But as for Argos, the Fate of Black Death Seized Him Straightway
It took two months for Lotti to deliver on her promise, long enough that Ansbach thought she would be unable to find anything. He had a working theory of his own, after keeping tabs on the behavior of the men in the barracks for two months, and if she hadn’t slipped a note into his hand when they passed each other in the general store one morning, he would have only taken a little while longer to find concrete proof. But she did slip a note into his hand, not even looking at him as she passed, with her basket on her arm and headed for the vegetables.
He went outside the store to smoke, read the note, and wait for her to come out.
They’re selling thioxin, Lotti’s note said. It’s the duke’s valet William who’s got most of it. I’ve seen him wrapping it up and giving it to the guards. Don’t think he knows I’ve seen. It’s probably all in his room, maybe you could catch him giving it to one of them or go in his room and find it.
The note didn’t say anything else. Ansbach folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. It didn’t surprise him at all. Selling thyoxin was exactly what Ansbach had expected. It was a very popular drug among soldiers, and as such was easy to obtain on Odin and in major areas of the fleet. Westerland, however, was far off the beaten path, and the drug was in short supply. Manufacturing it was relatively simple, but required ingredients and electricity that were rare in the backwater. So, any soldier who had developed a taste for the drug, and then returned home to the colony, was out of luck. To find someone who semi-regularly went to Odin and was willing to sell it to them was probably a major boon, and the valet was almost certainly getting very rich from the soldiers pay.
Telling the duke would cause trouble— that was certain— but it would be a way to get noticed, maybe appear indispensable. He fingered the note in his pocket as he smoked his cigarette. Across the street from the general store, Captain Moran stood on the porch of the pub, doing almost exactly the same thing. It was a fine morning now that spring had properly bloomed, and so most people were out for as long as they could be.
Lotti emerged from the general store, her basket now full, and turned to go without looking at Ansbach. “Lotti!” he called, but she ignored him.
Once she had gone, from across the street, Captain Moran said, “Don’t you know better than to bother the house staff?”
Ansbach, now having been acknowledged, went across the street to talk to the captain. “I wasn’t bothering her, sir.”
“Looked like it.” The captain wasn’t wearing his glasses, but his hearing was enough.
“She’s an old friend of mine. I wasn’t bothering her.”
The captain laughed. “Cartier, it’s nice to know that you’re human after all. I don’t care. Flirt with your cook. What’s it to me?”
Ansbach’s expression darkened, but he looked away at the quickly-retreating Lotti. “How can I, if you won’t let me on the roster at the house?” he asked.
“They don’t need an officer up there.”
“Sir, if I may say so, you don’t need an officer in town, either.”
“Very true.” Maron was smiling, an unpleasant expression if there ever was one. “I’ve been wondering when you’d ask for a transfer to Orrensburg. I’m sure they could find a use for you there.”
Ansbach considered his options, and fingered the note in his pocket. He would get what he wanted one way or another. “Sir, I’ve been wanting a transfer since I arrived. I would like to ask the duke to send me back to His Majesty’s fleet.”
Moran flicked the ashes of his cigarette against the bannister of the pub. “Don’t like it here?”
There was nothing he could say to that. Moran would mock any sentimentality about his mother, so he decided on the truth. “I want to feel like I’m useful, sir,” he said.
“Shame to let your education go to waste,” Moran said flatly. “I’ll see what I can do for you about that transfer, somewhere you’ll be of use.” The transfer to Orrensburg. The man didn’t like him— there was a dry glee in the idea of halting Ansbach’s career in its tracks.
“Thank you, sir,” Ansbach said. “But would you put me on the duke’s roster?”
“What’s the girl’s name again?”
“Lotti,” Ansbach said. “Lotti Ziegler.”
Moran considered him for a second. “You know, spring’s here. The duke’s going to hold a hunt on Sunday. You can come to that. It’d be a shame for you to miss it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ansbach said. “I appreciate the opportunity.”
