Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby
***
Tanaquil was furious. Servius had come in smiling, puffed up like a little boy who has caught a huge fish, or a cat that's brought a mouse in its soft mouth as a gift; pleased with himself, hoping she'd ask him why. That only made her more furious.
"You arsehole of a gods-damned demon," she said, pushing a tablet at him. "You stirred that up."
He could have read it, but to sit down, patiently to decipher it, in front of this spitting hatred? He wouldn't do it. He said, roughly, "What?" and pushed the wax tablet back at her.
"Cisra's destroyed. As good as."
"What?"
"You and your damned stupidity, starting up this idea of freedom for slaves. They've thrown out the zilaths. This man calls himself Son of the Slave, Son of Servius; you can see where he gets his ideas from."
"Velx wasn't my doing."
"No, but Veii was."
"Veii? There was no rebellion..."
"You set the slaves free."
"Well, I.."
"Now they think you'll back them. Your precious plebs have seen to that."
"I didn't mean to..."
"Kings have no excuses. The message has gone out to every city in the league; Rome will support the slaves against their masters. Servius, the man who abetted a revolution in Velx; who freed the slaves in Veii; who gave the plebeians votes and armour and promotion."
"That's not the same as encouraging revolt."
"They think it is."
"I thought you wanted a city open to talent?"
"Open to talent is one thing. Breaking down the whole framework of society is another."
He had to stop this before he became as angry as she was. He'd never seen her this angry; with sudden coolness he realised, he'd never seen her this frightened, either. He'd never seen her more beautiful, either, her eyes shining with wrath, her face slightly flushed. He had a choice; he'd had a choice before, he thought, and it hadn't stopped him, and he felt ashamed before her, and guilty, and reached out a hand hesitantly towards her, saying "We need to talk, we need to put this right."
He was more ashamed when she collected herself, and spoke softly, about what she'd tried to do in the way of diplomacy, about her time in Velzna, about how many people she still knew there, and how they would put all their weight behind Rome if only the city moved softly, taking care not to upset the major cities; and about how it was important not to frighten off their Etruscan allies, how the slave revolts could imperil everything she'd worked for. She had done so much in Velzna, trying to snatch the drifting threads of League diplomacy and weave them into a Roman future. He felt, for a moment, out of his depth, as if winning at Veii had been nothing but a toy, and he was a boy who had caught a lizard on the wall and thought he was the conqueror of worlds.
"And what news of Velx?" he asked.
She shrugged. "No news," she said.
"Nor of Ramtha?"
She shook her head, smiling slightly.
He nearly bridled at that smile; mocking, he thought it was, and superior. But then he remembered what he'd come to tell her.
"Robur," he said. "We have Robur."
She closed her eyes as a cat does when you stroke it, and breathed in, swelling with joy, and then sighed out her breath very slowly before she opened her eyes again. Just for once, she hadn't heard the news before he could tell her. And just for once, it was good news.
"What are you going to do with him?" she asked.
"What do you think?"
She didn't answer, just smiled, a long, thin smile like a knife blade; then she started to talk about the temple in Velzna, a long, funny story about the priest who kept showing her fantastic treasures of the temple - the gilt bronze tripod given by a charioteer who had won fifteen races on the trot, the statuettes given by some new city in the northland fens "where all the people have webbed feet and they only eat fish and fowl, because the pigs die of rot and the cows drown in the mud", the way both combatants in a small war had vowed a bronze-sheathed chariot if the other was destroyed, and both were destroyed, so in the end the temple got two chariots, though it took ten years for the ruined cities to raise the funds ("which teaches you to be careful what you ask for," Ramtha commented) - showing her all these treasures, and then telling her the price. It was a long and rambling story, full of amusing twists and turns, and her mocking imitation of the priest's whining voice and insinuating head-waggles pulled him into a better humour, so they ended up laughing together.
It was strange, the way her bad temper had blown over so suddenly, but squalls on the lake below Velzna did that, ruffling the water with sudden wind and speckling it with rain, only for the sun to rise again over a dead calm; Tanaquil, a force of nature. The though made him smile.
"What are you smiling at?" she asked, and he could hardly tell her the truth, so instead he told her the story of the false ghost that got a Volscian woman's husband into bed with him - she must have heard it before, but it always raised a laugh - and she reminisced about her time in Velzna, and he about his boyhood, but missing out the bad bits (which, gods knew, left him little enough to tell).
He felt most ashamed the next morning when he woke, in Tanaquil's bed, and didn't remember how, exactly, he had got there, and wondered which of them had made the first move, and was, on the whole, not certain at all that it had been him.