Juniper Bough Ch. 6

“Here’s what we know.”

Jaune looked across the table—Ren had paper ready for notes, taken in his precise, byzantine code language, either on its sixth or seventh iteration, while Nora just had a soft grin on her face, clearly imagining the coming opportunity to take on whatever foes he was about to identify. This… this was right. Jaune might have been coming out of a rough night, but now, he was back on course. This was his team, and they were ready for action.

“In terms of the authorities, we’re safer than I initially thought,” he began, starting things off on a good note, “From the sound of things, Mayor Ozpin is more interested in keeping things stable in the Mistralian Quarter than any personal hostility towards us. I’ll be instructing Sacristans to put more pressure on the corner dealers and to keep them suppressed. Not outright stomped—starting a new turf war is the last thing we want—but if it looks like we’re a force for something like moral decency, the city’s willing to turn a blind eye.”

“So!” Nora grinned, “This means we’re dealing with enemies we can beat down in the streets?”

He couldn’t help but grin. Nora’s enthusiasm was always a welcome element. “Still have to keep things quiet, no outright warfare, but… strategic demonstrations of force might be what we need here,” he said, giving the go ahead to his lieutenants. “Touch on the remaining traces of the Malachite’s organization, what remaining allies they might have. We don’t want to go too far, but keeping them down works for our goals.”

He enjoyed the enthusiasm he could feel around the table. As Sacristans, they were the Temple’s most elite forces, and even as they had pious intent, they also felt the desire to flex their talents and show off what they were capable of. Jaune knew that this could be a risky matter, being incentivized to want to take action, but he figured it balanced out his naturally cautious behavior.

But still… rein it in, maintain control, discipline. Jaune was something more than most men, and he felt the heavy chains of his office settle back onto his shoulders after a night’s reprieve. Getting wasted on absinthe with Ren took his mind off things, but all things had to pass eventually. The dawn broke, the hangover was forced aside, and work came in for them.

Taking up another paper, he moved onto the next, heavier piece of business. “However, we do have something else to concern ourselves with. I was informed by our sister in the Office of Ecclesiastical Confidence,” Counter-Intelligence, ”that an attempt to cover up a loose end by one of our brethren was… interrupted last night by unexpected force. A journalist of no particular name had protection, and word from May, this protection came from her connection to Blake Belladonna.”

“I know that name,” Ren said, his brow furrowed, “How do I know it?”

Jaune nodded. “She was a former lieutenant of the White Fang, a Faunus gang that backed a philosophy of racial separation. A lot of local Faunus muscle, as I understand, have histories tied to it. But when the organization collapsed after the death of their leader, she seemed to have escaped—May says that the journalist was also previously Fang, but Belladonna planted a sniper to observe and protect her. That’s not casual behavior, and I’m thinking that means Belladonna has an interest in us.”

Nora tilted her head quizzically as she asked, “But… why? So she used to roll with a big crew before it fell apart, but what’s she been doing since? That seems like it’d tell us what she wants with us.”

It was easy to forget, between her bubbly personality, tremendous physical strength, and the fact that Ren and Jaune typically handled most of the intelligence work, but Nora was sharp, and went right to the point. She did the more technical work of their staged fights, ensuring structures were weakened and built the bombs Ren planted.

“Hard to say,” he admitted, “She came to our journalist in the company of a…” he glanced back to his paper, the details provided by one of the lesser Sacristans, “Yang Xiao Long, a local pitfighter and thug, nothing too interesting… but it’s hard to get much of a picture of her. She’s definitely got more coin than a boxer should have.”

“So Belladonna’s got her as a bodyguard?” Nora asked.

“Doesn’t answer where Belladonna’s getting the coin,” Ren mused, “But now I remember where I’ve heard that name—both of them. What I’ve heard from the street is that the two of them have been together for a while now. Might be bodyguard, might be more than that, but the money’s still the real question, and I haven’t really heard anything—they’re just a regular fixture of the street, not affiliated with any gangs and might be doing some security for one of the casinos, at best.”

