"We're being followed."
Weiss had the presence of mind not to jerk her head around to look for the tail. She looked up at Winter instead. "Are we in danger?"
"I don't think so. They're just watching for now, from a distance."
Weiss nodded. "I suppose we should have expected that. We're conspicuous, and conspicuously out of place."
It was an understatement. With their pale skin, hair, and clothes, the sisters Schnee were a brilliant contrast against the deep browns and grays of the Crater.
Mantle, in its infancy, had been a mining town—one with such an embarrassment of riches in its Dust veins it attracted ever more settlement around it. Eventually the city took on a full life of its own. Its unplanned, unmanaged legacy left the place a jumble, with fewer clearly-defined districts than might be expected in a city its size. Slums and high-rises bumped shoulders; fast food joints and five-star restaurants lived in different floors of the same buildings.
Atlas, in contrast, was a planned city with rigorous zoning meant to distill all the best things the Kingdom saw in itself. Gentrification was a design feature.
As the population of the two cities exploded over the long decades of post-Great War peace, the number of poor people grew too, but there was no place for the poor in Atlas. They concentrated instead in Mantle, making Mantle poorer on average. Yet the population boom caused increasing strain: the placement of Mantle's defensive walls set de facto limits on the city's growth. No real estate developer could afford to move a Kingdom's defenses.
So Mantle's buildings grew up rather than out, and the city's poorest people were increasingly forced into the only place they could go, the only place they could afford: the crater left behind by Atlas' ascension. Much of the bottom area still belonged to mining companies, especially the (ex-)SDC, but squatters filled the rest.
Said squatters, Weiss and Winter were discovering, were largely Faunus.
The sisters were circling the rim of the Crater, inside the cut-off where Mantle's infrastructure ended and the shantytowns began. Spread before them were ramshackle neighborhoods of flotsam-built houses, tent clusters that had merged gelatin-like into amorphous blobs, and community bonfires in empty steel drums that warmed mini-blocks.
They didn't go down into these communes, but neither did they avert their eyes like they might have before.
Even here, there seemed to be a hierarchy. As many people as possible clung to the rim of the Crater, at or just below Mantle level, and the nicer dwellings—the permanent if decrepit houses—were clustered there. The further down, the deeper down a person went, the colder and nastier it got. Only the most desperate dared establish themselves in tents or dug-out holes at the bottom, near the walls that protected the active mines.
Height seemed doubly important as Weiss kept looking: those permanent houses were elevated, standing on stilts, and those who could manage to place their tents on something above ground level seemed to have done so. She saw why when a rivulet of water overflowed the gutter at Mantle's border and cascaded down into the Crater. It passed beneath the closest elevated house before petering out. Weiss could imagine how bad things could get under heavy rainfall, if Mantle's sewer infrastructure couldn't keep up: overflowing water would turn the sides of the Crater into a sea of mud. She couldn't imagine how people were supposed to live like this.
A handful of children ran along beneath the Schnees, several with obvious animal features (and, Weiss was willing to bet, more with un-obvious animal features). The children were as grimy as the houses they ran past, so that they looked like a smudge, all variations on a theme of gray. Any one of them was filthier than Weiss had ever been.
The presence of children was baffling to Weiss' already-reeling mind. It implied people lived here long-term—maybe all their lives.
"Why aren't they in school?" she said as the children turned a corner.
"Did you see any schools down here?" drawled Winter. "No, don't look around, you'll alarm our tail."
"Right," said Weiss, returning her gaze to the front. "What should we do about them?"
"The children? Not our problem."
"I… I meant our tail," said Weiss, though the mention of the children threw that to the front of her mind. Shouldn't someone be doing something about them? Anyone?
She'd heard Atlesians in high social circles complain about social services being such a drain on the economy, how Atlas paid for ever-so-many handouts… but if that was true, where were they?
