 
Etruscan Blood

AM Kirkby

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2015 AM Kirkby

Also by A M Kirkby on Smashwords

Short stories

A Ghost Story of the Norfolk Broads

The Tin Heart

The Tea Master

Sword of Justice

Sacrifices

Egerius

Wake the Dragon

Rise Above

Not a Ghost Story

Haunted

Westminster Chimes

The Augur

Novellas

Walsingham Way

Green Land

Doppelgänger

Novels

Etruscan Spring – forthcoming

Children's books

Kasbah cat

Pagliaccio the Opera Cat

The Cat Who Couldn't Miaow

We have a city founded by the auspices and augury: there is not a corner of it that is not full of our cults and our gods: our regular rituals have not only their appointed places, but also their appointed times.

Livy

# 

# The Master

It was like that recurring nightmare of his; a dark passage through which he had to stumble, towards no light but only more darkness.

There was only one man with him. One man alive, that was, and one man dead behind them. One man who had died without a sound, except the hiss of a knife and a sudden splash of blood.

He lurched forward as one foot failed to find a safe hold; for a moment he felt cold with fear that there was no floor in front of him, only the long fall into blackness. He didn't realise he'd ground his teeth together till he felt his jaws loosen with the relief of finding his footing again. As he scrabbled to stay upright, he scraped the back of his left hand on the rough rock wall. His mouth was open to curse before he remembered the need to stay silent.

Somewhere down here were the two brothers. Somewhere in the tunnels and watercourses that ate through the soft tufa below the city, some made by natural erosion, others carved with iron chisels. The darkness hid them, as it hid the shafts that fell away into blackness, the bones of animals that had crept here to die. As, perhaps, it hid more guards than the one he'd killed already. And so he crept on down the dark passage, feeling his way as silently as he could and feeling the weight of the rock like in the dream, as it began to crush him. No torches, no sound except the slow drip of water or blood and the dull roaring in his ears.

A wind was blowing a long way off; he felt the air move around him. He closed his eyes to feel it; no need to do that down here, there was no sight to distract him, but it was a habit of his, ingrained after long years. The breeze came from ahead; there was an opening there. He was unsure whether it was what he was looking for, or whether he'd passed the place he wanted, and was coming out at the other side of the rock. He stood for a moment uncertain.

A huge weight slammed into his back. It was too dark for Camitlnas to have seen him; his follower had walked right into him. For a moment they staggered in a silent, farcical slow dance till they regained their balance; then listened, wondering if any other ears than theirs had heard the scrape of soft leather soles on rock, the hiss of expelled breath. There was no sound. Which might mean no one had heard; perhaps no one was there to hear. (And though he didn't want to think it, he wondered if perhaps there was no one there to hear; if Avle and Caile were dead already, by the noose or by the knife, or by slow starvation.) Then again, if anyone had heard, they were waiting, silent, biding their time. They might be anywhere in the heavy dark. Damned game of cat and mouse.

He started forwards again, repeating in his mind the tenuous instructions he'd been given. He'd entered the tunnels at the mouth behind the well, where the five cypresses stood together. Following the right hand wall, till he came to the parting of five ways and felt in the darkness for the second passage on the left. He should have checked for all five; it might, it occurred to him now, not have been the right junction. If he'd got it right, he should be approaching the place where the brothers were being held. If not... he didn't want to think about it. They'd left a body behind them; there would be no second chances.

Ahead, the darkness seemed less intense. It was difficult to tell; his senses were on edge, and he wondered if he were imagining it, or if he'd been in the dark so long that he perceived it as less dark even though it had not changed. He slowed his pace, reaching out to hold Camitlnas back. If he looked back, he'd be able to see whether he was right. But Camitlnas' silent tug at his arm showed him the other man had noticed it, too. Of course, they could both be mistaken...

No, this wouldn't do, this doubting everything. You needed a certain scepticism to wage successful war; but you had to have something to rely on. Your own senses, your instincts, the men next to you. The darkness was not only less intense, it was tinged with red. He closed his eyes and squeezed his eyelids together, trying to call up the yellow and purple that swam in the dark spaces of his head; and then opened his eyes, and after that dizzy swimming moment, like waking, he could see that the redness was a different redness, not an illusion of his brain and nerves but a real redness, like fire or blood.

Torches, then, or lamps, or a fire. It was too dull for torches; pine resin would spit bright sparks of yellow. Lamps burned more brightly. A fire, then; and a fire banked, he thought, a fire smothered under its own ashes. They could not be far from the place.

What he hadn't expected - what his instructions hadn't covered - was a bend in the tunnel just before they reached the place where the prisoners were being held. He thanked his guardian lasa that he'd kept close to the wall - that was strategy, but it was pure luck that he'd kept close to the left hand wall; if he'd been the other side of the passage, the guard would surely have seen him. As it was, he had a single moment to react.

'Mars Ultor!'

His voice sounded as loud as thunder. It was the password Tanaquil had given him; he hoped it was the right one. If it wasn't, he had no idea how many guards might lie beyond this corner.

'Roma Victrix!' came the answer, and he saw the guard relax, dropping his hand from the hilt of his sword. As he rounded the corner, he took in what he could of the room beyond; two men he took to be guards, sitting by the banked fire. The face of one was brightly lit by the flames' red glow; he was not one of the brothers, nor anyone Servius knew. Slumped some way beyond them were three naked bodies; asleep or dead? he wondered.

Roma Victrix; Rome triumphant. He allowed himself a wry smile at the thought that this time, at least, Rome might not triumph; or not as completely as she thought. And that was his last conscious thought, as he gave himself up to his instincts and the memories of war his body held, shouting to Camitlnas to attack at the same time as he stabbed his short sword into the first guard's guts.

Camitlnas took the man whose face had shone in the firelight, slicing through his throat. The blood stank like iron and wild lightning. Then Servius was through to the bodies beyond, trusting Camitlnas to take the other guard; and praise Tinia, the men were alive, though trussed with rope. Putting his sword back in its scabbard, he drew his dagger and cut through the rope around the first man's wrists; giving him the dagger, he turned to the second man, slicing his bonds away.

"Free yourself, then the third man," he yelled, and turned to see how Camitlnas fared.

Camitlnas had the second guard backed against the wall; he'd raised his sword, ready to slice down diagonally at the guard's throat. One or the other of them had kicked the ashes covering the fire away, and it was blazing up, lighting their faces, lighting the blond hair of the desperate man facing Camitlnas.

Avle was up now, and Caile was struggling to his feet, the third man still shaking his legs free of the rope; Servius had brought a second sword with him, and yelling Caile's name, threw it to him, still in its scabbard. If any more enemies arrived, drawn by the noise, he'd need all the help he could get from the captives he'd freed. He was about to shout to Avle to get the first guard's sword, the man he'd stabbed at the start of all this, but he must have been thinking slower than a man could act, as Avle was already kicking the guard's body over, leaning down to grasp the sword's hilt.

But Servius was thinking hard; that gleam of blond hair had him thinking he knew the man Camitlnas had backed up against the wall. Blond hair was unusual in a Roman; was this an Etruscan noble, then? He looked across; Camitlnas had forced the captive to his knees, and grabbed that glorious blond hair in one hand, jerking the man's face up, raising his sword again for a final blow.

And suddenly Servius knew where he had seen the man before, and shouted "No!" But it was too late, he knew before he said it that it was already too late, and he saw, in that awful slowing down of movement that comes with drunkenness but also with battle, the sword scything through the air, the gash opened in the throat, the curtain of blood.

Then the other guards were running into the room, and Avle and Caile and Larth Ulthes were running forwards to take them on, and it was every man for himself, a confusion of sweat soaked bodies in the glaring red light, and feet plashing in water and piss and blood, and it was too late, it would always be too late.

# Tarquinius

He knew as soon as he encountered Tanaquil that he was in the presence of someone quite exceptional. She was an aristocrat, of course; but it was not just her lineage that marked her out, but a certain aristocracy of attitude; the assurance of someone who has never either lacked, or been found lacking.

She had incredible poise; as if she were posing, and yet she seemed superbly unaware of the elegance of her attitude, the way her arms flowed down to her artfully raised fingers, the way one eyebrow lifted as if to ask the question how he dared even approach her; the way her nostrils flared almost insensibly, giving her features a cast of pride. All this he noticed in a second, and felt all the more ill at ease.

How ridiculous; she was much younger than him, and not even beautiful. Her nose was too sharp, her forehead too high. But there was something fiery and indomitable in her, something that belied the precision with which her hair was braided, and the tidy pleats of her chiton. He wondered - and this was within moments of meeting her - what she'd be like in bed.

"What are you thinking?"

Damn her; she could read your thoughts. He tried to keep his voice light; felt warmth in his cheeks, despite himself.

"Oh, I was wondering where you had your earrings made."

"Do you like them?"

"Very much," he said, though in fact it wasn't the earrings he'd noticed so much as the way the gold touched the downy skin of her neck.

"They're from the best workshop in Tarchna," she said; "the work of Aristodemus the Corinthian. All the best jewelry is Hellene, of course. Oh!" She put the tips of the fingers of one hand to her mouth. "Of course you know that."

He flushed; the reminder of his Greek ancestry was her first misstep, and she knew just how unwelcome to him it must be. They'd been talking for a while; she knew from his single name that he was of immigrant stock; he knew from her gentilicial name, her father's name, her mother's name, exactly how well born she was. As if her self-assurance alone weren't enough to tell him that.

As for the gold that glittered at her neck and wrists, the transparent linen of her long dress; wealth wasn't always accompanied by high social standing, his father's example showed that. Nor was wealth always accompanied by such exquisite taste, such impeccable - apart from that one lapse - manners. They'd been discussing politics in a desultory way; Tarchna had sent an embassy to Karthagos again, to strengthen the alliance they'd already made, and every prominent member of Tarquinian society seemed to have a different view on the matter. Tanaquil had said nothing out of place, nothing that another young girl of the ruling class might not have said, yet he'd felt a keen intelligence at work. And he'd felt, too, that in some way she was not just delivering an opinion, but also measuring him up, and finding him wanting.

He remembered the first time he'd understood his place in Tarchna. He'd been six or seven then, old enough to be allowed to go with one of the household servants for the morning shopping. He'd been pampered, as a boy with six older sisters always is. There was one younger girl too - 'disappointment' seemed to be her name, though he didn't understand that for a long time. In the women's quarters he was always the focus of attention, pulled this way and that way between laughing girls. When he was sick, or simply tetchy, he'd climb up on to his mother's lap and stick his head into the sweet stink of her armpits, or hit her legs with his little fists till she picked him up and put him to her breast.

His father was a more remote presence, a big man with curly black hair and a beard he could lose his fists in. Even his mother was afraid of Demaratos; in his presence she seemed to become thinner, and her face was washed clean of emotion as if every laugh, every joke had been wiped away with a sponge. But Demaratus would take his son on his shoulders, or swing him around by his chubby little arms; and if it frightened him, being so high, it excited him too, and he knew he was loved.

So when the first handful of mud struck the wall near him, that day he'd crept out of the house on his own, it was a nasty surprise.

"Greek scum!"

He'd howled for hours afterwards. The cook had come out to see what the noise was, and found him whimpering in the alley. The boys who'd thrown the mud had scarpered.

It happened again a month later. That time a clod of earth had struck his cheek, smashing the soft inside of his mouth against his teeth. He'd tasted blood. His own. A scatter of stones hit the wall behind him.

That was the day he'd asked his father what a half-blood bastard was.

"If you look closer, you'll see how they've used granulation on the tiny lions," her voice said softly, interrupting his bitter memories. "It's an intricate technique; they have to make the golden balls first, then solder them to the cast lions, and then finally they apply the lions to the discs. Twelve lions on each, twenty-four lions in all, and each one with its fur made out of granulation."

He realised she was talking to fill the silence, to prevent his being embarrassed. To be polite, he looked at the earrings; they were indeed fine. But he hadn't looked interested enough, obviously; taking his hand in hers, she put his fingers to her earlobe, so that he could support the heavy gold in his hand while he inspected the workmanship. Her ear was surprisingly warm in his hand. He wondered if she realised what a dangerous thing she was doing, how much the momentary contact excited him. Of course she did. It was a game, a game the nobles could play, because they didn't have to take such things seriously.

But it wasn't earrings they talked about for the rest of the day; it was politics. Lauchme's father had been exiled from Corinth after losing a high-stakes game of influence. At least the Greeks were more civilised than the Phoenicians or some of the Italic nations; they exiled you instead of making you part of a bonfire or pouring your blood out in the market place.

"We kill people too sometimes," Tanaquil riposted. "Didn't you know?"

He hadn't. She seemed, in a way, quite proud of it.

"Every time a temple is built, it needs a sacrifice."

"I know. But I thought it was goats. Or sheep. Or a bull. Not... when was the last time?"

"I'm not sure. My father would know. But I do know that the great temple of Tarchna was built over the body of a child."

"How on earth do you select a child for that purpose? You cast lots? Or do you just take a child from the street and murder him?"

She looked at him as if he'd said something unutterably stupid.

"The child is chosen by the gods, of course."

It turned out that the sacrifice was always an albino, or an epileptic; or, in this case, both. And she knew this, even though it was two hundred years since the temple had been built, even though most people had forgotten it. That was the Etruscan Discipline for you; every fact, every act, since the beginning of their history, was woven into the Discipline, remembered by the few on behalf of the many.

"But you are right, of course, that we don't do much of that any more. We tend to solve political disagreements by talking, not unlike the Greeks. I can't talk for Spina or Felsina, of course; the north isn't quite civilised. I'm intrigued how shocking you find the idea, though. Didn't you say you were brought up here in Tarchna?"

So he had to tell her his story; and that necessitated telling his father's story; and to be understood, that story in turn had to be prefaced by the history of Corinth, or at least as much of it as was needed to see that Demaratos had overplayed his hand - and within half an hour (as he realised glumly soon afterwards) she'd mined him for as much information as any Etruscan would ever need about the political affairs of the Hellene cities, and the way Demaratos had made his fortune. If Tanaquil ever played her own political game, he thought, he wouldn't want to oppose her; and she wouldn't overplay _her_ hand.

***

His father seemed not to feel the bitterness of exile. Robust men like him never did, Lauchme thought; Demaratos never cared what anybody thought of him, but simply forged on with his immense energy. There was always something that needed doing; a deal to be struck, a kiln to be fired, a slave to chastise. Demaratos might have missed Corinth, but he had done well enough here in Tarchna. He'd not come as a poor man - he brought with him five slaves, two of them expert potters and one a painter, plus his valet and a chef; but he'd made himself a wealthy one. There were twenty kilns behind the house now, and more than thirty potters working there; and they all belonged to Demaratos, except for the painter he'd brought with him, who was a free man now, and owned his own slave painters.

Demaratos was wealthy, but it was the wealth that came with dirt and hard work, not the easy wealth of Tanaquil's family. The half-naked slaves made their pots right behind the house; in the morning you could hear the thump and slap of the raw clay being worked, and in the hot afternoons the dust would rise, irritating his nose. You could taste the damp dirt in the back of your throat; the house was never free of the pottery's red silt. Always the clay, always the dirt, always the heat.

Yet Demaratos clung on to the stories of his golden youth. It was the only sign he ever showed of missing Greece. (That, and the way he ran the household, but Lauchme only got round to understanding that when he was much older.) Demaratos' phalanx, the men with whom he stood shoulder to shoulder, spear at the ready, wedged into a tight mass of bodies; "impregnable," Demaratos boasted, "tight, unbreakable. Whatever they threw at us, we stood firm." The races he'd run; his prize as victor of the footrace at Thebes, the fine tripod he'd had to leave in Corinth when he escaped; the time he'd come second in the chariot race, but only because the axle worked loose during the race, and that - he always thumped the table to drive home the moral - was why you had to check these things, gods damn it, and you couldn't trust a slave to do it for you. It was impossible to see the athletic youth in Demaratos' bulky frame; but the power that had fuelled his victories was still there, as well as the combative nature that had, in the end, put paid to his chances of power in Corinth.

Strangely, the only story Demaratos never told was that of his political career. Lauchme had pieced together small fragments of information from his mother, from visiting Greek traders, from snippets of overheard conversation, but there were still lacunae, silences no stray words had filled. It was the story of the golden child, victor in every race, winner of every debate, for whom there were no boundaries and no defeats; a youth spoilt by his own charm and his own success.

The name Kallisthenes was mentioned; Lauchme never found out why. There was the mention of bad counsel. Lauchme wasn't quite sure if that involved Kallisthenes.

Demaratos' family was already one of the wealthiest in the city. Greece being what it was, wealth brought power in its train; not the overt rule of a tyrant, but the more subtle influence an oligarch could exert. Hints and raised eyebrows, or a present freely given but with the expectation of return. That should have been enough.

All this Lauchme had put together, painstakingly connecting one piece to another in his mind the way he'd seen his father mend a broken pot, once. (You didn't mend pots, in a potter's house, you got a new one; but this was a wine-cup painted by Andronikos of Athens, his father had said, and Andronikos was a master - a master who had stopped painting some years back - so it was worth the repair. Even so, a tiny shard was still missing, so that Afrodite's thigh had a mark like a tiny arrow piercing it.)

And sometimes, there was mention of a son Demaratos had lost. Lauchme looked at his father sometimes when he was small and wondered if he really had an older brother, and what he might look like; and how could he have been lost, unless perhaps someone had let him wander into the streets one day, but then he surely would have been found later. Older and wiser, he remembered those tenuous mentions of a missing presence in the family, and somehow understood it was, like so many other things, not something he could mention to his father.

***

There was no reason Lauchme should have seen much of Tanaquil; he'd never really involved himself in politics, though he had an educated interest (how could he not have, given his father's background?), and he was, after all, only half-Etruscan, and somewhat out of the mainstream of Tarquinian society because of it. But that summer, when he should have been concentrating on planting out the new vineyards his father had acquired, he'd drifted into an acquaintance with a number of younger men who had ideas about developing more trade with the north - through Spina in the northern marshes, and even through Massilia and up the Rhone - and Tanaquil always seemed to be meeting one or another of them, so that he inevitably ended up talking to her.

It wasn't as if they'd ever have met, otherwise; she was only fifteen, hardly half his twenty-nine years, even if she was mature for her age. He'd been trained at Velzna for a couple of years, though his Greek blood debarred him from any position of power in Tarchna or the confederacy; he'd acquired every skill a young Rasenna man needed, from poetic composition to accounting, and he was reckoned one of the smarter traders in the city and at the port of Gravisca. He was good-looking, too, and while he'd never equalled his father's athletic record, he'd competed with some success as a runner; his lanky, rather indolent body might not look so powerful, but he had real stamina over the longer distances. Yet Tanaquil had that way of making him feel clumsy and unpolished, as if he were fifteen again, growing too fast to know what to do with his long legs and unwieldy body.

"Lauchme," she said to him one afternoon; "it's an interesting name..."

"I'm Loukios to my father, of course," he said.

"Lauchme..." she caressed the name in her mouth, and it was soft, not brilliant and sharp like his Greek name. "Meaning king, or ruler, or priest. But who will you rule?"

For a moment he flirted with the idea of saying "You, if you'll allow me", but the dizzying perspectives of that fantasy passed, and he said bitterly, "Ironic, isn't it? My mother called me the one thing I could never be."

"Not in Tarchna, anyway."

"Is there anywhere else?"

She smiled, raising a finger to her lips in a little gesture she had. Then she opened her palm towards him, almost as if she were blowing a kiss. "I'm surprised you look to Massilia and Spina, when Rome is the city of opportunity."

He looked down, abashed. He'd never thought of Rome, other than as a rough town of renegades and refugees. Men who kidnapped other peoples' women, men you wouldn't trust your daughters with, men with no culture and little to bring them together other than their status as outlaws. And Tanaquil lumped him in with those barbarians. He frowned, not sure whether to be furious or miserable, or both.

"I've upset you," she said, and her voice was warm and sad. Perhaps after all she'd not meant to do it. He couldn't answer; he squinted up at her, his brow still darkened by hard thought. He put his hands to his eyes, and massaged them, feeling how tense he'd suddenly become.

"Stay here, and you can make pots like your father." A little asperity had entered her voice, he thought. "In Rome, you could be a king."

A king of goatherds and rapists, he thought; but he didn't stop her talking. And by the end of the afternoon, he'd had to concede she had a point; in a town of refugees and outlaws, it didn't matter who your father was.

****

Autumn had arrived, and the olive harvest was well under way; this year Demaratos had trusted him to manage the operations himself, and had, at last, taken the trip to Athens he'd wanted to make for so long. For the first time, his father's shadow didn't fall over him. He wondered it had taken so long; nearly thirty, and only now was he free of that feeling of being weighed up, measured against some ideal Hellene youth he'd never quite managed to be.

Just as he was about to depart again for the hill farm, Tanaquil sent him an invitation. He intended to ignore it; but then he thought he could put off the meeting with the farm manager for a couple of days - he hadn't been needed to start the harvest, after all, it was the processing of the olives and the accounting for the yield he was needed for - and since he'd be away for a few weeks, it would be good to see Tanaquil before he went. He'd expected to see a couple of the younger traders there too, and he could see whether it would be possible to participate in their next voyage with some funds of his own; if he'd managed to set up a separate business by the time Demaratos came back, he might manage to gain a little grudging respect from his father. (Love he had, he thought. But love was never enough; it only smothered, instead of satisfying.) So with one reasdon and another, he managed to convince himself that he should go to Tanaquil's dinner.

Should he perhaps have been surprised at such a young girl giving a dinner on her own account? His father would have been shocked; but Lauchme was used to having to discount the Etruscans' different attitude to women. In Greece, he knew, women never attended banquets, not even in their own houses; and his own mother obeyed Demaratos in this, though her Etruscan blood and upbringing must have rebelled against it. So, torn between the two cultures, he found he hardly knew what was normal, what was strange. In any case, it was typical of Tanaquil's impatience with Etruscan society that she would do exactly as she wanted; no doubt she'd instructed her parents, with her customary forthrightness, that she wished to manage her own affairs that evening.

But when he arrived, and found no one else there but himself, and Tanaquil, and a couple of servants, he did find that disconcerting. No doubt he was early; she must have invited other guests. They would turn up later, he told himself. They never did. Instead, when they went through from the garden where they'd chatted for a while into the house, he saw the table ready, and two couches only set out.

He must have looked startled, since Tanaquil turned to him at once.

"Couches are so much nicer than chairs, don't you think? Much more comfortable, once you get used to them. Besides, father says it's better for the digestion; he heard that from a Greek doctor in Gravisca."

He smiled, still a little uneasy. "Father has a couch, too; but my mother always sits on a chair. More traditional, she says."

"Well, some women still prefer their chairs, I suppose. Grandmother always used to, but I thought she was rather stiff."

"I suppose that must have made it difficult for her to use a couch."

"No, I meant... well, she was always rather formal; standing on ceremony. Even with me."

For a moment he felt jealousy twisting in his mind; he'd never known his Greek grandparents, and his mother's family had given her up as if dead the day she'd married.

"Such a pity your mother doesn't come to banquets," Tanaquil had said once. Even when Demaratos held a dinner at home, mother was absent, taking refuge in the dark warmth of the women's quarters, with Lauchme's gaggle of sisters. This wasn't the kind of place she would have felt at home - not any more; though this was her Etruscan heritage, she had given it up, given up everything that was Etruscan except her carved wooden chair, and her monthly visits to the little shrine by the river.

But now Tanaquil was talking again about her grandmother; determinedly making conversation as if, somehow, she felt the same unease that Lauchme did at their being alone in the house.

"Still, I wish I'd appreciated her more while she was alive. She was a frosty woman, sometimes; she insisted on being addressed formally, even by us. But she was a marvellous woman, you know; hard as nails, when she wanted to be. She kept a feud up with the Ancarui for years, because Lartha Ancarui had stolen one of her handmaidens. And she got what she wanted."

She stopped, as if she expected Lauchme to ask her a question. He wouldn't help her out, though; he'd not seen her at a loss before, and he was beginning to enjoy it.

"People usually ask me what she wanted, when I tell this story. But if you're not interested..." Give her credit, she had put him on the defensive again.

"Of course I'm interested. But I know what she wanted; the lucumo. And she got him."

That delighted her; she smiled, like a cat stretching, and stuck her chin in the air.

"You don't know the half of it. She wanted him - but she wanted his vote for the alliance with Cisra, too. And of course his father was dead set against it. It took her three years, and she was still only seventeen when she married him. Women of this house start playing politics early, you know."

Indeed he did know. But what Tanaquil wanted, he couldn't say. Her horizons were broader than her grandmother's had been. Of course the world had changed in three generations; the Greeks had colonised the south, the Celts were pressing in the north, the Etruscan cities had made the Federation into a reasonably effective political machine, and Rome had become - a nuisance, you might say, not quite a new power.

"Your grandmother carried on playing politics, too, didn't she? I forget where I heard it, but wasn't she the prime mover behind the attack on Veii?"

"Father was all for applying economic sanctions," Tanaquil replied evenly. "He was right; at least, he was right in saying they would have worked, given time. But my grandmother always preferred the most direct way of doing things. Of saying things, too."

"I don't like that smile of yours."

"I was just remembering the day she met your father. She ... she didn't like his beard."

"That's not what I heard she said."

"Well. You've heard it then."

"That he looked as if he had a cunt stuck on his face, hair and all."

He'd expected her to blush, but instead she clapped her hands together lightly, and grinned.

"I'm glad you see the humour of it. I'd thought you might be upset, that's all. I know the Greeks have a different idea of what a well kept beard ought to look like, and... not that I have anything against Greeks, you know..."

"But you think they look like they have cunts stuck on their faces. Very funny."

She laughed again, and reached out to touch his smooth cheeks. "And you don't. Thank the gods. Maybe you're an Etruscan after all."

Then, turning from him, she clapped her hands twice, summoning the servants; a dark-haired young woman in a blue and white chequered robe, who sat on a cushion at the end of the table and played the flute, and a lad Lauchme thought might have been Celtish, from his braided blond hair, who mixed the wine and water, and filled their cups.

It was already getting dim; out in the garden, the air was cooling, and Lauchme could hear a thrush's song, liquid and high. Swinging his legs easily up on to the couch, he looked across the corner of the table at Tanaquil; her eyes were hidden in shadow. One of her braids had come untied and dangled between them. She tossed it back, then reached again for her cup.

"Doesn't life in Tarchna ever irritate you?" she asked, then took a mouthful, and swirled the wine in her mouth a couple of times before swallowing it.

That wasn't the right word, he thought. Sometimes life here was glorious; sometimes, downright miserable. And at all times, uneasy; he could never be quite unconscious of his divided heritage.

"Sometimes," he said diplomatically. "I wish I could travel more. To see Carthage - that would be something. Or to see Greece."

"Of course you'd want to see your father's city. I can see that."

"I don't feel particularly Hellene. My father doesn't really understand that. But because of him I don't quite feel Etruscan, either. If I could see Athens... well I suppose I'd know just how much of me is really Greek."

"And how much isn't?"

He nodded, and reached for his cup, then having lifted it half way to his mouth, set it down again and rested his chin on one hand.

"It's not just that though. Tarchna seems increasingly small. When I'm speaking to Arnth about Massilia, for instance, and Spina, and I think that apart from Velzna and one week in Cisra, I've never even seen the other Etruscan towns, I begin to feel provincial."

"It's the other towns that are provincial," she said with a mocking acerbity, "and that you know very well, Lauchme son of Demaratos. But I must admit I should like to see something of Rome."

"Provincial in the extreme!"

"Yes, but exciting. Think of it; a city with no rules, a place where you could do anything."

"Barbaric and undeveloped. I can't even sell our best wine to the Romans; they won't take it. They're only interested in the cheap stuff." He remembered that last negotiation with distaste; he hadn't got the price he wanted, not even near it.

"Yes, but what an opportunity! You really could do anything there. No ruling families, no established priesthood or leadership; it's wide open."

"I suppose so," he said doubtfully. "I might think of it. At least the Romans don't care whether I'm more Etruscan or more Greek; they just care whether they can squeeze a bit more wine out of me for a bit less bronze. But what's in it for you? You're a king's grand-daughter; you could hold Tarchna in the palm of your hand if you chose."

She scowled. That was stupid, he thought; she's probably heard that kind of comment from men before, and she knows flattery when she hears it. Though he hadn't intended it as flattery; to him, it was the sort of truth that was simply obvious.

"Hadn't it occurred to you that life in Tarchna is just too easy?" She looked across at him, and met the anger in his eyes. "For me, I mean. Too many people ready to give me what I want. Too many people willing to be bought with a smile or a hint of gratitude, or the promise of a sympathetic hearing for their nephew's ex-wife's cousin's lawsuit. Tarchna's too small for a woman of spirit, Lauchme."

"It was large enough for your grandmother."