There was a maddening distance between the appearance and possession of omniscience. Jaune sometimes wondered if it would grate less if he wasn’t in the business of making it seem like he knew all, that if he could breathe a little easier if he could just be open and admit that intelligence took work and Pyrrha’s appearances required careful planning, but… that was their job description. They were miracle workers—they needed to be miraculous.

“From what I’m seeing, Belladonna’s the biggest unknown to deal with, the others,” he ran his finger down a list of gangs, operators, dealers, and other nuisances who had reason to resent their presence, “are either too small, or, in the case of the Constabulary, not officially interested in us.”

“And Lila, from the cafe?” Nora asked. “Her teeth certainly looked high class.”

Jaune shook his head, “Not sure—I’m assuming it’s a fake name, but I’m not finding much from her description, either. Might be because she’s small time-”

“Or it might be because she’s very good,” Ren cut in. “A white haired Atlesian woman who’s obviously from money? I’ve heard word of that woman, and we should be preparing for what it means that Winter Schnee is sizing up against us.”

Jaune chuckled. He knew Ren would pitch his theory when he got the chance. “Winter Schnee,” he mused, thinking of what he knew of the famed soldier, “It’d explain where the money is coming from, at least. But if the Atlesians are interested in us, so much the better—it’s not like they’re going to be able to do anything with what they find out. They won’t tip off Vale that they have one of their officers working here, nor can they exactly send in the Marines. But I’m personally thinking it’s not her. Wouldn’t have been so direct in her approach to Nora, that’s for sure, but no matter who she is, this ‘Lila’ seems like the kind of nuisance we can work with. From what you described of her,” he nodded at Nora, “she is in the intelligence business, but she can snoop all she wants—she can’t stop what’s coming.”

“But if she’s bankrolling Belladonna...” Ren added.

Jaune just shook his head. “No… sounds too… neat, for my liking. We want to see the world line up and make sense, it’s natural instinct. But until we have actionable intelligence, I don’t want us shaping a conspiracy just because the Schnees have money and Belladonna’s flush. A lot of people have money, and just as many have an issue with us. But… worth trying to investigate her, as well. Nora?” he glanced up as she raised her fist in excitement, “Go get some pancakes, see if her friend with the sweet tooth might make another appearance.”

Nora lit up. Ren narrowed his eyes. “You think she’d make another appearance at-”

“If they are what they say they are,” Jaune interrupted, “They’ve got no reason not to. If I’ve learned anything, most people aren’t a labyrinthine mass of fakeouts and secrets, and aren’t actually as interesting as they might imagine themselves to be. And besides,” he added with a teasing smile, “are you going to tell Nora to cancel Operation Pancakes?”

“I will uphold my sacred duty,” Nora said, placing a hand on her heart, “Even if it should cost me my life.”

They all had a laugh as Jaune started to gather up his papers. He had work to do with pursuing the Belladonna lead, speaking with a few former White-

“There’s another matter, Jaune,” Ren said, startling Jaune back to the room.

“What… what do you mean?” He was legitimately confused, unsure of what Ren could be talking about as he rapidly scanned for something he might have missed in the itinerary. Which wasn’t a good sign when Jaune’s job was to not get surprised by anything.

“We have to prepare the Believers for accepting you as the Key of Virtue.”

A sudden, dark, and sour note struck Jaune as he heard it. Hadn’t they reached some… but of course not. Ren was Ren, and he would always put the Temple first. Jaune… knew that that was a task too far for him. He’d been trying not to think of his status, trying to pretend that it wasn’t going to happen, as if denial could, childishly, make it all disappear.

It hadn’t worked.

“That’s… that’s a matter for the Elders,” he said, knowing that it wouldn’t work as an excuse.

