeting took place had been lit. Perhaps that hinted at a degree of complacency about attracting attention, or about being infiltrated by humans.
(Do people of mixed herit. share Faunus vis. acuity? What pct. of Fang membership do they repr.?) I put these points in brackets, to indicate their secondary importance.
Tsagaan had also mentioned a stark divide between the recruiters and the new arrivals at this…event. The former had stood at the doorways and at intervals along the walls, herding the latter into the center of the room with silence and significant stares from behind their masks. Three of them—two men and a woman—circled around the knot of recruits, firing off questions. ("You, in the green dress and sash—why are you here?" "You with the hat and goggles—ever tasted tear gas? How about you, sunshine?" "There was a ruling that just came out of Mantle, involving publication of court proceedings for cases affecting the 'public integrity of the kingdom.' The first person to tell me what that ruling said can walk out of here wearing a mask— Put that scroll away or it's mine!" "You look like a sharp kid—what are the three essential ingredients for sustaining a fire? And don't say 'Dust;' we don't have enough that we can waste it like that.")
This last claim was certainly intriguing, although even if it was true, it didn't come as much of a surprise. Limited Dust supply may be conf.; continue investig. of thefts and inventory errors, but consider altern. means of transport, energy sources, comm. methods. Theft/loss of non-Dust-reliant materials/equip. may be more signif. or obv. (Also consider poss. of educators, athl. coaches among Fang memb.)
Over the course of the meeting, several recruits (Tsagaan estimated seven or eight) had been led out of the room by existing members. Several had answered questions with a steady eye and voice, although apparently not with so much confidence that they seemed insubordinate. Others had never said a word after entering the building, but the recruiters must have seen something in their body language that suggested competence or trustworthiness. None of them had given her their names, of course, but she provided reasonably detailed descriptions for five of them—descriptions not limited to what they'd been wearing. Once I got through her report, I'd type up the appropriate forms and pass them to the public-surveillance office.
I wished I could include credit where it was due when I did so, but even assuming Tsagaan lived through this assignment, publicly acknowledging her contributions might not be wise. At least it wouldn't occasion any comment when I peremptorily sent her descriptions to the surveillance office with no additional comments, but with the implied addendum "I'm sure I don't need to tell you what to do with this." It would be entirely in keeping with the expectations I'd worked under since I enlisted. And for a Schnee, expectations mattered all too much…
"—understand that, sir, but the specific provisions I've identified provide absolutely no benefit to the Company. They serve only to humiliate Ilex, and as a matter of fact they'll decrease the value of certain of its assets, at exactly the moment when we'll be taking possession of them. Furthermore, they'll produce resentment in its employees; those of them who remain with us will have even more trouble integrating into our workforce than I'd have otherwise expected."
"That doesn't matter, Hawk." Looking back, I knew that my father's use of the nickname had been calculated. It had emphasized that—for the moment—they were speaking as friends, but suggested that that could change if Zimnyak didn't watch his words. "What matters is this: we made them an offer a year ago—quite a generous one, as you'll recall—and they spat in our faces. We'll receive plenty of criticism for our handling of this acquisition, but we've withstood worse, and frankly I don't expect it to affect our customers' behavior significantly. You might also consider this: when the next acquisition comes—most likely AFT Traders—their executives will remember Ilex's experiences, and they'll know what their options are…"
As Company board members went, Mikol had been quite decent—and he'd been more willing than most to stand up to my father. He hadn't done it often, though, nor without reason, which was why I'd been surprised when he'd openly congratulated me upon completion of my training with the Specialists. Father hadn't been pleased, but apparently, he had grudgingly acknowledged that doing so behind his back would have been just as insulting, and far more suspicious.