She threw back her head then and laughed, not a girl's half-abashed giggle but the full-throated laughter of a woman generous enough to know when she'd met her match. And despite his irritation with her, he began to laugh too, and soon the two of them were caught up in the contagion of amusement; he laughed at her laughing, and she laughed at him laughing at her, and so it went on till they became aware that the blond servant had come back into the room and was standing, silent, at the end of the table.

The Tarquinian aristocracy were renowned for their luxury and taste; Tanaquil had stressed the taste, rather than the luxury, with her selection of food. There was a stew of meat and dried fruit, sweet and tart at the same time, and a dish of chestnuts and mushrooms, with a single huge flatbread they had to share between them. More than once he found himself trying to tear off a piece of bread at the same time as Tanaquil, and their fingers touched for a moment.

It wasn't only politics they talked about. He'd heard a new poem by Pulenas a few days ago, and described it to her; the description of winter coming to the marshlands, and the wind rustling in the reeds, and Pulenas' image of the ghosts of the dead as dry leaves scattered by the wind. He'd found it chilling, but unforgettable; and Tanaquil listened patiently as he struggled to recall exactly the rhythm, exactly the words of the poem.

"That man is driven by ghosts," she said.

"Aren't we all?"

But having mentioned the marshes, their talk turned to hunting; the approaching winter had brought the seafowl with it, and Tanaquil had spent four days already riding into the marshes with her slingshot. She was, as Lauchme would have expected, an expert shot, though it was unusual for a woman to take such an interest in the sport. They talked about hare-coursing, about ways of cooking hare - soused in its own blood, or roasted with olives or sour berries; Lauchme's mother preferred it slowly stewed, and the house would be full of the heavy odour for days. And so the evening drew on. As it got dark, the blond boy brought in oil lamps, and drew the curtains across the door to the garden. The room seemed more intimate in the yellow light, the edges of things blurred and uncertain. The flute player slowed her pace, from dance tunes to a long melodic line that flowed easily in a minor mode, like the river's meanders delaying its meeting with the sea. It was late; apart from the flute, the house was quiet. Their conversation had slowly run down.

Tanaquil's dismissal of the servants was not ungentle; "I expect you'd like to rest," she said to the flute player. And when the young Celt - he was indeed Celtish, Tanaquil had told him, a slave they'd acquired through Spina, which traded with the north - came to pour their wine, a heavier, sweeter white which left a syrupy richness in his mouth - she was tactful with him. "I don't mind if I have to pour my own wine; it's late, you need your sleep, father will chastise me if you're no use to him in the morning."

But to Lauchme, she was direct, as one equal to another.

"Come here," she said.

He sat down on the end of her couch, as far from her as he could, dreading but hoping she might move towards him, but keeping that space between them, in case he'd misinterpreted her command, or she wanted to change her mind. And wondering, too, how it was he could be so enthralled by a girl not much more than half his age.

She leant towards him, and ran a hand down his cheek, the fingernails touching his skin with a faint dry tingle. She kept her face just far enough away from his that he could feel her breath on his skin, but not touch her; she knew what she was doing, for when his determination finally broke, it was he who reached out for her, feeling the tight plaits at the back of her head as he pulled her to him. Her lips were already open, half smiling, her eyes open and candid. But when finally they lay down together, it was her hand which took hold of his penis, her hand which rubbed him against her, which put him inside her. Her hand in all of this, he thought.

Afterwards he noticed the smear of blood and sperm, mixed, on the couch, and he could never afterwards think of her without wondering how she could have shown not only so little fear, but so little curiosity.

***

And now they were on the way to Rome, and a new life. It had surprised everyone when they married, though there was no opposition to their plans, Tanaquil must have made sure of that. Everyone, that is, except Lauchme's mother, who said "Tanaquil gets what she wants, but gods know why she wanted you," and cuffed him gently on the side of the head, the way she'd used to when he was a boy.

Demaratos had set them up handsomely, with the gift of the hill farm and a house in Tarchna, should they ever wish to come back. Some more cynical minded observers had noticed that in the meantime, Demaratos had moved some of his new intake of potters and painters into the new house. Tanaquil's family could hardly afford to be less munificent than a Greek immigrant, though their gift of a share in the Spurinna copper mine would prove difficult to draw on unless Lauchme went into the business personally.

Under the wide skies, in the blazing sunlight of an early spring, such considerations seemed irrelevant. Lauchme felt filled with a joy he'd rarely known; this journey was a time away from his responsibilities, away from the game of politics or the difficulty of trying to disentangle his mixed inheritance, or the curiosity or contempt of the Tarchna nobility. There was only himself, and Tanaquil, and the whole wide country before them; the sun shone on them, and when a squall drove dark clouds across the sky and soaked them, Tanaquil squealed with laughter and pulled him into the shelter of the cart's leather awning, and when they'd finished, the sun was shining again.

They were well wrapped against the cool of the morning, Tanaquil in a mantle of blue so deep it was nearly purple. He'd jammed a red felt hat down on his springy hair, and shrugged a rough felt cloak over his shoulders; he knew he looked like a peasant beside her, and felt strangely happy with the contrast, as if that were his right place.

He heard the tragic scream of lapwing on the wind. Tanaquil was driving, her hands relaxed on the reins; their pair of hunting dogs lay curled together, heads on paws, behind them, the energy run out of them that morning chasing down a hare, though for once they'd failed to make a kill. The wind was cool and light on their faces; the whole of nature seemed exultant and filled with grandeur that morning. He allowed himself to think of Rome; a place where he might discover himself, not half-Greek, not half-Etruscan, but a man complete, a man of his own making. (For a moment, he managed to shrug off the suspicion that without the incessant conflict, there might be nothing there to discover; the deeper unease that had lurked half-understood under the more obvious unease he felt in any social situation, where he never knew whether people were talking to the Etruscan or the Greek.)

He looked across at Tanaquil's face, hawkish under the mantle she'd thrown across like a hood, against the wind. Strange how you could love someone as much as he did her, yet still not feel quite at ease in their presence; it was stolen glimpses like this that he valued most, when he felt she was almost unaware of his presence.

Suddenly, everything changed. A cold wind buffeted his shoulder, and the sky seemed to darken; then he felt a blow against his head, and his scalp cold. He'd lost his hat. He hadn't felt himself fall, but he was lying on the floor of the cart looking up at Tanaquil, and when he rubbed his temple with one hand, he saw blood on his knuckles.

"Tanaquil? Help me..."

But she wasn't looking at him, she was standing up in the cart, her eyes asquint against the sun, watching something moving across the sky. Her body seemed strung like a bow; she smiled cruelly. She'd let the reins go; the horses, obedient, had stopped immediately. He pulled himself up with one hand; and at last, after a long moment staring into the sun, she turned to him, and her eyes were bright with reflected fire.

"The eagle," she said to him, "the eagle of the kings," but it made no sense to him. What eagle? What kings? His scalp ached. He felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, and bit his bottom lip hard, to prevent himself grizzling like a child.

# Tanaquil

She'd known, the moment the eagle swooped, that it was an augury.

The sound of feathers beating air; the sky darkened by the bird's immense wing span. From the north-east; the auspicious north, the east that was the home of the highest gods.(That much anyone could have told you who had the least idea of the Discipline.) And the eagle, the king of the birds, messenger of Tinia the highest of gods. An omen, the best omen they could have.

It was when she saw the eagle flying off with Lauchme's cap in its talons that she realised the complexity of the foretelling; and even then, she suspected it might lie beyond her knowledge to interpret it fully. The eagle recognised Lauchme, crowning him with the air; that was one meaning. But she suspected the sign of its taking his hat might hold more occult significance. If she were back in Tarchna she'd know who to ask; and her old teacher was one of the very few people in the city who would give her a straight answer, not trimming it to suit what he thought she might want to hear. (She'd write, later, once they'd reached Rome; but she wanted to know now. There was nothing she could do; it took ten more years of study to become fully expert in the Discipline, and that could not be hurried, even for a lucumo's granddaughter.)

The sight of the eagle's huge wings, the vivid flash of white on the underside, its golden and black eye seemingly fixed on hers, had shocked her breathless; her mind was running through the meanings of the augury, while at the same time she realised she was standing frozen, unable to move other than to follow the bird with her eyes, unable to feel anything other than her lungs burning. Then the air came rushing into her, and she felt herself slipping back into time and humanity, her blood throbbing in her ears. Shaking her head angrily, hearing the golden hair rings on her braids click against each other, she tried to throw off the strangeness. Her mouth tasted of metal.

She couldn't help laughing when she saw Lauchme, lying sprawled on the floor of the cart. Her laughter turned to concern when she saw the blood at his temple where the eagle's talon had torn his skin; she knelt over him, and cradled his head in her hands. She saw with relief that his eyes followed her, that he struggled to speak.

"Tanaquil? Help me."

She bent her head to his, pressing her lips to the wound that circled his forehead like a bloody diadem. She tasted salt and iron. Strangely moved, she licked the wound, pressing the edges flat with her tongue, holding his head between her hands; now she tasted her own tears, too, and she realised she was saying his name over and over again.

Afterwards she told him what the augury meant; that he would be a king in Rome.

"And you will be a queen," he said, seriously; then his face changed, and he said lightly, "but then, you always have been."

She didn't tell him her other thoughts.

***

Their first experience of Rome wasn't encouraging. Though Lauchme had dealt with a few Roman traders who had come to Tarchna, they were difficult to track down, and when he found them, uninterested in his business. Tanaquil visited the other few Etruscan women in town, but they warned her Rome was very different from Etruscan society; a woman couldn't go out on her own - Roman men wouldn't stand for it. As for any idea she might have of playing politics, she could forget that; she would never even met any of the men who mattered.

"I tried to break out of that myself," said one of the women, a woman of about forty with a tight mouth around which the wrinkles were already clustering. "But it just isn't possible. And anyway, I think it's better this way, really." Tanaquil wondered who she was trying to convince.

"Don't you even take an interest?" Tanaquil had asked.

"Not much point, since I can't do anything about it," the woman replied; Tanaquil conceded she had a point. "So I concern myself with other things; we serve the best food in Rome, and my flute playing has improved markedly."

And though it sounded trivial, playing the flute was indeed one small subversion of Roman life; it was a tiny piece of Etruria in Rome, that giving up of oneself to the wildness of music, the giving up of time to something most Romans saw as purely incidental to the great struggle of their lives. But Tanaquil bit her lip, and narrowed her eyes, and made herself a promise that she would not become some toy woman; that when she saw a chance for greatness, she would take it. She suspected none the less that she might have miscalculated when she brought Lauchme to Rome; it was hard for them both, in those early days.

Rome was a sad place, a scatter of huts and homesteads on the hills, and marshland below. A single black stone marked the centre of the desolate forum; no one could tell her what it meant, though there were stories that it marked the grave of Romulus' foster-father, or the place where he had fallen in battle, and others said the gods had marked the centre of Rome's rule with the fall of a star, blackened and polished by its fiery fall. By the marshland the Tiber rushed and foamed, a savage and grey river.

The Romans were a dour people, dressed in homespun wool; the dirty grey of their clothes seemed appropriate to their character. There were no feasts, there was little jewellery; apart from their religious rites there were no festivals, no games, and no music except for the great war trumpets that boomed across the bleak flatlands by the river. Romans had no time for elegant conversation; they were always doing something. The women spun or wove, and when Tanaquil once tried to chat to a couple of them as they span, she was shushed, and cold-shouldered. Work, it seemed, was too serious for amusement. The men worked the outlying fields, or built - there was always building work going on, nothing was ever finished; or they practised fighting, a hundred men together. The clash of shields, the hissing thrust and clanging block of swords, kept time for the city.

This was a city being built. Nothing was ever finished, nothing was ever well begun. One day, there would be men working next door, smashing down the existing house and starting on a new one; then a few days later, they would have gone elsewhere, leaving a half-built wall behind them. Mud tracked everywhere, and in summer, the fine grit got into the clothes chests, into the bedclothes, so that it was always a struggle to beat it out of the fabric, and you ended up getting scratched by it anyway. Everything was provisional, even most of the thoroughfares; in this city with no history, and no rules, a new house might appear in the middle of what had been a road, and the traffic would simply divert around it, making a new road perhaps through what had been, till a couple of months ago, someone's back yard.

It was a hideous straggle, Tanaquil thought. Everything changed all the time, but nothing improved; the city surged and oozed like mud trodden by too many feet. The only thing you knew would be the same tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, was the noise of saws, and chisels on stone, and workmen shouting. Lauchme told her, one day, how he'd passed a house he always remembered from the figure of a sphinx carved above the door; the whole thatched roof had fallen in, and a team of men were dragging the roofbeams out to use them in another building. He had no idea what had happened to the family who used to live there. (That was typical of Rome; you got to know people, then they left, and it was it if they had never been.)

When she learned that Rome, like every Etruscan city, had a _mundus_ , she was not surprised. The rock-cut shaft connected the worlds of the dead and the living; it was a darkness that saw light only three times a year, when the ghosts were allowed to walk. It was a hole, a vacancy, an absence; the absence that gave life its sharpness and its joy. Typical that Rome was be a city with a hole at its centre; but unlike the Etruscan cities, Rome had only the hole, and nothing but the hole.

Those first years Tanaquil had little to do. She threw herself into weaving; not homespun, such as the Roman housewives prided themselves on, but the fine tapestries of nobility. She wove golden threads into transparent linen, so that it shimmered like cobwebs spattered with dew on a spring morning; when she wore it, she knew Lauchme could see her body through the linen. When she wove wool, it was not for rough clothes, but for hangings in rich colours, decorated with sphinxes and proud horses stepping high. Every time she moved the shuttle she felt herself recreating her Etruscan culture; every thread she wove tied her to Tarchna, to the land of her birth. She wove into her tapestries the whole Discipline, the eagles of augury, the cardinal points with their gods; and when Roman or Sabine ladies looked at them and commented on how vivid they were, how rich Tanaquil's imagination was, she smiled, and nodded, and kept her contempt to herself.

****

It was odd to have new names; _Lucius_ , the sound was strange to her, like a snake hissing after the lisping softness of _Lauchme_. And when he became better known they called him _Tarquinius_ , after the city from which he came, Tarchna in the Rasenna tongue and Tarquinia to the Romans. He found it ironic, calling a half-Greek barred from office after the Etruscan city that had forced him into exile; and in his bitterness he forgot he'd never been forced, but only persuaded, by her.

She had a new name too; Tanaquil, three tripping little syllables, since the Romans couldn't manage the rich consonants of her true name Thanchvil. It felt as if she'd become someone else; she didn't recognise herself in her new name, she found herself as ill-fitting in this place as her name was odd in a Latin mouth.

It wasn't difficult being an Etruscan, as such; Rome was a young city, open to migrants. There were Faliscans, Sabines, Hellenes from Great Greece in the south; besides the Etruscan nobles, there were many Etruscan workers who had fled oppression in the federated cities, and come to Rome. (None from Tarchna, though; she felt a modest pride at that. We at least know how to treat our people well, she thought.) They made a good living in the pottery and jewellery trades; the bronzeworkers too were Etruscan, usually.

But there was always a political edge to relationships between Roman and Etruscan. They always wanted to know which side you were on; whether you were truly a Roman, or whether you'd support an Etruscan city if there was a war. Rome had already been taking noble hostages from some of the Etruscan cities - and some of the Sabine towns; it was a formality, no doubt, but when she met one Veiian prince she was disconcerted to find he'd been tailed by his two minders.

Lauchme was still a delight to her; his doubts, his hesitations, seemed to enrich him. Next to him, she felt herself incomplete; too shallow, too well trained to be real. Only that single moment when she'd seen the eagle struck her as the reality for which she was always striving; otherwise, she felt hollow. She always knew exactly what she would do in any given situation; whereas Lauchme was unpredictable, a challenge to her. Sometimes when she lay with her head on his chest, and her hair spread out across him after they'd made love, she wondered what he was thinking.

"Are you glad we came?" she asked him once, about a year after they'd arrived in Rome.

"I don't know." His eyes looked sad. "It's different from what I expected. I wanted to find my place here; but I don't seem to _have_ a place."

"We're doing well enough in the wine trade. I know you said they'd only buy the cheap stuff, but..."

"Yes, we make enough out of it. But I wanted so much more. Just to get rich, I could have done that in Tarchna." He looked down at his hands, turning them over so he could inspect the nails. One was dirty, and he began to pick at it. "And you're not happy here."

She shrugged. "It's been different from what I expected. But you've achieved something, in a year. As for politics here, it's just about finding the right way in. When they need something from the Rasenna, it's you they'll ask."

Yet she continued to find Rome difficult. Roman women were spineless; gods, they were even nameless - simply named after their fathers, or given numbers as daughter two, three, four. No Roman would ever have his mother's name carved on his epitaph; no Roman woman would ever claim her own fame. Some days, in the streets, it was hard to believe Roman women existed; they hardly went out, and when they did, they were muffled in veils and mantles, and shuffled along the streets timorously, as if they had no right to be there.

***

There was one bright day in that first grey year, the day she went to pay her respects to Menrva. Not everyone had a devotion to a god; but she'd dreamt of Menrva the first time she'd been to the god's sanctuary, when she was five, and her parents had agreed with the priest that hers was a real devotion. Menrva had not spoken to her, but she'd dreamt the young goddess bent down to touch her face while she was sleeping, and had laid her slim fingers on Tanaquil's lips, letting her taste the lightning that flickered around them.

There was a shrine to Menrva up in the hills, half a day's travel from Rome. Lauchme drove with her out of the city, and once they were clear, handed the reins to her; it was the first time she'd driven since they arrived. Suddenly furious, she whipped up the horses, jolting the light cart over the rough ground. To feel the wind hard on her cheeks, the blood coming to her face; that was living, that was what she'd missed in Rome. She looked across to Lauchme; she hadn't scared him, but she slowed anyway, after a few minutes, to a brisk trot. The horses came easily to the tightened rein, without impatience or a fight. She was pleased with her own skill, with the way the horses she'd trained trotted in step with each other. She might not have the chance to train another pair, now.

They reached the shrine in mid afternoon. It was a simple place, with a spring and a tall altar in the open, and the house of the priests near by. Lauchme stayed to rub the horses down; she went on ahead. She'd brought her offerings with her; wine, and spelt cakes, and a garland. One of the priests came out to talk to her; to her surprise, she seemed to recognise the woman, though she didn't recollect the name, Thanusa.

She made her offerings; Lauchme had raised an eyebrow at the omission of a sheep, but she'd simply smiled and said she had her reasons. The sun glinted from the waters of the spring, filling her eyes with slivers of gold; she felt the sun's warmth on her face. Many people, she reflected, would feel they had been touched by the god; but she was simply grateful for a day's good weather, for the stillness of the country after the noise of Rome, and for the company of another Etruscan woman. She breathed the air in deeply.

But company would have to wait till tomorrow. She had things to do first.

"I came for guidance," she said, bluntly. "We live in Rome. It's a city of opportunity. It's also a city that imprisons its women."

"And you want to know..." the priest's voice was low, the question hardly stated.

"Whether we should stay or go."

"How long have you been in Rome?"

"A year," Tanaquil said. The other woman frowned.

"And you ask the god this now?"

"I have my reasons," she said, as she'd said to Lauchme about the sacrifice. And while many women might have said this flirtatiously, or in jest, she said it with natural authority, and it could not be questioned.

So she spent that night in vigil, sitting by the waters of the spring, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that she had taken from the cart, while Lauchme stayed in the priest's house.

She watched the sun go down. It seemed to hang forever just above the horizon, swimming with melted purple; the water of the pool glowed orange, as if there were a fire burning in its depths. From somewhere behind her she heard a bird singing, a lonely voice in the stillness. She felt an itch behind one knee; she ignored it, concentrating on her breath as she had been taught to do. One eyebrow itched, and that too she ignored. She felt the air cooling around her.

A chill breeze below over the water towards her; she saw the water ripple, then still itself again. She thought of Rome, and what she'd set out to achieve there, and how far she was from it. She thought of Lauchme, and the way his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck; and then she had to listen to her breathing again, stilling her mind, calming her body.

Then she looked at the sun. It had hardly moved; just the bottom edge was beginning to bleed into the horizon, like a ball of molten solder beginning to flow.

The sun took a long time to set. Probably, she thought, no longer than normal, but when you actually looked at it, when you could see nothing else, you understood just how long it really took. She saw the landscape was losing its definition, the far hills blurring into a single smudge of purple-tinged dark, and wondered when it had begun to dim. Perhaps if you looked long enough, often enough, it might be possible to find out; but there was no going back, to see how much lighter it might have been when the sun was just so much higher, so there was no comparison. There never would be; it would always be a mystery, like so many other things. She felt on the edge of some great understanding, and then it went, and she realised the sun was now only half above the horizon, and the first stars had begun to show, very palely, in the sky above.

Then once the last glowing droplet of sun had slipped below the horizon, the glow of sunset slowly began to die away. It was surprising how much could still be seen; the distant shapes of hills black against the lurid sky, the sinister glimmer of the water.

"My flute playing has improved markedly," she remembered - that woman with the tight mouth who'd told her to stay out of politics - the stuffed quails lined up on a dish, their trussed legs in the air - the twittering women of an Etruscan party in Rome. Images flickered through her mind, none staying more than a second, and at the same time she felt her legs becoming numb with long sitting, and the tip of her nose and her earlobes growing cold.

At last even the line of the hills against the sky disappeared, the whole countryside sunk into the same darkness as the heavens. A few scattered stars pricked the velvet dark; she was falling half asleep, her mind slowing now as tiredness blunted her perceptions. It was like a heavy weight pulling her down, and she let it pull her, closing her eyes and feeling her face slacken and her head fall forward.

She must have dozed for a time then, and afterwards she never knew quite whether she had been waking or dreaming, whether this had been a true dream or some fantasy of her own. She thought, in the dream, she had woken, and the moon was shining on her, and in front of her the pool had turned to dark blood; she could smell the blood sharp on the air - she could almost taste it in her mouth. As she watched, the surface of the pool began to shimmer, and in it she saw Rome, its hills and marshy plain, spread out as if seen from a height. She seemed to fly over it, like an eagle. Then the hills of Rome began to heave, swelling up, and gradually spreading, like a blot of blood, over the whole landscape. She soared higher and higher, seeing below her the lights of Etruria flickering out, and the dark stain of Rome spreading ever further across the land - even over the dark seas, to lands unknown to her.

Then she was falling forward, spiralling down into the heart of the darkness, as flames seemed to reach up towards her; and suddenly awake again, in the slight greying of a false dawn.

She was numb with sitting there too long, and frozen; her nipples were sore with cold where her blanket had fallen open. She pulled the heavy wool back over herself, burying her head inside it, and feeling her breath slowly warming the air inside. Had she really sat here all night? She flexed her legs, feeling the prickling pain as sensation returned to them. Her hands were stiff, too; she suddenly felt, with awful foreboding, that this was what it must be like to be old.

The dream, if it was a dream, puzzled her. There was no god in it, no unambiguous omen; Rome had spread to the whole Etruscan world, yet she had no idea of her own place in this, whether Rome was to be resisted or enjoyed. She had flown, with a sense of freedom incomparable, and yet at the end she'd fallen into flames. She couldn't shake the images from her mind; they seemed to flicker obsessively behind her eyes, even when her eyes were open. It was not the guidance she had looked for.

She had begun to wonder whether Rome was the place of freedom she'd hoped it would be; for her, it was a prison, though perhaps it would be the place where Lauchme could find his future and his true self. Rome was no place to bring up a daughter, she thought; no daughter of hers would fear to go out in the street, to drive a chariot or take what lover she pleased. No daughter of hers would go unnamed.

And yet... if Rome were going to conquer the world, then it was in Rome that the future lay. Lauchme could never rule Tarchna; but if he could rule Rome, and Rome would conquer Tarchna, then she would have brought him the city as a dowry - the birthright of the Spurinna.

She still couldn't shake off the fear; there was blood in her vision, too much blood. But if the god had wanted her to go back to Tarchna, she could have told her; and in that moment, Tanaquil took the decision she would stand by all her life, to stay in Rome, and fight to rule it with her husband.

***

The sun rose, its clear yellow light chasing away the blurred grey of dawn. Tanaquil was grateful for its warmth, but even more for the way light seemed finally to dispel the wavering images of the night, the uncertainties and fears. Slowly, painfully, she stood; her left leg nearly buckled under her, sending lightning bolts of pain through her nerves. She massaged it hard with her knuckles, hissing curses. Then, limping slightly, she made her way to the priest's house.

There was already a pot of furmity on the fire; most priests rose early, and this woman was no exception. As Tanaquil came in, the priest looked up from blowing on the embers; her lips began to form a question, but she bit it back, and instead, bent back to blow the fire again. Tanaquil sat, composing herself, folding her hands in her lap. The priest remained silent, waiting for her to speak. There was no sign of Lauchme.

"I'd be glad of some furmity," Tanaquil said. Neither of them mentioned the vigil or its results. The priest reached for a small cup, dipped it into the pot, and handed it to Tanaquil; it was warm, thick, sweetened with apple juice. Tanaquil drank.

"It's good," she said at last. "Thank you."

"Most women sweeten it with honey. I prefer the juice myself; it's less heavy, there's a tartness to it."

Tanaquil nodded. "You live well here?"

"Not luxuriously, but well enough. I have a couple of hives, and an orchard, and a small garden, and there are offerings from Veii and the nearby villages."

"No servants?"

"I have a man here, most of the time, but I've sent him to Veii for more grain. And I was training a young girl for Menrva, but she's decided to marry instead, so I'm on my own now, till I find another student. Or till another student finds me."

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Tanaquil could feel the furmity slowly warming her; she cupped her hands round the cup, feeling the heat of the clay. The priest took a cup herself, and dipped it in the furmity, and drank.

"There's honey if you want," she offered.

"Perhaps I will; I'm chilled through." Besides, she thought, it would hardly be polite to refuse; the priest obviously felt defensive about the shortcomings of her hospitality. When the pot of honey came, she wound its syrupy strands round the stick, and laid tracks of honey across the top of the milky broth, watching the milk slowly swallow it up.

Yesterday, Tanaquil had looked forward to being with another Etruscan woman; today, she realised they had little to talk about. The priest turned out to have no real knowledge of politics - odd, Tanaquil thought, since most of the priests she'd trained with had been expert politicians, as augurs needed to be. And she was so far out in the wilds she had no idea of the fashions in Veii, let alone Tarchna, which Tanaquil would have been interested in hearing about. Besides, Tanaquil wasn't about to let her know about her dream; something warned her to keep it to herself. Even Lauchme, perhaps, shouldn't know the whole of it.

The priest excused herself for a while, to take care of the morning libation; still no sign of Lauchme. He must have stayed with the horses, Tanaquil thought. She dozed a little in the warmth of the fire, her chin rested on her hands, and woke to a backache as the priest returned.

"You're not from Veii?" the priest asked.

"From Tarchna, but we're living in Rome."

"You'd know my cousin then, Nerinai Camna?"

Of course; that was the woman she'd known in Tarchna. The heavy, dark eyebrows were the same, though Thanusa's mouth was different, her lips fuller.

"She's a little older than me; I didn't know her terribly well. But yes, yes I know her. She must be married now?"

"Married and with a child, young Laris. Not her parents' first choice, but I think they were glad she didn't marry a Greek, anyway."

Tanaquil stiffened, but she kept her talons leashed for the moment.

"Your retainer is awfully restless, by the way. He slept here, but he was up before me this morning, and he's got the horses groomed already."

"And harnessed?"

"Not yet. But he seems to want to be gone."

Not surprising, Tanaquil thought; even though Lauchme had learned some of the Discipline in his youth, he was never quite at ease with the Etruscan gods. The more so at a shrine dedicated to Menrva, the hunter; the god of wisdom, but it was a female wisdom, the knowledge of weaving and the spinning of fate, and so Lauchme would be doubly uneasy here. She, on the other hand, was loath to return to Rome, despite the decision she'd taken earlier that morning; she felt as if her spirit could expand here, when in Rome it shrank, like a caged bird hunching itself up on its perch. She might have nothing much to talk about with this priest, but at least she didn't feel the pressure of the Roman women's surly disapproval, on the one hand, or the Etruscan ladies' relentless chatter, on the other.

So she was not completely glad when Lauchme came to the door, and she saw that he was already dressed for travel.

The priest looked up, and smiled. "Ah! Your retainer seems ready to whisk you away. You may need to instruct him better."

Tanaquil assumed the blandest expression she could, and said, evenly, "My husband; Lauchme son of Demaratos."

She saw the priest's eyes narrow, and her mouth tighten; give the girl her due, apart from those tiny signs she didn't show her shame, and when she next spoke, her voice was steady.

"Well met, Lauchme son of Demaratos. Well met, Tanaquil... wife of Lauchme."

Spurinna, Tanaquil thought, you can't deny me my blood; Spurinna, through and through, and not 'wife of' anybody, that's the Roman style. But then she gave as good as she got, this priest; and perhaps she'd deserved it. And chuckling to herself, she thought; that's why I like being with Etruscans. They keep you on edge; they keep you on your guard.