The look Ren gave him confirmed that well enough. He and Nora’s faces were easy to read—a mix of apprehension and uncertainty and surprise. It stood to reason, though. Jaune had been granted the highest honor imaginable, to be humanity’s most virtuous and to aid the Vessel in birthing the new world. Their souls would be joined permanently, overseeing the world they ushered in.

And yet, Jaune didn’t have the talent to fully hide his misery at it. How could he? How could he be the one to seal her fate...

Nora’s face carried only sympathy and worry. She mothered them, both of them—sometimes even mothered Pyrrha, though she was always careful not to overstep her bounds with the Vessel. But Ren… there was confusion in Ren’s face, uncertainty. He saw a thing in Jaune he could not bring himself to see, and yet-

“Jaune,” Ren’s voice softened to a voice Jaune recognized too well. Ren was… even among everything else, Ren was his brother, in every sense of the word. Nobody in the world knew him better, and nobody knew Ren’s compassion better than Jaune did. “I know you doubt yourself. I know you struggle to serve as an example to Nora and I, but… Jaune, you are worthy. Nobody in the Temple could claim to be worthier than you!”

Of course. Of course, Ren couldn’t- couldn’t imagine that Jaune’s real doubts weren’t about himself. Ren, for all his cold calculations, was a man of such unshakeable faith, and the root of that faith was love. He loved the family he had in the Bough, and he loved Jaune as dearly as Jaune loved him. Ren could never suspect the blasphemy that filled Jaune’s heart in his every waking moment.

“It’s not that simple,” was all he said.

“Is it?”

Nora’s interjection caught him off guard. But then again, she always did.

“Maybe it’s not… not that you feel you’re not worthy,” she ventured, “but that you… you worry. For Pyrrha. And that...”

As her words trailed off, Jaune’s eyes went back down to his documents. Things were sensible there, known unknowns like the ambitions of various street gangs. Chaos that could be tied into a semblance of Order. Nothing like the vagaries of the human heart, the pain he could not rationalize himself out of. Forcing himself to look back to his friends, Jaune said, “This is… this is a matter that I can only handle on my own. I… I appreciate your concern, but it is my task and my task alone. We shouldn’t discuss this further, at least, not now.”

Ren looked at him, his eyes nervous, his heart bare. “I… take hope,” he admitted, “in knowing that it’s you. That you and Pyrrha… that you will be the ones to bring the new world into being, it tells me that I have nothing to fear. That there couldn’t be a better world than one where Pyrrha was the Vessel, and you, Jaune, are the Key.”

“You’re a good man,” Nora added, her voice unusually—and devastatingly—soft as she said it, “You’ve done more than anyone else for me and Renny… and for Pyrrha. And I think… I think you can trust that we think you’re a good man, no matter what doubts you might have.”

Knives. Knives in his heart with every ounce of faith they invested in him. As their leader, their friend, their Brother in the Temple. Because they couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t be allowed to know how deep the rot went. How much Jaune loathed himself for now being the executioner of the woman he loved, the doubt that curdled to contempt and hate, blazing forth in-

“Excuse me...”

In a merciful interruption, Jaune turned to see the sharp eye of his fellow Sacristan, May Zedong, standing at the door. Office of Ecclesiastical Confidence, the one who’d been handling the situation with Ilia Amitola until she’d moved the matter up to him in the Office of the Infallible Vessel. He nodded for her to enter and she passed him a note. He’d expected it to be more information on that duty.

“There is...” she began tersely, “a matter we need the Vessel to handle.”

Ah hell.

A glance at the note told Jaune everything he didn’t want to see, and yet, knew was coming as soon as Pyrrha had named him the Key of Virtue. If he hadn’t been so wrapped up in the emotional ramifications of what that title meant, he might have moved sooner… but no, he should have known, should have acted sooner. Because now they had a matter of high treason, and that meant they had to dispense the Temple’s justice.

At least it’d take his mind off his own problems.

“Nora,” he nodded at his fellow Sacristan, “You and Pyrrha are going in the field soon, start prepping who you want on the team to back you up. Ren—we have to take a look at everything we know about Mister Cardin Winchester. This… this has to be big.”