"We'll turn left just before the road," Winter said, and Weiss was glad someone was able to stay focused through all this. She looked up to catch Winter's meaning. Ahead was one of the roads that led from Mantle down to the bottom of the Crater and the mines therein. The houses (if one would deign to call them that) on either side were set curiously far back from the road. It left a relatively open space between house and road that wasn't visible from the rim unless they were followed more closely. Weiss saw Winter's intention: turning there would bring their tail in without making them feel trapped.
"Alright," she said. "I'll follow your lead."
Winter didn't nod in affirmation—perhaps because Weiss' response was the one she was supposed to make. Either way, Winter cornered sharply, making Weiss nearly stumble to keep up.
Once they'd made their turn, Winter stopped, spun around, drew her sword, and placed it on the ground at her feet. Weiss hastened to follow suit. She mimicked the posture her sister took up: arms spread, palms out to show her hands were empty.
It was as non-threatening a posture as someone could adopt. There was no way Winter had learned this from the military. Weiss quirked an eyebrow at Winter.
"Atlas Academy trains non-military Huntsmen, too," Winter said, interpreting Weiss' question correctly. "Independent Huntsmen need at least a few people skills."
Before Weiss could reply, their tail caromed around the corner, only to come up short at seeing his quarry right before him.
His face drew up in surprise, but his surprise was nothing next to Weiss'. Her eyes went, as if transfixed, to the man's nose. It was as far from a nose as Weiss could imagine while still being able to name the organ. It looked almost like a nose turned inside out: the holes were nearly flush with the man's face, surrounded by exposed pink flesh, and half a dozen pinkie-like extensions splayed out in all directions.
Weiss couldn't imagine the mess if the man ever caught a cold.
"We're—" Winter began; her voice hitched, but she regained her composure in a moment, "—just passing through. We don't want trouble." She pointedly nudged Eiszahn with her foot.
Weiss knew she was staring and struggled to tear her eyes away. Hers met his for a moment; he'd noticed her fixation. Flushing, she looked elsewhere.
The man was only a bit taller than Weiss and shorter than Winter, with a roundness to him that his heavy coat exaggerated. A mustache and beard of moderate length framed that bizarre nose. No wonder: Weiss imagined it would be a real chore trying to clean-shave around a nose like—
She was staring again.
Ripping her eyes away, she took in his heavy and warm workman's clothes, splattered with mud but otherwise in fine order, and strong hands thick with calluses. He looked old enough to be their father, and he had composure; after his initial surprise at the close quarters Winter had forced, his expression became guarded and keen.
"And just what are you up to while you're 'passing through'?" he said. His voice was a rasping growl, like something was permanently caught in his throat and his lips wouldn't move quite right. It was a chore to understand him.
"That depends," said Winter. "To whom do we have the pleasure of speaking?"
His eyes narrowed. "Nom deRuse," he said.
"Why were you following us?" Winter went on. "We mean no harm and we've done nothing nefarious."
Nom gave a sound like a grunt. "I asked first."
Winter considered, then nodded. "We're getting an idea of the living conditions here."
The man gave a sneer, or something close to it; his nose jerked up alarmingly, its tendrils quivering. "A couple of rich girls out poor-gazing, 's that it? Getting your jollies seeing how the rest of us live so you can go home and say, Glad that's not me?"
"Hardly," said Weiss, defiance asserting itself. "We're seeing what we can do better."
"Sure you are," Nom said, and that was definitely a sneer. "I know you two. You're the Schnee sisters. Your family's the reason this all," he gestured all around the shantytown, "looks like this. This place is called Schnee-ville, didn't you know?"
Weiss couldn't tell what was rising faster, her shame or her temper. "I had nothing to do with this, I assure you."
Nom snorted; it sounded like a gunshot. "Yeah, you just got raised in the lap of luxury 'cause of it. All the benefits, none of the guilt. Sweet deal."
Weiss had her retort loaded and ready, but Winter got there first. "Explain what you mean about how the Schnees are responsible."
"Oh come on," he said. "Are you that stupid?"
"I stepped away from the family business to join the military," Winter said. "I don't know anything about the SDC's practices."
