Sorry for the fap, but although I knew what I wanted to achieve in this chapter, it took me time to work out how to say it.

A little exposition heavy, but the next chapter will have more action.

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Raven grimaced to herself before opening the portal to the designated meeting point. She disliked Malbec. He was all the things about Mistral she despised—corrupt, greedy, boastful, deceitful, and pompous—and those were only his good features.

It didn't help knowing that what she had always suspected was true. She had persuaded Emma to tell Raven Professor's Pink version of the last Mistral attempt to use force against Raven. It confirmed what she had always suspected.

There had been little chance of Mistral making a deal with her, but Salem and Malbec had firmly put their thumbs on the scales to make certain that the military would break the ceasefire and try to kill her. They had warned her that this was the plan, and maybe she had played into their hands by ambushing the ambushers.

Emma had told her Professor Pink's version of the events three years ago. He had done well in both his Vytal Festivals, and while he had served in the MBAD after leaving Haven, he had resigned and joined Haven as a tutor soon after the death of Moriarty's successor. This was because he was unhappy with the new tactics being used in the Badlands.

He disagreed that the threat posed by the four remaining tribes was significant enough to justify torture and the murder or mutilation of children and other non-combatants. He also was unhappy with what he believed were the motivations behind choosing the Branwen Tribe as the target of shock and awe. Not so appalled as to do anything about it other than complain to Moriarty and a few others he trusted, but she wasn't going to be too self-righteous about that.

Three, nearly four years ago, an ambitious colonel in the Mistral army had noted that the original tactics of pretending that Raven was not a real threat (and that to the extent that she was a problem, the other three tribes or assassins would deal with her) had been wishful thinking.

By that time, the Branwen Tribe had eliminated or amalgamated the other three tribes and controlled the area the bandit tribes had operated in before the MBAD had started working in the Badlands. The assassins either refused to take the contract or were being paid by her not to take contracts.

Her policy of not allowing any hunters or huntresses in the Branwen Protectorate had reduced the incidence of have-a-go heroes wanting to avenge the deaths of friends and relatives. Well, also, the fact that she had killed those sent against her or, in some cases, sent them back dressed only in their underwear. Oddly, humiliation seemed a bigger deterrent than death.

Anyway, her contacts and Malbec had warned her that this was about to happen. She had decided it was not worth bribing politicians to prevent it happening, and Malbec had agreed with her. Instead, they had worked on ensuring that the man wasn't given enough resources to guarantee success.

One faction in the Mistral government had agreed to the operation on the basis that a negotiated peace should be an option once Raven had been eliminated. This meant trying to win the hearts and minds of the citizens who suffered from the oppression of the Branwen Tribe. For this reason, they insisted on placing Pink with the army as an advisor. He had served in the Badlands with the old MBAD, and there were signs that the Raven didn't absolutely despise him. Unsurprisingly, the colonel did his best to ignore Pink's advice.

Between Salem's minions and Raven's own contacts, she had known what the Colonel's strategy and tactics were before the offensive started. She even knew where he was proposing to garrison troops and establish weapons dumps.

It didn't take a military genius to work out that her best defence was to avoid fighting the army head-on but to indulge in guerilla warfare. Her semblance made ambushing supply columns and placing dust IEDS easy. She had embedded small groups of fighters in various parts of the Badlands with orders to keep out of the way of the army.

It helped that the Badlands were mostly forest and that there were no airfields. Landing bullheads and disembarking troops involved flattening the crops of farmers. That didn't help Mistral win the battle for hearts and minds.

She smiled. After a week, the army thought they were winning as they had advanced without resistance. By the end of a month, they knew they were losing. The colonel had been shot down in his command bullhead by a surface-to-air missile looted from his own arsenal. The biggest concentration of troops had been destroyed with fire dust bombs planted before the offensive had started. No supplies were getting through by road, and it was a toss of the coin as to whether bullheads got through.

Thirty per cent casualties and no fresh food were not good for troop morale, especially as Mistral was not minded to send in reinforcements. Inevitably, the troops became paranoid and blamed the inhabitants for betraying their movements and assisting the Branwen Tribe. This resulted in them treating the civilians as enemies rather than as liberated citizens, with predictable results.

