***
"So, how are you finding Velzna?"
A cool and disinterested question didn't always want a straight answer, Tarquin reflected; it was part of the game. Then again, perhaps Arathenas was really interested.
Or perhaps not; he was elegant, this well-born man, perhaps too elegant, with a boneless grace that made him seem to be always moving just a little slower than the rest of the world, and pale grey eyes. Every time Tarquin looked at him he seemed to be leaning on something, drooping slightly despite his height.
Tarquin murmured something, as he always did, about the special quality of Velzna, and didn't specify (as he never did) in what that special quality consisted.
"It must be a small city, though, compared to Rome." A woman's voice cut in - a voice that seemed quiet, but was well projected; a voice, he thought, that could command as well as beguile.
"Small?" he asked, for once on the back foot. How Velzna could ever be considered less than splendid; he felt, for once in his life, overwhelmed by it, and she asked if he was disappointed.
"A little quiet for you, perhaps?"
He saw her slip her arm into Arathenas', with the ease of old friends. He thought, with a sudden stab of melancholy, she'd grow old well, with that high nose and clear eyes.
"It's good to be with my own people at last."
"Romans are … very effective," she said, as if she was unsure exactly which word to use.
"Very dull," Arathenas said, looking down at her with amusement.
"They can be a bit predictable," Tarquin said. "I think Servius likes them that way."
"But he's Etruscan too, I think?"
He wondered whether she was Arathenas' partner, or perhaps a sister; both of them had the same slight lisp, which in his speech seemed languid and arrogant, as if he couldn't be bothered to speak with clarity, in hers hesitant and placatory.
"He's as Etruscan as I am," Tullia said. "More, actually."
Arathenas raised an eyebrow.
"I'm half Celt," she said.
"On her mother's side," Tarquin added. For what that was worth. Half slave, too, like her father; they didn't mention that.
"I haven't had the pleasure..." Arathenas could be suave when he wanted; he made his ignorance seem Tarquin's fault, and even when Tarquin told him he was speaking to the daughter of the King of Rome, he looked sidelong through his eyelashes and spoke almost dismissively, though his cheeks were flushed.
"Of course, she's not officially here?"
"Nor am I," Tarquin said, and put a hand over Tullia's shoulder, pulling her slightly towards him.
The rooms in this mansion were bright with lamps, though lower and heavier than those in the Tlesnasa house, the ceilings vaulted in smooth curves; the walls were hung in one room with gilded bronze shields that glinted in the lamplight, in another with fabric striped in the colours of Tuscan spring, light greens, sky blue, and the orange, pink, lavender of wildflowers. Girls dressed in white passed with warmed wine, which cooled gradually the further they got from the kitchen; by the time Tarquin tasted his, it was lukewarm, and it was too sweet, anyway, and tasted strangely of incense.
"Velzna's not so much smaller than Rome," Tullia said. "Quieter, maybe. But you have to understand, Rome was wild, even when Tarquinius took over. It was the place you went when you'd run out of options."
Murderers, Tarquin thought, and rapists, twister, cheats, and traders who didn't care how dirty their hands got, as long as some gold as well as dirt stuck to them. He'd seen them all, half of them among Servius' slingers. But he tightened his fingers on Tullia's arm, feeling her flesh yield under them, and she fell silent.
"And now?" Arathenas' voice was silky.
"My father had big ideas," Tarquin said. "But Servius..."
"Her father..."
"I think he's gone native."
Arathenas' eyes narrowed, and he seemed about to pursue that thought, but the woman spoke again, deftly weaving a different strand into the evening.
"You know of course Velzna is a holy city. So many of us have given our lives over to the gods; others, to the sacred arts. And so the city is, perhaps, rather different from Rome."
"My mother trained here," Tarquin said.
"Thanchvil Spurinna," she said. "She's still spoken of with respect."
"There aren't many women who can foresee," Arathenas added. "One or two in each generation, perhaps. She's a loss to us, you know."
The woman began to speak, and then hesitated, and frowned slightly, before saying, quite softly; "I'm surprised she doesn't have more power in Rome. She would here."
"Romans have strict views on a woman's place," Tullia said. "In fact they have strict views on most things. Strictness is what they're all about."
"But you'd be wrong to think she doesn't have influence," said Tarquin. "Anyway, we're not here to talk politics." He'd meant to keep his voice soft, but the words surged out too loud and harsh. It was difficult to keep from scowling, sometimes, when she barged in like that, something she had in common with his mother. Roman women were so much easier to manage. But boring, of course.
"Of course not." The other woman reached out, and put a hand on his arm. Soft, cool from the winecup she'd been holding.