That made Nom laugh. "That's rich, that's so rich. You don't know!"
"I don't," repeated Winter sharply. "Explain."
He considered her for a moment. "It's dangerous for me to say. Someone'll get irked if I do. Maybe lots of someones, with a lot more money than you have these days." It was a cutting comment; it lashed against Weiss, but she withstood it. Nom watched the sisters carefully, as if judging their reactions, and after a moment his eyes narrowed and focused on Winter. "But you look like you really need a reality check. So I'll ask you a question, and let you figure out the rest."
He stepped in more closely and spoke in low tones. "When is a person not a person?"
Weiss felt like her clothes were doing no good at keeping her warm; this chill came from the inside. She considered all the possible answers to his question, and none seemed as right, as near the point, as the one she dreaded giving.
There was nothing for it. She steeled herself and made sure her voice was firm.
"When they're a commodity."
Nom said nothing, but his eyes tilted in approval, and he might have nodded. It was hard to tell, with how hard Weiss was having to try to not stare at that nose. She looked to her side instead. Winter looked thunderstruck—like the denial she'd been harboring so hard had been struck down, and she had no way to cope with that.
"What does that make you, then?" Weiss asked, and she couldn't help it if her voice was shaky.
"Nobody. No one at all. Plenty of us here are like that. We're the people who don't exist. And that means no one looks after us." He shrugged. "We try to look after each other. Much as we can, anyway."
The cold wouldn't leave Weiss' chest. How could she fight it? How could she fight something so… so…
Words failed her.
For a moment, her thoughts went back to a conversation with one of her fencing tutors. The tutor had been a Huntress earlier in her life, and Weiss had been unable to suppress her curiosity.
"You don't fight grimm any more?"
"No, I don't."
"So… did you win?"
"There's no winning. The battle never ends."
"I don't understand. If you can't win, then what… what…"
She hadn't understood, not at age seven. She hadn't even known what question to ask. The Huntress knew, though. She'd given Weiss a sympathetic look. "Even if you can't win, it's still worth it to fight. All life is work. All life is struggle. Every good thing in life, you have to fight for. And the things that really matter… they pay for it all."
Weiss had looked around at the opulence of Schnee Manor, uncomprehending. She couldn't remember having to fight for anything.
Her eyes had fallen on her father, watching from afar. His face was tight in a scowl.
He'd fired the Huntress the next day. It was one of his last official acts.
The cold feeling in Weiss' chest left her. Fire replaced it. She thought she understood what the Huntress had meant, now—and she certainly wouldn't let this self-described 'nobody' tell her she couldn't do something.
"We'll do better," she vowed.
Nom gave that gunshot-like snort again. "Just because I'm nobody doesn't mean I don't watch the news. You've got no company, you've got jack shit. You're changing nothing."
The fire roared higher. Weiss' voice was clear. "I mean to try."
He rolled his eyes at her; her temper rose along with it. "Look, can you just leave? You're not getting anything done standing here, and you're making everyone uncomfortable."
"What are you, the neighborhood watch?" she replied waspishly.
"I'm nobody," he repeated, but his expression—what she could see behind that nose—belied his words. "Now get."
"Fine," she huffed. "But you wait and see. I will make this happen, and I will bring change."
"You'll fail," Nom said bluntly.
"Watch me."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
"In that case…"
Weiss started slightly when Winter reentered the conversation; she hadn't spoken since the ground beneath her gave way. Winter looked almost as surprised as the others, but she swallowed and pressed on. "In that case… when we're ready to start anew, when we're ready to change things… can we talk to you about it?"
Nom eyed her suspiciously. "You serious?"
She nodded. "You've been helpful to us, whether you meant to be or not, and if you're looking out for the F—for the people here… Well, if we can convince you, we can convince anyone, don't you think?"
"Suuuure," he drawled in equal parts suspicion and skepticism.
"I will give you my scroll number," Winter said, raising her scroll to Weiss' surprise, "in exchange for yours."