By that point, Victor Zimnyak and I had long since agreed that we had no business marrying each other—or, perhaps, marrying at all. (Even if he and people like him had been legally protected since before either of us could walk, they still weren't fully accepted in most of the kingdom's industrial dynasties—another reason I preferred the culture of the military.) If it hadn't been for that, I'd have suspected his father had had ulterior motives for contacting me again, but no matter how closely I'd parsed his message, there had been no hint of any sentiment other than pride and near-familial affection. 'Quite decent' didn't suffice: by Company standards, he'd been a saint.
Still, he'd broadly shared the rest of the board's attitudes toward the Faunus issue; that had been all the White Fang cared about. It had been foolish of them to choose him, though. I assumed it had mainly been a question of who made the easiest target, but they couldn't have chosen a better martyr for the human-pride crowd to rally around.
Then again, perhaps they were hoping for a backlash against Faunus civilians, to make recruitment easier. That could certainly benefit Tsagaan, and the three other agents we were attempting to place.
I shook myself and bent over the report again. If our people were to gain the White Fang's trust, or even survive the attempt, they still needed help in looking properly disreputable. Our support team had already adjusted the agents' bank histories to make their pay deposits appear lower and more irregular, in line with the hand-to-mouth lifestyle of the typical recruit, and I'd personally drawn up false arrest records for two of them. Making the changes in person had been a risk I'd weighed carefully: a Specialist taking an interest in the histories of two otherwise unremarkable citizens might elicit curiosity among the records office's employees, but the fact that we were exempt from sign-in requirements and other paperwork would ensure that there was no substantial trail of evidence pointing toward the false records.
Even so, the field agents were having mixed success. Tsagaan seemed to be making some decent inroads—it was probably a matter of weeks before she was challenged to do something heinous to prove her loyalty—and Kikalis's most recent message had been encouraging as well, but Lev and Churiurdin weren't having as easy a time. I wondered if Faunus held prejudices about each other, based on the species from which they borrowed their features. Are lions considered self-centered/arrogant? Are bears considered unpredictable? Research; consider findings (if any) when selecting agts. in future.
I wondered, too, if Kikalis and Lev's records—however carefully we'd embellished them—were still too clean-cut, or suspicious in other ways.
Kikalis had been convicted of malicious damage (Class C), unlicensed possession and use of hazardous equipment, and acting as an accessory to a raft of hypothetical offenses—ostensibly convicted, that is—for destroying the external locks and security system of an apartment complex after one too many rejected rental applications. (In reality, he had been undergoing basic training during the period in question, but none of us were expecting any of his comrades in the Fang to have crossed paths with him there.) Casting him as technically competent and inclined to hold grudges had probably been a good decision; combined with his quite genuine knowledge of subversive political literature, it seemed a wonder he wasn't already leading a local cell.
Come to think of it, there was still a possibility that someone in the White Fang would ask themselves that precise question sometime soon…followed by closely related but more specific questions for the eager new recruit. Confirm that K. is prepared for more intensive scrutiny re crim. hist. (Recall that he does have approp. experience w/ cutting torches, circuitry, etc.—it may be tested.)
Kikalis' history could elicit either enthusiasm or suspicion, depending on the observer, but Lev's was ambiguous in other ways. She had worked for a contractor to the Dust Company in the past, and it was relatively easy to weave in an account of her being jailed for falsely reporting equipment as "depreciated" and selling it to their competitors. I left hints that she had taken the fall for a supervisor (human, of course), thus explaining why she wasn't still in prison, but giving her a grievance with the Company to complement her inside knowledge of the Dust industry.
So far, so good.
However, I knew for a fact that the Company generally responded to requests for information—even from its own employees—as if they were maternal insults, and its refusal to either confirm or deny such a story about a former contractor would make the portions of Lev's account that were actually true difficult to corroborate. That would leave the question of whether to believe her up to the White Fang alone, and I saw several possible answers. If they took the arrest at face value, they would need to weigh Lev's technical knowledge and history of enmity toward the Company against her aptitude for financial malfeasance, and the potential temptation to misuse their own assets in the future. Otherwise, they might follow our hints that she'd been wrongfully accused, and eventually welcome her with open arms (I hoped); or they might make their decision based on a different rationale entirely.