The civilians hated the army, and the Branwen Tribe was receiving more information than it knew what to do with. Indeed, the inhabitants of the Protectorate saw the Branwen Tribe not only as the lesser evil but even as a good thing. The Faunus, in particular, wanted the withdrawal of the Mistral forces.

It was at this stage that the army started listening to Instructor Pink. While the man had no doubt exaggerated his clairvoyance, from what Raven had known at the time, he had predicted the problems more than most.

He and his faction proposed that the Mistral government agree with the Branwen Tribe that the Branwen Protectorate become a new province of Mistral with stronger powers of self-government than normal. It was to be sold to her as bringing the Badlands in from the cold and to the Mistral hardliners as a cheaper way of reintegrating the land into Mistral than outright war. Raven would simply become a local political boss.

According to Pink, Moriarty had lobbied hard in Mistral City for it as a solution. Without him actually saying, "I had told you so," enough people remembered that he had warned them that making a deal with her or crushing her entirely were the only realistic options.

There was another faction which investigated whether Atlas was prepared to provide military assistance. However, the Atlas council, on which Lady Fria still sat, had demanded new concessions in Argus, which were unacceptable to the Mistral Government.

Whether this was because Atlas didn't want to get involved or thought that there was a real chance of Mistral conceding, Raven didn't know. She did know that Lady Fria, like many Atlesians of her generation, blamed Mistral for the Great War and the Faunus Wars and that the success of Argus was down to its immigrants from Mantle.

Anyway, eventually, Pink was authorised to discuss a ceasefire with Raven. The military had asked Little Miss to pass on a message to Raven that they were open to talks. Little Miss handled ransom negotiations for the Branwen Tribe, so they knew they could reach Raven through her. Mistral believed in keeping private backdoors open even with its public enemies.

Raven had guessed that her success had taken Salem and Malbec by surprise as well as the Mistral military. They had expected a long, drawn-out war of attrition rather than the outright defeat of the Mistral military. They didn't know about her ability to create portals more or less at will or that she had opened up some abandoned dust mines, which had allowed her to build multiple IEDs.

She'd had some initial negotiations with Pink in her territory. To do him justice, he was not a coward, and she was prepared to believe that he had been negotiating in good faith. However, the new commander of the Mistral military force had insisted that the next meeting involve him and that this would be in neutral territory administered by a group of arbitrators from the Travers Foundation from Vale.

She had smelt a rat and suspected a trap, even before she had received a tape from Salem's go-between. This involved the military commander instructing his subordinates the meeting to carpet-dust bomb the meeting place and kill Raven. Pink and the arbitrators from Vale would be collateral damage, and the claim would be that Mistral had responded to an ambush by Raven.

It had been a little tense, but knowing where the bullheads with the bombs were coming from had made it easy to sabotage most of them and shoot down the others. Besides, she always had the portal option. After the explosions had been heard in the distance, Raven had played the tape to one of the arbitrators and to Pink. She had delivered an ultimatum that she would not leak it to the rest of Remnant, provided Mistral cleaned the house and withdrew its troops.

Pink had told Emma this to show that Raven had good reason not to trust Mistral or any of its representatives. The commander had killed himself on hearing that the ambush had failed, and his subordinates died in a bullhead accident a few days later.

What Raven hadn't known until yesterday was that it had later transpired that the commander's young son had been kidnapped two days before he had ordered the bombing. The man had written a letter to Moriarty apologising for what he had done. Apparently, he had half expected the plot to fail and had taken the precaution.

Raven had always wondered how Team Salem had obtained the recording. It was now clear that the commander himself must have made the recording to prove that he had complied with the demands. The real clincher was that the son had been released unharmed, but his one clear memory was of being played with by a man who giggled incessantly and told the boy to pray to the goddess.

At that time, she had neither met Tyrian nor seen him playing with Vernal. Tyrian had even offered to adopt Vernal as his apprentice. No doubt most of the tribe would have been delighted if she had taken him up on the offer. However, Vernal was feral enough as it was.

She recalled what she knew about the career of Alexander "Sandy" Malbec. He'd been the bastard son of an aristocrat by a nightclub singer. Just respectable enough to have his education paid for and to attend combat school. Not so important to his family to have been sent to Haven. Certainly, they hadn't interfered when he had been selected as the scapegoat for one of the biggest political scandals in Mistral since the end of the Faunus Wars.