This just meant that the transfer to Orrensburg would be requested before then, or that day. Soon. Ansbach smelled the spring on the wind.
“You should propose to that girl, you know. Seems like she’d say yes, if you’re going to move up in the universe. Better than bothering her.”
“I’ll think about it, sir.”
Thyoxin. Ansbach had a list of people in the barracks who he suspected of using it— six or seven of them. The ones who regularly got into scuffles in the pub, had careless and strange moments on duty, sometimes had the look in their eyes like they weren’t quite there in the moment as they came up or down. He couldn’t exactly search their footlockers or rooms (and they probably weren’t stupid enough to hide it in there anyway), so confronting the men about it wouldn’t be easy. And, besides, Ansbach didn’t care about the enlisted men’s bad habits. The wound that festered during his stay in the barracks started and ended with the captain.
He sat in his room, the narrow pantry, and smoothed Lotti’s letter out across his knee over and over. Captain Moran could have had his loyalty, Ansbach thought. It wouldn’t have even been that hard to keep. He didn’t like the idea of ruining his superior, but the instinct overrode it. If Moran had just let him have a space that was proper to him, not stepped on him. Let him have his little dignity. That was all it would have taken.
Even still, he could feel that he would regret his actions, even as he planned the best way to orchestrate it. He didn’t like the impulse that drove him— it had never once served him well. But he had it; he was a servant to it.
Ansbach waited until late afternoon, when most of the men weren’t in the barracks, and then he hunted down Marchand, who was on duty, standing at the little gate that closed the road into town, as if there was any traffic that ever came this way. He leaned on the fence post, but as Ansbach approached, he stiffened and saluted. The spring wind ruffled his hair.
“Nice day, isn’t it, sir?” he said, nervous already. Maybe he could smell it on Ansbach. The way he walked, or something in his face gave it away, that there was trouble brewing.
“It is. Glad spring’s here,” Ansbach said.
“Can I do something for you, sir?”
Ansbach nodded, but took a moment to compose his thoughts, letting Marchand sweat. “The duke is going to have a hunt this Sunday, I’m told,” Ansbach said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re on the list to go, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. Why do you mention it, sir?”
He pitied the boy. Marchand was nice enough, and didn’t deserve to be a stepping stone for Ansbach’s plot. But, nevertheless, he was. “It’s something you mentioned to me a while ago, back when you had your cold.”
“That long ago, sir?”
“Yes.”
“What did I say, sir? I— I was pretty sick. I could’ve said anything. It was a bad cold.”
“It was. You cleaned me out of fever reducers.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, I was happy to share.” Ansbach stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned on the fence, though his projection of camaraderie was terrible. “I’m afraid I do have to ask you a favor, though.”
“Sir?”
“Back then, you said that the captain didn’t mind the things that Vogel and Kleiger and everyone else were playing cards over.”
“I said that, sir?”
“You did.”
Marchand’s face was twisted in a rictus— a pathetic smile that only heightened his wide-eyed anxiety. “I see.”
Ansbach pitied him, and looked away for a moment, out over the fields. “At this hunt, I think the duke deserves to know what exactly it is that people are betting over in the barracks. We are all his staff, after all. I might need to ask you to say what you told me, back then.”
“Please, sir,” Marchand said. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I swear, really, sir.”
“I know,” Ansbach said. “I know it doesn’t. You don’t play cards. I can swear to that.”
“Sir—”
He turned back around and looked at Marchand, whose head was hanging. Ansbach considered him in silence for a moment, then scowled, and relented. He put his hand on Marchand’s shoulder. “You know what— forget it. Nevermind. Don’t worry about it.”
Marchand didn’t believe him, didn’t look up at him. The damage was already done. Ansbach already regretted it, but it was too late. He dropped his hand and walked away.
He wanted to talk to Lotti about it all, but didn’t have a chance before Sunday arrived, and the hunt with it. Ansbach, Moran, and the selected soldiers took the horses out of their stables, and walked them up to the manor house. Marchand, on his horse, alternated between jumping ahead and lagging behind— anything to get away from Ansbach and Moran. Eventually, he rushed ahead and disappeared completely out of sight.