****

Lauchme noticed her reserve on the way back; he must have felt he had upset her. She hadn't shared with him exactly her reasons for the night vigil, but she wondered if he had guessed, and perhaps dreaded what decision she might have come to. She still felt confused by the visions, uncertain how to proceed; but she had to talk to him, and now.

"I was wondering whether we should leave Rome."

He looked unhappy. "I wondered if it might be that. So is it back to Tarchna then? Or north, to Spina?"

Perhaps that had been the wrong way to start. She was normally more diplomatic; but the strangeness of the night's dreams had put her off balance.

"We won't be moving. I'll stay with you, in Rome."

"It was that clear?"

No, she thought, it wasn't clear at all. "We need to talk about some things, though."

"What?" He seemed defensive. He'd need careful handling, she thought. It might be best to get this out of the way before she told him the other news.

"If we have children, they must be brought up as Etruscans. Not Romans."

"They'll be a quarter Greek, anyway."

He didn't understand. "Not Romans. I want them to have their heritage; the arts, the wealth, the freedom of Etruria."

"Not much freedom for me there."

"You know how the Romans treat their women. They can't go out, they can't take their own lovers, they can't study; they have no spirit, their souls are dead. I won't bring my daughters up like that."

"Why say that now?"

"Because it's important."

"But why now?"

"Oh you fool," she said crossly, and then smiled, loving his male stupidity. "Haven't you any idea?" And then she told him why.

***

In the event, their first child was a son; but she gave him a good Etruscan name, Arruns. For once, Lauchme agreed, as if hoping in his son to gain the whole Etruscan blood he had always lacked.

# Tarquinius

The bridge was nearly finished. The wooden piles, driven deep into the bed of the Tiber, stood firm, despite the water breaking viciously against them. Between each pair of pilings, the first of the huge split tree trunks had already been laid across, and now men were beginning to run out the long beams of the first span; the ten men standing on the first pair of pilings were hauling on the rope, but the beam was already starting to sag towards the water, and the foreman was screaming at the team to pull, pull harder.

Lucius watched from the bank, where he'd set up his chair on a small hillock, giving him a clear view. He picked at the quick of one thumb; it was bleeding, he noticed, but that didn't stop him picking at it nervously with his other thumbnail. The nearer the bridge came to completion, the more stressful it seemed to become. In the first days, planning the bridge's site, designing the spans, ordering the timber from which it would be built, he'd felt hopeful, confident. He was an able surveyor; that was one of the skills of the Etruscans which he'd been able to learn, from which he hadn't been debarred by his Hellene parentage. And the neat accountancy his father had taught him had stood him in good stead when it came to drawing up the lists of materials, ensuring nothing was missed that was necessary. Progress had been swift. Even driving in the iron-shod piles had gone well; but now, as the superstructure was added, he worried that one of the pilings would slip, carrying the whole structure with it, or that the men's grasp would slip, and lose one of the huge beams to the foaming waters below.

His choice of site had not been popular. Most of the Romans had wanted to build the bridge where the island split the stream in two, so they could build two shorter bridges. But Lucius knew the water ran fast there, breaking on the point of the island; whereas further down, past the island, once the two channels had rejoined, the river was shallower, and the stream ran more slowly, more evenly. A bridge built here would have less angry waters to withstand; and even here, the river surged viciously, and it had been difficult to get the pilings driven in, as the water kept breaching the temporary dam Lucius had had built. When the dam breached in three places just after they'd driven the final piling, he gave up trying to shore it up; they'd just have to reach the pilings by boat, and pull the timbers across.

It hadn't been made easier by Faustus' opposition. He was close to the king of Rome, and a strong advocate of the two-bridge plan. It wasn't his overt opposition that Lucius distrusted - he'd explained carefully to Ancus Marcius all the reasons for building downstream - but the poisonous asides. He'd heard Faustus use the word 'Etruscan' a few times, and he sensed it was not in a purely denotative sense. If anything went wrong in this last phase of the construction, Faustus would make use of it, somehow.

Lucius looked across again to see how the men were getting on. The beam had sunk close to the water before it reached the piling, and the men on the piling were hauling hard, trying to pull it up before the water grabbed the end and swung it out of their grasp. He felt his knuckles crack, he'd fisted his hands so hard.

It was at that moment he heard the horns blare; not far off, but close, and loud.

Turning, he saw the king in his chariot with the two white horses, accompanied by the two trumpeters, by a young aide who handled the reins for him, and by Faustus, who walked beside, with his habitual scowl. The men on the piling had not stopped hauling up the beam, but on the riverbank all work had stopped, and the men were staring at the king. They must be wondering what this visit meant; so was Lucius.

Ancus Marcius was robed in his formal purple, the white diadem binding his brow; but instead of the formal bearing Lucius had expected, he seemed distinctly at his ease, jumping heavily down from the chariot and striding across, the young aide scrambling after him. Faustus lagged behind, deliberately, as so often, staying in the background.

"You seem to have made progress," the king said, handing his red cloak to his aide, and clambering up the earthen bank to stand besides Lucius. "Are all the pilings driven in soundly?"

"All twenty - ten pairs, driven in and then braced against each other with the cross-beams."

"Like trestles."

"Exactly."

"We wanted a bridge, not a table," Faustus muttered. The king turned round, and looked at him frowning, but said nothing. He turned back to Lucius.

"And all done without metal?"

"Except for the iron shoes for the spiked ends of the pilings; that we couldn't have done without."

The king frowned again. "The oracle was specific; no metal to be used."

"No metal to be used _to join the pieces in the making of the bridge_ , I think you'll find, were the actual words, sir." That was the young aide; Lucius was grateful for his interruption. The boy's voice was soft, his language hesitant; he knew how to handle a king, Lucius thought, and looked at him with interest. Sharp brown eyes looked back from under floppy blond hair.

"The feet of the pilings don't connect any parts of the structure," Lucius confirmed. "The iron simply makes it easier to drive them into the bed of the river."

"And no metal has been used apart from the feet of the pilings?"

"Absolutely not. It's entirely connected with wooden pegs and wedges. No metal at all." He was quite proud of that; not everyone would have been able to achieve it, but he'd sat down with two of the best woodworkers in Rome and they'd worked out how to do it, using the weight of the beams themselves to tighten up the structure.

"Good. Not that one necessarily believes in oracles, but there's no point opposing them. It wouldn't do if the plebs started mistrusting all the new works, would it?"

Plebs. That was interesting; Lucius had thought Rome was a classless society, and so it was, at least compared to Tarchna, but for Marcius at least it was as stratified and class-ridden as any Etruscan city. He noted the fact; it needed thinking about, but not now.

"I'm quite impressed," Marcius was saying. "Up till now, everything seems to have gone smoothly. Young Manius was telling me it's down to your good work." He nodded at his aide. "Well, it's not finished yet, of course. But once it is, I need your surveying skills for another job. The salt workings."

Too right it's not finished, Lucius thought, and now you've upped the stakes. His eyes flickered to where the men on the piling had just, thank the gods, managed to get the beam pulled up and were levering it into place. It wouldn't be easy; he knew, having been there when the carpenters finished chiselling out the sockets and fitting the tenons to them, how tight a fit it needed to be.

Faustus coughed. " _If_ the bridge is finished."

Marcius pretended not to have heard, but Lucius saw how his jaw set in anger. Best not to take issue, then. "The salt workings?" he asked.

Manius answered him. "Now that Ancus Marcius has extended the rule of Rome to the Tyrrhenian Sea, we can make our own salt. But the saltings must be extended; we need a man who understands the laying out of land, and the action of the tides."

"The land I know well. The tides, less so."

"You appear to have given good advice on the siting of this bridge," Marcius noted. "Speaking of which: when will it be finished?"

"On the kalends next month," Lucius said, thinking that it should be ready two weeks before that, but he'd given himself time in hand, in case anything went wrong. Anything, that is, barring absolute disaster.

He looked across again to the pilings. This time the tenon had fitted snugly in the socket; one of the men was already walking gingerly out on the beam, his arms extended to maintain his balance. Disaster avoided, at least for the moment.

***

If Lucius thought it would be easier going once that first span had been built, he was wrong.

The completion of the first span of the bridge did at least show that his engineering was sound, that the principles on which the bridge had been planned were good; in short, that it would stand up. There were those who had doubted it, not least Faustus, who had made sure that his doubts were communicated to anyone who would listen. Even those who wouldn't listen to him could not escape his insinuations; like water seeping slowly on to stone, his words gradually wore their way into the consciousness, insidiously, inevitably. But the bridge stood; and as the timbers of the second span were carefully levered into place, it became evident that it would continue to stand.

But little things started going wrong. They were annoyances, rather than disasters; one morning, one of the two boats which carried the men out to the further pilings was missing. It was found, towards noon, having drifted downstream and become wedged between two rocks in the river. One of the men had waded out in the river almost up to his chest to retrieve it. It seemed the painter had not been properly tied the night before; no one could remember who had tied it up, so perhaps, Lucius thought, it had been left untied for want of someone whose responsibility it was to do so. He appointed one of the gang as boat-master, and went home that night feeling at least one problem had been solved.

The next day, the two boats were safely tied up; but one of them was full of water. That would take two men a wasted morning pumping it out, thought Lucius. Still, he had those precious two weeks in hand that he'd allowed himself; they could afford a morning.

But as the sun rose higher, and the men kept pumping, it became apparent that the level of the water wasn't falling. The boat must be holed. It would have to be dragged out of the river - that took another four men; though the boat was light, the water in it weighed it down. Two of the planks near the bottom had been stove in. Perhaps by accident, Lucius thought, perhaps not. That would take both his carpenters a couple of days to repair; two days of their work lost, which would make the beams for the third span a day and a half late, since the tenons on the ends hadn't yet been carved. And till the second boat was in commission, he couldn't use the labourers as flexibly as he wanted to, since every journey out to the pilings in the middle of the river would have to be doubled, to bring the boat back.

Still, Lucius thought, he still had ten days or so in hand. The bridge would still be finished on time, even with only one boat.

He had reckoned without the effect of the problems on the men. They were beginning to talk; his foreman told him the next day that some of them were saying it wasn't an accident.

"It might have been," Lucius said reasonably. "You know how things are. The river's fast; tree trunks, dead cows, whatever, it all comes down the river. Something bashed into the boat."

"Something bashed into the _bottom_ of the boat?" The foreman's face was sour. "Could be. But not likely."

He had a point. It was possible, but it wasn't likely. "You think it was one of the men?"

"No, I don't think so." It seemed to have taken him rather a long time to think about it. Lucius thought about asking him whether he was sure, then thought better of it.

"Well, let's agree it was an accident. But keep your eyes open."

"I do already."

"Good."

There were no more accidents after that, but there were numerous small annoyances. The harness for one of the ox teams broke; the leather was too thin, and seemed to have been rubbed away where it had been stretched by the load put on it. That meant one of the beams for the central span was delayed; and because it was late, the tenons couldn't be carved in time to fit it on the day it should have been fitted, and so the detailed work had to take up the morning of the next day, when they should already have been working on the next bay. Then the second boat sprang a leak where some of the caulking between the timbers had come loose. That was easily repaired, but again, time was lost, and the men complained at having got wet, again. Then the lead carpenter, Gaius, dropped a chisel into the Tiber while he was out at the far pilings, shaving down a tenon that had been made slightly oversize.

Lucius found it difficult to anticipate his men's reaction. Sometimes they treated events with rough humour, as they did when Gaius dropped the chisel; for days afterwards they'd call 'Splash!' or 'Butterfingers!' when he passed, and laugh, and they laughed even harder when he scowled at them and his face went the dark red colour of old bricks. Other times they were sulkingly silent, or muttered between their teeth. They knew by now, though he'd tried to keep it quiet, that they were behind time; and they didn't like it.

Still, he thought, the bridge itself was safe; the structure was too strong, the system of counterweighting too secure, for it to fail. Now that first span was up, he knew it would work. It was just a question of getting it finished. He held on to this thought throughout the coming days; there were times when it was the only thing getting him through the day, and there were nights when he woke from a nightmare of swirling waters and splintered wood and held the thought of that hard geometry close to him as a talisman, a protection against his fears.

He wasn't convinced it wasn't one of the men sabotaging the equipment. Some of the men must have thought the same; there was an air of tension about the site now, and every so often he'd hear angry yells. Men looked at each other with suspicion; borrowing another man's tools would lead to a scuffle. He noticed some of them wouldn't walk behind another man's back now, but deliberately went out of their way instead.

The day they were starting on the central span, two of the men started a fight. He could never find out what had started it; when he asked, he was met by silent stares, or prolix admissions of ignorance. One man simply said, "You don't want to know," and turned his back; that would never have happened in Tarchna, but in Rome, where every man was his equal, some men thought they needed to show it. One of the fighters was a Faliscan, the other a Roman, but that didn't mean race was at the bottom of it; it could have been anything, a lost bet, a spilt cup of water, a wedge inserted the wrong way up.

The fight might even have started as a friendly scuffle, but within a minute it had become serious, and the other men were watching, keeping carefully out of the way of the two antagonists. The Faliscan was stockier, and he knew his strengths, trying to close with the Roman and grapple him; the Roman, taller and less well muscled, kept moving, jabbing punches at his opponent two-handed, trying to keep him occupied. They were fighting on the edge of the river, above the little pier where one of the boats was tied, and the Roman used that to his advantage, trying to edge the Faliscan towards the water, giving him no room to move. When he landed a blow, a couple of the men cheered; but most of them watched in silence, as if they were at a religious ceremony.

The Faliscan was pushing forward, though one of his eyebrows was split and bleeding. He blinked, and raised an arm, wiping the back of his elbow across his face; the blood must have got into his eye. Bellowing, he ran at the Roman, knocking him off his feet and into the river. But there was no splash.

Lucius couldn't see what had happened to the Roman, but the men were surging forward to the edge of the river, shouting, and the Faliscan was on his knees, surrounded by them, screaming. A couple of the men were kicking him, hard.

He'd only have one chance to stop it. He looked around for Gaius, thinking he'd be useful support, but the carpenter was nowhere to be seen; he'd have to do it on his own. He had to elbow his way through to reach the Faliscan; he stuck his arms under the man's armpits and pulled him up, holding him against his own body for a moment till he was able to stand. The other men fell silent; not dispersing, as he'd expected them to, but shuffling, looking down at the ground, not willing to meet his eyes.

"Get back to work," Lucius said; and they did.

It wasn't till he looked over the side that he realised what had happened. The Roman had fallen badly, not on to the mud or into the water, but across the edge of one of the boats; one arm had smacked the gunwale, and hung at an unnatural angle. The bone stuck out, white through a swathe of red tissue and blood.

***

Now Lucius had lost several days, and one man. But they'd reached the great central span, and the immense beams were being swung into place. If we run short of time, he thought, we could always work from the other side of the river as well, working on two spans at the same time; though the bridge hadn't been designed to be built that way. (And why hadn't it? he wondered; in retrospect it was such an obvious thing to do, to have two teams working in towards the middle, instead of the single team throwing a bridge across from one side to the other. Perhaps he'd been so opposed to the two-bridge scheme championed by Faustus that he'd closed his mind to any idea that even slightly resembled it. A mistake.)

The first of the huge beams was swinging into place. They'd learned, after that first near-disaster the day the king had visited them, to rig a trestle up on the pilings, counterweighted at the back, and use it to pull the beam upwards, as well as just along, so that it could be gently lowered on to the piling, instead of hauled up and manhandled into the slot that was ready for it. Though Lucius knew the heaviness of the beam, though he'd seen the two oxen struggling to pull it yesterday, straining their shoulders against its inertia, as it swung now from the ropes it seemed almost weightless, easily moved with the touch of a finger, floating like a leaf on the breeze.

He'd remember that deceptive moment of lightness for ever, or rather the moment that came immediately after, like the moment your stomach lurches and you realise you're about to fall, or about to vomit. It was like the times his father would swing him in the air and pretend he was about to let go, and though he never did let go, the dread of it was always there, the same terror and nausea and lightheadedness and sense of imminent disaster.

Then the men were shouting, and tugging at the fallen beam, and one of them was struggling free of the whipping ends of the rope. Everything turned in one moment to ashes. He couldn't remember having seen it fall.

The beam had turned askew as it crashed on to the pilings; it rested on a single corner, threatening to slip again. The A-frame of the crane had fallen backwards, its feet slipping off the pilings and into the river; the rope dangled loose. One wrong movement and the beam would collapse again, into the water, and there would be no retrieving it.

All this Lucius saw in one moment, but he never saw the man who lay, his head crushed, sprawled away from the beam. He hadn't even had the time to cry out.

It seemed to take hours for the boat to reach the pilings, so he could clamber up and inspect the damage. By then, someone had dragged a cloth over the dead man's face, to hide the shattered bone and brain; but it was worse somehow, seeing the bloody stain on the grey rag, and the shapelessness of what was under it.

Gaius had already secured the ends of the ropes, and the beam had been tied, as well as it could be, at each end, so there was no chance of losing it. But nothing could be done till it was lifted again, and straightened. And that could not be done till the dead man had been moved out of the way, and till the crane had been fished out of the river, and the ropes reattached.

It wasn't till Gaius grabbed his arm that Lucius realised he'd lost track, that his mind had locked up, he was in a daze. It took him a moment to realise what Gaius was telling him. The ropes... the ropes...

Gaius held out a loose end. The fibres were splayed, fanned out, except at the core of the rope where they were torn, rough. Lucius looked without understanding. Gaius was trying to tell him something, but his mind refused to take it in.

Then he realised. Each of the fanned out cords ended neatly, with a flat cut. Each surrounding cord had been severed, leaving only the single strand in the centre to hold the entire weight of the beam.

***

"This is dangerous," Tanaquil said.

"Of course it's dangerous. One of the men got killed." He was pacing the length of the room. He looked across to her, sitting poised on her couch, still as a cat.

"That's not what I meant." She looked at him with that look she had, a mixture of impatience with his slowness and resignation. He felt like a child which had disappointed its teacher. "It isn't an accident, and it couldn't be an accident."

He looked down. "I know that." He was losing his temper, and dug the nails of one hand into his palm to try to keep it under control. "Of course it's not an accident. The rope was cut. How could that be an accident?"

"It's the fact that it _couldn't_ be an accident that's important."

He turned back towards her. "What's that got to do with it?"

"Everything before _could_ have been an accident. Or might have been sabotage. But if it was sabotage, whoever was carrying it out was careful to leave the possibility of accident. Until now."

"So, this time he came out in the open."

"He doesn't care if you know." She paused, nodded as if agreeing with herself, then went on. "Perhaps he even wants you to know."

Ah, he thought, that made sense.

"He can't ruin what I've already built," he said, holding the thought to him like a drowning man holding on to a piece of wood.

"He doesn't need to."

She was right, damn her. Making him late would be enough. Whoever the saboteur was, he was clever. Not as clever as Tanaquil, not quite, but smarter than Lucius had been. And then he realised.

"He wants the men to know, doesn't he? They've been as skittish as a bunch of rats for the last twelve days, and now they're frightened enough to walk off the job."

"No workers to finish the bridge."

"Given time, I could get more. But of course, time is what I haven't got."

She raised an eyebrow. "No?" Cool as she always was. He wished she would ever lose her control; even in bed, he felt, she kept some reserve, didn't show him her whole self.

"I told Ancus Marcius it would be ready by the Kalends of next month."

Her face tensed, like a cat's when it sees prey. "You told Marcius. Who else?"

"What's it matter?"

"Who else? The men? The ox-teams?"

"No. Only Marcius, and; who was with him?" He struggled to remember that day when they'd placed the first beams. "Manius. And Faustus."

She smiled. "Oh, so Faustus is involved. How interesting. So only those three men know that the bridge has to be finished by the Kalends."

"Well, the ox team could probably guess from the delivery schedule. And the men could work it out from the progress we're making. One span every two days. It's not beyond their intelligence."

"That's not the point." She was abrupt this time; her patience is running out, he thought. Am I that stupid? Has the accident smashed my brains as effectively as it crushed that man's head? "They might be able to guess when it will be finished. But only those three men know that you've committed to it."

"Unless one of them has told anyone else."

Her face fell. For a moment he felt savagely satisfied; you didn't think of that, did you? Shame followed quickly. "Still, Faustus is a good bet. It's the kind of thing he would do." It was the nearest he could come to a peace offering.

"The violence?" she asked, "That's what makes you think it's him?"

"Not so much the violence of this attempt. No, it's more the covert nature of the earlier attempts."

"If they were attempts at all, and not accidents."

"Indeed."

"It might be Ancus Marcius. But he has no reason to ruin you."

"Or it might be Manius. Damn, I don't want it to be Manius; I like him."

"But it could be."

"Yes."

"And he'd have a reason?"

"Every reason. He's Marcius's lieutenant. If my star rises, his declines. He was there when Marcius offered me another job, on the saltworks." Too late he realised he hadn't mentioned it to Tanaquil at the time. She was suspiciously quiet; but he was sure she would remember his lack of confidence in her.

"So; either Manius or Faustus."

"One or the other. But they don't know one thing that I know."

She looked at him, her head slightly tilted to one side. She said nothing. He wondered sometimes why they played these games. Her silence said; I know the game you're playing, and I'm not playing it. He'd invited her to ask him the question, and now she refused to answer it. He'd have to answer it himself; and as he did so, he realised she'd been playing the game after all, and she'd won it.

"I added two weeks to the time I needed."

She smiled then, not an I-know-something-you-don't smile, not the patronising smile he resented, but that almost childish, gentle turning up of her mouth that made him remember the girl she had been so recently; a smile that was for him and him only.

***

The three days after the incident passed without further accidents. Two of the men hadn't turned up the next day; work went on without them. In silence, that first day, but as the men's confidence returned, the whistling and singing of odd fragments of song returned, and eventually they were yelling at each other and ribbing Gaius with shouts of 'butterfingers' and 'splash' as if nothing had happened.

They were still behind. Lucius put on a brave face; he lied to his foreman, he lied to Gaius, he pretended he was pleased with the half a day they'd pulled back by working over the midday break. But when he came in and found the newly carved tenons of the three beams that were to be placed that day wrecked, even he couldn't keep his temper.

"He says" - that was Gaius, sweating with rage and pointing at one of the ox handlers - "he says he didn't back the oxen into it, he says he didn't drag one of the other beams against it, he says it's nothing to do with him, he..."

"I didn't! I don't know anything about it! I came down this morning with a load of lumber for the ramps, and this guy starts yelling at me."

"Knows nothing! Knows nothing!" Gaius spat in the dirt.

Lucius bent to look more closely at the tenons. The ends were furred, spread, as if something large and blunt had hit them. They were unusable; he didn't know if Gaius would be able to trim them down again, but he doubted it. Looking at the damage, he saw how it was more severe on one side, tapering off towards the far tenon; as if a huge weight had swung into all three beams together. Not the work of a man with a hammer, then, which is what he'd feared at first. No harm in checking; he walked to the other end of the beams. He dreaded seeing the same damage. It would be clear, if he did, that it was sabotage.

But the tenons on the other end were crisp and square as they'd been made.

"Come here, Gaius." The carpenter scowled. He added, "Please."

Showing Gaius the undamaged tenons, he asked whether the other end could be repaired. To his credit, Gaius thought before answering. But the answer was still no.

"How quickly can we get another set of beams made for the next span?"

"We can take the ones we were going to use for the day after next, and use them instead. And so on. There'll be a bit of cutting down involved, not much, a bit. Then when we get to the last span we have a problem."

"Hm." Still, that shifted the problem to the end of next week. Enough time to get more beams out of store. "So we'll need another three beams made ready."

"There aren't no more."

"What? There must be."

"Not ready, not dry. Remember, we ordered these six months ago."

"I remember. But surely..."

"Someone's bought up all the spare timber. Work on the Palatine is what the men say."

Odd, Lucius thought; he'd not heard of any building work going on. Ancus Marcius would surely have told him; in fact he would have thought the king would have had him in to consult on it, if his estimation of Lucius was anything like as good as his offer of work on the saltings had implied.

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing the size we want." Gaius fell silent for a moment, but his lips were still moving; Lucius made out nothing except a couple of numbers. Then Gaius looked up, his eyes peculiarly bright. "We could run two pieces out and meet in the middle, there's some smaller stuff we could use, but."

Lucius waited for him to complete that thought.

"But. It's not going to be very strong. The joint in the middle will give, after a while."

Lucius's breath hissed out between his teeth. That wouldn't work. Any weakness in the bridge, and he knew it would fail, in time. His future depended on the solidity of his work. If the bridge fell, he fell with it. He couldn't afford the risk. And he trusted Gaius, this ill-tempered, blunt man; what Gaius said had always been right, so far.

It would be doubly annoying if the bridge failed because of that last span. In the whole bridge, the central span was the widest, across the deepest and fastest part of the flow; the others were all equal, except for this, the shortest of the spans.

While he was trying to puzzle out what to do next, he was also thinking what this told him about the saboteur's identity. It could only be one of the men on the team, surely; only they knew how the whole thing fitted together, only one of the carpenters or labourers would have known exactly how to achieve the maximum possible damage for the least effort. Only one of the them would have known how to ruin the entire beam by damaging just the tenons. But then he remembered the day of the king's visit, and he realised he'd taken the three men over to the piling in the smaller of the two boats, and shown them the way the beam had been inserted, the way the socket and tenon fitted each other exactly. Gods help him, he'd been proud of his design, he'd boasted to them about how the wedges used the timbers' own weight to pull them together. It was exactly as Tanaquil had said; either Manius or Faustus, and only those two, knew enough to have done this damage. Yet again, he had no way of guessing which of the two it was. He wondered if he ever would have.

And even if he did know which it was, that wouldn't help him with the immediate problem; the need to locate three more huge oak beams. Seasoned, trimmed square, and carved ready. He realised he was scraping a line in the soil with his heel, and stopped.

In front of him, Gaius was staring over at the ruined beams, and hitting his big fist on his forehead again and again. "Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid," he was saying to himself; "stupid, stupid..."

***

It was a close thing in the end. He'd forgotten the three days of ill luck, the _dies nefasti_ when no work could be done; and Gaius managed to drop his mallet into the Tiber, though unlike the chisel, it floated.

Gaius's revelation was obvious, of course; to cut the spoiled beams shorter, to fit the final span. The ruined tenons were simply waste, to be cut away with the rest, and then new tenons could be cut on the shortened length.

"But it won't work," Lucius had said. "The last span is the shortest. So the beams cut for that span will be shorter. So we can't reuse them for another bay; they won't be long enough."

"Ah," said Gaius. "You can't trust foresters."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Gaius looked surly. "You could talk to me a bit more civil."

Lucius took a deep breath. "I could."

"I reckoned if I ordered everything exact length it'd come wrong. Wrong length, or wrong order, and if we got the short span first we couldn't do owt with it."

"So?" It still wasn't making sense.

"So I ordered the lot all alike. All except that middle set, that would have cost too much extra. So all the beams fit all the spans."

Gaius didn't understand when Lucius grabbed him round the waist and started swinging him round in a frenetic dance. Gaius - like most of the Romans - didn't have much sense of rhythm anyway, but it hadn't stopped Lucius. It hadn't stopped the men from applauding the strange sight, either; a tall, dreadlocked Etruscan leaping about with the stocky, puzzled Roman's head pulled against his chest. (At least the event had given them something to yell at Gaius other than 'butterfingers' and 'splash', to their amusement, though not Gaius'.)

***

Lucius had expected to feel exultant when the bridge was finished; what he felt, though, was only relief, and a dull ache that he'd been through so much for so little. A rough timber bridge, fine enough as a work of engineering, but nothing to set beside the magnificent god's house at Tarchna, or Velx's acropolis, its temples crowned with statues of the gods. Nothing to set beside his ambitions; nothing he'd be proud to show his father. The prize had not, after all, been worth the cost.

He'd allowed himself only a tight smile when he heard that Faustus had left for a week's hunting near Alba Longa, and wouldn't be there for the opening.

The trumpets' long moan sounded over the river in the pale dawn light. Ancus Marcius would be coming, Lucius thought, in his chariot drawn by white horses, bringing the sacrifice, with his lictors marching in front and behind. There was already a small crowd of men waiting, and one woman; the Flaminica Dialis, wife to Jupiter's priest, smothered in dull grey veils. She seemed like a ghost come out of the mists; grey was their mourning colour, someone had told him. He wondered why she was wearing it now.

The sun rose huge and pale, giving no warmth. Lucius could see the procession now; the edges of the lictors' axes glinted icily in the sunlight. He turned to Gaius.

"A good show, isn't it?"

Gaius shrugged. "Not bed. But not worth getting out of bed this early."