LINE BREAK WEISS

“My, my, Mr. Winchester, you are simply too much!”

Weiss laughed, in vapid imitation of everything she was not. The woman seated in Port’s, one of Vale’s finest restaurants, wasn’t the invisible mastermind of the Ruby Masque, wasn’t the scheming spider at the heart of a web of blackmail and intelligence. That woman got to wear comfortable clothes. This woman was a vapid socialite, the very image of what her father expected of his daughter, a role Weiss did not like to return to playing, one that became, like this dress, more and more ill-fitting every day she thrived in Vale. Lucky Winter, getting the chance to throw it all aside and live as herself... But this performance was enough for her target, the spoiled, idiotic scion of wealth seated across from her.

Cardin Winchester. Old Valean money, old Valean manners, and old Valean charm… which was to say, a deeply indebted imbecile who clung on to the ghosts of his name like they could carry him through the world as he bled money like a stuck pig. And to his credit, the name had done a lot more than sense would suggest. How else would a man with no discernible talents, intelligence, liquid wealth, or personality sit across the table from Weiss Schnee and seem entirely in his element.

Unfortunately for him, Weiss worked a different element nowadays.

“Well, what can I say,” he said, taking a sip of an inferior vintage that he’d bought for the price tag, not the taste. No wonder he could own so much and yet, be so broke. “It’s a lowbrow consideration, but I find myself among the Faunus far too often not to notice these things.”

Weiss had played coy with who her contact was because she didn’t want Blake to know about it. Because on top of all his other “virtues,” Mr. Winchester was a bigot. And an obnoxious one at that, as his bile-raising attempt at “joke” underscored. Letting Blake know that she’d be getting dinner with him would… well, Blake wouldn’t lecture her. Blake understood the rules of the game, knew that Weiss did important work in prying secrets from the moneyed morons who made them rich. But the look on her face, that reckoning with the reality that Weiss could so neatly step from one world into this one, the land of wealth and privilege and cruelty and be so easily welcomed, that never sat well with her.

“I take it,” Weiss said, taking a sip of wine and pretending to be impressed with the taste, “your work with the Faunus comes from your recent charitable work with… with those religious folk, the ones from Mistral?”

Cardin waved it off, of course. “The Juniper Bough?” he asked, “Oh, that’s nothing worth speaking about, not really...”

“Yes, that’s the one!” she replied, faux eagerness springing to her lips as she pretended to be the precocious aristocrat, excited to have something to share, “I’ve heard about them from the overseers I employ at the company warehouses—apparently, they’re quite upstanding, giving the laborers a model of hard work and clean living. Which, as I don’t doubt you’ve seen, that class sorely needs.”

She sniffed her disgust, which achieved exactly what she wanted. The flicker on Winchester’s face, the look of simultaneous agreement in his contempt for the working folk of Vale, but also… his own frustrations.

“I… there’s certainly some elements to their scriptures that are agreeable...”

Got him.

It had been Ruby’s intel, acquired through her… personal connection to The Goodly Witch brothel, that told Weiss that Cardin Winchester both had and was having some “regrets” about his connection with the Juniper Bough. In the sense of a drunken princeling raging to his evening companion (hired for the night, of course) about how he’d been “betrayed.” It seemed the proprietress had quite good notes, the kind that made Weiss worry if Ruby was maintaining operational secrecy with the Madame.

Wasn’t hard to piece it together from there. It seemed Mr. Winchester, in addition to being the heir to one of the largest shipping interests in Beacon, was also a “faithful believer” in the Juniper Bough. Of course, his faith had been bought, like everything in his life, with promises that… well, Weiss wasn’t quite sure how much was the cult making promises and his idiotic self assuming things, but he was under the impression he was up for an office that would… let him have sex with Pyrrha Nikos.