He looked down, mumbling to himself. Weiss thought she heard words like 'stupid' and 'reckless'.
"I would accept any other way to contact you," Winter offered, keeping Weiss off-balance. "Scroll seemed most direct, but… I realize you have no reason to trust us, not yet. Choose some other way for us to reach you, then, however circumspect you need it to be."
He sighed and looked up at them. He seemed, suddenly, twice as old as before. "Scrolls are fine. Here."
He fished into a pocket and brought out what was barely recognizable as a scroll—cracked, weathered, but with a screen as bright as any recent model. He and Winter tapped their scrolls together to transfer data. Winter looked down to make sure the transfer had succeeded… and her head snapped up. "Aster Cristata?" she demanded.
"That's me," he replied, replacing his scroll somewhere in his voluminous coat.
"You said your name was Nom DeRuse," Weiss accused.
"And you believed me?" Aster said with raised eyebrow.
Weiss blinked and changed mental gears. She translated the words… and closed her eyes as her cheeks grew warm. "I suppose I shouldn't have."
He made a sound of dark amusement. "Now, I'm heading out. If you meant anything you said, you'll stick around for… say, ninety seconds, and then walk back up the road and out to Mantle."
Winter nodded. "We'll contact you when we're ready."
"Sure you will." Aster stepped backwards, never turning his back to the sisters, until he was at the corner. He disappeared behind the house.
Weiss shook her head, trying to clear it; so many emotions were cluttering it. "That was both illuminating and frustrating."
"And disturbing," Winter said, reaching down for her sword; Weiss belatedly followed suit. "And embarrassing."
"So why did you sign us up to see him again? I doubt he'll be any more pleasant next time."
"No, but he'll be a known unpleasantry," Winter said, reviewing her scroll before stowing it. "One piece of life-advice the General gave me was, "Always know someone wherever you go. You never know when you'll be back." Well, now we know someone. We'll have an 'in' next time."
"However much good that does us," Weiss muttered. She'd decided she could do without seeing Nom—Aster—ever again.
Ahead of them there was a rumble. A large truck was groaning its way down the road from Mantle towards the mines. It was much louder than Weiss would have expected. Looking down, she saw that the road could barely be called that, as cheaply and hastily as it had been paved—someone skimming the infrastructure budget, she was sure…
Panic.
Throwing her hand forward, she drew a glyph, but too late. The truck's wheel hit an eroded part of the road, sending a cascade of water and mud towards the Schnee sisters. The glyph formed late, cutting off part of the shower, but not all; the women were splattered with muck as the truck passed them. And, just like that, Weiss knew why the houses gave the road a generous buffer.
Harsh, barking laughs came from one of those houses. Weiss couldn't tell which.
"'Stay here ninety seconds,' he said," she snarled.
Winter's mouth was as tightly drawn as Weiss had ever seen it. "Maybe we won't be meeting with Mr. Cristata again."
The math didn't add up.
Winter could tell. She wasn't as adept with the spreadsheets as Weiss, but she could read the bottom lines. No matter how much they squeezed, contorted, or massaged the numbers, they couldn't get them where they needed them. Even setting the security budget close to zero ("We'll still need things like locks and fences, plus Dust and supplies for ourselves", Winter had reminded her sister) didn't make up the difference.
"Is this the actual market price for Dust?" Winter asked, pointing.
"Not right now," Weiss said, "but market prices are artificially high because the SDC is in flux. Prices will have dropped by the time we enter production. They'll drop more after that."
"Why?"
"Because we'll be another producer adding our Dust to the market. Plus, we can expect the biggest companies left to flood the market once they've reorganized and can afford it." Weiss' eyes narrowed. "It's standard practice for squeezing out the small fries."
"It's also standard tactics against grimm," said Winter, trying to relate the business talk to things she knew. "The smaller grimm charge first, because the older grimm have more restraint and better tactics, and it makes sense for us to focus on the closer targets first to even the odds. Put it together and the smaller grimm are always the first to be wiped out."