She wondered exactly when Salem and her then Chief of Staff, Maurice Gold, had decided that he was ripe for recruiting.

She had always assumed that it was when he had clawed his way back into public life, first as a gonzo journalist and a radio phone-in host. He then became the presenter of a network TV show of unparalleled vulgarity.

She recalled watching the Sandy Malbec show while at Beacon. They had watched with disbelief as a family of poor and mentally challenged inhabitants of Kulsa humiliated themselves for thirty minutes of fame. Once had been enough for Team STRQ. It had struck her at the time that he was as much of a performing Beringel as the chumps who appeared on the show.

No doubt, at that point, he was ready to be recruited. Certainly, it was after the show had been on the air for a year and had become the highest-rated show on TV (which no one admitted to watching) that he had been offered a late-night TV show on which the great and the good were happy to appear.

She assumed that Salem must think he was useful to her. Still, provided that he came across with information, dust, and money, Raven could live with being polite to him if they only met about three times a year. Fortunately, he still had his journalism and TV career to pursue, so that was easy to arrange.

She was going to arrange a greeting for him. She didn't know if Ozpin had done it on purpose, but she could talk to other birds while in bird form.

This had proved useful for finding out where Grimm were concentrated. It also had other advantages, less obviously useful, but in some ways more enjoyable.

She waited until she saw the sea bullhead flying in low over the waters just before dawn. She sniggered to herself and went to talk to the birds.

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Sandy Malbec sat in the sea airship with his eyes firmly closed. He'd had to rearrange his schedule at short notice. He would like to believe that it was because his efforts had been more successful than he had hoped, and it was necessary for him to consult with and advise Raven Branwen ASAP.

In reality, at the last conference call (Seers really were the most secure form of communication in Remnant and made an excellent security guard for the vault in his mansion), Merlot had told Salem that they owed Raven Branwen a favour for so swiftly capturing his latest silver-eyed research subject.

Dr Merlot was Salem's favourite advisor nowadays, thanks to Project Hound and what he asked for, he got. The one comfort that Malbec took was that Merlot did not rub the rest of their faces in his current supremacy. He seemed honestly more interested in the science than the pecking order. It wasn't even as though his increased budget had been reflected in the rest of them getting less money.

Malbec suspected that the man wouldn't have bothered but for a desire to find an excuse to redeploy Tyrian once their joint mission had been successful.

Because he was still a public figure in Mistral, Malbec could only disappear for a short time without rumours starting to fly. Questions would definitely be asked if it was known that he was travelling to the Badlands, so it was necessary to cover his tracks.

It was true that Tyrian Callows could be relied on not to blab about where Malbec had been to anyone who mattered in Mistral. It was also accurate to say that Tyrian was a competent flyer, had excellent night vision and that he probably could get him in and out of the Badlands quicker than anyone else.

The problem was that Tyrion was bonkers, and Malbec had a vivid imagination. He could believe that no one was tracking them on radar and that no one had seen the bullhead as it was flying without lights. Still, he would have preferred to be further above the sea than he expected they had been for most of the trip. Definitely he could have done without Tyrian looping the loop and flying upside down when it looked like they were going to be early.

It did mean that he found it hard to concentrate on the preparation for the meeting ahead of him, especially as the news he had heard in the last thirty-six hours meant that he was likely to be meeting an irritated Bandit Queen.

Malbec had been recruited twelve years ago by Maurice Gold, who had been Salem's most trusted advisor until his death two years ago of old age. He had been Salem's banker and chief recruiter for fifty years.

Sandy Malbec had been part of the biggest political scandal in Mistral for five years and had been the designated scapegoat. He, after all, was the illegitimate son of a liaison between a younger son and an artiste.

He could not deny that he had played an active part, but he had been merely doing what his political superiors had expected him to do. The speed with which his old boss, who a month before had been calling him the son he never had, cut him adrift had horrified him. His so-called friends had deserted him.