Ancus Marcius stood erect in his chariot, rigid like a statue despite the vehicle's jolting on the uneven ground. His horses had their heads pulled in and down, their necks curved in submission to the reins; Ancus kept a tight hand on them, Lucius thought. Behind the chariot, the priests in their spiked helms, led by the Flamen, a heavy woollen cloak thrown over his toga, pinned with two huge golden brooches. (But where was the ox for the sacrifice? Lucius wondered.) Behind the chariot came more of the lictors, holding their bundles of rods and axes; they marched in step, slowly. The solemnity struck him; but what was truly impressive was the discipline of both men and horses.

Then behind the lictors walked ten young nobles, Etruscan and Sabine to look at them, with their long loose hair and flowing robes. One wore a golden breastplate; another, huge golden bracelets. He thought he vaguely recognised one, from some banquet of Tanaquil's, but they were too far away for him to be sure. Behind them came soldiers; at the back, Lucius could see the huge curled stems of the trumpets.

Ancus Marcius never looked to left or right, never recognised Lucius and his men, but followed the lictors straight on to the bridge, still slowly, still staring straight ahead. Only when he got to the centre did he stop, and turn around, beckoning the Flaminica Dialis to him.

"No sacrifice," Lucius murmured.

"There'll be one, don't worry." Gaius kept his voice low, like a grumble.

The lictors fanned out around the king, leaving a clear space in front of him, between the chariot and the parapet. Into that space came the young princes; they seemed uncertain, half asleep, as if it were still too early for them. Ancus stood with his arms open, as if to embrace them all. A showman, Lucius thought disgustedly, that's all. Suddenly he felt disappointed in the king; he'd thought he would be above such obvious displays, more serious-minded than to put on some kind of glittering performance.

Then suddenly the priests stepped forward from behind the lictors. Quickly and silently, they stepped up to the princely youths; and suddenly the youths all seemed to be dancing, a strange jerking dance, as the trumpets blared, but behind them the priests were standing still, each with his arms raised and a length of rope in his hands.

It took them a long time to die, their bodies still jerking and twitching against the priests'. At the end, like huge puppets, they were walked upright to the parapet, and tipped over into the river; they fell limply, floating sprawled across the water.

# Egerius

He couldn't remember his father at all; not his face, not his voice, not even a looming presence far back in his childhood. Just nothing.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he thought he could remember a tiny detail, an impression, nothing more. But even of these vague feelings he was suspicious; he wasn't sure if he'd really begun to remember, or whether he'd heard his mother talking about his father so often that he'd begun to weave her stories into his own memory, as if they were real.

"You remember when your father came back from Tarchna?" she'd ask, and he'd have to make some little sound of assent, before she'd launch herself on the story. He'd said "No" once, and he couldn't bear to do it again; she'd become desperate, trying to prise a memory out of him, any little detail, it didn't matter what. It was like trying to get a splinter out of your finger; the more she tried, the further it seemed to become embedded. So now he murmured gently, and let her words wash over him without listening.

He knew the story almost by rote now; how his father had come to Cisra as a trader, how he'd fallen in love with Sesanseia, how he'd died before they could be married, of a marsh fever. He knew his father's name, Arruns, and that he'd come from Tarchna; but it was his grandmother Ramutha Vestiricina who had given him her family name when she took her daughter's son as her own.

It wasn't a rich house, where he grew up. Ramutha, like her daughter, had been a widow for long years, though unlike her daughter she never spoke of him. His mask hung in the forecourt; a stark terracotta face, blank eyes and hollow mouth. It was impossible to tell what he'd really looked like, Aranthur thought. In his dreams, hollow faces with only darkness behind them pursued him down long corridors of silence.

And today the new tutor had arrived. Ramutha had insisted on it. Mother was crying again. Ramutha was taking him away, she'd never see him again, and he was too small, too small to go to a tutor...

He thought with the heartlessness of a child that she was making too much of it; he'd be back with her by midday, after all. He wasn't to know that this was the beginning of the end of his childhood; the gradual cracking apart of their closeness, till in a few years he'd look back and see his mother very small, as if from a great distance, and never be able to close that gap again.

And now she was grabbing him to her breast, half smothering him in that sweaty, milky smell and her puffy flesh. He could feel her sobs; her tears soaked his sleeve, and he felt irritated that he'd go to meet his tutor wet and dishevelled. "My little man," she called him, and he resented it, stretching his back to try to stand taller, stretching his mouth flat in what he hoped was a look of immense dignity. She only clutched him tighter to her too soft breasts.

"Aranthur?"

It was Ramutha, come to take him. His mother, surprised, slackened her grasp, and gratefully he ran to his grandmother; then stopped, just before he got to the door, and carefully smoothed down his hair, and rubbed his face where his mother's tears had dampened it. Then he looked up at his grandmother's hard black eyes, and put his hand in hers. She inclined her head; the corner of her mouth twitched, the nearest to a hint of a smile she ever came. Ceremoniously, they made their way across the courtyard, past the shrine where his grandfather's mask looked down at them. His mother's voice, thin and breathy, followed him; "Don't leave me, Aranthur... my little man."

That was something he would like to forget.

The man was already standing at one end of the room; Ramutha must have shown him in there, then come to fetch Aranthur. It was the room she kept for best; newly swept out, but the hangings smelt of damp and he could see, in the sun that shone through the single unshuttered window, that there was dust hanging in the air.

The Greek was not an attractive man, with his thin, unkempt beard and bulging forehead. He looked at Aranthur without curiosity, his face giving nothing away. "This is Aranthur," he said. Whether he'd meant to, or whether his Etruscan was not quite good enough to make it an interrogative, it came out as a statement. Aranthur looked back at him, his lips tight. He would not smile at this man.

"This is Aranthur," Ramutha said. "You'll teach him every morning; writing, the poets, that thinking stuff you have."

"Philosophy," the tutor said.

"Yes, that." She looked severe. "I want him stretched; he'll do well, if you don't let him be lazy. His mother pampers him. I think I told you already."

"You did."

"Well," she said, and turned her back.

So this was his first morning. Mornings were all she could afford, his grandmother had told him. In the old days they would have kept a slave tutor, and he would have worked all day with the boy; now half the rooms in the house were empty, like this one.

"Come," said the tutor, and the boy went to him. "Do you speak?"

"I do."

"Well, that's one thing. You don't write?"

"Write?"

"I thought not. We'll start you on that tomorrow, then. I'll bring the doings. Today then. That thinking stuff, as she calls it. How did the world begin?"

***

That morning confused Aranthur greatly. Every time he thought he'd answered the question, the Greek asked another one; or he'd circle back to that first question, "How did the world begin," and assert yet another opinion, before picking it into tiny shreds of meaning and discarding it in its turn. Every answer he gave was wrong, or his tutor said it was interesting, and then proceeded to show him it was wrong.

At first he was confident he knew the answer. The hidden gods made the world, Aranthur said. Ah, said the tutor. So who made the hidden gods?

Aranthur thought for a moment. He'd always thought the hidden gods just _were_ ; but it was possible they had been made. There was a god above them after all.

"Did Tinia make them?" he hazarded.

"So if Tinia made the hidden gods, did Tinia make the world?"

"I suppose." He was frowning with the unaccustomed need to think through everything he said. "Or Tinia might have made the hidden gods and then the hidden gods made the world."

"So. Who made Tinia?"

And so it went on. After a while, his tutor moved the ground of debate from 'Who made the world' to 'Was there a time before the world?' Suddenly, everything shifted; the idea of huge emptiness opened his eyes, tasted like cold air on a frosty morning in his mouth. He had taken the world for granted; it was there. And suddenly it was not there. Instead, inside his head he felt a huge darkness, an open space that he had to fill with the tenuous streamers of his own breath, his own thought. Life changed for ever in that one second, and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Not even breath, for a second.

Ramutha's arrival at midday surprised both of them in the middle of a teasing thought, the idea of infinite worlds divided only by a single chance - a world in which men had not come to be, a world in which the Greeks had been overcome by the Persians, or a world in which everything was the same, except for the window that Ramutha had left open that morning.

The tutor - he remained the tutor, or 'master', or sir, and Aranthur never learned his name - simply stopped, in the middle of a sentence, and looked up at her. Aranthur never did find out what would be different tomorrow, or after-tomorrow, or in his grandchildrens' lifetime, as a result of that window being left open, but when he thought about it later, he realised that was why the worlds had to be infinite; there would be one world in which he shut the window, one world in which Ramutha had already shut it, or would shut it, and another in which the window stayed open, and perhaps a sparrow flew into the room...

"Has he been attentive?" his grandmother asked the tutor. When he nodded, she turned to Aranthur. "What have you learned?"

He wanted to say so many things. The world, and the gods, and the vastness of fortune. The swirl of eternity, the reflective shards of an infinity of possibilities, the dizzying precipice of humanity. The words were not there. He said, simply, "Some of that thinking stuff," and winced inwardly at his tutor's disapproval.

"You will be here tomorrow, punctually?" Ramutha's attention had moved back to the tutor. He assented; perhaps he had not noticed the implied criticism in her question.

"I have nothing against this thinking stuff. But I hope you will start him on his letters tomorrow."

"I shall. But I can't do that without the tablets and wax. Which I will bring. Tomorrow."

And then he stooped a little, turning to Aranthur.

"So tomorrow, letters. And then, having asked ourselves how the world came to be, we will look at what we mean by 'the world'."

***

He was silent at lunch. It was cold; they never heated this room, and darkness lurked in the corners. He felt he'd disappointed both his grandmother and the tutor. He'd disappointed his mother, too; but that went without saying; every time she looked at him, she remembered Arruns, and wanted the child to make up for the father's absence.

They ate the same as every day; spelt porridge, with dried fruit from last season crumbled into it. There was no meat; there never was any meat, unless one of the chickens had stopped laying, and then Ramutha would have it strangled by the one servant they had left, who was kitchen maid and bodyservant and errand runner, and everything else, and would have left, only (like Ramutha) she was too old to change. There would be roasted chicken on the first day, then the stringy remains boiled with the spelt porridge the next, and the bones left in a stock with beans the day after.

The silence between them grew until he felt it would burst his eardrums. He'd never been so aware of the sounds of his own eating; the clamping of his jaw, the liquid sound of food moving about his mouth. He was amazed that his mother and grandmother couldn't hear it. No one said a word.

Every afternoon till now he'd sat with his mother, but today he couldn't bear it; he needed to be alone with the thoughts swirling in his head. He knew the house, perhaps better than any of the women; he had found his way into every locked room, except one, and through the disused passage to the outhouses, roofs half fallen into ruin. It was to the furthest of these that he made his way, clambering up over a fallen beam to the small loft. No one would find him here. Through the roof, he could see a small patch of grey sky.

He wanted to think about the idea of the world not being there; of there having been something before the world. And for a moment, he considered the idea of what there had been before he had been born; had the world existed before then, or had it been born, bright and new, when he opened his eyes? But as he wriggled further and further into the age-paled straw, and began to feel the warmth, his thoughts slipped away from him like writhing elvers, and he started daydreaming of those other worlds made by chance or coincidence, those infinite worlds.

In one of those worlds, he thought, he had a father. In one of those worlds, his father would turn out to have been not a poor trader from Tarchna, but the son of a lucumo, a resplendent prince. In one of those worlds, perhaps, his grandfather would send for him; a messenger would arrive, a young man as beautiful as a god, on a fine horse, with rich presents for the house, and would carry Aranthur off to his father's palace.

He'd asked Ramutha about his father, a few times, but she didn't know much about him. He came from Tarchna, he was a trader in metalwork, he would have been handsome if he hadn't had a mole at the corner of one eye. He was well spoken and elegant in his ways.

"He must have been a prince," Aranthur said, pleased with his deduction.

"If so, he was a poor one."

"He must have hidden a great treasure somewhere," Aranthur insisted, thinking he would go and look for it among the rambling outhouses and in the dust-ridden rooms that hadn't been used since grandfather Vestiricina's death.

"He probably had nothing."

.

"Mother says his father was a great man."

"He'd hardly seduce her by saying he was a pauper." Her voice was acid. Then, as if she realised she had hurt him, she reached across and grasped his shoulder with one bony hand. "I'm sorry, Aranthur, but that's the way it was. He had very little; a few bronze items, nicely made, for his trade, and some old bone dice."

"Bronze!" Aranthur jumped up, knocking her hand off his shoulder. "A sword! A helmet!"

Ramutha smiled, but it was a twisty smile, one that could become a frown if you looked hard enough. "A half-made dagger sheath, and a little bronze horse. You can have them if you like."

The scabbard was a poor thing, shaving-thin slips of bronze each side of the wooden body; but the little horse was a lovely thing, its neck arched proudly and its mane standing stiffly up, as if it were about to buck and leap in the air. Aranthur kept it by his bed; as soon as he woke, his hand would steal out of the covers to caress the cold bronze till it warmed, and the bronze gleamed as if polished. He might have no memories of his father, but he had this; the only horse he was ever likely to own.

As for his mother, she was always talking about his father, but nothing she said made any sense; she was either crying or raging, and she kept trying to drag up those memories that wouldn't come. He thought sometimes that he felt them, like worms wriggling in his stomach, and if he didn't stop her, his mother would plunge a hook into his guts and pull them up.

"Your father's parents didn't approve. They killed him, you know. They killed him. He'd never have come to Tarchna if it hadn't been for his father. He told me once that he could never do enough for his father; so he'd come here, to make a life on his own. The man was a slave-driver. Imagine! To kill your own son!"

He'd started off believing everything his mother said; now he was not so sure. Had he become more aware of her myth-making as he grew older, or had his mother's madness grown with time? He wanted to know about his real father; how tall he was, what he liked eating, how he spoke and laughed and walked. He didn't want her stories of the man killed by his tyrant father, or poisoned by rivals (that was another version).

He wanted above all to know whether his father had loved him; whether his father would have been proud of him. And that he'd never know.

In another world, somewhere in the multiplicity of universes his tutor had spoken of, another Aranthur had a father. Here, he had a bronze horse and a scabbard that had never been finished. But he could still dream that this might be the world in which his grandfather was a lucumo, in which his grandfather sent riders to scour Etruria looking for him. And in the warm glory of the daydream, and the warmth of the straw around him, his eyelids began to droop.

***

The learning of letters began the next day, as the tutor had promised. It was easy to see how the symbol could stand for the sound; easy, too, to draw the letters with his stylus in the soft wax. But it was less easy to remember which letter was which. He muddled them sometimes; alpha and gamma were the same forked figure turned on one side, and lambda was a gamma upside down, and then there were sigma and ksi which were just serpentine squiggles and he could never quite tell apart.

Then there were two o's, and two e's, and he could never remember which was which. His tutor, normally placid, began to show evidence of temper.

"Omega, not omicron, boy!" he yelled, one day, and Aranthur thought for a moment he was going to throw the tablet and stylus at the wall. Instead he turned suddenly on his heel, his breath hissing out in a violent sigh. Aranthur struggled on, his head bent over his work to disguise the hot shameful tears that were pooling on his eyelashes.

Philosophy, though, he loved; he felt as if he were exploring the unused lumber rooms of his own mind. Huge vistas opened before him, as if he'd been living besides some great precipice all this time, and only now looked over, and seen the virgin plains spread out below, the rivers and valleys that led to the sea, the dizzying height of the air and the depth of the gorge. Infinite worlds were the least of it.

"How do you know that I am the same tutor who taught you yesterday?"

He had no answer for that; it seemed obvious, but he'd soon learned that what seemed obvious was anything but.

"I have changed. Look; I tore this nail on my chiton this morning when I put it on. My beard has grown as I slept. I am a day older than I was yesterday. So I am not the same person."

"But you are, obviously."

"In what way?"

"You have the same memories, the same thoughts."

"Ah. But I have new memories too. Like how the fingernail I caught in my chiton hurt. Or how you just answered my question."

"Is this something else to do with infinite worlds?"

The tutor's eyes narrowed, and he leaned his head forward on his skinny neck. "In what way?"

Aranthur realised he'd said something that surprised the tutor; interested him, maybe.

"Well, there's you-yesterday, and you-today, and you-tomorrow, and so there is an infinite number of possible tutors."

"Not infinite, not quite. Not in this world, anyway. But it's an interesting way of thinking about it. Anyway" - he had the air of someone desperately trying to get back to the road he'd been on - "change and continuity. What would make me a different person? Or to take another example, you step in a river. A year later you come back and cross the river again. Is it the same?"

"Of course not."

"Explain."

"The river flows to the sea. So the water is always different." He smiled, thinking there, see, I've showed you what I've learned.

"No. The river is the same, isn't it? It has the same name, it flows in the same bed."

Aranthur was crestfallen. He'd been certain he had the answer. And now it had receded again, that tenuous understanding, and his mind felt heavy and confused. Even so, he treasured the memory of that moment when he'd seen a glint of interest in his tutor's eyes.

***

If you'd asked Aranthur two years later whether he'd had any difficulties learning to write, of course, he would have said no. He'd started by reading slowly, forming the sound of each separate letter with his mouth, listening to his own voice to see if he could hear what the word was. Then one day, only a few weeks afterwards, he'd read; 'What is the principle of all things?' And he'd already spoken the words 'Everything changes, isn't that it?' when he realised he hadn't actually read the question with his lips, he'd seen it and understood it without the mediation of sound.

From then onwards he learned quickly. He learned the skills Ramutha wanted him to learn; how to write a business letter, to keep accounts, to write a eulogy of a wealthy patron. He learned about Etruria - his tutor had lived in Tarchna, and had visited Veii and Velzna, before moving to Cisra some years ago. They discussed the trade between towns; the way cities had specialised, Tarchna in the luxury trade, Vulci in bronzeworking; even the distinctions of burial rite between the southern and northern cities of the federation. He learned Greek history, too; and through that, the history of the Persians, the Medes, the Phoenicians. The world grew as he looked at it; he began to dream of deserts, wide expanses, the dark sea in a storm.

But it was the philosophy he really wanted to learn; he even got his tutor to lend him writings, and spent his afternoons reading. By the end of the first year he was beginning to push his tutor for answers. By the end of the second, he was beginning to write his own answers, in inexact Greek where the Etruscan language didn't have the right words, or any words at all. He hoped, one day, his tutor would volunteer to stay after midday; but he never did. Aranthur told himself the tutor was no doubt engaged elsewhere in the afternoons, but even so, he was disappointed. He never let it show, any more than he ever allowed anyone to guess his hunger for ideas.

"I don't understand you any more," his mother said. He thought; you never did. "What use is that stuff? Why would you care about the beginning of the world?"

"Because it's where we come from," he said. "Because it explains."

"I wish your father were here. He'd have put an end to this. It's all Ramutha's idea, isn't it? She just wants to take you away from me." She sobbed.

A year ago he would have turned away, dismissing her. But for the last few weeks he'd been discussing ethics with his tutor; not rules for living, but thoughts about how one might go about creating such rules. They'd talked about subjectivity; how the world as each person experiences it is different, how to frame a moral imperative in such a world. There were no answers; then, there never were any answers, that was something he'd learned over the course of his studies.

Now he looked at his mother, and saw not the desire for possession, but the neediness of a woman whose only love had ended in death and penury. He was no longer irritated by her; it was worse than that. He was deeply, woundedly sad that she had never been able to love him in any other way; that she could only desire to hold on to him, to grasp him tightly, too tightly. With tears blurring his vision, he went over to her and bent down - he'd grown, this last year - to put his arms around her.

She was shaking with sobs; he felt how gross as he'd thought her flesh was, there was very little weight to her. In a different world, he thought...

"Aranthur. I need you. Now." Ramutha's voice was sharp. Aranthur turned angrily; but he calmed as soon as he saw how flustered she was. He had never before seen her anything other than composed. "I may be poor, but I am still noble," she'd said once, "and as long as I keep this house, I shall keep up decent standards of behaviour"; and that, for her, included a certain frostiness and immobility. But today he saw her hands trembling, the veins clear and blue on the backs of her hands, her thin throat pulsing as she swallowed. He was suddenly aware she had grown old; when had that happened? (Was she still the same Ramutha she had been yesterday? Or a year ago? Or when she married old Vestiricina, when she was young, and he too, who had been dead since before Aranthur was born? His mind chattered incessantly, while he thought on another level, what could have broken her self-control?)

"There's a messenger. You must come."

He let go his mother's shoulders, turning her face upwards so that he could look her in the eyes. Strange, he'd never noticed how light they were, brown flecked with green.

"I'll be back in a moment," he said, and squeezed her once, hard, before he followed Ramutha into the courtyard.

"He's from Tarchna." He'd never known Ramutha afraid to speak out, but as she muttered to him, she was looking sideways at the man who stood in the centre of the yard,; a tall man, his riding cloak folded over one arm. A golden brooch gleamed on one shoulder; the pointed toes of his red boots were covered with dust, but they showed fine, soft leather. Aranthur remembered his dreams; his grandfather had sent for him at last.

"Aranthur son of Arruns?"

He nodded.

"Then I've been sent to find you. Venel Camna, at your service." Venel dipped his head gracefully; his hair swung forward, and his golden hair ties clicked as he bowed.

Aranthur looked at Ramutha; she was holding her back rigidly straight, and had tilted her head up a little so she could look along her sharp nose at the messenger. Seeing her poise, he collected himself; he wouldn't give her cause to be ashamed of him.

"You have found me."

The messenger's eyes widened very slightly. "Then I have a message from your grandfather."

Aranthur extended his hand. "Give it me, then."

The messenger looked puzzled. His hands remained by his sides.

"You said you have a message. Give it me."

The messenger took a breath. When he spoke, his voice was high and musical, as if he were reciting a poem. Which, Aranthur realised, was not far off what he was doing; reciting from memory.

"Demaratos of Tarchna, sends greetings to the son of Arruns. For years he searched for his son, who is lost. But since a son of the family remains, he wishes to extend his hand to him. I am sent to bring him to Tarchna."

It was that daydream, but made real; this was the different world, in which Aranthur's grandfather sent for him. He should have distrusted his luck, and yet he felt everything was playing out as happened in dreams.

There was a long silence; then Ramutha spoke. "Demaratos is an odd name."

The messenger cleared his throat. "It is a Greek name, lady."

"A Greek name. How interesting." She had regained her control now, was icily, almost insultingly cool.

"He married into an Etruscan family in Tarchna."

"We've heard nothing for thirteen years."

"We didn't know where Arruns had gone. He said something about Phoenicia; he must have come back through Pyrgi, and eventually settled in Cisra."

"He died here."

The messenger had the grace to look sorrowful.

"And my grandfather," Aranthur broke in; "Who is he? What is he?"

He dreaded now - now that he knew his father was no lucumo, not even an Etruscan - that he'd find out he was some shabby immigrant living in a squat outside the town. But he had enough clout to send a noble messenger, he thought.

"Demaratos was a noble of Corinth before events there made it, ah, advisable for him to leave. He is a wealthy man in Tarchna; his house is your house, Aranthur son of Arruns."

"You'll be a wealthy man," Ramutha pointed out; "You'll be his heir."

"Unfortunately not," the messenger said gently. "His son Loukios is that. And there are the sisters, too. But he'll recognise you, none the less. You'll want for nothing, you can be sure."

***

The messenger stayed that night, and another - the second to rest his horses - though it put Ramutha and the maidservant to some trouble to air a room for him, and find fresh bedlinen. He'd come with a spare horse, and provided with riding clothes for Aranthur, having guessed from his age what to provide. The only thing he hadn't brought was riding boots, since he couldn't have guessed the right size; Aranthur had to ride in his ordinary shoes.

They set out early, before Aranthur's mother was awake; Ramutha had insisted on it, though he felt ashamed when he remembered his last words to her. At least, he thought, his tutor - Agathos - would know he was leaving, and wouldn't think the worse of him for it.

It was a day's ride; a long day's ride, along the coast and then inland, towards the rising crest of Tarchna with its great temple at the top of the ridge. The day was cold; when they reached the coast road, a fresh breeze blew in from the sea. The great pines that bordered the beach were slanted, growing away from the wind; Aranthur looked at the sea and thought again, how large this world is, and how little I've seen of it.

He held himself aloof a little, not wanting to look too easily impressed by either the messenger or his message. When they talked, it was of the journey itself, which Venel had already made once, and which he was making again with Aranthur, in the reverse direction. Venel told Aranthur about his own family; he'd not wanted to come on this journey, as his old mother was ill, and likely to die before he returned. "I feel I might not see her again," he said, and Aranthur felt pain at the thought that he, too, might not see his mother again, and had left without saying farewell.

Towards the end of the day, though, Aranthur felt he had to ask the one question that had worried him all night; how had Demaratos found out?

"Agathon," Venel answered.

He didn't understand, either why Venel used the Greek word, or why he said, 'the good'. The good man, perhaps? His lack of comprehension must have shown, since Venel explained immediately; "Your tutor, Agathon of Mitilene."

Aranthur remembered his tutor saying, once, that he'd lived in Tarchna for a while. He'd played his dice close, that one, though; he'd said nothing about Demaratos, nothing about the message he'd sent.

They rode into Tarchna late in the day; the town was grey and cold, like Cisra. The houses seemed to turn inwards, presenting blank walls to the street, and gates studded with iron, and firmly closed. A woman running down one street stopped and yelled to Venel; "Eh, get home, you're wanted." A couple of boys scuffled in the gutter, screaming at each other till they saw the horsemen, and ran off.

"Nearly there," Venel said, as they turned the corner into a wider street that ran uphill. "It's the house at the top. The portico is new. A new style, an idea Demeratos brought from Greece with his new stonemason."

But as they approached, they heard a high, ululating wail; a single voice at first, then a whole crowd shrieking, piercing the air with noise. Aranthur's horse shied; he felt himself falling, but managed to throw his arms round the horse's neck before he slid completely from its back, so that when Venel managed to grab the horse's harness and pull its head round, Aranthur was hanging uncomfortably down one side of the horse, one leg trailing on the ground. This wasn't the way he would have wanted to arrive; he let himself fall on to his feet, and stood, his body aching from the change of position after the long hours riding.

Venel vaulted off his horse; together they led the horses up to the gate, which stood wide open. From inside, a crowd of masks stared at them, sightless eyes and soundless mouths, as the wailing started up again from inside the house. The masks swayed silently, above bodies swathed in grey rags that seemed taller and more elongated than they should be, as if their necks had been stretched out like a strangled chicken's. Aranthur felt the hairs on his arms stand on end; there was danger here. There was death.

"Someone's died," Venel said, and as he did, a black figure ran from the house towards him, screaming. For a moment Aranthur thought it was another mask, then he realised the woman's face was white, and heavily lined, her dark eyes wet. She threw herself into Venel's arms, crying, then suddenly took Aranthur's head in her hands and started kissing his cheeks, sobbing.

He stood stiffly, wondering what he had to do with this woman, till a young man came out from the dark doorway of the house and stepped towards him. Though he had a rough grey mantle thrown over his shoulders, the rich red of his robe showed through where it opened at the front, and gold gleamed on his wrists. That must be Loukios, Aranthur thought, and stepped forward to grasp his forearm, putting his hand to the inside of the other man's elbow.

"This is Aranthur, grandson of Demaratos," Venel said, rather grandly. The youth closed his eyes, as if in great grief; something Aranthur had hardly expected.

"Demaratos is dead," the youth said, and bowed his head to Aranthur.

***

So the fatherless boy followed his grandfather's body to the tomb, the next day. Aranthur had gone back to Venel's rooms, out of the way of the rest of the household; it was strange, having been sent for so ceremoniously, now to be hidden out of sight. Venel's mother, a thin woman with a cough, served a cold supper; nothing would be cooked this night. They rested early; no one had the heart to stay up. Around him in the darkness, he felt the house drawing its breath, mysterious and silent.

They started early in the morning, while light still shimmered on the dew and the sun was low. The procession made its way out of the city, along a road flanked by burial mounds; their retaining walls whitewashed, their grassy summits topped by cypresses, they crowded the road, the shadow of the trees falling across it like bars of darkness.

The men of the city had stood outside the gate, watching as Demaratos' body was brought out and laid on the cart that would carry it to the grave. The man that Aranthur took to be Demaratos' son led the mourning, kneeling in the street, scooping up the dust, and raising his hand above his head to let dust fall on it; there was a certain grace in his movements, though his eyes looked troubled. Each man greeted the body, raising one hand in salute, in silence.

Behind the body came the female mourners, led by the woman who had sobbed in Aranthur's arms the evening before; that, he thought, must be Demaratos' widow. His other grandmother. A lined face, frank eyes, a hint of double chin. He looked curiously at her, wondering if his father had looked like her, or more like the man who lay on the flowered bier; bulky once, his face already sinking to show the bone beneath. She was scratching her face with her nails, till the blood ran down, smearing her clothes; other women tore out handfuls of their hair, or dug their nails into their palms till their hands were bloody. The wailing never stopped; a high keening that shivered his soul, like high wind on a cold night.

They came, at last, to the tomb; a new tomb, its stonework fresh, not like the Etruscan families' ancient tumuli on this stretch of the road, where lichen had already begun to cover the stone. Demaratos would be the first body laid here; he had no ancestors in this land.