"And SDR will be a small fry," Weiss said thoughtfully, flipping through several pages. "We can't support more than one mine to start. No startup loan will cover more than that. Neither will my trust fund," she added preemptively. "That's our emergency fund. Just as it was outside the SDC's finances, we'll keep it outside SDR's."
Winter could appreciate that. In combat, it always paid to have more cards to play than her opponent knew about. "So… does that mean we lose?"
"No," said Weiss, her eyes flashing fire. "Not even. We just have to be smarter, is all."
Winter didn't know what that could mean. She looked at the numbers again. "What kind of Dust are we talking about?"
"I made a few assumptions, but… mostly water, some stone and wind. Sixty-twenty-twenty mix."
Winter could hear Weiss' wince, and she knew what had caused it. "Those are the cheapest forms of the twelve," Winter said—she remembered that much, at least.
"I know, but that's all we can expect. We're not getting any prime mines—we're going to be stuck with the ones the other companies didn't want, or couldn't make a profit on. Even the SDC couldn't lose money mining Lightning Dust."
Winter nodded reluctantly. She didn't make heavy use of Dust in her own fighting style, but when she did, it was mostly Ice Dust. The reasoning was as pragmatic as it was thematic: Ice was a fusion of Wind and Water Dust, two types that were common out of proportion to demand.
Burn Dust was needed for fuel, ammunition, warmth, and any number of other applications. Lightning was needed in ever-growing amounts to feed the world's ever-growing addiction to electronics. Gravity supported the world's airship fleets and other types of high-end transport, plus Atlas City itself. No other type had near the demands on it as those three.
Weiss' estimates, in contrast, were based on the worst-case Dust mix. Stone was used in construction, but only in the bluntest and most straightforward ways—paving roads, laying foundations, and the like. Wind helped propel airships, but the limiting factor for airships was never Wind Dust for propulsion, it was the much more expensive Gravity Dust for lift. There was talk in the scientific community about using Wind to try and substitute for Lightning, but none of the proposals for turbine generators had met the break-even points to be economically viable, even at the low cost of Wind Dust.
Water Dust? Portable water supplies didn't have nearly the same value from place to place, and Solitas wasn't Vacuo. Ninety percent of Atlas' use of Water Dust was in synthesizing other forms, and Water Dust was never the limiting factor in those processes.
To have to assume they'd be stuck with the least valuable forms of Dust… it might have been the safest assumption, but it was a hard pill to swallow.
Winter's eyes traced further down in the spreadsheet. "What's all this?"
"Conversion costs. You transport Dust in its granular form only if you think you might use it immediately. Otherwise, it's vastly safer to convert to crystal form for shipping." Weiss sighed. "But then, a lot of the end uses require granular forms, so you have to convert it back before you can sell it. Both processes take money."
"Then we should, as you said, be smarter about it," Winter said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Winter only heard Weiss' question vaguely; she was writing a note to herself. When she finished, she looked back up and flipped the page.
Uh oh.
This page was their labor costs. This… this conversation was unavoidable, after their trip to the slums ("Schnee-ville" indeed!). That didn't mean Winter had been looking forward to it.
She swallowed and pointed. "Talk me through it."
"These are the different categories of labor. Secretarial work—cargo operators—at least two to three people operating and maintaining equipment, especially the conversion machinery…" She hesitated, knowing where this was headed, and Winter let her, as reluctant as her sister to get to the point. "…and the miners, the bulk of our employees."
"These are all market numbers for their salaries?" Winter said, pointing at each category in turn.
"Except for the miners," said Weiss. "For that, I took what I remembered of labor expenses for SDC miners, and…"
"And?"
"…and added twenty percent."
Winter looked at Weiss.
"What?" Weiss demanded.
"I didn't say anything."
"What are you thinking, then?"
"Is that the market number?" Winter said.
"I already told you it isn't."
Weiss' body was set in defiance. Unfortunately for her, she had no monopoly on that quality. Winter sat back and crossed her arms. "Then I have to ask you what your true goal is. Is your priority to help the Faunus in the slums, or to establish a viable Dust company?"