“You’ll wear out your horse like that!” Moran yelled after him.
“Let him go,” Ansbach said. “I don’t think the duke wants us in the front of the pack, anyway.”
“Hah, you’re right about that.” Moran glanced at him with a wry smile, but Ansbach just stared straight ahead, and pushed his own horse forward.
The forest sprawled out in front of them, miles and miles of trees planted in regular, human rows. Sometime earlier that week, the fox had been loosed into the forest. It had nothing to eat— no rabbits, no birds, no mice. Westerland didn’t have pests like that. The fox was fat from captivity, and would live long enough to get lost in the forest and make an entertaining chase. Ansbach had seen the hunt as a child, helping with the horses, and watching the riders go out. Once, he had even gone with the groundsman to release the fox in the woods, and carried its empty cage back. It thumped against his legs and reeked of piss. When he passed the kennel on the way back in, the dogs had all rushed the fence and tried to leap it to get to him.
Along with the handful of soldiers, Braunschweig invited a couple men from the town, a few even came in from Orrensburg, some Phezzanis who owned the factories there. They were already shifting nervously in their borrowed saddles when the soldiers rode up to the house, though it was taking the Braunschweig family a little longer to get ready. Even the little Elizabeth was coming, though Princess Amarie wasn’t, and the delay was in getting the young girl properly situated on the top of her stout and speckled pony.
Ansbach dismounted, and slipped into the servants’ hall without anyone noticing he had gone. There, in the kitchen, he found Lotti working on lunch, chopping endless potatoes to be boiled. She looked up at him when he came in, her eyes wide. In the room behind her, the one with the great stoves, the head cook was checking on a whole roast pig.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered. She wasn’t happy to see him, not at all, and he didn’t know why.
“I was invited to the hunt,” he said. “I need to tell the duke.”
“Now?” she asked.
“I don’t have more time,” he said. “The captain is going to ask that I be transferred to Orrensburg. I need to— or I won’t—”
She was nervous, too, like Marchand had been. He didn’t know why— she wasn’t scared of him. She had helped him with this plan. But still, her voice shook as she hissed, “Do you have something to tell him?”
“Can you get the evidence? While I’m out on the hunt? You know where it is.”
“I—” She cut herself off as the cook finally heard their voices and turned around, looking into the other room with a glare.
“I thought you were William, bringing back my bowl,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Apparently not. How long does it take to feed the dogs?”
“Do you need me to go look for him?” Lotti asked.
“No, I don’t.” The cook’s eyes landed on Ansbach. “Did you need something, Lieutenant?” she asked, voice hard.
“No, ma’am,” Ansbach said. “I’ll be going. Thank you.”
He headed out the back steps, towards the kennels. The dogs were all still inside the kennel— they couldn’t be let out until just before they needed to go. William, who must have been one of the servants, had just fed them the kitchen scraps, though he left the big metal bowl on the ground rather than bringing it back in to the cook. He had tossed them across the expanse of the kennel, so each one of the dogs had found their own piece and was settling down to it, tongues lolling and licking their chops as they finished. Even the old bitch had gotten her fair share, somehow, though she was eating it slowly.
The door behind Ansbach opened again, and a man stepped out.
“Are you here for the hunt?” he asked. The man was unfamiliar, with an Odin accent, and he stepped past Ansbach to pick up the bowl that was left on the ground. This, then, was William, and the accent revealed who he was— Braunschweig’s valet, who came with him from his Odin estate. This was the supplier of thyoxin, according to Lotti’s letter. He was slender, thirty or so, with dark hair and eyes. There was nothing remarkable about him, aside from his accent.
“The cook was looking for that,” Ansbach said. “And I am.”
“I know, I forgot it out here,” William replied. There was some wariness in his voice as he examined Ansbach’s uniform. “Enjoy your hunt, Lieutenant.”