***

They ate the funeral banquet outside the tomb, once Demaratos' body had been taken and laid on the stone bed inside. Two aulos players wove skeins of sound round each other's piping, the wild reedy notes flying faster and faster till some of the women threw off their mourning dress and began dancing. One, in a sky blue dress stained with her own blood, brought a cup of wine to Aranthur, and he felt her breath on his neck as she bent towards him; then she was gone, throwing up her arms wide in the abandonment of the dance.

It wasn't till the guests began to drift back towards the city that Venel took Aranthur towards the widow and her family; the youth, and six young women, the youngest still chubby-faced, one with a fat baby held on her hip. It wasn't the homecoming Aranthur had dreamed of, but they were cordial, though the widow seemed brittle, like the thin skein of ice over melting snow.

"You must stay, of course," she said: "Demaratos wanted you to come home."

"And father had to be obeyed," one of the older girls said, with a sideways look at her mother.

"Are you my new brother?" the youngest piped up, rewarded with a vicious elbow from one of her sisters, who hissed "Nephew, silly," and flared up bright red.

"You might let Venel look after you for a few days. Things are... disordered. My husband..." She broke off, and Aranthur could see how she pressed her lips tightly together, to stop herself breaking.

He nodded. He wanted to ask; who was Demaratos? What was my grandfather like? But it would all have to wait; perhaps he would never know.

The young man approached him as he was going back with Venel. "You must stay. Really you must. I know it looks like sheer politeness on the widow's part, but I think they are genuine; they really do want you. She loved Arruns so much; and you look so much like him. She told me, last night. Just like him." He seemed at a loss for a words for a moment, and reached out for Aranthur's hand. "

"But you're the heir." He hadn't meant to say it, though he'd thought it. To his surprise, though, the youth simply laughed, throwing his head back and tossing his crisply curled hair.

"No," he said, when he could manage to stop laughing. "No," and he laughed again. "I'm so sorry. Really. I'm just the nearest man at the moment. I'm Thanchvil's brother." Seeing that Aranthur still looked blank, he went on; "Thanchvil; she's married to Loukios. And they're in Rome."

# Tarquinius

Summer came to Rome, and the bridge had stood against the spring floods, though the Tiber was full of debris washed down from further upstream; denuded tree trunks, dead animals bloated and pale. The water was brown and milky with mud. But the bridge stood.

Ancus Marcius had found more work for Tarquinius; the saltings at Ostia. The Roman army had taken Ostia two springs ago, and with it, the seacoast, sparse flat land flayed by the wind.

"I've told everyone you're working on the saltings," the king had told Tarquinius.

"Am I not, then?"

"You are. But something else besides."

Tarquinius thought. "Gravisca. Pyrgi."

Ancus Marcius smiled. "You're quick. You're right, too. Rome will never be a great city as long as she has to import through Tarquinia or Caere. They charge us too much for a start; you'd know, you're an Etruscan."

"Only half."

"Well, half Etruscan. Which side is it, by the way?"

"My mother."

"And your father? He was Latin?"

"Greek."

"Oh. Slippery people, the Greeks. Mind you, maybe that's where you get your intelligence from."

"I assure you," Tarquinius said, and he was thinking of Tanaquil as he said it, "I assure you there are Etruscans who can out-think me. There are some very smart Etruscans indeed."

"And some of them are women," Ancus Marcius said.

At which Tarquinius was, for a moment, silent.

"No matter; we need a port. So while you're surveying the saltings, have an eye to where we can make a wharf; and it had better be defensible."

"So we can bypass the Etruscan ports, and capture the margin from their traders."

"You understand so well." Ancus Marcius sighed. "Some Romans can be so short-sighted. I dream of leaving Rome great; not just through military conquest. A prosperous city; a city of luxury."

Tarquinius allowed himself a tight smile. "Some Romans think if they ever stop wearing rough wool, they'll turn into Greek pederasts and implode in a stink of perfume."

"There's something in their purity, though. It's admirable. Not very lovable, perhaps; and wrong; but admirable."

"So much easier to live that way than have to think about things. Your policies are too ... too nuanced for them, you know."

"Yes. They want enemies, for instance. I have to try to deal with the Faliscans, the Etruscans, the hill tribes; it's a thicket of sensitivities, half-baked policies, parochial patriotisms and envies. And it's only made more difficult by the fact that half the population of Rome _is_ Faliscan, or Sabine, or Etruscan."

"Like me," Tarquinius said drily. "And look how many enemies I have."

Ancus Marcius looked at him levelly. "You know, they want enemies so much that the whole world becomes their enemy. Just because it exists without Rome, they think it's there to be fought, conquered, trodden into submission."

"It's a rather limited view."

"Not necessarily wrong, though. But we can't do anything about it at the moment, of course. First things first. First a port, for instance."

He stood up, and wandered over to the terrace. From here on the Palatine they could see the whole of Rome spread out below the massive twinned peak of the Capitol; the scattered houses on the hills, the Tiber silvered with sunlight, the gold and green of a young spring landscape. Rome seemed full of promise like a budding wheat ear. How strange that the Tiber, surging with brown mud, looked so bright with distance, Tarquinius thought, and even the dull grey stone of the houses glowed creamy in the sun. Did everything, with distance, acquire grandeur? It was only when you looked more closely that you saw the dirt, the accumulated grime, the little evasions and hesitations. Only when you looked more closely that you saw betrayal in someone's eyes.

"I can understand their feelings," Ancus Marcius was saying. "Rome's a new city; hardly a city at all by your standards, I suppose. Just a scattering of houses on the hills, and all the space between lying fallow, marshland and rough pasture. A collection of refugee camps, outlaw villages. No wonder they're afraid of everything, suspicious of anything that's not as simple and plain as their lives used to be. But once they become prosperous, that will change.

Look, the place has changed already, you know it has. Stone houses instead of wood, and the bridge instead of a ferry."

"You remember the early days?"

"Oh, I remember the time before Rome."

Tarquinius raised an eyebrow. There was a surprise.

"I'm Sabine by ancestry, though I think most people have forgotten that. Numa Pompilius was the first Sabine to rule here, and he was my grandfather. But he was a gloomy man, with severe gods... what gods do you have in Tarchna?"

"The hidden gods, and the consenting gods, and Tinia of the thunder. But ask a woman and you'll get a different answer; they have different gods."

"Goddesses," Ancus Marcius corrected him.

"No, gods as well... and there is terminus, who is the king above us all, and sets the boundaries of our lands."

"You have boundaries then."

"Yes, too many," Tarquinius said shortly. "Too many for a half-caste."

"Too many for your own good. At least the Romans see their enemies outside, but you Etruscans fight with each other. It'll bring you down in the end, you know."

Tarquinius shrugged. "I'm a Roman now."

"With a Roman name... I heard Tanaquil call you lauchme. Were you king in Tarchna, then?"

"Good gods no. That's one of the boundaries; no half-caste kings. Not like Rome. Lauchme was my mother's name for me; but my father named me Loukios."

"Greek?"

Tarquinius nodded.

"What does it mean?"

"The shining one."

"Oh, very splendid. None of that Roman dourness about you Greeks. Or etruscans, for that matter. And you're Lucius here, Lucius Tarquinius." Ancus Marcius turned towards him, looked hard at him as if trying to make up his mind about something. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly low.

"I've been meaning to talk to you seriously. I'm getting older."

"You're a young man," Tarquinius said, and meant it.

"Hm. You might think so. I know better. I'm short of breath sometimes these days, and I dribble instead of pissing. Who knows? I might last years. I might die tomorrow."

"Surely not."

"You know what I'm trying to achieve here. For Rome. For my children, too. I need someone to guard my heritage. Someone to carry on the work, if it's not finished; and it won't be. Rome won't come into her own for generations; the accumulation of wealth can only ever be gradual. And someone has to win over the Romans from living hand-to-mouth as if it's a virtue." He grinned at that last phrase as if the whole speech had been planned for Tarquinius' amusement, but despair had curdled his voice and his eyes were tired.

"You know I'll do what I can."

"Well," and again Ancus Marcius put on that falsely bright voice, "I was wondering if you'd become a guardian for my children?"

***

It was a bright spring day when Tarquinius went to the Palatine to meet the king's four children, but for some reason a sudden squall blew up just as he arrived at the palace. The green landscape turned suddenly black as clouds choked off the sunlight, the silver Tiber dulled to a smear of grey. He felt the first smack of raindrops on his face before he was able to dodge under the portico. Tanaquil had come with him; she threw the hem of her tebenna over her hair, to keep it dry, but even so her face was spattered with what might have been tears.

The children were drawn up in a line in the hall; they stood awkwardly, knowing they were under inspection, except for the youngest, who was sucking his thumb with the unselfconscious avidity of infancy. Tanaquil shrugged her tebenna back down around her shoulders, shaking her head to dispel the few drops of water that trembled on her upswept hair.

Marcus Ancius named them. Marcus Robur was the oldest, a musclebound youth who might have had a slight squint, Tarquinius thought, or else he was scowling. Tiberius, next in age, was a slight boy of about eleven, very much in his brother's shadow, who looked up when he was named and blinked at them. Secunda smiled shyly at them, and Brutus looked at them from behind his tiny curled fist, took his thumb out of his mouth with a small sucking sound, and then changed his mind and put it back.

"So you're Tarquinius," Marcus Robur said. He growled roughly; his voice could only just have changed. He looked at Tanaquil, gloriious in her bright yellow tebenna.

"She your whore, then?"

"Sorry?"

"She your whore?"

"She's my wife."

"Dressed like that?" Robur jerked his head. "Decent women don't go about in the street. Decent women cover their hair."

"Etruscan women don't cover their hair." Ancus Marcius' voice was like oil, smoothing over the roughness.

"They're whores, all of them. Everybody knows that. She's in Rome now, anyway."

"That's enough."

"And you're Tiberius," Tanaquil was saying softly, bending her knees a little to bring herself closer to his level.

Tiberius looked sideways at his older brother, who was staring straight ahead; then turned back to Tanaquil, and focused his worried eyes on her.

"Do you like riding? I'll take you out riding, if you like."

"Silly," he said, his voice very small. "Women can't ride. Robur says so."

"Well this one can," she said, and smiled at him. "Do you have your own horse yet?"

"You can ride? Really?"

Tarquinius heard her laugh, high and thin. "Of course I can. And I have the best pair of horses in Rome."

"No you don't."

"Oh?

"My father's are the best horses in Rome. So."

"Except your father's, of course. But they're very nice horses, all the same."

"Can I see them? Can I?" He swung round to appeal to Ancus Marcius.

So that was one conquest made by Tanaquil, Tarquinius thought. She always amazed him; distant with their own children, she'd found her way unerringly into Tiberius' affections. Of course, it was a direct affront to Robur; she'd done it partly out of spite, partly out of the need for an ally among the children.

The rest of the meeting didn't go too badly, though Robur hung aloof and refused to talk to Tanaquil. Secunda and Brutus were too young to realise what was at stake, but Robur evidently realised that by calling Tarquinius as guardian, his father was admitting his own mortality; equally clearly, Robur didn't share his father's vision of Rome as a cosmopolitan (Robur would have said an Etruscan) city. Something in Robur's intransigence reminded Tarquinius of his father. (He hadn't thought of him for ages; that solid, intemperate man, who'd left Greece and doggedly made his way in what he must have seen as the far west - a man who refused to give up his Greek values and his Greek name, despite his years in Tarchna and his Etruscan wife.)

When they talked about the meeting that evening, after the table had been cleared and Tanaquil had mixed the wine, she didn't mention Robur, and for whatever reason Tarquinius also felt disinclined to say the boy's name. They both knew they hadn't made a friend there. They could not ever have made a friend of him; someone had got there first, Faustus perhaps, or another of the Old Romans.

"Secunda," Tanaquil said, savouring the syllables of the name. "A second daughter, then. What happened to the first one, I wonder?"

"No one's ever said anything." He held the wine in his mouth a moment, feeling the heavy tannin like fur on his tongue. It was sour. Many things were sour, and always would be.

"But Tiberius is sweet. Even if he's named after a river, which is stupid."

"He's a bit wet, perhaps."

Tanaquil didn't get the joke. "He might make a good husband for Tarquinia."

"He's eleven."

"And you're his guardian."

Her ambition sometimes irritated him; what was more irritating was that she was so often right. A marriage would link them to the royal family, and that could be useful, particularly given Robur's evident Old Roman leanings. The king might even welcome it; if, as Tarquinius supposed, he was increasingly coming to see Tarquinius as the guardian of his heritage, then he would see the marriage as a safeguard against the opposition.

"I am that."

She smiled. "I used to wonder why we'd left Tarchna."

"You know why we left."

"Yes; but Rome was so ..." she screwed her face up.

"Dirty?"

"Yes, but ... so _small_ , I was thinking, so limited. People were happy to live like that; they _wanted_ their poverty, they seemed proud of it. And now; I'm beginning to think Rome really could be everything we always wanted it to be. A real city, a city that could wake from its dreams of grandeur to make them real."

"You'll have to convince Faustus' crowd of that."

"Oh, we never will," she said lightly. "But we'll achieve it in spite of them." And she smiled that little catlike smile, and walked over to kiss him lightly on the brow. "Just the two of us."

# Tanaquil

Tanaquil didn't always have things her own way. Rome was changing, and yet shreds of the past clung about it still. The look of the city was changing fast; she saw young girls in bright, clinging linens, youths flashing golden bracelets and white teeth, walking side by side in the streets. New temples were being built, gleaming white stone and red tile like the temples of Tarchna; the bright colours of their paint clashed in the sun. And yet beneath the city's spring gaiety she could feel the old frost, the chill of the unforgiven and unforgiving men who had made it.

And so she might ride her chariot along the Sacred Way, in defiance both of their mores and their gods, but she might not attend a banquet in her own house.

"I don't see why," she said sulkily, for once not noticing how ugly she had made her face or Tarquinius' delicate flinching from her.

"Because the dinner is for men, only. As is quite normal in Rome. As you know."

"It's our house. We make the rules."

"That's not the point."

"So what is the point?"

Tarquinius shut his eyes, shook his head slightly, sighed. "I told you already. I have to neutralise the Old Romans, and I can only do that if I can convince them we are, well, as Roman as they are. Which means keeping you in the background, as they'd expect in any well run Roman house."

"This is not a Roman house."

"I know, I know." He shrugged. "But if we want Rome to become what we dream of, then we have to go gently."

"Why? Let them think their way of doing things is right? Pretend we agree? How can you change them if you insist on behaving like them?"

"Tanaquil, I..." he spread the palms of his hands out to her, beseeching silently. "I don't believe you can't understand. You were always so smart about politics in Tarcha - gods, you taught me everything I know! And now you don't seem to be able to see the point of a little caution."

"A little cowardice."

He put a hand up to his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose, and covering his eyes as if to hide from her fury.

"It won't help you."

"Look, Tanaquil.."

"Why don't you call me Thanchvil any more?"

"Look, Thanchvil"; but it was no use, she couldn't help detecting a hint of a sneer in the way he said her Etruscan name now, even if he hadn't intended it.

"If you want to be a Roman, go ahead and be a fucking Roman. Just don't involve me in it. It's not my city. They are not my people. And if you don't manage to make them civilised..." She pulled herself up short. They both felt the unspoken threat hang between them like the hot air before a storm, and then she exhaled softly and the moment passed.

She nodded wearily. "Very well. But I'm not happy."

"Nor am I. But I do believe it's what we have to do. At least now. Later..."

"Later it will be different?" She smiled, but it was more of a scowl really, a sort of sarcastic pleasure at detecting his little lies.

"We'll _make_ it different," he said.

She ignored the hand he held out to her. The storm might have passed over without breaking, but there was no reason she should let him off lightly.

"When we've made Rome into a properly Etruscan city, you'll be able to live as you like."

She felt hope stirring within her uncertainly, but kept it back from her face, as she had not managed to keep back her anger. Quietly and evenly she said, "I shall live as I like with or without Rome."

"I'm not going back to Tarchna."

"Did I threaten you with that? We burned our boats when we left."

"They gave us our wedding gifts. Neither of our families had to do that, and you know it. I thought it was very reasonable of them."

"Yes, they gave us our gifts, and hoped we wouldn't stay to enjoy them. I wonder who works the vineyard now. I wonder what margin they make on the wine we get from our own grapes."

Ha! he hadn't thought of that. She could see the shock in his face; how enjoyable it was to manage to shake him a little, to slide a knife under that conviction he sometimes had that he knew best, that he was the smarter of the two of them. Had he been like that before they came to Rome? She couldn't remember exactly, but her memories were of the hesitance of the half-caste Greek, the uncertainty even of his slender body; and now he'd grown stockier, and bull-headed, like the men of this city.

"I wonder how my sisters are. And my mother."

"You still miss her?"

"Sometimes." She couldn't define what she heard in his voice; a yearning for something lost, a kind of weariness. He could still surprise her, this strange Greek. Smiling now at her own prickliness, she stepped towards him, holding a hand out to him. And now he, on his side, was not ready to make peace, but looked coldly at her.

"Yes, I do miss her. I used to put my head between her breasts, and the whole world would cease to exist for me; just me, and my mother's heart beating, and the warmth of her."

Only one thing would end this argument. Did she want it to end? She looked at her husband, and thought back to the shy young man she'd first known, and his sense of wonder at her. She'd never thought he might be her master; and now he'd tried, and she had only just come through unmastered. And perhaps, in his raw admission of longing, she could see for a moment the shadowed eyes of the young man he had been; so that when she reached up and brought his head down to her breast, her smile was genuine.

So the rest of the afternoon was wasted; or at least, the Romans would have said it was wasted, and so did Lauchme. Not a lot of work got done, it was true. But then, to an Etruscan, she thought, making love was one of those activities that proved you were civilised, like listening to poetry; and if you wanted to be civilised, you put some work into learning exactly how rhythm and pace and precision could improve it. (And that was true of poetry as well.) Whether their philosophical truce would last, she couldn't tell; but there was still enough heat in their sexual encounters to smooth over those small distances, at least for now.

***

Even if Tanaquil couldn't attend the dinner, she still had to make the arrangements for the food and service. A pig had to be procured, brought to the house and slaughtered; a couple of extra male servants borrowed from one of the other Etruscan households, to replace the women who could not serve on this occasion; and the whole house decorated with laurel, ever green, and the few flowers that could found in the dreary Roman spring.

The pig had already been quartered in one of the little rooms off a yard at the back of the house, where normally the sacks of grain were stored, and the horse harness hung on the walls. Its eyes gleamed in the darkness with hot malevolence. It seemed a concentrated bulk of male power, a threat. She found herself fascinated and repelled; somehow she seemed to find herself passing that room again and again, and every time, she would look into it, and see its eyes glaring at her.

She'd never had to kill a pig in Tarchna; they had servants for that, and the whole business was handled away from the house, almost out of earshot (though it was amazing how far a dying pig's squeals could carry). But now, in Rome, their household was too small for that luxury; she'd have to do it herself, with her two maids. It had been one; it was two, now they had a little more space. Both were Etruscan; "I can't stand Roman girls round the house," she'd said to Lauchme; "They have no life of their own." They just stood there, waiting for you to tell them what to do, or worse, spinning, always spinning the scratchy grey wool. So Etruscans had to be found; a woman from Tarchna, who'd been left in Rome when her trader husband died, and a young girl from a settlement south of Veii.

She was looking forward to killing the pig; or rather, to the pig being dead. In the week it had occupied the dingy little storeroom, not a moment had been free from its grunting and scraping. She felt its evil eyes on her every time she walked past, full of menace as its sharp tusks; it unsettled her.

The girls had already hobbled it to lead it out into the yard, and now they pulled its front legs up and tied them. It scrabbled with its back legs for a moment, till they trussed those too, and then it lay rocking on its side, screaming already as if it knew what was coming. Its bristled sides heaved with its breath.

Tanaquil took the knife she had sharpened that morning, remembering the hiss of the knife on the gritstone; she tested the edge against a fingernail, feeling it bite. Good. Taking the knife, she went and stood over the pig, one foot each side of its bulk. As she turned it ready for the blow, she saw the glare of its eye like hatred. A shadow moved on the wall. She grasped the bristly mane between its ears with one hand, pulling back, and quickly opened its throat with a single long stroke of the knife, hearing the blood spatter the dirt floor.

Under her, the boar struggled, at first violently, and she held it down with both hands, jettisoning the knife now its work was done. The blood kept spouting, first one great gout of it, then a lapse, then another pulse of blood, but each wave was lesser than the one before, and the pig's struggles subsided, too. At the end it just twitched weakly, as if a fly had settled on its skin. It seemed to take an incredibly long time, and still she held it, and felt its life lurching out of it. She wondered for a moment if this was how Thefarie had died, after the priest had cut his throat - if it had indeed been Thefarie who had died a sacrifice on the bridge, and Lauchme had always told her he couldn't be sure. To struggle, and still struggle, and even in very death to be still struggling; she shivered. But then, a man and a pig were different things. And at last, the pig was no more moving. She let her breath out. She hadn't been aware she'd been holding it.

Then came the dirty job; burning off the hair, with brands they'd brought from the hearth. The hair stank as it burned, filthy and acrid, and collapsed into a clump of congealed nastiness before it flamed away entirely. Then they scraped the flesh clean, or as clean as they could get it, and singed it again to get rid of whatever had been missed, till eventually the boar lay white before them in the pallor of death, stripped of its blackness. Its eyes were still open, now sightless.

They washed out the blood with three, no four, flushings of water, running red at first, then pink, and finally almost clear, with just a few thin strings of already congealing blood in it; after that, it was time for the butchery, and she picked up the knife again to slit the hide and rip off the fat in huge lumps, before plunging into the ribs. Turned over, spreadeagled out, its mysteries lay open to the daylight; the organs laid out, bulging white and gray and pink and liquid, and she thought of the danger in its little evil eyes and laughed to herself as she saw its power dispersed.

She looked at it with the experienced eye of an augur; a fat liver, plump intestines. Her hands were covered in blood; this was normal. She almost felt tempted to take the omen; but this was not the time, nor was this a sacrificed victim. Odd. She thought, how sometimes we read the message of the gods, and other times we make chitterlings.

But when she turned to go, and one of the girls showed her the pig's severed head, its skin strangely thick and yellowing, she felt its burned out eyes looking far down into her from some place she feared, and flinched from it.

***

"Be still, Tarquinius!"

She'd had problems with the boy's tebenna, and he wouldn't stand still for her to put the heavy gold brooches that held it in place.

"Why do I have to wear the tebenna?"

"Because your father is having a dinner, and he wants to show you off to the king."

"The king will be here?"

"Yes. I already told you that. Be still!" She'd pricked her finger on the long pin of the brooch; she pressed it, and saw a droplet of blood well up darkly. Sucking it away before she could smear his white and gold tebenna, she grabbed his thin shoulders and held him down while she finished, despite his squeal of outrage.

"But why do I have to wear this?"

"Because you are an Etruscan prince. Because you will show the Romans what an Etruscan prince looks like."

He scowled. "Romans are bad."

Tanaquil said nothing.

"When I'm grown up I'll kill lots of Romans."

"Not tonight, dear. Tonight I want you to show the king what an Etruscan looks like. I want you to show him just how much better we are."

"Can I tell him?" His face was eager.

"No! Absolutely not!" She looked at his disappointed pout, and tenderness stirred in her. He had the right instincts, this boy, but he was too young to understand the need to dissemble. "He has to find it out for himself," she said. "Don't make it easy for a Roman. They need to learn."

Tarquinius nodded. "If they don't learn, I'll kill them," he said, sticking his jaw out with determination.

One of the girls laughed softly. Tarquinius scowled.

"I will, you know."

Tanaquil patted him on the head. "I'm sure you will. But tonight, nice smile, hm? And don't trip on your tebenna."

"Aren't you coming?"

"No," she said shortly, and pushed him towards the door. It was unfair, she thought, that a child barely more than a toddler could attend the dinner, and she was barred. But that was Rome; city of prohibitions. There was no man more jealous of his women's honour than the man whose grandfather had been a rapist; and that was most of them, she thought, if you believed that story about the Sabine girls. A man's town, this had been, set up by the lawless and landless; women for them were a commodity, bought for sex or for posterity, and like all property in a lawless town had to be guarded, locked up, hidden away. To them she was just a thing; it soured her days, as if someone had poisoned the air.

Warm voices sounded in the hall, the over-enthusiastic greetings of men trying not to be merely polite. That was typical of men, the way they had to create a fug of comradeship by shouting, thumping each other with their voices. No elegance, but this masculine butting like bulls at each other. She turned from the noise with a movement whose very delicacy was a reproach.

She'd known it was going to happen, she'd known for so long, but nevertheless when at the third hour Lauchme had accompanied her to the door of her rooms, and kissed her on the forehead, she had felt it deeply; for the first time in her life, she was locked in, restricted, a prisoner, forbidden to pass this threshold till the Romans had gone. And then she'd looked at her two maidservants, and shrugged.

"What shall we do?" she'd asked.

"We could spin," the younger said.

"We're not Romans," the elder corrected.

"Thanks gods!" Tanaquil said, and then: "Dice?"

It was quickly agreed that wasn't the worst idea, and so as soon as young Tarquinius had been spruced up and sent out, they began the game; dicing for small stakes - a golden pin, a few amber beads, a hair-ring. Tanaquil began to win, slowly; the game wavered and went away from her for a while, but came back before she'd lost all her winnings, and the pile in front of her began to grow again.

"Three and two. No throw." That was Hecla's throw, the elder of the women. The younger to go next.

"Four and one. Nothing."

"Two ones." Lowest throw wins. Tarquinia swept the stakes towards her, unsmiling. Never gloat when you're winning, it distracts the mind.

She could smell the pig roasting. It'll be sausages for the next six months unless we're lucky, she thought. That was another of the things she'd grown to hate about Rome, the insistence on thrift. At least now Tarquinius had so many clients coming to the house to take instructions, they'd be able to give some of the left-overs away, instead of eating pork, cold or cursorily reheated, for the next week. (And today she'd be lucky to get leftovers, after the men had eaten their fill; the flabby bits of pork fat, without crackling, or the pickings of the bones.)

"Four and two. Does that count?"

"No, Hercla. It's a lousy throw. Hell, four and one again."

Tanaquil was still winning when young Tarquinius came back. He was dragging his tebenna, treading on the hem. One of the brooches had come off, and he held it in one hand; the golden lion's head was so large he could hardly wrap his fingers round it.

"Father said I should come back with the women."

"Yes, of course he did. Did the king see you?"

"Yes." He was scowling.

"Well then. That's all he wanted."

"To see me?"

"Yes. "

Tarquinius thought with that utter seriousness children apply to the smallest things, squinting with concentration.

"So has he learned what an Etruscan looks like? Or shall I have to kill him?"

Tanaquil looked at the girls, who were trying to stifle their laughter.

"I think he might have learned, don't you?"

Tarquinius didn't look convinced. But Hercla managed to distract him by giving him a doll she'd made of a couple of crossed sticks, and telling him it was a fine Etruscan warrior, so that he sat happily on the floor with it, occasionally shouting as it killed an enemy. But most of the time he sat with intense concentration, wriggling it along the floor or muttering secret commands, and letting the women continue with their gaming.

But now Tanaquil was finding it difficult to concentrate on the game. She miscalled a throw, and paid the penalty; and then she threw two sixes, the worst and losing throw, and lost two gold pins on it. The aulos player had started up; she looked at Hercla, who made a sour face at her.

It was usually Hercla who played, but of course that wasn't allowed either, tonight. Tanaquil hadn't known when she brought the girl into her household that she played aulos; she'd known only that Hercla was distantly related to her, through her cousin Arnth, and that she'd been left in Rome alone and without support after her husband's death, and so she'd taken her on, partly out of a sense of family piety, but also because she'd instantly taken to her. It wasn't till a few weeks later that she found Hercla's hidden talent, overhearing her playing quietly on a little reed flute she'd brought with her. Now, she'd ordered a good aulos made for Hercla, and the girl had learned how to breathe continuously, so that the second pipe sounded an incessant drone to accompany the bubbling, stuttering melody of the first. Hercla didn't have the grandeur of the best players, perhaps, but her music was infectious, developing tiny minor mode motifs into strange stuttering melodies that circled around, that leapt and skipped beats, that insinuated themselves into the brain and seemed to play on after Hercla had stopped.

This aulos player Lauchme had brought in wasn't that good; he knew the standards, 'Goatboy king', 'Tinia's oath', 'Minrva's bath'. He knew them all right, but he didn't make them live; there was no impulse behind his playing, no incessant beat, no fantasy, just the dull technical accuracy you'd expect of a Roman. Tanaquil knew why Hercla looked sour. It wouldn't improve Lauchme's temper, either, she thought.

"Dead! Dead! Dead!"

Tarquinius' voice was high and savage, startling Tanaquil; she realised, as the dice left her hand too early, that it was going to be a bad throw, the third in a series of bad throws. And it was; double six again.

