Etruscan Blood

  ***

  He wondered how long it had taken Tanaquil to make that damned tebenna. She'd even spun the yarn herself; no other woman in Rome could spin so fine, drawing it out to the infinitesimal point where it almost ceased to be thread and became nothingness.

  Tanaquil had never mentioned the question he had asked, that time in the cave. He almost wondered if he hadn't spoken it aloud; had his mind played tricks on him, as it did sometimes when he was listening for a sound, and thought he had heard it? She never took him back to the cave, but her teaching continued; in her rooms in the palace, or in the cella of a small temple she frequented, under the black eyes of a rough wooden god.

  He'd asked how you could know when you had an answer to your question.

  "Prophecy is about questions," she said to him. "It's not about answers."

  "That doesn't make sense. Why ask the question unless you want it answered?"

  "Asking the question is its own answer."

  That didn't make sense either.

  "So the gods don't answer questions."

  "Not in the way you mean, no."

  "In another way they do?"

  She shook her head in anger, and her earrings rattled drily, as if the tiny lions of their filigree were growling in thin metal voices.

  "Haven't you ever been doing something, something you thought about, you decided was the right course of action, and yet suddenly you know it's wrong? You're walking down a path, and suddenly you know it's the path that leads to the haunts of the hinthials, there's an enemy in the shadows. You feel a spear pointing straight at your heart. You must have felt that, some time in your career."

  He nodded. Nights when it was only that sudden heightened danger that kept the blade from your neck. One night when he'd stopped a finger's breadth away from the edge of the pit. It was a strange feeling, that raised the hairs on your arms and made your skin shiver, but it was the feeling that separated the experienced soldier from the rookie. Or from the dead; that was another way of looking at it.

  "You miss that life?" she asked. Uncanny how she must have tracked his mind's wandering.

  "Everything's stalled here," he said. "Just delaying things."

  "You think we play too many games."

  He didn't answer. He didn't have to; the look in his eyes was enough.

  "Tarquinius would say the playing of games is sometimes its own reward."

  "And what would you say?"

  "I'd say that sometimes you have to. And sometimes you play games when things are uncertain."

  "You play games that keep things uncertain."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "To keep the future from closing in on us too quickly. To give ourselves freedom."

  "Life was simpler when I worked for the Vipinas."

  "Simpler. But better?"

  No.

  He felt choices pressing in on him, the ever-narrowing space of action. Sometimes in a fight you realised it was narrowing to a point; you were in an alley with the walls narrowing, you were backed up against a wall, you had nowhere to go, and only a choice between slow grinding defence and taking your chances in a rush attack. When that happened it was as if the infinite branching possibilities that extended their delicate tendrils into the future had all been slashed away; there was nothing left but death or glory or possibly both, and there was a wonderful certainty in that moment, an utter certainty that you might find in sex or the moment you crossed the finish line in a race, or (and he still felt his pulse stammer as he thought of it) in the fire of prophecy.

  "Let the sky fall," he said. "Let Rome burn. Just tell me who to fight."

  "In due course," she said, and smiled. And made him look into the sacrificial fire again, till his eyes burned and swam, and in the dazzle he began to see Rome rising, and a tall young man with long braids falling, as an eagle raked his head with its talons, falling from the Tarpeian rock, his face red with his own blood, falling.

  Tanaquil & Servius

  Fuck, she was furious. She'd been locked out. Tarquinius was squatting like a spider in the comfortable fug of the Palatine hall, with his whole council; young Tarquin and Arruns standing behind him, Manius and Servius and Faustus and Gaius with him, every notable of Rome both Etruscan and Latin; and he'd set guards at the door.

  She'd screamed at them; had he told them not to let her in? They'd looked at each other anxiously; two young men of the interchangeable sort who were always found on the margins of power, useful, efficient, and completely without individuality. The same neat braids, the same neat clothes, the same limited brains.

  "Well, did he?"

  One shook his head.

  "Let me in then."

  "He didn't mention anything about letting you in, you see," the other said apologetically.

  "For Turan's sake use your own initative, then."

  He looked worried at that, and the other one spoke. (A neat double act, that; they only spoke in order to get the other one out of trouble.)

  "I don't think he'd be too happy if we used our initiative," he said. "That's not really what we're here for."

  That was clear enough. So was the fact that he'd meant her to be locked out. In all those years of marriage – how long had they been together? she could hardly remember now – he'd never before excluded her from his council. She'd always been as free as he was in their house; they shared everything, bed and board and the rule of Rome. Now like a damn Roman he'd banished her to kitchen and loom, and left these two boys to take her anger, coward that he'd become.

  He'd never lied to her before, either.

  If it hadn't been for the Senior Vestal she might still not be aware of his move. He'd brought the men together; Manius was there with him, Servius was in there too, so there was no chance she'd hear from either of them what had happened. She only heard of the council from one of the serving girls, who'd taken a jug of heated wine in to them; but they'd stopped talking as soon as the girl had gone in, and she'd served them in an uneasy silence. Both her sons, all her confidants, and her husband; and herself excluded. It could not be other than bad news.

  It was the Vestal's daughter, Fabia like her mother – as they termed themselves – who brought the news; not trusted to writing or to a messenger, but uttered in her husky voice, breathless from running. (Tanaquil wouldn't have got breathless; but she exercised, whereas the Vestals were restricted to their temple, and when they went out, were driven in a carriage, preceded by guards. The very fact that Fabia had come without her carriage, disguising her robes and veils under a dirty felted shepherd's cloak, showed the importance of the message she brought.)

  "Fabia says..." the girl's breath rasped, her lungs thirsty; "Fabia says they've gone up against Velx."

  "Who have?"

  "Rome has. We have. The …" she convulsed again, her ribs almost pulling her body apart as they expanded to take in the air … "the city has been taken. She said you'd..."

  "Easy, easy." The girl was unsteady on her feet; Tanaquil pulled her towards her, bracing her body, feeling its struggle for breath.

  "She said you'd want to know."

  Fabia had been right, whether or not she'd realised Tanaquil had been blind-sided by her husband. Tanaquil forced her face, her hold, to soften; no point letting the girl know how angry she was. She'd only tell the elder Fabia, and the elder Fabia didn't need to know. Soft, soft, she thought, feeling the muscles of her face relaxing into a dishonest smile. (It was the hardest thing to do, pretend softness. All that effort to look effortless.)

  "Quite right," she said evenly. "I did want to know."