“I will, thank you.” He nodded at the kennel. “You shouldn’t have fed them right before going out. Aren’t they supposed to be hungry?”
William shrugged. “I don’t know anything about hunting. I figured they’d need energy to run.”
“Should I bring the dogs over?” Ansbach asked.
“The groundsman will do it.” William walked away before Ansbach could say anything else. He stood there watching the dogs for a moment more, until he heard someone blowing a horn at the front of the house, and he left to go rejoin the hunting party.
The hunt commenced when the groundskeeper let the dogs out of the kennel, and they swarmed forward with the horses to the sound of the horn. Ansbach was late mounting, and so lagged at the end of the party as they set off in a long line into the forest. The party was quite handsome— the soldiers wore black, but everyone else, even young Elizabeth, wore fine red coats. Braunschweig led the party, with his Phezzani guests, and Elizabeth on her pony trotted at his side. Her new dog— it must have been hers— followed.
Everything could be seen so clearly through the arrow-straight trees. The dogs ran ahead, baying, snapping their jaws at the air, pressing their noses into the wet, leafy ground, sniffing for the one wild thing alive on the planet. It was a fine, beautiful day to ride. The air was warm and smelled like decay, almost like the forests of Odin. No one minded if the sounds of the horn or the barking of the dogs or the laughter of the party scared the fox. They wanted to beat it out of the bush, to send it running.
It took a while for the dogs to catch the scent, but then they did, and the chase proper began. They ran ahead of the horses, weaving in between the trees, picking up the smell and losing it again, twisting and turning, faster and faster, until they had covered what must have taken the fox two days to run through. The closer they got, the wilder the dogs became, bowling into each other in their haste. Braunschweig and the other men at the front of the party readied their rifles, though they’d probably let the dogs catch the fox— a reward for leading the merry chase.
The fox, in its few days of freedom, had gone almost the whole length of the planted forest, and now the dogs were flushing it out from the trees. Ansbach, at the rear of the party, only caught the faintest glimpse of red fur as it left the treeline, running for its life into the fresh-planted fields of wheat. It couldn’t get far. The dogs leapt after it, snarling, as the whole party broke into the sunlight, out of the greening forest. The horses trampled the fresh furrows as the duke edged them into a gallop, chasing the dogs, chasing the fox.
Somehow, despite her age, the grey-muzzled bitch led the pack, spit falling from her jaw. The dogs caught the fox, all of them falling upon it with a scream. In the whirl of fur, it was impossible to tell where one dog ended and the next began, and there was no way to see the fox at all. It vanished beneath teeth, so thoroughly that it may as well never have existed.
The dogs, in their frenzy, kept biting anything they could get their jaws around, turning on each other. Ansbach far in the back of the group, watched, and was the first one to sense that something was wrong. With nothing left to shoot, Braunschweig and the others all shouldered their rifles again, and were letting their horses pant and rest after the chase, laughing about the dogs and their eagerness.
“It’s been too long since we’ve let them out. They’re too eager when they don’t get to hunt,” Braunschweig said. “Pity that we’ll be back on Odin soon— can’t take them with us.”
The Phezzanis laughed, and so did Moran.
From the snarling horde of dogs, those who had been bit pulled themselves out of the mass. It was the old bitch who dragged herself out first, limping with a gash in her shoulder, but still snarling. She turned towards the hunting party, smelling something on the wind. There was a strange light in her eyes and an unusual strength the way she moved, and the foam gathered at the edge of her mouth. She broke into a run, coming towards the group, towards the child Elizabeth and her dog, which was laying on the ground. No one except Ansbach noticed the danger until the old dog was close enough to leap at the girl, who screamed. Her pony startled and reared.
But Ansbach had seen it coming, and he had his sidearm in his hand, and without any hesitation whatsoever, as the dog rushed towards the child, he shot it in the head. It was only when the dog fell to the ground, twitching its last, that he remembered what he had named it, years ago.