The younger girl had bent over Tarquinius and was asking him what was the matter; it appeared that Tarquinius' little warrior had killed a Roman, or possibly three Romans, it wasn't quite clear.

"Your throw."

The girl looked up, then shrugged.

"I won't bother. I'm losing, anyway."

"So am I," Tanaquil said; but the girl shrugged again.

"You can have all I've got left," she said, and went back to playing with Tarquinius, though when she tried to take the doll out of his hands, he howled, and then freeing it, slashed at her with it.

There were only two amber beads left on the table in front of her; no wonder she was quitting. Tanaquil scooped the beads up to put on her pile, and waited for Hercla to throw again.

The noise from the hall was getting louder; keen as the aulos' sound was, it was muffled by the voices. There was an occasional shout of laughter; someone must be telling dirty stories, she thought bitterly. She wondered how Lauchme was getting on; whether he'd managed to impress Faustus, or on the contrary whether the magnificence of the banquet, women or no women, had alienated the austere Roman.

She was losing still, and she'd had a long sequence of throws that gave her nothing, nothing at all, but Hercla wasn't getting any decent throws either. She passed her next turn, thinking she might change her luck if she did; at least she couldn't throw the unlucky double six if she sat it out; and then Hercla threw twin aces, and she thought damn it, I'd have had that throw if I'd stayed in the game. Of course you could never know that, but it felt just as if she'd been robbed. She pushed the stake over to Hercla with bad grace, and stood up.

"I'm sick of playing," she said.

"It's no fun with only two," said Hercla, and the young girl looked up with a don't-blame-me face, but no one was looking.

"I'm going to torture the Romans," Tarquinius said into the bad-tempered silence.

"Bloodthirsty little beast!" Hercla said, laughing.

"I'm going to stick pins in them, I'm going to kill them and then I'm going to stick pins in them."

Tanaquil smiled. "You'd think he might get better results if he tortured them before he stuck the pins in them."

"He's still a bloodthirsty little beast."

Tarquinius was making mysterious movements with the rudimentary doll, waving it around and then sticking the point in the floor and twisting, crooning to himself and muttering. Tanaquil couldn't distinguish his words; imprecations, or instructions? Or it might be nonsense words, she couldn't tell. His face was happily ferocious, his mouth turned up in the cruel little smile all her family possessed, a smile of self-possession as if he had a secret you couldn't guess.

"Look! They're bleeding," he said.

At least he enjoys it, she thought, looking at his savage grin. I couldn't bear it if he grew up cold, efficient - but his blood runs as hot as mine in his veins. He has that spark of ambition, that special energy of the Tarquinian line. If he inherits his father's subtlety, too, he might be king of Rome yet.

Of course Arruns was the elder; but Arruns had always disappointed her. He was the kind of boy who did what was expected of him, but nothing more. He had been no trouble to bring up, no trouble at all. She'd wished, sometimes, that he would misbehave; that he would bite her instead of suckling, or bunch up his little fists and strike her, hard. Later, she'd wished he would fight the restrictions Tarquinius imposed - don't go out after sunset, don't get involved with the Cilnii, they're a bad lot, don't get your tebenna dirty; but Arruns did what he was told to do. Now in his first year of military training, he fought well, but he'd never get into a fight; he treated her with respect, but he was distant. He seemed to know neither love nor hatred; for him every day was the same, and he was the same every day.

Tarquinius, on the other hand... Tarquinius had that restless, contrary spirit. He'd raged, as an infant, screaming himself red, and she could still see that anger burning behind his eyes.

Like her own anger, being caged here while the men feasted. She paced the room, shaking her hair loose so that the hair rings clattered, feeling against her scalp the pull of the heavy braids swinging. She went to the doorway, couldn't stay, stalked away, approached it again; and listened, standing as close to the curtain that hid the hall as she could.

Fragments of shattered conversation, odd words and phrases.

"How goes the work with the Sabines?"

"Slowly, slowly, as these things always do..."

What work, she wondered, but her ear was distracted by a braying laugh, "He got a Greek slave to suck him off..." and a chorus of hisses and laughter; it must have been the end of a joke, but she'd never heard the set-up so she couldn't see the humour in the punchline, just the obscenity. She thought of two or three possibilities, but none of them quite tied in; it was one of those things she'd never be able to piece together. And what was she doing anyway, wasting her thoughts on recreating a tired joke? She realised she was whistling, or hissing perhaps, a slight stream of breath exhaled between her tongue and her teeth.

"And he said, they might not want to, but they need to..."

"...against the gods, and I do really think, against the customs of the city, and if you're going to say 'It's all relative' again I shall..."

Suddenly furious she hit her hand against the wall; the splitting of one knuckle brought blood, a tiny smear of damp red on the dry plaster. And uneasily she became aware the room had fallen silent. A draught stirred a little dust on the floor. She wondered if they'd heard her striking the wall; but something seemed to be happening, there were those low murmurs you might hear when something not quite expected happened, and no one was quite sure what to do. Then slowly, hesitantly, the conversation resumed, and when she heard a sudden shout of laughter from the other end of the hall she realised the interruption, whatever it had been (and she would find that out, see if she didn't) was over, normality, such as it was, resumed.

The evening dragged. Hecla tried to get her to play dice again, but she wouldn't unless the girl would, and the girl wouldn't, so there was no game. Tarquinius, tired of sticking pins in Romans - and tickling them till they screamed, apparently an even worse torture - started to grizzle, and had to be put to bed, and then screamed because he didn't want to go. Tanaquil could feel the numbness behind the forehead and over the ears, the back of her neck tight with its usual warning of a headache just beginning. She poured a cup of wine and drank it down quickly; it was stale and acid. Still, she poured another, and took it back to her chair with her.

It was late when the last guest went; Hecla and Cafatia had already gone to bed. The cleaning up would have to wait till the morning. She drew back the curtain and stepped over the threshold of the women's quarters, into the catastrophe men had made. Dark blotches of split wine, the sharp stink of it. Bones tumbled on the tables, a woollen throw left crumpled on one of the couches, stew spilt and spattered on another. The lamps out, all bar three, and one of those guttering; as she came towards him she saw Lauchme bend and cup one hand behind the flame to blow it out.

Then she noticed that there was still one man left, waiting in the shadows behind her husband, and she thought for an instant that she'd come too early. She'd already started to open her mouth to apologise, and was turning to go, but Lauchme caught her hand.

"It's all right; he's family."

She looked again at the shadowy figure. Family? She knew she'd never seen him before, though familiarity of a sort was prickling at the back of her mind; something in those features that reminded her of someone, yet she couldn't think who it was or pin down the resemblance.

"He is?"

"Aranthur."

"There's no Aranthur in my family," she whispered, and thought; none in yours either, I'm pretty sure.

"It seems I have a nephew."

"One of your sisters' boys then?"

"No... my brother's."

"But I didn't think..."

"Nor did I."

This hissed, covert conversation could only have lasted seconds, yet they both felt they'd stood there for far too long, embarrassingly long. Tarquinius half-turned towards the stranger.

"Aranthur. This is my wife, Tanaquil."

Even speaking to another Etruscan, she noticed that he used the Roman form of her name. She smiled thinly at the newcomer.

"I'm sorry I arrived at such a time. I hadn't expected..."

"No reason you should have," Tarquinius said quickly, and Tanaquil realised it must have been Aranthur's arrival that had caused that uneasy silence during the banquet.

"I should have sent a message. But I didn't want you to hear from someone else."

"I'm glad to know I have a nephew. I always knew my father had had another son. But I never knew what had happened to him. So your news was welcome. And all the better coming from you."

"That wasn't the news I meant. And I couldn't tell you with the others there. It would have been wrong."

Tarquinius seemed puzzled. "There is other news? Besides your sudden arrival?"

"You don't know? Then I was right to come."

Tarquinius shook his head. What news could come from Tarchna now? The vineyard harvest for the year; a sister's marriage; surely nothing that warranted this duel of politenesses, the serious face Aranthur seemed to have put on.

"Your mother; I'm sorry, Lauchme, I'm sorry."

Tarquinius stood still, with that exceptional stillness you see in a cat when it has seen a mouse, or a dog when it's scented a fox. He didn't have the time to ask the question.

"Two weeks ago. I'm sorry, Lauchme."

Strangely, Tanaquil thought, Aranthur looked more genuinely sorry than Tarquinius; his face was hollowed with grief, his eyes anxious. His lower lip trembled as he gazed at Tarquinius; he must be doubting his welcome now, she thought.

# Tarquinius

It would have been wrong to blame Aranthur for the news he brought, Tarquinius thought. He could only blame himself; he suddenly realised how estranged they had become from Tarchna and their families, over the years. The stories they'd heard in the first couple of years, of one sister's marriage, a cousin's victory in a footrace, the youngest's mishaps and absurdities, had become the myths they returned to time and again when they wanted to remember their past, but the present had slowly drifted away.

He'd heard, through one of the Greek houses he traded the produce of the vineyard with, that his father had died, but he'd heard too late to attend the funeral or even the funeral games, and when he wrote his condolences to the family, he received no reply, neither by letter nor any spoken message. Tarquinius hadn't been there; but Aranthur had been at the ceremony even though Demaratos had never known him, never even knew that he had a grandson. That cut him, a keen short pain that never let up.

The relationship between Tanaquil and Aranthur was still strained, but Tarquinius had grown used to Aranthur's presence and his hesitant ways, and found he had a quick mind; more, he was a quick study. Show him a procedure, or a line of reasoning, and he'd have it committed to his memory; he learned Latin quickly enough, and one evening when Tarquinius came looking for him in the back yard he found him talking with one of the Faliscan horsemen they knew, asking him the Faliscan words for grain, spelt, oat, barley, wheat.

So when Tarquinius left for the salt workings, he took Aranthur with him; both to benefit from the young man's quick brain and steady hands, and to relieve Tanaquil of his presence. Manius would come, of course; he'd become an increasingly useful lieutenant, and could manage the small force of men they'd need to assist in the survey, and whom they'd leave to get on with the digging of the salt ponds when they returned to Rome.

Of course Tanaquil had wanted to come, and of course she couldn't. He understood that; she wouldn't believe him, but he wanted her presence, too, yet he knew it was impossible. The Roman world was divided, it was two worlds; a male world and a female world, a world for men and a world for the women and children. He knew it to be wrong; he felt its wrongness, like the tearing apart of a segmented fruit, ripping the pith and the membranes apart to expose the fleshy pulp dripping with juice. And yet he understood it, too, perhaps from his upbringing in his mother's cloistered quarters, the mother who had closed herself up in Demaratos' house when she married him and never went out of it again, except to her grave.

She wouldn't believe it, but he would miss her. She sparkled like light on the water, sometime light in her wit and sometimes ferocious like a lioness; no one he knew could amuse him the way she did. Manius never joked, nor Aranthur; and Faustus joked, but heavily, like bread that wouldn't rise. He missed the strangest things; the mole under her left armpit, the sight of her painting her mouth in the mornings. And he'd miss the feel of his head between her breasts, the smell of her body.

Still, there were women everywhere, and if there weren't women, there were men, and any Etruscan knew there was no shame in relieving your desires with another. But who else would say, afterwards, "Not quite Olympic standard," or "not bad," and lift an eyebrow the way she did?

They were already setting the camp up; some of the mules had been unloaded, others were still loaded so high you could hardly see the animal under their bulky cargoes. Tarquinius and Manius arrived had arrived ahead of the main party; the high sun of mid-afternoon and the clarity of the blue sky and sea put them in high good humour, and they urged their horses into a fast gallop along the levels. Tarquinius had walked his flashy chestnut, the one with the splashy white blaze and one white foot, to cool it, and Manius' steady bay mare was already hobbled, her head down, shaking her neck so her mane flopped over from one side to the other, then back again.

Tarquinius slipped the rope hobble over his horse's forefeet, and stretched lazily, feeling his tired muscles tighten, then relax. He'd wandered over to one of the dunes then, scrambling up the slope, his feet sinking into the soft sand where it wasn't anchored by the sparse patches of grass. He'd looked out to the sea, a milky turquoise that gradually darkened towards the horizon. To each side stretched the dunes and marshes, devoid of any landmark except the broad waters of the river flowing into the sea; a bare land on which to inscribe the glyphs of civilisation. From here, the camp site, the horses were hidden by the slumping dunes; he was alone, utterly alone. He thrilled to it, hearing the wind in his ears, one of those primal sounds like a heartbeat or the slow retreat of a wave over gravel.

After a while, he knew the feeling would diminish with familiarity; so he turned his back on the sea and walked back through the slipping marks that showed where his feet had been, their ridges already dulled and half blown away by the wind. And by then, the others had arrived, and Manius had them already marking out the perimeter of the camp with a rope laid on the ground.

It was the standard Etruscan plan; a square perimeter, a grid formed by two crossing alleys. In the hills, of course, the plan was adapted to the requirements of the terrain; here, though, there was no need; there was nothing to disturb the evenness of the pattern. Here, as in none of the Etruscan cities - not even in Rome, constrained by its hills and marshes - the great pattern could be incised on the waiting earth, completely regular, ordered according to god's demands and the geometry of nature.

"Get the first tent up," Manius was shouting; the poles were up, unsteady till the ropes were pulled taut. Tarquinius hoped they wouldn't be here long; in the afternoon sun the plains steamed with haze, but at night, with the wind blowing in from the sea, a chill would set in. And there was salt, salt everywhere; salt taste in his mouth, salt drying scratchily on his clothes, salt encrusted in his hair, even salt like a white scurf on his arms where he'd sweated and it had stuck. But his blood was still fired with his sense of what could be achieved here; saltings, and a port on the river, and a city even etched on the earth by the toil of his men.

Aranthur came late; he'd guarded the back of the baggage train, and he'd been delayed by a mule which had managed to throw off its load - or perhaps, he thought, the man responsible for it hadn't tied it securely, it was difficult to be sure.

Manius for some reason couldn't manage to pronounce Aranthur's name; and after a while, he'd decided to nickname him Egerius, the pauper, the man whose father left him nothing. Tarquinius thought bitterly that it might as well apply to him, left nothing now by Demaratos' death, since his sisters had partitioned the fortune between them; true, he'd been given that marriage gift, but he'd made himself, neither Etruscan nor Greek and even less a Roman. He was his own creation in the absence of an inheritance. And Aranthur could make himself too, though he had not yet.

They were three landless men in Rome; two etruscans, and Manius, a Sabine by birth. Tarquinius knew he'd come to Rome from Sabine Reate; and later, in the evening as the camp fire burned low, and they finished the spelt cakes they'd cooked in the embers, he asked Manius what Reate was like.

"Poor," he said. "The kind of place where no one ever has enough food. When you have it, you eat it; there's never anything left over. No sense of anything but just surviving, day to day."

"I thought Sabine territory was fertile," Aranthur said.

"It used to be, before the wars. But half the terraces have crumbled, and the irrigation channels have fallen in; and so many of our trees were burned. I remember when I was a child, once, I saw a whole hillside of charred olive trees, their black branches twisted and dead."

"So you came to Rome. That wasn't a rich town either," Tarquinius said.

"But with Rome came the idea of achieving something - something more than just survival. Surely you see that in Ancus Marcius?"

"I do, I do," Tarquinius said.

"I'd probably have as much in Reate now, if I'd stayed, as I do in Rome. But Rome is going to be so much more than Reate ever was."

"But if Rome fights the Sabines again," Aranthur said, "on what side do you stand?"

"Rome," said Manius without hesitating.

"Really?"

"I'm not the first to make that decision. You must have heard of the Roman rape?"

Aranthur hadn't, yet, so Manius told him.

"Rome was made of outlaws, refugees, masterless men. It was a city of men, men whose trackless wanderings brought them to it, exiled from their own cities by justice or by poverty. It had a king, Romulus, and a council, but it was a city bound to die, with no women to bear the next generation. Or else it would always remain a city of outlaws, more and more men drifting in every year, and how would they ever create a civilisation if the men who came were uncivilised, used to the solitude of the unwanted and the selfishness of the loner.

"Romulus foresaw the dissolution of the city - hardly a village, as yet - before it could achieve its destiny; an abortion, formless, dead before it was born. Women were needed for civilisation, so women would be got. He took a raiding party and went hunting for women, just as he'd earlier raided for cattle and horses, rounding them up and herding them back to Rome."

That was the kind of story that always made Tarquinius doubt whether he should be in Rome. He wondered whether Tanaquil had heard it; yes, he thought, she must have. She made it her business to know these things.

"So you approve of that?"

Manius sucked his top lip in, shook his head once. "That's not quite... you haven't heard the whole story."

Tarquinius waited.

"My grandmother was one of those women. She was married already, with a young daughter, but they took her, along with three of the unmarried girls from her village. But when the Sabines came to claim their women, she pleaded to be allowed to stay with the Roman husband she'd been allotted. She bore him three children, all boys; and she never saw my mother again."

A woman who actively sought her own slavery; that surprised Tarquinius, and he thought drily how little Tanaquil would appreciate that story.

"Women want to be mastered, anyway," Manius said.

"Do they?"

"Everyone knows that."

Tarquinius tightened his lips, but decided it was not worth replying. It wasn't much of a game, mastering a woman; what he and Tanaquil enjoyed was the duel, the perpetual game, even if he did sometimes suspect that he came off worst rather too often.

"So you're four quarters Sabine, yet you have a Roman grandmother," Aranthur said. Manius nodded. That was interesting, Tarquinius thought; even this pure-blood was in his way as mixed in his allegiances as either of the Etruscans.

"You're not ashamed that your grandmother was stolen property?"

"Better stolen than sold as a slave."

Tarquinius wondered what the difference might be.

Aranthur - Egerius - went to bed early, leaving Tarquinius and Manius to rake the ashes over the fire and bank it up for the night. In the vast darkness, the camp's scattered fires glimmered faintly as they died down; a few of the workers still chatted round one or two.

"You know, I probably have the purest blood in Rome," Manius said; "Four Sabine grandparents, two Sabine parents, no admixture of Etruscan or Faliscan blood. And yet even so, I have that Roman inheritance from my grandmother. In Rome, everyone's heritage is mixed, everyone has secrets."

He smiled, his face open; perhaps deceptively so. Perhaps not.

"You have a secret?"

Manius grinned, and flicked his head up, so that his blond forelock bounced.

"Not much of one. I used to steal."

"What?"

"Oh, things. My sister's doll, the one she loved the most. I gave it back eventually, but only after she'd wept for it for days. My mother's hair ribbon. A pair of dice from one of the farmers who'd got drunk."

"Long ago then?"

"Yes." Manius sighed. "Long ago." Then he looked up, tossing his hair out of his eyes, and fixed Tarquinius with his question. "What's your dirtiest secret?"

Tarquinius could think of three or four small, tainted secrets: how he was afraid of the dark when he was little; how the strangled princes had haunted him in his sleep; or that time one of his big sisters had found found him pulling his prick experimentally - he couldn't have been much more than four or five - and had laughed at him. That memory still stung. But he wouldn't let Manius know his humiliation. Instead he sorted through his memories, finding something that would have the right effect on the Sabine; that would win respect. Not so much a secret as an ambiguous guilt, a threat carefully chosen.

"I killed a man once."

"Where?" Manius' face was keen in the firelight, his eyes greedy, but he leant back, distancing himself from Tarquinius, as if he had begun to fear the older man.

"In Tarchna." Tarquinius thought well, I might have killed him, and then again, I might not have. He shouldn't have been competing in the foot-race at his age, not against a youth like me; and I knew what I was doing when I pushed the pace on the uphill slope, changing cadence, striding out. He could have given up; he could have hung back, and hoped to make it up. But he didn't; and his heart burst so that he fell, gasping like a fish for air that had become poison to his lungs. I'd known that might happen; so did I kill him?

"How did you do that?" Manius was greedy for details now; the macabre taste that made children tiptoe into the old tombs of the necropolis, or dare each other to enter a death-chamber.

"I couldn't tell you. It would be too dangerous. There are... other interests involved."

Manius' face was avid, hungry as Tarquinius had never seen it before. They talked for a while of other things; but Tarquinius steered him away from the subject of the man he'd killed. Let Manius think what he liked of the death; a political assassination, a passionate murder, a cold-blooded execution. It was better if he didn't know; his imagination would prey on him, till the shadows thrown by the fire on the canvas of the tent were presages of death, and the wind whipping up a guy rope cracked like a broken neck.

Later, Tarquinius lay listening to the distant rumble of the sea and the thrumming of wind on canvas, wild sounds yet strangely comforting, and he thought through that conversation again. He'd known what he was doing, putting the fright on Manius; he'd never been quite certain of Manius' trust, since the accidents on the bridge, the accidents that had turned out not to be accidents at all.

Now he realised Manius had been checking him out, too, with that story of the Sabine grandmother, of allegiance to Rome. Had Manius been sent by Ancus Marcius not to help with the surveying, but to spy on Tarquinius? It was always possible; it's what he would have done himself. Perhaps, though he hadn't thought explicitly in those terms, he'd brought Aranthur to keep Manius in his sights. He might brief him tomorrow. It would make sense, if anything made sense in that fluid, mistrustful place that was Rome.

***

He'd already seen enough from the top of the high dune to guess where the saltings might be laid out, though he'd not thought about it consicously at the time, aware of nothing but the wind and sea and expanse of coast. He took Manius and Aranthur up with him just before sunrise, watching the light gradually chase the shadows; where the land lay lowest, the shadow lay longest. At this hour the apparent level was pockmarked by blemishes of darkness, which slowly shortened and drew themselves in and disappeared as the angle of the sun to the land increased.

Between them and the river to the north the land was flattest, silvered by dew this morning and glimmering uncertainly in the early light. It was too far to see the water clearly; if there were no white caps, if the water lay sheltered from the wind and the open sea, there might be an anchorage. Nearer the sea, the dunes formed a flimsy barrier; as the breeze began to blow onshore, he could see streamers of sand blown from the top of the nearest dunes.

"Thinking what I'm thinking?"

Tarquinius squinted against the glare of the sea. "I don't know what you're thinking."

"That area, north of us. Good and flat. A couple of pools there already."

Tarquinius hadn't noticed the pools earlier, but now the sun was catching the water, silvering it so it stood out bright against the misty landscape. He nodded. It would do.

As soon as they were back in the camp, Tarquinius ordered water to be brought, in buckets, and thrown on the bare sand in front of his tent. Manius frowned, but said nothing as the water splashed out, darkening the ground.

"More!" Tarquinius ordered. The sand crusted up around the darker patch, throwing up little tawny curlicues and crests against the smooth wetness. The water was already drying into the sand, the dark lightening again.

Aranthur brought a bucket, and threw the water up in the air, where it hung for a moment transfixed by the sun before splashing down on to the ground.

"You didn't have to join the men," Tarquinius said.

"I don't mind." The youth shrugged. "Besides, I wanted to see what you were doing."

"Wait around, then."

Aranthur handed the bucket to one of the other men, and came to stand by Tarquinius. "As long as we don't have to fill the whole salting this way," he muttered.

"Wait and see," said Tarquinius.

The darkened patch gradually spread, till it was ten paces wide, and even longer, a stretch of fine level sand. The men brought more water, till the sand could absorb no more and the water was sloshing around in a great shallow puddle, and Tarquinius nodded gently to the foreman, who yelled "Stop!" Striding forward, Tarquinius held his hand out for the foreman's staff, and drew a huge sweeping line down the side of the patch.

"This is the shore," he said. "And the river" - he drew a hook at the top - "comes in just here" \- and as he said 'here', he dug the stick in again, and delineated the curve of the river across and down. "So this is the space we have to play with, just here." He waved a hand across the space, leaving the stick poised where it had ended his last stroke.

"So we have to plan the ponds. One large one to filter the water from the sea."

He pulled the staff towards him, and was about to draw a line when Manius stopped him.

"Why not from the estuary?"

"That's fresh water."

"Not necessarily. The sea comes into the delta; and though the river flows out, in the shallows, the water washes around, and it's salt."

"It is?"

"You can see it after a flood; the marsh plants are covered with salt."

"Salt? Not mud?"

"I've tasted it."

Tarquinius paused, and rested his chin on his hands on the top of the staff. It was a difficult question; and Manius seemed to have done some preparatory research, which was interesting. He wondered again if Manius had been sent to help him or to test him; or, perhaps, both.

"Look, if it's salt, the estuary is a better place." Aranthur's sounded unusually confident. "If we let the water in straight from the sea, the wall will be a weakness \- a storm will stove it in, and we'll have our saltworks ruined."

"And all the salt already in the pans lost," said Manius.

"Right. But if we let the water in from the estuary, then we don't run that risk."

"There are floods in the river, though," Tarquinius said. "A tree trunk, a capsized boat - that could easily run up against our embankments. Just as destructive."

"So we dig the entrance to our canal against the flow. Or we put up a wooden breakwater. Or both. Whatever the flood brings, it will be swept right past."

Manius nodded. Tarquinius fought down the uncomfortable thought that he was being ganged up on. Manius and Aranthur - Egerius, he was now to call him - hadn't met before they started the journey from Rome, and he'd been with one or the other pretty much the whole time. They couldn't have discussed this. And actually, the idea wasn't bad.

He thought back to the view of the landscape from the top of the dune; there was a little ridge about ten degrees east of north, where the land rose. Not much, but it would do.

"Well," he said, slowing his words as if he were still thinking it out, "that rising ground there might help us, too." He pointed the staff towards the ridge. "If we put our filtration pool behind it, then it's protected from the river."

"And dig the canal on the seaward side, back towards the pool..." Aranthur was leaning forwards, nodding. "Yes, that's good."

Tarquinius lowered the staff to the sand again. Heavily, he inscribed a line from the river, and then drew a rough freehand circle to represent the pond. Then below that, he etched a series of straight lines, which slowly ordered themselves into a grid.

"From the filtering pond, we sluice the water into these pools to dry out the salt. Then we leave it. Each pool separate, so we can let fresh water in from the canal as soon as the rakers have finished. Quicker that way, and more salt if you use the pool twice in a year, instead of once."

"You sound as if you've done this before," Manius said coolly.

"There is a salt works at Graviscae, of course."

"How long should the pans be, then?"

Of course there were no rules; you divided the ground evenly, then when you'd done that, the one thing there were rules for - at least, rules of thumb - was the width of the central dike, so it was strong enough and not too narrow for the saltmen to walk along the top. But there was no reason Manius should know that.

"Fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long."

Manius nodded. (That was a relief; he'd rather wondered whether Manius would ask whether that was Etruscan feet, or Roman feet, or Greek feet. Manius could be difficult like that.)

"We can start staking them out tomorrow."

Tarquinius had finished with the sketched plan; he'd remember it well enough when they started surveying. One of the men who'd come with the horses was yelling at him from the other side of the camp, and quite conscious of the effect it would have on Manius, he strode carelessly across the wet sand, dragging his feet in the soft.

"Clever, eh?" said Aranthur.

"What - walking across the bloody map?"

"No; using the sand to draw on."

"Oh," said Manius; "I had wondered if it was some kind of strange Etruscan sacrifice. Or Greek, maybe, I hadn't heard the Etruscans did anything of the sort, but you never know.. funny people, Etruscans..." He looked down, for once caught out by his own tactlessness.

"Funny people, those Greeks, too," Aranthur said, and forgot, as he nearly always did, his quarter-Greek ancestry.

***

Manius was surprised they didn't make a quicker start on marking out the salt plans; but Tarquinius' first job was to determine the course of the feeder channel, and so the measurement was put off by several days, despite Tarquinius' apparent eagerness to get the land marked out. It would have been easier to take the water directly from the sea, as they did in other places; but Manius' objections were reasonable. The dunes afforded little protection; they'd shift over time, and weren't to be depended upon. So that meant a feeder channel had to be cut; and it had to have a gradient very slightly, and very precisely, downhill for the whole of its length, if they were going to make this work. But then at the same time the filtration pond couldn't be lower than the salt beds; so managing the different levels was going to be tricky. That was where his surveying and setting-out skills were invaluable; he'd always dreamt of setting out a new city, a city where half-Greeks were as welcome as pure-blooded Etruscans, but it was here at the edge of his world that he needed to put his lessons into practice. A bit of a come-down, he thought ruefully, from city building to digging a pond. But at least Ancus Marcius found it useful.

Once the canal and the filter pool had been planned, work on the rest of the saltings could start; and by the end of the first week the salt ponds had been marked out with tall stakes and rope slung between them, and the canal was being dug, earth thrown up on both banks and tamped down to make them stronger and higher against the river's potential damage. Tarquinius had carpenters working on the sluice gates already, huge gates that sat in the slots between two massive pilings on each side. He'd doubled the sluice, too, so if the first one broke, there was still a second standing between the force of the river and the salt ponds. No need for such masterful carpentry between the salt ponds, though; the slope from the first pond to the final saltings was so gentle, they could simply dig through the banks from the central canal to fill them, and use a rock wedged in the hole to dam up the water once the salting was full.