"Wait, what?!"
"You have to pick one," said Winter, raising her chin to look down on her sister. "So choose. Help the Faunus, or have a viable Dust company?"
"We can do both!"
"This," said Winter, waving at the spreadsheets, "says you can't. I remember what you told me the other day. Comparative advantage, right? Find what you do better than anyone. If you pay the miners at this rate, then you're accepting a comparative disadvantage. SDR won't last long like that."
Weiss stomped, looking for all the world like a child throwing a tantrum. "I won't be responsible for creating another Schnee-ville!"
"Then you'll fail," Winter said as bluntly as she could.
"Don't you mean 'we', partner?" Weiss said acidly.
"Fine, we. We will fail. Just like Aster said—do you remember?"
"Forgive me if I don't remember every word that came out of that… person's mouth," Weiss spat.
Winter didn't believe her, but chose to act like she did. "When you said you would do better for the Faunus, he told you that you'd fail. This," she pointed again at the spreadsheet, "is why. How can we compete with other Dust companies when we're overpaying for labor?"
"Oh, so you think we should get in the trafficking business, too?"
Winter's hand twitched, ached to go to her hip. "Watch your tongue, sister," she growled.
"It sure seemed like that was your recommendation," Weiss said, heedless of the danger.
"My recommendation is that we be realistic," Winter said, carefully enunciating each word, trying to keep her flaring temper focused and controlled. "Paying our miners a living wage is the right thing to do. But when the other Dust companies are using trafficked labor, they'll beat us. We can't keep up.
"That's why I asked you what your priority was. If your priority is to help the Faunus in the Crater, fine, pay them like this. But you'll only be helping them until the money runs out, and it will run out. We can't win like this, Weiss. We can't survive."
Winter could see through Weiss, see how she felt, because she was feeling much the same. Trapped. Frustrated. Enraged. But Winter felt something Weiss didn't: disgust.
Winter had given years of her life to the Atlas military, had wanted to give years more—and not just empty years, but years full of labor and sweat. All this time absorbing pride in her Kingdom, reveling in its triumphs, defending and extolling its virtues…
Was this all Atlas was? An illusion, a sham, a front that could only exist because of wage slavery? How many people knew about this and did nothing? How many didn't know but ought to?
How deep did it go? If the mining companies were growing fat exploiting trafficked Faunus, were other industries doing the same? If the Kingdom's police didn't enforce trafficking laws in the mines, could they be bothered to enforce those laws in the city?
For three days, those questions had kept Winter up at night, and she felt worse the more she thought about them. No matter how she sliced it, she couldn't come to any conclusions that didn't paint Atlas as complicit in something outrageous. There was no going around it or avoiding it. Weiss was dealing with the issue by burying herself in minutiae, by devoting herself almost fanatically towards her precious business plan and its every detail. That didn't work for Winter. Not for long.
She rose. "I want nothing to do with Dust… or Atlas."
"Winter, wait—"
"No!" said Winter, and a glyph flared to life beneath her, ready to catapult her in any direction.
Weiss, wisely, said nothing.
"If the only way to compete is to be as cruel as the other companies," Winter said, "I refuse. I will take my license elsewhere and be an independent Huntress. I will do some good in this world, until… until…"
Her nails bit into her palm.
"…until I feel clean again."
There was, Winter knew, no cure for the notorious Schnee temper. Their dear, departed father had passed that legacy onto his children. Winter had been on the receiving end often enough to know its contours. It had terrified her when she recognized it in herself. She told herself she'd joined the military to help her learn discipline to control her temper. Her doubts whispered that her real motivation was to find excuses to indulge that rage.
That temper was storming in her now. Taking it out on the grimm was the safest thing to do with it.
"So that's it?"
Winter's attention went from internal to external. Weiss was looking at her with frustration, still, but… also a hint of something sad, if Winter knew her at all. "What do you mean?" Winter asked.