The hunting party scattered as the rest of the dogs ran towards them. They tasted blood on the wind and saw the new corpse to devour and fall upon. Braunschweig, in a startling feat of athleticism, grabbed the screaming Elizabeth off her pony and kicked his mare into a gallop, until he was far from the slavering pack of dogs, still turning on each other. The rest of the party followed Braunschweig, though now all had their rifles back in hand, ready to shoot any of the dogs that followed them. None did. They just fought each other, out on the field.
The hunting party crested a hill, and the noise of them howling and yapping fell away. Elizabeth buried her face in her father’s hunting jacket, and Braunschweig, panting, asked, “Rabies? I’ve never seen—”
No one in the group could answer, until Ansbach nudged his horse forward. “No, my lord,” he said.
“What is it, then?” he asked.
Ansbach put the pieces of the story together in his mind— he had told Marchand that he was planning to reveal the story of the thyoxin and get the barracks in trouble; Marchand, far more loyal to his fellows than to Ansbach had rode ahead to warn the valet; William, trying to dispose of the evidence, had fed the drugs to the dogs. A simple, clear line. He could picture what was happening back at the manor now, too. Lotti might be trying to sneak into the man’s room to find the package, but she wouldn’t find anything. It was all long gone.
“Thyoxin poisoning,” Ansbach said. “Don’t you recognize it?”
Two days later, Ansbach returned to the Braunschweig manor, carrying all his belongings. It had been easy, after saving Elizabeth’s life, to earn a spot on the duke’s personal staff, even if all he had asked for was a transfer back to the fleet. The duke rewarded him, gave him a job as his aide. It was a position that he fit neatly into, perfectly sized for him. There would be more to do when the family returned to Odin, which they would be doing soon enough. For now, Braunschweig ignored him, though he was given a space at the table at dinner, and a room better than a servant’s.
The only problem was that Lotti was nowhere to be found. He went down to the kitchen, and asked where she was, and the cook told him that she didn’t know— a lie.
When Ansbach returned upstairs, he found Princess Amarie waiting for him in the hallway.
“A word, Lieutenant?” she said.
“Of course, Princess. What can I do for you?”
She led him into her parlor, and shut the door behind them. She sat, but Ansbach, having not been invited to sit, stood at attention. She let him stay there, and looked him over.
“Ask me the question you want to ask,” she said. He kept his face very still, despite the sick feeling that rose in his throat.
“Did you dismiss Lotti?”
“I did,” she said. She looked at Ansbach steadily. “I don’t appreciate trouble in my household.”
“It was never my intent,” he said.
“No, I understand. It never is.” She tilted her head. “I heard the story from my husband, and I understand that you’re my husband’s man now. Very well. I’ve always known you were intelligent— I’m sure you’ll be a great asset to him in time. But if you are going to remain part of my household, there will be no more trouble.”
“My lady— I didn’t set up the thyoxin. The story was exactly as I told the duke.”
She looked at him. “I’m not talking about that,” she said. “While you were out hunting, Frau Alberg found Lotti trying to break in to the men’s dormitory. When questioned about it, she said that she was looking for the thyoxin because she was pregnant, and needed to end it. The man whose it was said he wouldn’t marry her.”
A coldness went through Ansbach, from his neck to his fingers. “That’s what she said?”
“I think she was lying about her reasons— and I certainly don’t think she actually would have taken it. But she was pregnant. Yours?”
“Yes,” he said. There was no point in lying.
“As I thought.” She looked out the window at the bright spring day. “The doctor took care of it, and she has a letter of reference for a position as a cook in Orrensburg. I’m not cruel, you know.”
“No, my lady.”
“But I don’t want trouble in my house. Do you understand me, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You have your position. Do not step out of it. You’re not a servant— you’re a soldier, and my husband’s man.”
Ansbach looked out the window. The groundskeeper walked between the forest and the stables. The trees in the wood stood as orderly as soldiers, and the kennel stood empty.