The Romans had no idea how to measure gradients, Tarquinius thought; they just wanted to start digging, and he'd had difficulty holding them back till the whole area was staked out. The land looked level, marsh and sand, but you couldn't take anything for granted.

He'd had one of the carpenters make up a huge trough for him, every side of it trued up and square, lined with black pitch to make it watertight. The Romans had laughed. That was often the way when they didn't understand things; and they never did seem to understand the importance of measurement. It was as if their gods didn't care about the boundaries of the world, as if they didn't see that all things had measure, and needed proportion. Now, the trough was stood firmly on sturdy legs and filled with water, and he'd had it brought to the centre of the site and levelled till the water was exactly flush with the surface all around. It was a finicking process, moving one corner up with a shim under the leg, pushing the other end down, and every time the trough was moved correctly on one axis, it would be out of true on the other, so that it took a whole morning to get it perfectly level, and the water flush with the sides, not even a hair's breath of space between. In fact, if he bent to look at it, he could see the tiny curve where the water bulged up above the edge of the trough, something he'd never understood. It was as if the water had some kind of strength in it, to pull itself upward and inward, like the way a drop of water gathered on the end of an icicle in the thaw.

Manius looked on, his respect for Tarquinius clearly struggling with a lack of conviction that this strange Etruscan flim-flam would achieve anything at all. Tarquinius wasn't explaining; let Manius wonder. He'd see what this all signified soon enough.

"Aranthur?"

The youth stepped up to the trough, careful as if his very breath might disturb the silvery surface of the water.

"Take this staff. Go to the further salting. Stand there. Stand by the tall post."

Aranthur wasn't used to this laconic side of Tarquinius, but he obviously thought better of questioning that command. He made his way to the final rope mark, and turned round to face Tarquinius. He was almost out of earshot now.

"Hold the staff up," Tarquinius shouted.

Aranthur cupped his ear.

"Hold the staff up!" Tarquinius said again, and added "Bugger you" under his breath.

Aranthur shook his head. This wasn't going to work. Tarquinius beckoned over one of the men, and walked a little way further off, away from Manius. He explained, quickly and concisely, just what he wanted Aranthur to do, and sent the worker trotting off towards Aranthur with the instructions.

Manius was clearly annoyed to be left out of the conversation; it was obvious, too, that he was intrigued by the procedure.

Tarquinius went back to the end of the trough furthest from Aranthur, and bent down till his eyes were level with the water. Closing his left eye, he sighted along the water. Without moving his body, or taking his eye off the water, he raised an arm, and gestured; up, up, pushing the air upwards with his palm.

At the other end of the saltings, Aranthur raised the staff. Tarquinius flapped his hand again; up went the staff, the white blaze painted on it gleaming clear in the sun.

"Damn," Tarquinius said, and turned his hand, pushing it down towards the ground, below the level of his shoulder. After a moment's pause, the staff descended, till Tarquinius held both his palms up level with his body.

Aranthur was still holding the staff; beside him, the other man was cutting a mark on the post with his knife.

They carried on like this the whole morning and most of the afternoon, and at the end of it Tarquinius sent round a man to paint bright white lines around the poles at exactly the level of the notches made by the knife. Suddenly, the white stood out vivid against the dreary landscape of saltmarsh and dunes, confusing the eye into seeing a shimmering level plane of light hovering above the ground.

Now that the level had been established, all that was left was to dig each pond to a given depth below the level, gradually increasing that depth to encourage the flow of water. The stakes were left standing proud in the excavations, supported by rough islands of dirt. They usually dug those out last; but the soil here was so poor that Tarquinius wondered whether that was needed. The water they let in would just wash the already crumbling bulwarks of earth away.

As for the banks, those would need reinforcing; either with pilings, along the main canal, or with mats of reeds along the banks between the ponds. But that would all come later, once the ponds were dug. It was a nice decision whether to have men making the mats in advance, or get the digging under way; in the end, he looked at the huge sky and the bleak landscape and thought it might be best to dig while the weather lasted. This was no place to work if the wind got up, and the rain drove in from the sea.

He never recaptured that feeling of solitude he'd had the first evening, standing on the dune looking out to sea; but every day he woke to that vast blue sky, he felt a tug on his heart. Under that sky, he felt himself a tiny speck on the huge earth, in the long low marshes where every landmark fell into insignificance. Each clump of grass, each dune, each mazy channel of brackish water, as soon as you walked past it began to recede into an undifferentiated flatness and bleakness; you could lose yourself here so easily, without those white markers and the ropes with which he'd bound the landscape. He was at the mercy of the gods and the weather, with nothing to defend him from rain and wind and self-doubt and the ever-gnawing sea.

Yet at the same time he felt light, almost drunkenly inspired by the great emptiness and the vaulting arch of the sky, clear deep distant blue with sometimes a single cloud or a smear of misty nimbus high up, where you could not imagine even an eagle flying. There was a freedom here that he'd never known before. Then came a day of rain, and having set the men to work on the reed matting in their camp, he came out alone to walk the banks of the ponds, feeling the rain fall fat and heavy on him. The sky was slaty gray shading to black, the whole heaven rent in two by a dark diagonal band where the rain slanted down. The water shone silver against the darkness, still, as if waiting for something; there was no wind, and he could hear the incessant noise of the rain, he could almost, if he listened hard enough, distinguish the individual percussive note of each tiny drop that fell on mud or in water within the swishing roar of the mass.

He smiled, innocently surprised by sudden joy; he couldn't remember being happier since the day when he'd ridden in the cart with Tanaquil across the plateau towards Rome. As he thought of it he missed her, with a great and again sudden pain from which he almost flinched, but it didn't dislodge his joy; on the contrary, it sharpened it, so that his hair stood on end not with the cold of the storm but with the acuity of his feeling. It was as if he had been reborn without his skin, every sense more powerful and more wounding.

The storm came hours later, a savage wind whipping up both sea and rain, the men miserable under the dripping canvas of their tents. But after that single day of storm, the good weather returned, and the rest of the work went quickly. Unlike the work on the bridge across the Tiber, it went well; not a single problem disturbed the even tenor of Tarquinius' days. Aranthur proved to have a hitherto unsuspected taste for hard work; he was always to be found shovelling earth into the great leather baskets the men used to carry it, or bent almost double with a basket slung across his slender back.

The pattern he'd scratched out on the sand gradually became the larger grid dug into the earth. He'd looked forward to it, but strangely, he was disappointed; the dream had held grandeur within it, while the reality was just mud and dirt and puddled footprints, nothing really to be proud of or inspire.

Manius noticed Tarquinius' increasing abstraction. He'd kept himself to some extent out of Tarquinius' way, handling the work on the ponds while Tarquinius applied himself to the trickier business of getting the gradient of the feeder canal's bed precisely graduated, a dip of two inches every hundred feet. (Enough to get the water to flow; not enough to create a surge. The difference was crucial, and you could measure it in inches. Nor could you afford inconsistency; a bottleneck, a lip or a ridge, could create a countercurrent that would, soon enough, undermine the banks.) Aranthur too had seen little of Tarquinius; he'd been too involved with the work. The men loved him; an Etruscan princeling who was willing to put in some hard work. ('Like a Trojan', one of the men said, and another replied jokingly 'At least he doesn't work like a Greek, we'd be here till the Greek kalends'...) They called him Beanpole, not Egerius, and got him drunk with some regularity.

But they were getting close to the end of the work, letting in the water for the first time, and the three men seemed now to feel the same need for each others' company. Besides, Tarquinius was still suspicious of Manius; he wanted to keep him within sight, though he realised that it might have been better to let Manius incriminate himself. If he didn't allow Manius to undermine the salt scheme, too, he'd never be able to fix his guilt; while Manius seemed to have some interest of his own in this work, so that his fidelity here didn't clear him of sabotaging the bridge.

At last the day came when the last earthen barrier was to be breached. The huge wooden sluice gate was already half-open in the empty channel of the canal, a single bank holding back the Tiber's flow in front of it. Even though he knew the land had been completely levelled, even though he knew every sluice was open, Tarquinius realised he was holding his breath as two of the men smashed open the top of the embankment with their mattocks, and leapt away quickly as the water began to flood over it.

At first the water lapped over, just half an inch of slow dirty liquid; a few crumbs of earth detached themselves from the edge of the bank, and fell. Then the waves' foamy tongues began to lick the dirt, running crazily in all directions wherever they could find soft earth, checked by rocks or roots. Then suddenly a huge split ran down the middle of the dam, and a whole slab of earth slid away into the water that was pooling below, dissolving into silt. The river was pouring through now, and the sides of the bank started collapsing inwards.

Turning, Tarquinius saw the gate holding firm, breaking the onward rush of the water to allow it to spread slowly down the canal and into the ponds. Slowly the grid plan of the saltings began to emerge ina shimmer of dull pink and silver in the low sun.

They stayed another two moons after the flooding of the fields, the great gates closed once more against the Tiber's waters. They stayed as the water in the ponds evaporated in the sun, watching the pools turn from muddy grey to dark green, to bright red, and finally to white tinged with pink. They stayed till the men were already raking up the salt into great mounds of dirty, sparkling crystal.

This is wealth, Tarquinius thought. Not the gold earrings of the Etruscan nobles, not the painted halls of the Roman king, but this salty scum raked from the baked mud. He thought of the stink and tang of fish guts, the split halves of anchovies caked in salt, the soft slosh of brinetubs full of cheese, and smiled, knowing the whole of Italy would be carved open by salt roads, like scars carved in skin. The golden wheat of the central plains would flow to Rome, in return for the salt of Ostia; a bad bargain for the Italic tribes, selling their open skies and plains for a pinch of salt. But through that trade Rome would bind the whole land together, more tightly every year.

And Tanaquil would be delighted, he thought; to see Etruscan civilisation burning brightly in Rome, flickering into life in Umbria and the Marches, in Campania and Latium. Sometimes he wondered whether she had ever really accepted Rome for what it was, for the freedoms it offered; she seemed to be rebuilding Tarchna in Rome, only a Tarchna in which she could rule with a half-blood king she'd chosen to suit her own ends. But they both knew, like Ancus Marcius, that Rome had a destiny far beyond the rough wild town they'd first come to; and for the time being, that common purpose would have to do. They could fight over the details later.

# Tanaquil

She'd thought when she had her ears pierced, and the heavy gold pins threaded through, she'd felt the worst pain it was possible to feel. She'd been wrong. This was worse.

She was being wrung out, cramp after cramp, squeezed and torn and pulled, till her eyes stung with pain and the sweat that fell into them. Sometimes she heard her own screams as if from a great distance, sometimes she felt her throat raw and aching from them. The pain was purple, with yellow edges, stabbing, tearing hot behind her eyeballs. Her body tensed, rigid with effort, then as suddenly sagged into passivity. She was carried on waves of pain; the world spun about her.

It hadn't been like this when Arruns was born. Or had she forgotten the pain?

Then suddenly she let go of it all, it surged away from her, and she was left empty on the shores of a sea of blood. She saw blood on her thighs, smeared on her stomach by the woman who had taken the child from her. The smell of blood. That, she remembered.

She must have dozed then for a while, drifting in and out of awareness. Sometimes she thought she saw her father, and sometimes Lauchme, and other faces stared inquisitively at her from the bottom of her dreams. Then she was properly awake, and hearing her name, Thanchvil, Thanchvil, her true name and not the Roman one.

Lauchme was sitting behind her, his shoulder propping up her head, his arms around her and his body warm against her nakedness. He'd pulled her body up to sit against him, but she had slept through it. She shivered slightly; how long had she been asleep? That hadn't happened last time. Nor had the dreams.

"Where's father?"

"What?" He looked worried. "In Tarchna, I imagine. Did you think he'd be here?"

"Doesn't matter."

She was aware she should have asked about the child, but it didn't seem important; nothing did, except the warmth of Lauchme's body and the slow beat of her heart. She closed her eyes again and let herself sink.

"Shall I send the woman home?"

She felt a moment of irritation. She wanted to let go of everything, to float in the warm dark world of her own sensations, and Lauchme was asking her to think, to talk to him. She shook her head, blinked hard, feeling the tightness at the corners of her eyes. "You do what's best," she said, hoping he would stop talking.

"She said it wasn't easy this time. You were bleeding for a long time. I might keep her here."

Then keep her, she thought, and don't ask me what to do.

"You have a daughter."

She nodded limply.

"I thought I would call her Tarquinia."

Suddenly she was awake and blazing. "That's a wicked name. A Roman name."

"Well this is Rome." He was all sweet reason and calm, this man, defending his wickedness. Almost as if he hadn't realised how wicked it was, this suggestion of his.

"It's no name at all. She's not just your daughter; she's mine."

"Well, you know, according to the Romans, she's mine, and I can do as I like with her." He shouldn't be joking with her now. Then again, if he wasn't joking... she didn't want to think about that. She sat straighter, seeking for that authority she'd once had over him, in the sunlit days of that Tarchna summer.

"She will be her own woman, as I am mine. So give her a proper name."

"Tarquinia is a proper name."

"It is not. To say every time she's called, she belongs to you. Tarquinia, belongs to Tarquinius, like his horse or his house or his shitty arse; it's wicked, it's wrong, it's..."

"Ssssh." He'd taken her wrists in his hands, to stop her beating at him with her small fists; she noticed he was stroking the back of her hand with a finger. I would have loved that once, she thought sourly, and now I watch him doing it and I think he's gentling me, like a horse, like the bull before they sacrifice it. He looks at me now as if I'm an animal, not a woman; as if I have no thoughts, just momentary childish fears and tempers. Was it him changed, or was it me?

"You can't call her Tarquinia."

"All right then, all right. Call her what you like."

"Thania then. After my mother. A good Etruscan name."

"Be sensible. You know the Romans can't pronounce that."

"She's an Etruscan, not a Roman. Even if she's a quarter barbarian."

"Hellene."

"Barbarian. I know what you Greeks do to your women."

"Thania."

"Thania," he said, but she had a sense he was giving in as you did to a child, hoping you could distract it later; giving up something that wasn't important.

"I thought you'd like Tarquinia," he said. "After all, she'd be named after our city; Tarchna, Tarquinia. You couldn't show her Etruscan roots much more clearly."

"What a stupid idea! Calling a girl after a city. You want her to be like a city, is that it? Behind walls, besieged, fought over?"

He shook his head. "Let her be Thania to us, and Tarquinia to the Romans, then. We each have two names; let her grow up the same way."

She knew she was beaten then. You don't understand, she wanted to say, but the cessation of pain had left her strangely depleted; she could hardly lift her fingertips, and the soft heaviness of sleep was invading her mind. So Thania was Tarquinia; and as the years passed, she was Tarquinia more often, and Thania less and less often, until Thancvil wondered if she had ever really been Thania at all.

# Tarquinius

First the bridge, then the saltings; now the draining of the marshes, and the new buildings on the Palatine, open courts and fine high-ceilinged rooms, replacing the simple circular huts that the earlier kings had occupied. Lucius Tarquinius had become the king's right hand man; a man of influence in Rome. And Rome itself had changed; from a town of outlaws and chancers, it was becoming a place where you could dream of a good life. The raw edge had gone from it. In the street you might see men wearing fine Etruscan linens, sky blue or poppy red, as well as the undyed wool of old Rome; sometimes, the sound of a flute drifted across the open land near the founder's fig tree.

There were still Romans of the old sort, their characters forged by hardship and contempt. They had no time for anything except war; the world had been their enemy for so long that they couldn't imagine a world without enemies. For them, life was lived for one reason; conquest. If they were not fighting, they were practising it. Every moment of their lives was dedicated to the struggle; there was no ease, no rest, no time for what they called the foreign (and that meant, enemy) arts of music or poetry. They had no time for love, only for duty; they told stories of the man who'd lost a hand rather than submit to an enemy, the father who'd put his son to death for insubordination, the woman who had stabbed her children and then herself to avoid being taken. They were hard, Tarquinius thought, but not cruel, the way an Etruscan could be cruel; they simply had no room for emotion in their lives, only for surviving and fighting.

He wasn't surprised that Faustus had aligned himself with the old Romans, either. But the time when Faustus could have done him any damage was far in the past; Tarquinius was in the ascendant. The old Romans were on the decline, too; their sons, and particularly their daughters, found the new ways more to their taste.

To celebrate the completion of the old palace, Ancus Marcius was holding a banquet; for the first time in Rome, he'd ceded to Etruscan custom, inviting women as well as their husbands. It was an innovation not universally approved; some of the Romans acceded to the king's wishes, while vocally complaining about his soft foreign customs, while others kept their women at home, risking his displeasure. Interesting, Tarquinius thought; normally these Romans valued obedience above all things. But then, they did elect their king in the first place; perhaps that was what made the difference.

Tanaquil and Lucius wore the same dark red robes, trimmed with gold; gold glittered at their necks and wrists, and huge roundels of solid gold hung from Tanaquil's ears. Even their hair was braided the same way, with golden rings at the end of each plait; only while Lucius' plaits hung straight, Tanaquil had wrapped one thick braid across her temple, coiling it round like a diadem. She moved with grace, like a hunting leopard, he thought, or a smiling cat, among all the Roman women, gray and timid as mice.

It had taken her too long to recover from Tarquinia's birth; she'd been weak for months afterwards, lacking her normal fire. But now he looked at her, and saw her as she always used to be; proud, spirited, the girl he'd fallen in love with. The girl who saw a kingdom as her rightful prize. Holding their joined hands high between them, not minding who saw, he bent his head to kiss her fingers.

He looked round the hall, seeing who had come. Manius, and a woman with the same floppy blond hair, who might have been his sister, or perhaps his wife; Faustus, on his own; one of the Sabines he knew from the saltings business, with two women - well, that was his own affair; Marcus Robur, Tiberius and Brutus, standing with their father. Marcus looked thicker and heavier than he used to be, and hard with muscle; he'd been out on patrol in the border lands of the Alban hills. His hair was still shaved close, the skin showing through the bristly stubble. He shifted from one foot to the other, impatiently; he'd never have his father's immobility, thought Lucius. Nor perhaps his patience.

Couches had been set, and a single chair, its elegant curved legs crossed and carried upwards to make arm rests. The slender wood of its legs was gilded; an eagle's talon formed each foot. Lucius had assumed it would be for the king, but as soon as Tanaquil saw it she smiled, as if she knew a secret and wasn't telling. As soon as Ancus Marcius took his couch, she made her way to the chair, pulling Lucius after her, and sat, her poise defying anyone to query her right.

He was puzzled. She'd always preferred couches; ever since that first banquet she had planned for him in Tarchna. Chairs were too old fashioned for her, and too uncomfortable; they used couches at home, young Arruns sitting on the edge of his mother's couch, swinging his short legs in the air. Then he realised the signal she was sending; a defiantly Etruscan statement. Not only that; she was asserting the prerogative of monarchy. Born a lucumo's daughter, she showed herself as a queen.

He couldn't say the same of Ancus Marcius' wife, a woman whose spine seemed curved, so that she sat with her shoulders hunched up and her head bowed. Ancus Marcius had grown into his late middle age splendidly, his whitening hair making his square features seem stronger, more determined; power suited him. His wife seemed prematurely old; her eyes were dull, and while she allowed the server to fill her wine cup, Tarquinius noticed she never drank from it, but set it down on the table untasted between them.

Strange, he thought, that he'd never met her before; he'd been working with Ancus Marcius for so long. But then that was the way of these Romans; the women stayed in their quarters, they had nothing to do with the men's occupations - war, or politics, or trade.

"You're Tarquinius?" her voice was surprisingly high and childlike. He nodded, looking at her over the rim of his cup. The wine was sour; he'd have to speak to Ancus about that. "My husband talks about you all the time. He says you're very clever."

"Mm-hm."

"Did you really build the bridge over the river? Was it hard?"

"I did. No, it wasn't, not really." He didn't want to remember the trouble that had caused him, even though it was the beginning of his good fortune in Rome.

"Oh."

He smiled. "It took a long time. And it was hard work. A lot of wood to shift."

She smiled back, a strangely shy little smile that only took up half of her mouth. "You must be very strong, as well as clever."

"Oh, the men did most of the work. I just watched."

Her hand hovered over the table; she couldn't work out what she wanted, he thought. On his other side, he heard Tanaquil's voice, low but still audible above the hum of conversation.

"Tarchna will be the greatest of the Etruscan cities, if it isn't already. You should see the new temples. Cisra is beautiful, but it's old."

"I've never been outside Rome." Lucius looked to see who was speaking; a woman in severely cut dark cloth, her curly dark hair pulled to the back of her head and tied with a single ribbon. She grabbed at a dish with her chubby hands and looked to see what was in it, then put it back with a little curl of her upper lip.

"What was that?"

"Whitebait. Ech."

Tanaquil took the dish, picked up a few of the tiny fish delicately, and put them in her mouth. Lucius could hear the bones crunched. The other woman averted her face.

"Never been out of Rome?" Tanaquil clearly couldn't believe it. "Don't you know anything of the rest of the country?"

"My father comes from Nomentum," the woman said uncertainly.

"But you should travel! You know, when Lucius and I came to Rome, I drove the chariot half the way. And what a journey that was - the open skies, the smell of grass after rain..."

Lucius grinned as he remembered. But Faustus was leaning over the woman towards Tanaquil, scowling.

"The longest journey she's ever made was between her father's house and my house. And that's as far as she's going."

Tanaquil looked unperturbed, but Lucius saw the way her nostrils flared, and wasn't deceived. She turned, and looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

"My father always said it was the introduction of aulos players at banquets that destroyed the art of conversation," she said. "Apparently not."

***

They were thrown on their own company for the rest of the meal; she was bright, and flirtatious as she hadn't been since the sixth month of her last pregnancy, and Lucius fell in love with her again. He was beginning to think how long it would be till he could decently make his excuses and take her home, when she nudged him hard, and narrowed her eyes, and he realised he was being shouted at from the other side of the room.

"You! So-called Tarquinius!"

Marcus Robur was on his feet, yelling across the room. Two of his friends were trying to pull him back down, but without success; his face was reddened by wine. Lucius looked at the king; he was shaking his head, but made no move to stop his son.

"Stand up, arsehole. You fucking Etruscan goat-shagger."

Lucius felt his face redden, but quite deliberately bent forward, and picked up his wine-cup. It took all his effort to keep his hand from trembling, but he held the cup still in front of him, and turned to Thanchvil. He could feel the tension in the air; everyone was waiting to see what he would do.

"I think an aulos player at this feast might be an improvement on the current entertainment," he said into the silence that had fallen.

No one knew how to respond. Marcus Robur was struggling to break loose from his friends' grasp; everyone else was trying to make out whether this was merely a witticism, or an insult. Lucius was beginning to think he'd misjudged the mood of the banqueters when a raucous snort sounded, followed by a hoot of laughter. It was Ancus Marcius, thumping his couch with his great hands, his shoulders heaving. Then everyone was laughing, some with relief, others nervously, except Marcus Robur and Faustus.

Faustus turned to Lucius, glaring at him. "You might find it's dangerous, insulting the king's son."

"As dangerous as giving your wife ideas?"

Faustus' jaw clamped tight. Lucius stared back at him, daring him to look away first. He could see Faustus hold his breath; then the Roman stood, and turned to Marcus Robur.

"You'll let him get away with that?"

Marcus let out a great shout of rage, shaking his friends off; free, he jumped over the table set in front of his couch, and kicked over the small table in front of Lucius, grabbing the Etruscan's robe at the shoulders.

"You insult Faustus, you insult me." He pulled Lucius towards him. "You think my father will save you?" He spat in Lucius' face.

Lucius raised a hand to wipe the spit away, but Marcus Robur was already aiming a blow at him. He dodged, coming low under it, ready to punch Robur in the ribs on his way up, but was brought up short as Robur grabbed his hair. His head snapped back; he couldn't move without twisting his neck even further.

Robur put his face up close to Lucius'; his eyes were bulging, white all the way round the irises.

"Effeminate bastard. You've got your wife's hair. Can't tell you apart, except she's the one with the balls."

Robur yanked on his hair. There was definitely an advantage to the Roman crop, Lucius thought sourly, feeling with his hands behind him to try and find any hold on Robur. Finally, he got his hands up to the back of his head, and found Robur's hands; grabbing one of Robur's thumbs, he yanked it back as hard as he could. It worked; Robur's hands slackened for a moment, and grabbing as much as he could of his own hair in one hand, Lucius twisted out of his grip, and stood up. Come and get what's coming to you, he thought.

And Robur did. He was a tough fighter, muscles gleaming like oiled leather, but not a smart one; Lucius already knew he was coming, by the way he pulled his body back to throw it into the blow. A frontal attack; the easiest of all to deal with, Lucius thought. As Robur came, he swivelled to his left, took the roman's arm and pinned it quickly behind his back, relishing the squeal of pain. Quickly, while Robur's feet scrambled for a purchase in the reeds on the floor, he twisted back again, throwing Robur across the couch and seeing him land awkwardly with one leg across it. Robur thrashed about to try to get up, managing to kick the woman who'd been sitting next to Lucius; his mother, he realised, feeling stupid for not having realised it earlier.

Lucius' breath was burning in his throat, his heart pounding; he wasn't used to this kind of exercise, and it was obvious, stupid through Robur was, he'd been training. He'd have to finish it now, before Robur could get his second wind; before his own strength began to fail. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his scalp, he leapt over the couch, aiming both feet at his opponent. If he'd connected, it would have put an end to the fight; but Robur rolled away, scrambling to his feet.

Lucius stepped towards him, aiming a low kick at his knees. But Robur was wise to that trick, jumping over the attack and coming up close, jabbing Lucius in the ribs. Desperately Lucius tried to grab Robur, but his hands slid off the hard muscles, and the stubble of the Roman's head gave him nothing to hold on to. When he managed to get a handful of tunic, the soft fabric tore, leaving him with a handful of wool. Another jab in the ribs. He could thank the gods that he'd put a bit of weight on there; it didn't hurt as much as it once would have.

Giving up grappling as a bad job, Lucius aimed a knee at Robur's balls; he missed, but connected with his thigh. It was clear from the reaction he'd dead-legged the Roman, and he followed up his advantage with an elbow to the face, and a push in the chest; Robur staggered backwards, nearly falling, stumbling into one of the low tables before he righted himself again. Lucius was dimly aware of guests scrambling to get out of the way, but he was entirely focused on his opponent now. Marcius' son had been beginning to get the upper hand, but now, he felt, he was gaining an advantage, and he needed to keep it.

Putting his head down, he rammed Robur in the gut; he felt Robur's arms flailing, got back out of range before his opponent could grab his hair again, then it was in again on light feet, to aim a punch at Robur's face. He felt it connect, saw the blood spray out from a split lip, was stepping back before Robur could react, giving himself space, giving himself time.

"Stop dancing, Etruscan poof. Stand and bloody fight." That sounded like Faustus; a few jeers showed he wasn't the only one there on Robur's side.

There was blood on his knuckles. Some of it was Robur's. Some of it wasn't. Suddenly he felt tired, and stood, swaying a little with fatigue, watching Robur, trying hard not to feel he'd won, to see what Robur was going to do next. He ought to admit he was beaten, to come and grasp Lucius' arm, and give in gracefully; but then he was a Roman, and Romans never did.

Maybe Robur was smart enough to have learned by the failure of his earlier attack; maybe Lucius was getting so tired he'd missed the signal. Suddenly, with a great roar, Robur was on him, punching savagely. Lucius' arms felt heavy, flabby; he put up his fists late, felt a punch connect on the side of his head, and tasted blood; he'd bitten his cheek.

His eyes dazzled by the blow, he aimed where he thought Robur had been, but he'd missed him. He felt movement behind him, and kicked out wildly, hopefully; but he'd missed again, and though he spun quickly around, he was too late; Robur had got his hair again, and this time he'd pulled Lucius' head into his armpit, where Lucius couldn't get his fingers round to break his hold. Instead, he threw his weight upwards, hoping to throw the younger man off balance; but Robur laughed, and pushed back. Lucius hadn't expected that, and as he scrambled for a foothold, Robur started to pull him by the hair, making him run desperately after him, bent nearly double. Some of the guests started to laugh; at first hesitantly, then louder as they realised Ancus Marcius wasn't going to spoil their fun by stepping in. And it must have looked pretty funny, Lucius thought bitterly, a man being swung around by his long hair.

Lucius was in trouble now, and he knew it. When Robur stopped, he ran on a few paces before his hair yanked him back, and then Robur had his arms pinned, and was wrestling him down to the ground. With his face to the ground, Lucius couldn't see what was happening; he expected a blow in the ribs, or a kick to the head, any moment, but Robur was savouring his victory, not quite ready to end it.

Then at the same time as he heard a high screech of rage above the shouting, he realised Robur had let go of his arms. Quickly, before Robur could get back his hold, he rolled away, tucking his head and knees inwards to guard against a wild blow.

He wasn't prepared for what he saw when he managed to get up. Tanaquil seemed to be dancing, her legs and arms a blur of motion, her hair flying. Only when he looked more closely could he see Robur, being driven back by Tanaquil's scratching talons.