I set Tsagaan's report down, stood and stretched, and slowly walked across the office. It wasn't a significant distance—not in such a junior Specialist's office—but sometimes I thought more clearly when my feet were moving.
Besides, lighting the lantern by the door would improve the room's atmosphere somewhat. The sky had been heavy all day, and the evening had crept up while I was working; by now the dimness was becoming truly oppressive. The lantern wasn't strictly necessary—although the fall storms would be coming soon, power failures in Atlas' facilities were practically unknown—but I preferred it to the sterile overhead lights. It reminded me of the summer trips we'd made to the house on the lake to play at being pioneers, of excursions into the woods to harvest wild rice and mushrooms, and of ill-fated attempts to cook them ourselves. It reminded me of Mother.
Admittedly, Father usually hadn't been able to join the rest of us there—and never for more than a day or so—but looking back, it seemed that he'd been happier then, too. He'd certainly left the Company's problems back in Atlas during those visits. Even the rest of the year, while we were at home, he'd almost never brought them back from the office.
I hoped Weiss still remembered that side of him, although she'd been so young… She still is. I should probably ask her someday.
I should probably ask her now. There was no telling whether I'd need to go silent in order to complete this assignment, but I had to be prepared to do so. Moreover, there was no assurance that fate would keep me any safer than it had Mikol. I might be in a more secure position than the field agents were, but unlike so many of my colleagues, I understood that security could only be viewed in relative terms. Father's private war with the Fang had taught me that much, at least.
The frustrating thing was that, even if we removed Lev and Churiurdin from their assignments, they'd have to stay out of sight for the foreseeable future, to keep from raising any suspicion about the others. My commanding officer was getting nervous, and to be honest so was I, but as far as I was concerned, the potential good that Kikalis and Tsagaan alone could do far outweighed our misgivings.
Although they couldn't control the final outcome of the tests they were passing through, I had faith in their dedication and loyalty. They weren't like the frauds in the past, who had convinced Atlas investigators that they had key information about the Fang, and could obtain more—for a price. They'd all lost friends or loved ones in the struggle, one way or another: to attacks and reprisals, to the secrecy and mistrust the Fang's actions engendered, to police sweeps and cycles of recidivism. Not all of them had said so in as many words, but I believed that what they wanted, more than anything, was an end to the division and hatred and wasted lives. Disabling the Fang was one necessary condition of that goal; remaking the Schnee Dust Company, and the dozens of smaller firms that looked to it for direction, was another. All of us knew that, but none of us knew how it would be accomplished at this point. I hoped it wasn't too late.
I realized I'd been staring into the flame of the lantern for several minutes. I blinked and rubbed at my eyes, but the spot in my vision stayed where it was. Slowly, I circled back around my desk and tried to reorder my thoughts again. Once it faded, I sat back down and picked up my pen.
Those who hadn't been recruited outright at the Baltys-Ilgis building, including Tsagaan, had been ushered out the door with instructions and a warning. The instructions had been straightforward: to meet at a park on Alarcao Street, at sunset on the 19th of the month, and await further instructions. The warning had been a bit more…evocative. ("If any of you want to walk away from this now, you still have that option. You may not get it again. If any of you decide to turn on us, now or later, simply know that you will regret it—and if you have a family, they'll regret it too.")
Obtain Aura stimulants, antidotes to common tranquilizers; deliver by Faunus courier to Ts.'s cover address before Si/19th. Incr. protective details on parents' and brother's households; confirm that details are using heat- and Aura-sensing equip. at all hrs. Develop cost ests. for incr. security; remind Colonel of cost-sharing terms under which task force was formed. Consider additional sec. meas. for K., L., and Ch.'s rels., but prioritize Ts.'s for now.