Arathenas laughed. It was not a nice laugh, and something ugly happened to his face when he laughed it.
"A king's son - a queen's son - and the ruling king's daughter. And they turn up and say they're not here to talk politics."
"I'm not," Tarquin said, and turned away. Enough diplomacy. He was tired of this smooth princeling and his languid sneer. Time they learned a bit about Roman manners. "I don't much like Servius, and he doesn't like me. Tullia is here because I'm fucking her. You should be better informed."
He was delighted to see Arathenas wince. But the girl seemed amused, if anything.
"You're here for the ceremony, I suppose?"
"Well, yes," he said carefully, but..."
"Really because we can get away from Rome for a while," Tullia broke in.
"The ceremony is just an excuse?"
Tarquin kept his face studiedly impassive. "You'll understand... I can't let that get about."
"Of course not," she said evenly.
Truth told, he didn't really know why he was here. To get away from Rome, certainly. It had become unbearable; the backbiting, the pressure to conform, Servius' impositions. Servius wasn't even one of those eastern tyrants who tore babies apart before breakfast and dined to the screams of tortured prisoners. Persian shahs and Greek tyrants had style, Servius thought, they really enjoyed their cruelty, but Servius didn't even notice the means taken to achieve his ends.
He would have moved on, given up on this couple as a waste of time, but the music was starting already, and people were starting to sit down; the couches were filling up, and it would have been too noticeable if he'd tried to get away now, so he sat, with Tullia on one side, and Arathenas on the other.
The flutes started softly, with a winding, insinuating melody that seemed oddly inconclusive, its rhythms all irregular, so that when you expected a phrase to end it continued, and then paused suddenly where it should have carried on, twisting gently within its flow. But then the dance started, and the gentle sadness he'd always thought was the flute's inherent nature was broken up by shrieking notes in a higher pitch, that punched out an insistent pulse for the stamping feet of the dancers to follow; the hesitant, fitful little tune suddenly blazed up like fire, sparking and fizzing with piercing high shrills that started him shivering.
Once his ancestors danced to these rhythms in the harvest nights. But no one was dancing; they were waiting for something. Someone, somewhere, was pounding a stick on the ground in time to the flutes; one or two of the audience began to clap, sharp taps of fingers on one palm. Then with a shout the dancers rushed out; a troupe of young boys and girls all dressed in the same blue and white stripes, with red shoes and red caps, in a snaking line, the leader kicking out to the sides with
each jump that took the line forwards in a series of leaps and fallbacks, kicks and backheels, weaving the line over and under itself, taking it between the raised arms of a couple, or over their hands laid for a moment on the floor; restlessly coiling, twisting, turning, and all to the same fast, stamping beat.
He saw Arathenas, on the couch beside him, part his lips, licking his top lip with the very tip of his tongue. Lazy as he looked, Arathenas' eyes flickered with interest, perhaps with desire. There was some quality in that rhythm that pulled at you inside, like seeing a lover the day after you'd slept with her for the first time, seeing her suddenly, without warning, in the street, and feeling your heart lurch and die momentarily. He looked at Tullia, and saw her eyes bright and feverish.
"Do we dance?"
Tarquin shrugged. But Arathenas leant over.
"We do," he said, extending one hand slowly towards her.
When Tarquin looked, he saw that now, people were beginning to rise from the couches, joining on to the end of the line - one or two to start with, then more, so that the line became unwieldy, after a while, and was forced to split into two; and the two lines spun, spiralling into each other's embrace and then out again.
"You dance?"
Her soft voice startled him; she was bending close to him, he felt her breath on his cheek.
"I do," he said.
"Arathia," she said, and he was about to ask what she meant when he realised it must be her name. Arathia, Arathenas; so perhaps they were brother and sister, though they looked so unlike each other. Who were they? he wondered; obviously high in rank here, but he couldn't tell if they were scions of a ruling house, or if Arathenas was a zilath himself - he was old enough - or perhaps a priest.
He took her hand, and was about to lead her to join the tail end of the dance when he saw Tullia again, with Arathenas, dancing together, in their own tiny spiral; his feet flickering between hers, their hips swinging around a single centre, or rather, both of them turning around each other, like the two snakes of Aesculapius' staff. Tarquin wondered what Tullia was saying to him; he saw her eyes meet her partner's, saw her smile with one corner of her mouth and that tiny crinkling of her nose he thought was reserved only for him. He crushed Arathia's hand in his, and pulled her hard towards him; she pivoted on one foot, and turned inside his arm, and looked up at him with a frank question in her eyes, and as the dance passed them he grabbed the trailing hand of the last man, and swept them into the line.