Etruscan Blood by AM Kirkby

  ***

  "Look at him!" Tullia said with contempt. Servius was leaving the Curia. Around him the crowd surged, but the lictors surrounding him pushed their way through; Servius walked in his own tiny patch of empty space, frowning. A purple robe in a white square in a sea of brown and grey.

  "I remember him once saying to me, don't make a grand exit, you want to stand around and wait till they've stopped noticing you, and listen to them grumble. That's how you find out what's happening."

  "When was this?"

  "When I was little. I think sometimes he used to talk to us because my mother didn't understand. He ever spoke much to her, just..."

  Tarquin looked away. "He's making a grand exit now," he said, and his mouth was grim.

  ***

  "Why the hell weren't you here?"

  Mamarke looked grim. Mamarke never looked grim. You could put him in a snake pit with two tigers, a bear and a bugger from Bubastis, and he'd look for the bright side.

  "I should have been?" Tarquin said.

  Mamarke didn't answer that; he just said, "We're invading Tarchna."

  "You pair of a baboon's balls. You knew that, and you didn't tell me?"

  "Of course I didn't know."

  "He tells you everything."

  "Not this."

  "Hells. He's lost it. He's fucking lost it."

  Mamarke was diplomatically silent.

  They had no time now. No time to get word to Teitu. No time to fix their own plans. Tarquin stood, thinking, despairing, frantically tallying friends, supporters, allies, and they weren't enough, they never would be enough. Maybe they could run for Velzna... he realised he was muttering aloud.

  "We have no choice," Tullia said.

  "What?"

  "No use running. If he takes Tarchna..."

  "He'll take the rest."

  "So. We have no choice."

  She wqas about to say more, but she stopped, suddenly, and turned her head quickly; she'd caught sight of someone in the crowd, and pulled Tarquin beside her and round, so he was looking in the same direction.

  "See? Scarface?"

  Postumus was there. Wherever there was trouble, Postumus was there. And one execution so easily led to another.

  "We need to move," she said.