The sadness transmuted to anger. "You told me you threw away your military career for my sake. You told me you wanted to be my partner in this. And now you're out? Just like that?"
"I told you I'd help you," Winter said, trying to keep her anger directed away from her sister. She jabbed a furious finger at the spreadsheets. "But all this can't be helped."
"Bullshit," said Weiss.
It stunned Winter—for a moment. "That language ought to be beneath you," she said in a voice stern enough to make a recruit's knees knock.
It just prompted Weiss to square up to her sister. "Good, now I have your attention. We haven't even tried to figure out how to beat this, and you're giving up just from the sight of it."
"I'm not giving up, I'm… repulsed! Furious!"
"And I'm not?!"
"But I can't attack those other Dust companies any more than I can burn down Atlas," Winter said in between nasal breaths, for all the good that exercise did. "So I'm going to do what I trained to do. I'm going to exterminate every grimm I can find, because that is a valid use of my anger."
"That sounds an awful lot like giving up," Weiss said, and oh that just turned the fire in Winter's chest into a conflagration.
"I do not need to be lectured by a child," she said, barely keeping her voice below a roar. "You are playing with fire, sister!"
"You don't scare me," Weiss said.
"Then you are confusing bravery with recklessness!"
"Are you even hearing yourself?"
Winter choked on her words. The glyph beneath her, that she'd conjured on instinct alone, blinked out of existence.
The one—the only—emotion that had ever been able to smother her temper was shame.
The heat in Winter's chest collapsed, leaving a void in its wake. Winter felt herself withering. Weiss was saying things, but the words never reached Winter's brain. She felt twisted up inside, pained, unworthy. She'd gone too far.
If she burned Weiss with the heat of her wrath, she was no better than their father after all.
Time to lean on her training. Throttle the anger by focusing elsewhere. Compartmentalize. Let the feelings leak out in a trickle, bleed out slowly, like steam escaping in wisps rather than blasts. Sinking into her shame did the rest.
It wasn't a permanent solution, but no permanent solution existed. This would have to do.
Apologizing was not the Schnee way, but Winter closed her eyes, grit her teeth, and came as close as she could. "I'm ready to refocus on the business plan."
Not looking at her sister, she couldn't see how Weiss processed this pronouncement, and had to wait for her to speak.
"Fine," Weiss said at last.
Winter exhaled.
When Winter felt safe enough to reopen her eyes, Weiss had risen in her agitation. Her arms were crossed peevishly, as if the spreadsheet was disappointing her somehow. Her eyes narrowed.
"Let's think about this differently," she said, foot tapping. "Trafficking isn't just getting labor for a fraction of the cost. Or… it's about more than just that. No… no, the other way."
Winter wasn't keeping track of where Weiss was going, but she felt like she mustn't interrupt.
"It takes more than your earning potential," Weiss said, her agitation visibly increasing. "It doesn't just take away your money. It takes away your options, your… your choices. Your freedom." Weiss' eyes lit up. "Faunus work in the mines because they feel like they have no choice. There's nothing else they can do, nothing else they're allowed to do. They're trapped in something they don't care about, working out of fear, out of compulsion, but they'd do other things if they could. But they don't have anything—nothing to call their own…"
Weiss went still. For the first time in a while, she looked triumphant. "I've got it. I know what we can offer. We can offer something no one else in Atlas would dare."
She beamed at Winter. "That's our comparative advantage. We have guts."
When Weiss explained her plan, Winter had to agree: no one else in Atlas had her sister's audacity.
But then, maybe, what Atlas needed—what would redeem it—wasn't Winter charging off into the wilderness to blaze a trail of devastation. Maybe Atlas couldn't be redeemed by Winter alone. But maybe, if she couldn't cleanse Atlas, Winter could at least cleanse herself… by daring to be decent.
It was too grandiose a thought and Winter hated it. Still, it helped Winter live with herself, to know that she was trying. It helped her sleep. That had to count for something.
Next time: The Music of the Field