Malbec had exhausted his savings and favours owed in paying the bribes and lawyers' fees necessary to slow the case down and avoid his arrest. Even still, the political heat had barely started to cool when Malbec's old boss's death in mysterious circumstances meant there was no longer any need to launder the man's reputation. Everyone apart from Malbec was happy to accept the end of Malbec's political career as a price worth paying to forget about the scandal.

An agent, a contact of Little Miss Malachite, had approached him, saying that his notoriety could be put to good use. The agent had found employment for him as a gonzo journalist and a radio phone-in host. He used the show to vent his anger at Mistral while retaining a sense of humour. Six months after his first book of provocative essays was published, he became the host of the Sandy Malbec reality show on TV, on which ordinary people humiliated themselves for thirty minutes of fame. Not quite so much as he humiliated himself.

Still, it was a huge rating success, and within a month, some of his old "friends" were now happy to appear on his radio show. Those who even bothered to be embarrassed had explained that their cold-shouldering of him a few years back had not been personal but merely business. He knew the real reason was that he was now useful again as a performing Beringel.

At this point, Maurice Gold introduced himself. Malbec's agent had arranged the first meeting, saying that the man was a significant shareholder in the leading TV network in Mistral.

Maurice Gold had offered Malbec the means of satisfying his burning desire for vengeance against the Mistral political elite. He was also willing to pay him handsomely to help him achieve this end.

The radio show had become a TV show and had taken off. The public political faces of the factions in Mistral sought to appear on the show. Only then did Maurice Gold introduce him to Salem herself.

Carrot and stick applied. He could work for Salem and Gold and become rich, famous, and influential while taking his revenge against the people and the system which had betrayed him, or he could die. A no-brainer of a decision.

The rhetoric about bringing Remnant to an end had been disturbing, but the reality was that neither Salem nor Gold expected it to happen any time soon. As Gold said, she had been trying for thousands of years, and the kingdoms were still standing.

Anyway, initially, Malbec's role was sold as a financial ploy. Seventy years of peace between the kingdoms had done wonders for Salem's investment portfolio, and she had known in advance about the Faunus war happening, so she and Gold had reinvested and disinvested with perfect timing. Through various shell companies, she was a significant minority investor in all the multi-kingdoms and the best private equity funds.

An ever-present part of the investment strategy was to short investments in Mistral just before the next thing went badly wrong. It wasn't a bad strategy, but the problem was that sometimes things went wrong unpredictably. Malbec's task was to use his knowledge of the politics of Mistral to give Gold an early warning of storm clouds ahead. This had progressed to manipulating matters so that the problems which arose out of nowhere so far as Remnant was concerned were known in advance to Salem.

A large part of that had been undermining the few areas of competence in the Kingdom. He had only been trying to prevent Mistral from actually solving its bandit problem with a side advantage of exacerbating Faunus/Human tensions when he had smoothed the way to promote James Moriarty to be headmaster of Haven and then paid Marcus Black to arrange the death of his handpicked successor at the MBAD. True, he knew that the next leader wanted to replay the Faunus Wars, but even Malbec hadn't expected him to take photographs of his atrocities and share them.

Malbec had been in Mistral when Raven Branwen had unexpectedly returned to the Badlands. His contacts had let him know the shock in Mistral government circles when she had decapitated the leadership of the MBAD in two days. No one knew what to do. Some of his contacts were almost glad that she had gotten rid of the organisation for them. Rumours and, even worse, photographs of what had been happening in the Badlands had reached Atlas and Vale.

Within hours, he had been on the way back to the Grimm lands to advise Salem to support the rogue huntress. In public, she and Gold had accepted his claim that he had hoped for Raven's return as an outcome but had not wanted to treat it as certain or that she would be so effective. Gold had told him in private that she preferred lucky subordinates but not to bluff her.

Merlot had been sent to make the first contact with Raven. She decided to send Malbec back to Mistral to ensure that Mistral made a hash of its response. That had not been hard. The truth was that the current crop of leaders was second-rate.

Gold consoled him by saying that until they were certain about how Raven would react, they did not want to risk disclosing that Malbec was an agent of Salem. Raven had worked for the Headmaster of Beacon, who was Salem's most hated opponent. He also pointed out that he was the best placed to do the job in Mistral City.