She… wasn’t sure what to make of that. It felt… too crude to be true, but looking at Winchester, crudeness seemed to be in line with what she should expect. His loyalties had turned for a similarly crude reason as well, as the “Key of Virtue” had been given to another—a Sacristan, their cadre seeming more and more important as Weiss dug deeper—and Cardin Winchester was livid. So Weiss had done the usual thing, used her family connections and happened to have an invite to dinner with the gentleman—to discuss business, of course.

Weiss leaned forward, eager for gossip—for once, a true gesture—and asked, “Is there something more to them?” Her voice did not hide her intentions, aristocrats were always hungry for salacious gossip, and secretive cults were top shelf salaciousness.

Grumbling, Cardin struggled with his words. She had put him in an awkward position, but Weiss had been careful to present herself as everything Cardin would expect of her, to make it easier for him to blunder into the trap. As he neatly did.

“I… actually had some interest in speaking with you about them, because... well… I was recommended a… clandestine service by a friend of mine, Ms. Adel,” it was a herculean feat that Weiss didn’t raise an eyebrow at the claim that Coco Adel was a friend of Cardin’s, “she just married that Vacuan Count? But she had a little mishap that needed to be hushed up and she had help from… problem solvers you recommended to her?”

Weiss played it cool, feigning confusion as to what it might relate to the Bough. “Yes, I did recommend a service to her that I used to keep ahead of business matters here in Vale. Being not a local girl, I find myself relying on the aid of a number of different informants and brokers just to get a sense of who’s lying to me and how much.”

“Sounds absolutely dreadful,” Cardin said with a shiver. “I can’t imagine working with such… disreputable types.”

There’s more integrity in Blake’s toe than you have in your entire body, Weiss thought, but demurred in her speech. “Oh, I find the… colorful characters of the information trade to be rather… exciting. Beacon’s so very different from Mantle, and I must say… there’s a rather… dashing sort of criminal that comes from that. But, before I give any names, I should ask what you can tell me about your situation. Different problems need… different solutions.”

She punctuated her remark with crushing a sugar lump beneath her teaspoon, the most violent gesture she was capable of making in such an environment.

Cardin nodded, picking up her meaning and with the relief on his face leading him into the next stage. “Yes… and I find that the Juniper Bough is… more of a problem than I anticipated when I first reached out to them. They had seemed an upstanding and pious movement, a good model for the workers, like you said, but they… aren’t what I thought.”

You thought you were playing them, Weiss thought, but they were playing you.

“I had thought it would be a good move for the family,” he continued, acting as though this was simply a business move… which it sort of was, but Weiss knew Cardin’s involvement was more for the adulation the Bough likely showered an aristocratic failure like himself in their quest for legitimacy, “but as I… rose through the ranks, I began to find myself more and more surrounded by the most… detestable sorts. I had thought of the Temple as an institution of charity, of clean living, a model for the… Mistralians, who seem to come by the boatload. But instead, beneath the gilt and honeyed words of pious men, there was a criminal element.”

Weiss’s eyes went wide with feigned surprise. “I… I can’t imagine,” she gasped, then allowed her eyes to narrow. “But with that sort...”

Cardin gave a dolorous nod. “You simply cannot trust the lower classes to manage themselves. And now I find myself in a dangerous position, having offered much to the charlatans who posed as holy men. I’d back out, but they have… some embarrassing information on me that they could use against me, and my family’s interests. If you have contacts who could… make the problem go away...”

Now Weiss nodded, allowing herself a little confidence in her voice now that she’d made the sale. Cardin’s money was good, even if it likely would come more in IOUs and favors, some company money if they were lucky, rather than proper coin, but more so… he’d been fêted by the upper echelons of the Temple. He was too much of a moron to realize how much intel, or how precious, he’d been shown in that, but Weiss could pry it out of him. And that’d let them move against the Temple properly.

“They call themselves ‘The Ruby Masque,’ and I can assure you,” she struggled not to show the predatory glint in her smile, “they get results.”