Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby

  ***

  She could never tell whether the fire around his head was an omen, or just a momentary illusion, a trick of the way the sun caught his hair and lit it from behind. Sometimes now her eyes seemed to be clouded with a membrane that filtered the world through a mist, or dazzled her with reflected light; she never could be sure.

  The day had been muggy, the sky yellow like a bruise; the fat flies droned and flew heavy and sluggish, and some came to the table where spilled wine and honey had left a sticky smear, and died there. Tanaquil had been weaving when Servius arrived, but she'd set the shuttles aside when he entered.

  "Did you know Robur was in Tarchna?"

  She thought for a moment, unsure which was the lesser of the evils; to let Servius know her information was less complete than he'd believed, or to let him believe she'd known but, for whatever reason, kept her knowledge secret. But that short hesitation took the matter out of her hands.

  "I should have known."

  "What?"

  "You're playing some game."

  Of course she was; but not that one, and she told him as much. It was disturbing that her cousins hadn't let her know Robur had turned up there; and if she put that news together with what she already knew, that Tarchna was looking for new alliances, things looked very bad indeed.

  "There might be some innocent reason," she said.

  "Like what?"

  "They're probably trying to deal with him before I find out. Pack him off and hope I never do find out what they've done."

  "They think they'll get away with it?"

  She shrugged.

  "They should have refused to talk to him. They know how good your intelligence is. They knew that as soon as you got to hear of it, they'd lost your trust. What do they have to gain for it, unless they're cutting a deal with him?"

  "So. It's not just an Etruscan affair, the alliance with Velzna."

  "Potential alliance."

  "No, they'll do it. It all fits."

  "So what do we do?"

  "I don't think it changes anything."

  He snorted.

  "We're already working on detaching Velzna from the alliance."

  "I won't teach my grandmother to suck eggs, then."

  (The 'grandmother' rankled, even if it was a common phrase.)

  Thunder growled in the far distance. The city seemed quiet, waiting for something, the sky huge and empty. Tanaquil shivered; it felt like the kind of silence you hear when you wake in the small hours, when even the dogs and owls are sleeping, and the house echoes like an empty tomb.

  She could see Servius wasn't entirely convinced; she'd need to think later about whether she did in fact need to take any action about Robur's reported presence in Tarchna. It put her in a tricky situation; Rome was still not quite strong enough to declare war openly on Tarchna, but she could hardly overlook support given to Tarquinius' enemies (and it was quite clear now that Robur was that; she'd had enough reports of what he was up to).

  But she couldn't let Servius leave while he still so obviously distrusted her. She had to keep him on her side; on the side of Rome, but most particularly on hers. (Sometimes, she'd have to admit, it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.) And he was already turning to go, obviously thinking he'd got what he came for; there was no courtliness about him. Not like Manius, who if he'd come to talk politics would cover it with the decent integument of a cup of wine or a rambling conversation about poetry or the religion of the Sabines or his grandfather's views on bees; or Tarquinius, who would gently ease into a question about, say, Clevsin's affiliations, by way of a digression on the wine of the region and the couple of women from Clevsin that Tanaquil knew in Rome, though it was always rather obvious where he was leading – well, they'd been married so long that all his ploys were quite transparent to her. No, Servius was like Faustus – though in this only, that he had no patience with small talk, not with his friends, though he had great patience for anything else.

  "You know that I've been wondering which way Tarchna will go," she said. He turned back, not speaking, but she saw one eyebrow arched very slightly higher than the other – he was interested, then.

  "They do seem to be pursuing a course that would take them into open conflict with us. But I'm wondering..."

  "What?"

  "Suppose they really want an alliance with Rome. But they want better terms than they think are on the table now. Wouldn't they raise the stakes? And isn't that what they're doing?"

  "But you don't know."

  She shrugged. "So; is it a bluff, a double bluff, or not a bluff at all? Impossible to tell."

  "But you think it's a bluff." (She noticed that he put just a little stress on the word 'think'.)

  "Let's say that I think an alliance with them isn't out of the question."

  "Because they're family?"

  She smiled. How touching of him to think so. "I turned my back on family the day I left Tarchna. And they know it."

  To her surprise he laughed. "You know it, anyway. I'm not sure they do."

  And it was then the lightning shone out behind him, with the clap of thunder that had been impending all day, a long but low rumble that rolled across the marshes bringing slanting rain in its wake, a line of grey cutting diagonally across the forum. The fire seemed to whirl around his head like a crown; it flamed on his shoulders, crackled along his arms. It burned savagely and yet he was untouched, still laughing, though sparks seemed to be shooting from his fingers. It burned, but did not consume; miraculous fire. And as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone.

  "You're all right, Tanaquil?"

  She looked away, blinked to rid her eyes of the dazzle the lightning had left. Nothing could free her mind of the image of that flaming, whirling crown; a prophecy of kingship. Tarquinius had screamed when the eagle descended on him, but Servius had laughed.