After Raven made a deal with Merlot, Malbec was tasked with helping Raven destabilise Mistral without resulting in what passed for a government there willing to pay the price needed for Atlas to deal with her. His sources had allowed him to warn Raven of attempted assassination plots and the military expedition three years ago.

He had ridden on Raven Branwen's coattails to be the second ranking of Salem's advisers. His stock had risen as the Branwen Tribe had expanded. He knew he was lucky but told himself he had made his luck.

It would have been better if he and Raven actually liked each other, but it was clear that she preferred dealing with Merlot to him. Actually, she probably preferred receiving letters and donations, but Gold and Salem believed in regular face-to-face meetings. She, on the other hand, refused to have a Seer or to carry a dedicated scroll.

It had taken him a long time to learn how to talk to Raven. He had messed up early on by assuming that she was as venal as most Mistral politicians and that flattery laid on with a trowel was the way to go. He had looked at him with distaste, and it had taken a long time to overcome the first bad impression.

The other mistake he had made was to suppose that she was greedy and that her expressions of a desire to improve the lives of those in the Badlands as a means of securing her rule were simply posturing. It wasn't until he realised that she never made half promises and that she had not built herself a palace but lived in a tent that he had remotely learned how to talk to her.

Respectful straight-talking and brutal honesty were the name of the game with her. As politics in Mistral mostly relied on innuendo, taking bribes, extravagant promises (which everyone understood were conditional), and, at best, the pursuit of enlightened self-interest, it had been a hard lesson to learn.

What had been easier, especially after a few years of working for Salem, had been learning that Raven could be guided, but she could not be ordered.

His instructions from Salem were to encourage Raven to take over more of Mistral. Often, it only needed nudges. The areas near the borders with Raven's would have been starved of investment anyway, but Salem's investment advisors were activists. Most boards of directors found it easy to agree to reduce their exposure to areas close to the Bandit Queen. Mistralian fathers were easily persuaded to send the idiots of the family to look after the interests of the family in Western Mistral on the basis that there wasn't much harm they could do there to the family interests.

Even so he had been shocked at how small a nudge had been needed to make Watanabe collapse. Even though he had been part of the elite for many years and had prided himself on knowing how much they annoyed everyone else, he had not appreciated how Mistral Central had alienated the provinces. In particular, he had not understood how fragile the balance in Watanabe had been. Well, to be fair, his primary contact hadn't either and had just been playing local politics and paying off a personal score.

Trouble was that it would be embarrassing to admit to Raven Branwen that he had only meant to blow the bloody doors off, not collapse the entire building. But perhaps it would be worse to claim that it was deliberate.

The airship landed on the water, and Tyrion taxied up to the jetty. The man awaiting them took out a motorboat to them and gave him and Tyrion a lift to the shore.

He could see Raven emerge from the trees and beckon for him to join her. Crap, she was wearing the mask. That was never a good sign and showed that she had heard what was happening in Watanabe.

He heard birds squawking above him and then felt something hit his head. Ten yards behind him, Tyrian burst into laughter. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it wasn't just one bird that had targeted him. He doubted that the suit would ever be the same again.

Raven greeted him, "Welcome to the Branwen protectorate, Mr Malbec. I'm afraid that the local birds must watch the Sandy Malbec show and wanted to express their appreciation."

Tyrian's laughter intensified. Still, it wasn't as though Raven could order the birds to poop on him.

"Good to see you, Chief Branwen."

"I hope you have an explanation for what is happening in Watanabe. I was hoping to take over a more or less intact town, not one that the inhabitants decided to burn down before I got there. It's going to cost a lot of lien to rebuild it."

A pause, "I'm also going to have to intervene before I intended to, and I will probably have to fight the police force before they kill all the Faunus inhabitants. I will need you to ensure that does not result in Mistral City supporting the governor in Kuroyuri and to refresh my stock of dust after we break a few heads."

Well, he supposed that there were some advantages in dealing with a straight-talking contact. She wanted money and dust, and Salem could afford it. The political stuff would be time-consuming but eminently doable.

He named a figure for lien and dust, and when she snorted, he increased it after some haggling to the maximum figures Salem had authorised him to offer. He wanted to leave ASAP and change his suit.

Even then, she insisted on him telling her what had gone wrong. He explained that he had been feeding the rumours that Kuroyuri wasn't interested in Watanabe because there were so few people with the right type of eyes, that the Branwen tribe were a bunch of Faunus Justice Warriors and that the Mistral City elite had given up on Watanabe. The job losses and a couple of local businesses going bust had meant that there was plenty of discontent.

He then decided to tell part of the truth. "What I hadn't known until yesterday was that the Chief of Police had found out that his wife was sleeping with the mayor." Well, actually he had known that and had been responsible for the police chief finding out about it. He had just underestimated the lengths the police chief would go to get his revenge. Really, he should have suspected after doing the expletive deleted Sandy Malbec show for so long, but he'd expected the man to get even more subtly.

He could imagine a hard stare coming from underneath the mask.

"By the way, James Moriarty sent a special agent to Watanabe a week ago who went to see Major Verdi. The agent arrived before the news of my most recent enterprise reached Watanabe. My information is that the man is one of Moriarty's proteges from his MBAD days and is competent. It may be just a coincidence, but I thought I should mention it."

Malbec was shocked. Moriarty was one of the few people who was genuinely a Mistral patriot and more interested in the Kingdom than his own wealth. It was worrying that he had spotted that something was up in Watanabe so early on.

He would need to check the information about Major Verdi. The name was vaguely familiar, but he was not really on Malbec's radar. If the man did have a connection with Moriarty, then perhaps he had left some loose ends and a possible smoking gun.

Maybe it was time to arrange for an accident to the headmaster as well as to his go-between in Watanabe. At least he could rely on Moriarty not rocking the boat until he was ready to capsize it and had his life jacket on. He needed to get back to Mistral and look in his files.

For another thirty minutes, he had briefed her on his understanding of what was happening in Watanabe and what the powers that be in Mistral and Kuroyuri were doing or likely to do.

At that point, Raven nodded and, after dismissing him, asked, "By the way, when did Maurice Gold decide to recruit you? My own bet is that he arranged for the death of your old boss."

Well, that was something he had wondered about as well. It was what he would have done. If Raven thought that would upset him, she was dead wrong. He was wealthier and wielded more power working for Salem than he could have hoped for if he hadn't been disgraced. He'd even learned to love the Sandy Malbec show.

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Raven watched as the airship departed. That had been useful, and she thought that she had manipulated him into dealing with a problem for her without realising that he was doing her a favour. Moriarty was the only other person who knew the identity of the new Maiden and that she had been sent to the Badlands. His death would muddy the waters.

The finances and the dust would be helpful but not essential. As far as she could tell, neither Malbec nor Salem had worked out how close the Branwen Protectorate was to being self-sufficient, especially as most people were used to living on subsistence rations. Not having to worry about bandits and Grimm had done wonders for farming yields, and the old dust mines had been surprisingly productive. Upping the rations and the fact that the company shops only made a small profit motivated the workers to work hard. Remnant, even the fact that she had told the managers to take worker safety seriously had made her a heroine to the mine workers.

The long-term problem for the Branwen Protectorate was that she doubted that any successor of hers would be as willing to lead by example as she was. Oobleck's books and lectures convincingly argued that the problem of hereditary governments was that, basically, every second or third ruler was, at best, a self-entitled pompous ass and, more normally, someone who believed that they were the centre of the universe. Most never questioned the percentage of tax revenues needed to support their lifestyle and that of their entourage.

The positive side was that even pompous asses could take a long-term view – the Kings of Vale had been noted for their ability to say what the frack to their prime ministers about decisions which, although popular in the short term, would be long-term disasters and of giving a nudge on difficult decisions. Anyway, if she could give the Badlands thirty years of stability, that was more than anyone else had ever done, and there would be a chance that her successor would be mostly honest.

The question which she was wondering about was whether she could make Emma or Debbie, as she was now known, a fit successor as Chief. She rather doubted it, but it was worth a try. Maiden powers handed down to a chosen successor who shared some memories might give the Branwen protectorate a chance of survival.

She was also going to have to persuade the woman to fake her death. She didn't want Ozpin or Qrow trying to guess who the new Maiden was and killing everyone who knew that Emma had been close to Wendy was more likely to bring the matter to their attention.