"Enough!"

At last, Ancus Marcius had stood up; everything fell silent. Even Tanaquil ended her pursuit of Robur, and stood, her sides heaving, her arms dropped, watching the king on the high couch.

"I've seen enough. Robur, you will go. Now!" The king turned to Lucius.

"I'm sorry. You did insult him, you know. I couldn't stop it. But you fought well. And your wife..." Marcius' voice sounded wistful. "Your wife is splendid."

Two of the servants came forward to help them to their couch; one brought warm water in a bronze bowl, and cloths, to clean Lucius' wounds. He wanted only to be gone; but they had to sit through the speeches, and a ceremonious libation. He knew people were staring at him; he wanted to put his hand to the back of his head, and feel how much of his hair Robur had managed to pull out, but he was disinclined to show his pain in front of this hostile audience.

"Ponce. Lets his wife do the fighting," a voice said. Though it was instantly hissed down, he knew that was an accusation he'd have to live with. He felt Tanaquil squeeze his hand. She knew what she'd risked coming to his help. But she'd been right; he'd been beaten. There was no way he could have got out of that last armlock.

He squeezed her hand back, and sat a little straighter as he did so, looking around the hall. He noticed how people's eyes slid away; no one was prepared to meet his gaze.

And it was interesting how Faustus, suddenly, was nowhere to be seen.

***

They came home late, and half drunk; Lucius had drunk to solace the pain of his injuries, and Tanaquil, proud woman that she was, had insisted on matching him toast for toast. He should have felt dispirited and tired, but instead he felt strangely elated. He looked at Tanaquil; her eyes were huge and dark, and she had that cruel, serene smile he remembered from the first time they'd made love.

"I loved it when you leapt over the couch," she said. "You looked so young, so fine. It made me remember you're the only man I know who can handle a chariot as well as I can." She put her arm around him; with difficulty, he managed to stop himself wincing as her fingers brushed the place on his ribs where Robur had landed that first jab.

"I'm flabby," he said. "I know I've put weight on, this last couple of years. If I were still fit, Robur wouldn't have won."

"He didn't," she said, pressing her lips to his neck. "And he's not sleeping with me tonight."

Afterwards, the euphoria gone, they talked more seriously; talked till the lamp began to gutter, and they saw the listless grey of dawn outlining the edges of the closed door.

"We've made an enemy," he said.

"Faustus was your enemy years ago."

"We don't know that."

"You're thinking it might have been Manius behind the accidents at the bridge?"

"It might."

"Even so, you know Faustus was your enemy. He was then, and he is now. Nothing new."

"But Robur wasn't."

"He wasn't thrilled when you became his guardian."

"No fifteen year old would ever be thrilled to be given a new guardian. He thought he was a man already."

"He is now. And not well disposed to you; or to the Etruscans."

She had a point. She always did. "Thank the gods it's his father I answer to, then, not him."

"Yes. And I think we amused him. But we were close to the edge there. Be careful in future, Lauchme dear. Don't push him."

"It wasn't me doing the pushing."

"That's true. But... keep Ancus Marcius happy. And keep him well."

He nodded. She was smiling that smile again. He wondered if it was just satisfied lust that had made her smile, or something else. Probably something else.

"If anything happens to Ancus Marcius, we'll have to leave."

"Nothing's going to happen to him," he said.

"I'll keep a couple of bags packed."

"Going into exile?"

She shrugged. "We're in exile anyway."

True enough, Lucius thought. Another year, another city; it would make no difference. He drew a circle idly on her belly with his fingertip. "As long as you come with me."

"Of course... I wouldn't have seduced you if I didn't want to keep you." She leant in towards him, and he felt her breasts against him, soft and warm.

"At least he seems to like me," she said, her voice dreamy. She was already half asleep, he thought; and so was he.

# Tanaquil

It had been a good few years, now she was a king's daughter again, or as good as, the way Ancus Marcius had come to care for her. The Tarquinian house had become the leading power in Rome, next to the king; and while the king controlled the salt, Lauchme had cornered the trade in salted fish. It helped, she thought, that he had ready access to bulk supplies of cheap amphorae; there was something to be said for being a potter's son, though she was happy that they could delegate that business to Aranthur.

There were banquets, and races, and the high days when Ancus Marcius would sacrifice a bull himself, and daub the blood on the faces of his attendants. There was music; that, at least, she'd managed to bring to Rome, the wild beat of the harvest dance and the piercing sound of the double-pipes. Then after hours there'd be dicing, between herself and her husband and the king, and perhaps Manius would join them, or young Tiberius.

But now winter was coming, and Ancus Marcius was failing. She saw his strength decline as the days grew shorter, and wondered if he'd live to see the spring. It had happened so suddenly; there was no visible change, at least at first, but it seemed there was no energy in him any more. Sometimes he'd be sitting in his justice chair, and his eyes would slide away from the accused and accuser; you'd see his face relax, as if he were asleep, and though his eyes were still open, they seemed to see nothing. Other days he'd be the same old Ancus Marcius, ox-like and commanding, and then when he came to rise from the curule chair his legs would tremble, and he'd have to use the arms of the chair to push himself up. Once, he nearly overbalanced and fell; that would have been a bad omen, Tanaquil thought. But then, there were no good omens any more, where Ancus Marcius was concerned, only the waiting demons and the endless darkness.

"It's not as if I'm dying _of_ anything," he said to her. "I'm just running down, like an old tree dying off, branch by branch."

She thought of a walnut she'd seen once, the crown bleached by lightning.

"There are good days and bad days." His eyes were far away, but it wasn't the distance of mindlessness; she knew he was seeing something, like a man at sea squinting to see the thin line that might be cloud, might be coast and home. "There are days when I remember youth, the golden sun, the wonderful sensation of burning lungs and tight muscle in a foot-race. My wife before she dried up and turned away from me."

"And the bad days?" Tanaquil asked.

"There are days that I seem to be lost in a grey mist, when my mind doesn't seem to be working. And there are days when I'm in pain, when flames run through the marrow of my bones, and my joints are pierced with needles of ice. But it's the nights that are the worst, when I dream, and I see my father coming out of the grave, with a rustle of dried cornstalks, his face hollow like leaves falling to dust, gibbering at me."

She hushed him gently, patting him on the hand, but he was lost to her, half fallen into the same nightmare, and the words wouldn't stop coming.

"He's after my blood. I can see his mouth opening and closing silently. There are no words, and if there were they'd make no sense. It's blood he wants."

"I'll pour him a libation," Tanaquil promised.

"It's blood, not wine, he wants."

"We can give him blood," she said reasonably. "Tarquinius will kill a bull for him.

"It's my blood, it's mine he's after. Oh father, father..."

She saw a tear slowly tremble on the edge of an eyelash, then smear its way down his hollowed cheek. Poor child, she thought; did all men return to infancy as death approached?

"Why did I do it, father? Why?" He was sobbing now, his white beard wet. She shook her head, and reached for him, pulling him towards her breast as she used to do for Arruns and Tarquinia. As she would do for her next child, she thought, a child Ancus Marcius would never see or stand sponsor to. He was no kin to her, and she'd sought him out only to promote Lauchme's interests; but still she felt her innards soften with immense pity, and raised a hand to stroke his long white hair.

***

There was no time for pity that night, when she returned home from the Palatine. It was clear that Ancus Marcius was dying; equally clear that he was losing his connection with the real world, that the ghosts were already sucking his mind out of him, leaving the body hollow as a cut reed. He might die; and then they would have to shift for themselves.

"We'll wait then," Lauchme said. "As long as it takes."

"We might not have that long."

"Gods! You're going to kill him?"

She was shocked. Lauchme had teased her about her political ambitions before now, called her ice-blood, calculatrix, but she'd never realised just how cold-blooded he thought she was. It hurt, and in that moment she flinched away from him, and it seemed she loved the wandering old man more than she'd ever loved Lauchme.

She shook her head. He didn't even deserve an answer.

"Why don't we have the time, then?"

"His mind's going. He saw his father today, Lauchme, saw his father in the air in front of him. You've seen him when he just goes blank; this was worse. Much worse."

"Gods."

"I can't be the only one to have noticed. Even if that was the first time he's had hallucinations."

"Was it?"

"I don't know." She realised her voice was high with frustration. "I suspect it may have been. No one's said anything. Though some people would keep it quiet."

"Faustus would keep it quiet. Manius wouldn't."

"I'm not so sure. But if he starts hallucinating in public..."

"All hell will break loose."

"Never mind that. What's important is it would give Marcus Robur an excuse for taking over. No one would stop him."

"Why doesn't he do it now?"

"As long as it's just the occasional fit of absentmindedness, Ancus Marcius might always recover. It can be hoped for."

"You told me yourself he won't recover."

"He won't. But remember, I see him every day. I know him. Others don't. As long as there's still hope, Robur has no chance. Once the king's known to be mad, we have what? At best, a day to get away."

"Gods."

She wished he'd stop saying that. "I do still keep the bags packed, if that's what you're worried about."

He looked up. She saw how the skin under his eyes was dark and pouchy. He'd grown older, just as the king had.

"The answer is quite simple, you know." Her voice sounded brittle and unconvincing, even to herself. Lauchme said nothing, didn't even raise an eyebrow to enquire. He must be tired, not to be interested. But she'd tell him anyway; she couldn't do everything herself. In Tarchna, maybe, where women played the game and politics was a mixed pursuit; not here in Rome.

"You just have to get Marcus Robur away from the city. Send him hunting, send him hawking, send him to war for all I care; just get him away from Rome."

***

As it turned out the dice fell right for Tarquinius; Gabii had been attacked by one of the smaller Faliscan cities, and requested help. Marcus hadn't wanted to go, but Ancus Marcius had insisted; it was one of his better days. "Get yourself gone!" he roared at his recalcitrant son; and Marcus Robur went.

The next part would be more difficult, Tanaquil knew. While Ancus Marcius was still capable of ruling, or at least of being publicly displayed as king, Tarquinius would have to win enough supporters to be elected once Ancus had gone. While he was canvassing, she would have to prevent anyone guessing the truth; that meant sticking close to the old man, and keeping anyone she couldn't trust away from him. She'd move into the palace, if she could; but that would give rise to the sort of rumour she was anxious to avoid. She could almost hear Faustus' comment; "Those Tarquinii are moving into the palace already, before the old man's even dead." She wouldn't give him the pleasure.

Everyone was talking; Ancus' absence from business had been noted, and his increasing frailty was obvious. He was rarely without his stick, now, and his face had grown gaunt; his flesh seemed almost transparent, suffused with the frozen blue of his veins.

She sat with Ancus Marcius now whenever he was well enough to preside at the law courts, or the temple; but she made sure she sat on a lower level, on a small footstool, like a dutiful daughter. Secunda sometimes sat with her; it took both of them to support the old man, if he suddenly felt weak, which happened more and more often.

That day, he'd been sitting in judgment on a case of accidental death; a man killed by a house falling, and bringing the roof down on him. It should have been easy, but the dead man's brother deposed that he'd been staying with his son, who would inherit, and had weakened the woodwork deliberately to bring about his father's demise. The son had wanted to marry, apparently, and his father would not give him permission; when asked, the son admitted that was true. The uncle said the son hated his father; what was definitely true is that the son hated his uncle; Ancus Marcius had to instruct him twice to be quiet, when he started yelling at the older man.

"I was away in the vineyard when it happened! I wasn't even there!"

"Wait," Ancus Marcius bellowed. The youth stood quivering with temper, but he didn't dare yell at the king. Tanaquil could see his jaws tight and his hands balled into fists; he was a man on the edge.

Uncle Tullius was a little stick of a man, with a tightly trimmed beard and a cast in one eye. Not the kind of uncle you would love, Tanaquil thought; not stupid enough to bring false witness, either. Who would, when the penalty for false testimony was death?

"Your allegation is a strange one," Ancus Marcius said. "Most murderers are considerably more direct. And in any case, you can't prove that the son deliberately pulled his own house down. Will you retract your accusation?"

The uncle didn't even bother to say 'No'. Instead, he spoke with the voice of utter logic. "Of course you can't prove it. That's why he killed him that way. He knew you could never prove it."

The court was suddenly full of whispers; Ancus Marcius put up his hand. "Tarquinius?"

That got silence immediately. No one understood why Tarquinius was being called; not even Tanaquil, though she had a shrewd idea there was a long game being played here.

"How would you go about pulling down a house?"

"Well, I could do it from inside or outside. Inside, I could saw through the main beam of the roof, say half way, and then it would eventually break."

"And would you know when it was going to break?"

"No, not at all. It would break, eventually, but I'd have no way of knowing when. It would be easy to tell whether that had been done, of course."

"And had it?"

"No."

Ah; that was why Tarquinius had been out all of yesterday morning.

"And the other way?"

"I could take one of the posts that support the roof, and undermine it. Loosen it a bit, maybe scrape out a bit of the earth around it, like foxes do sometimes. Maybe the centre post, or perhaps one of the corners."

"And you'd be able to tell when that was going to collapse?"

"No. It's the same thing. I wouldn't really know."

"I see. So if it was my house..."

"I wouldn't want to be in it at the time. A trip away from home might be indicated."

"And the son went to the vineyards two days before the accident."

"Yes," said Tarquinius. Tanaquil saw how the uncle grinned at this. She didn't like it; it looked like the grin a dog gives before he starts to bite, showing his teeth. The son quite obviously didn't believe what he was hearing; his face was working, but he didn't dare to speak.

"Could you prove that the house had been undermined?" Ancus Marcius was saying.

"You don't need to," the uncle said stubbornly; but the king roared, "Silence!" and silence there was. No one had seen Ancus Marcius like this for months; skeletal as he looked, he was once again powerful, his hands trembling with the effort of holding back his temper.

"Tarquin," he said, very softly, "Could you prove it?"

"No."

Ancus Marcius nodded silently. It seemed he'd drifted away again; his head carried on nodding for a few moments. They'd reached an impasse in this case. But Tanaquil was not deceived; she'd seen the light of intelligence in his eye, the look he'd given Tarquinius just before he closed his eyes, and steepled his fingers together.

"Still," Tarquinius said into the silence, "If I were going to pull down a house, I'd want to know when it was going to fall. And young Quintus here clearly didn't. Besides, if it took two whole days for the house to fall on his father, how could he know his father would be there when the house fell?"

Ancus Marcius was still nodding, his fingertips pressed together. He's heard all this before, Tanaquil realised.

"But the uncle would not have known, either." Ancus Marcius' voice was very quiet when he said this; clever, Tanaquil thought, he's made everyone listen even harder. He must be preparing something. If the boy's guilty... that will be a death sentence, for sure. Parricide; tied in a leather bag with a dog and a snake, and thrown into the river. Drowning and bleeding and suffocating. No wonder his voice is soft. She shivered.

"It was Tullius who found Quintus senior's body in his son's house," Tarquinius said evenly, recounting mere facts. "He had been to visit Quintus that morning, and tied his horse up outside the house. They spoke for only a few moments, and then Quintus sent Tullius off on some business he had in hand. That took some hours, and it was only when Tullius came back that he found the body."

Tanaquil still didn't see how this was useful. The house had, or hadn't been undermined; the son had, or hadn't, killed the father. Though looking at young Quintus, she thought he might have killed in a fight, just losing his temper \- he clearly was still having a struggle to keep it in; but not cold-bloodedly, not in the way that was being suggested. She must be missing something. It wasn't like her to be out-thought by her husband. Then she realised; the horse. He hadn't said what happened to the horse.

"This is getting us nowhere." Tullius' voice was nasal, thin. "Quintus senior asked me to go and see about some neighbour whose tree was overhanging his garden. So I did. What matter? It's just fortunate the brat didn't manage to kill me, as well as his father."

"But you left your horse behind," said Tarquinius, very reasonably.

"Of course I did! I wasn't going to ride to the house next door, why should I?"

"And you left it tied to the house."

Tullius looked at him sharply.

"But you'd run the rope around the corner post, hadn't you?"

Ancus Marcius took charge from that point, and the whole story became clear. It was the uncle who had made the father send young Quintus to the vineyard; it was the uncle who had scraped away the earth around the cornerpost of the house; and it was the uncle who had tied his horse to that post, and then left for the neighbours' house. When a boy turned up and shied a stone at the horse...

"You can't prove I was responsible!" Tullius was on his feet again, indignant.

"That's him." A surprisingly innocent child, about eight, with curly black hair and a pouting red mouth, stood up in the middle of the crowd. Behind him, a young woman patted his shoulder reassuringly. Tanaquil saw her hair was black and curly too, under the veil she wore.

"Thank you, Sextus." Ancus Marcius' voice was warm; his smile was the warmest Tanaquil had seen for a while, even when he smiled at her. "What did this man tell you?"

"He said the horse was his friend's, and he wanted to play a trick on him and make it run away."

"And did it?"

"No." Sextus looked serious, and ashamed. "It was tied up too well. And it bucked, and it bucked, and..."

"And it pulled the house down?"

"Yes, sir."

Ancus Marcius' smile was no longer warm; it was as vulpine as Tullius' had been when he thought young Quintus was about to be sentenced. "Tarquinius? If Quintus had been executed, who would have inherited?"

"Quintus the Elder had two daughters, as well as his son, but they would only have been given enough for their dowries. As for the vineyards, the house, the orchard?" He looked at Ancus Marcius, saw him nod, and went on. "His brother, Tullius."

Tullius was already pushing through the crowd at the back of the hall; he'd seen it coming, Tanaquil realised. But so had Ancus Marcius; there was a brief scuffle at the door, and one of the guards brought him forward, holding him firmly by one scrawny shoulder.

Ancus Marcius rose. "I think false witness is enough to charge him with. No doubt we could think of more, if we had time. But he has an appointment. At the Tarpeian Rock. In an hour's time."

***

Tanaquil hadn't waited to see the execution. She could stomach most things, but watching a man pushed off a precipice was something she could manage without. Convincing Ancus Marcius to return home was another matter. He felt he was completely restored; and he was all for marching up the rock himself. It was only an appeal to spare young Secunda the sight of the execution that swayed him.

He was pleased to see Tarquinius, when the younger man had returned from the execution. "Done," Tarquinius said simply, and gave no more detail.

The king's smile was tight, his eyes cold. "Pity I wasn't there." He looked across at Tanaquil; he'll sulk about that for a good week, she thought. "Still, I'm glad young Quintus wasn't a parricide."

"Quite," said Tarquinius. "He seems a nice enough young man. I was thinking of taking him on to run the olive farm. Now his name's been cleared."

"I'm glad he wasn't a parricide," the king said, and it was clear he hadn't been listening to Tarquinius. "It's a nasty crime, parricide. Not something I'd want to have to judge." His eyes had gone distant again, and for a moment Tanaquil thought damn, I'm going to have to get him to bed before he embarrasses himself; but then he blinked a couple of times, and the old Ancus Marcius was back, planning improvements to the city's water supplies, drafting a trade treaty with the Greeks of Poseidonia, looking forward to a military campaign in the new year that she knew he would never lead.

But at supper that evening, he began to drift off into that state of vagueness she recognised, and when she suggested it was time to rest, he put up no resistance. Secunda took her father out, leaving the gathered councillors with no leader.

Some left as soon as they saw he had gone; others stayed, and Tanaquil noticed a number of small groups coalescing. Some of the men joined one group, others drifted between various groups, staying a while to talk, then moved on. The pattern was different from other evenings; Manius for instance was standing with Faustus, though he'd been closer to Tarquinius since the saltings business, while Tarquinius seemed to have attracted a couple of the Faliscans, whose sharp beards were waggling as they hectored him. It's politics, she thought; this is going to get interesting. Shall I stir it up?

She didn't have to. Faustus did.

"Lucius is planning to sell Rome to Tarchna," he said. "We all know that. It's just a question of the terms. And whether Ancus Macius lives long enough to do it."

"You think Tarchna would buy it?" she said, keeping her voice smooth, insinuating. "Why would Tarchna need to buy a city in the middle of nowhere?"

"A city of winners."

"Oh yes, a city of men who like putting on military parades. I think you'll find Tarchna isn't much impressed."

Further down the table, someone shouted, "What about Veii?"

"Yes, them too," said Faustus. "They might pay more. But we could conquer them tomorrow, like this..." He snapped his fingers dismissively.

"Do make your mind up, Faustus. You're being tiresome. Is it Tarchna, or Veii, or both? Or do you think the Gauls are preparing a counter-bid?"

"It hardly matters! Rome will be sold, on way or another, unless Ancus dies first.!"

That shocked even Faustus' supporters. The room was suddenly hushed. She waited, sliding her eyes slowly towards him, counting to three, waiting till her eyes rested squarely on his face before she spoke.

"That's close to treason." It was like dropping a stone into a pond. A big splash. But it would be the ripples that counted.

***

Despite his opposition to 'the Etruscan deal' – and if there had been an Etruscan deal, Tanaquil would have known about it – Faustus had been canny not to declare an allegiance. It was plain that he was loath to enter an alliance with Tarquinius, but he had been noticeably absent from the declarations of support for Ancus Marcius' son. Tanaquil wondered if he was preparing a bid for the kingship himself.

That seemed more likely when she heard him dismiss suggestions that he might be made interrex on the death of the king. The interrex might rule Rome in the gap between the old king's death and the selection of a new one, but it was a position which – since the interrex couldn't propose himself as king – virtually guaranteed the political nullity of its incumbent.

The whole of Rome seemed to be fermenting; everyone moving from one house to another, always in the streets, always talking. Tanaquil's quarters were crowded with placeseekers and rumourmongers, every evening; their eyes flickered as they talked to you, flicking away from your face to see who else was there, who was talking to whom – while the smile stitched on someone's face was still turned to you, she'd be considering whether greater advantage was to be gained elsewhere.

She was surprised to see even some she considered Old Romans. Had Faustus' near-treason led to a breach with them? Were they reconsidering their opposition after assessing Robur's character? Or were they simply looking for the best advantage, like everyone else?

"Tarquinius wouldn't be the first foreigner to rule Rome," she pointed out to one of them, his skinny arms exposed by his toga. "The Sabine Tatius was co-king with Romulus. It was another Sabine, Numa, who gave Rome her temples and her laws."

"But they were Sabines, not Etruscans."

"Yes, but they weren't Romans. And you know, Sabines are rather different, too."

"Even Ancus Marcius has a good bit of that Sabine gloominess in him."

"Oh yes; I'd forgotten he was Sabine by ancestry," she said, though of course she had not forgotten it at all. You had to be careful how you reminded these Romans of their polyethnicity, she thought; and don't mention the Greeks, either. But once she'd started that discussion, the Old Roman found himself admitting that he had a Sabine grandmother, and a couple of the others there admitted to Faliscans in the family, and she was able to move on.

Somewhere in the crowd she caught sight of her husband, and steered towards him, but a hand caught her sleeve, and she stopped, recognising the woman who had told her she'd never change anything.

"I always knew you'd do it," the woman said. "No one believed in you, but I always did – I told you so – I always knew you could do anything you set your mind to."

Oh, indeed you did, Tanaquil thought sourly, and no doubt you'll be wanting something in return. Even if it's only for me to be gracious; and she was tempted to say exactly what she was thinking, played the scene in her mind, saw the woman's mouth turn sourly down even more than it did before. Had the throne been secure already, she would have acted it for real; but now she had a part to play, and she said sweetly, "I'm sure my husband thanks you for your support" (which was, if not exactly true, at least not such a lie as an expression of her own gratitude would have been), and moved on.

***

She spent most afternoons now sitting with Ancus Marcius, in the damp dark heat of the inner room. Sometimes he dozed, sometimes he dreamed; they were not good dreams. Sometimes when he woke he looked frightened, unable to recognise her till she'd held him and stroked his head for a while. Other days he was well enough to play dice with her, though a game never lasted long and there was rarely a winner; he lost interest long before a result declared itself.

It was quiet in his room; the palace was full of frightened whispers and fraught silences. The nobles who came to find out the state of the king's health, or to see who was making alliances with whom, conducted their business in low murmurs; everything had slowed, they even walked slowly, careful not to step loudly. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

Marcius drifted in and out of the present; Tanaquil couldn't always tell whether he was here with her, or back in the Sabine mountains of his youth. His eyes sometimes stared past her, as if she weren't there, and he saw figures waiting in the darkness. It was as if the ghosts were waiting for him, she thought; and when he spoke, his voice was cracked and thin, as if he were already a ghost, sere and bloodless.

He still hadn't named his heir. It had been a game of hide and seek, earlier in the month, and she knew he was teasing her, willing to name Tarquinius, but not quite yet, trying to make her ask him outright. Perhaps she'd misplayed; he was drifting further over the border into the dead lands. He might never name his successor.

That afternoon, Marcius was well enough to sit up, a heavy red and black blanket draped over his shoulders. They played dice for a while, and Tanaquil heated a little wine with herbs and honey for him; it was all he could drink. He'd just thrown Venus against her dog; not just a winning throw, a win by the greatest of all possible margins. She thought he'd be triumphant, but his smile was a sad, thin one; then suddenly his eyes seemed to focus on a point far beyond her, and he recoiled in terror.

"Father!" Something in his voice made her flesh prickle. His hands were scrabbling at the bed, as if he could push himself away from whatever he'd seen, yet his eyes were fixed.

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to... forgive me, please, forgive me..." He began to whine; she couldn't hear all the words. The skin of his face seemed loose, as if it were falling away. His lips were wet.

A low cough startled her. It was Manius, standing at the entrance from the outer rooms, clearly uncertain whether to enter, or close the curtain again. She was holding her hand up, palm out, to prevent him, when she thought it might be to her advantage to have him there. Silently, she put a finger to her mouth, and patted the air with her hands; hold back, wait. He nodded, and stood leaning in, with one hand on the doorpost; he'd understood.

"I didn't mean to do it, you know I didn't mean to do it, I never meant... how was I to know what they would do? I only thought..."

Manius crept across to stand by Tanaquil. He leant close to her.

"What's going on?"

"He thinks his father's ghost has come for him."

"Gods, how horrible." He ran his hand through his fine hair; the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Father, don't look at me. I can't stand it." The old man was sobbing now, his beard wet with tears and saliva. He put his hands to his face, Tanaquil thought to hide it from his father's gaze, but instead he began to claw at his cheeks. Tiny droplets of blood welled up in the pallid tracks of his nails.

Manius bent to put his mouth close to Tanaquil's ear. "There was always a rumour he'd betrayed his father in the Sabine war. I never believed it..."

"They told me you would be safe... father, believe me, please believe me." His body jerked back as if flinching from a slap, and he sobbed again. "I saw your flayed face, your naked eyes staring at me through the blood..."

Manius looked at Tanaquil, appalled. Ancus Marcius' voice was low, but his lips were moving incessantly, as if he were praying in some repetitive way; some words they could hear, others were garbled, gabbled.

"Your skin hanging in shreds, your eyes, your eyes. Forgive me... forgive me... what do I have to do for you to forgive me?"

He burst into tears, beating at his own face with his fists, pulling up his knees and curling up as if against a storm of blows, but he was still staring at the same space that had mesmerised him all this time. Tanaquil couldn't have sworn to it, but she had an impression that the focus of his eyes had moved a little closer; that whatever it was he had seen was advancing towards him.

He screamed once, then, before he fell, and his body lay on the floor stiffly, his robe hiked up around his thin naked legs.

***

Manius was inconsolable. He had idolised the old man; he'd believed in his civilising mission, the rule of law, the creation of justice and right boundaries. Now he saw Ancus Marcius as merely a murderer; the bright image of hope was tarnished, stained with a father's blood. Tanaquil realised the floppy-haired boy had aged, suddenly; his face was twisted, and his eyes looked empty.

"It's unspeakable," he said.

"We must never speak of it."

Manius looked appalled. "His crime!" he nearly shouted; but when his eye caught the bed, where they had laid the old man, he suddenly stopped, as if he'd been caught telling dirty jokes in the temple.

"Yes, that's why we must never speak of it," she said reasonably. "He killed his father. But he birthed new Rome. And new Rome must survive. We can't allow his crime to imperil that."

She could see Manius' unease; the words _civilising mission_ , _new Rome, imperium_ against the reality of a man who had seen his father flayed before his eyes. The bridging of the wild river against the lives of the Etruscan princes. She'd never quite got used to the cruelty behind the politics, the cold reason that demanded blood; uncertainty stalked her waking thoughts, her sleeping dreams. But necessity ruled. There was no power in the daylight that did not compromise with the night.

"You must keep silent, Manius."

He looked unhappy, but nodded. "What do we do with him when he wakes?"

She looked at the frail body on the bed and raised an eyebrow. "He needn't wake."

"You can't..."

"He's a parricide."

"Even so... without the law..."

"You're right. We can't. You can't think I would..." His relief was obvious. "We need him to name Tarquinius."

She went to the door; Egerius was close by. She beckoned him over.

"Get some wine heated for me. We'll need it. He's had a bad turn."

While they waited for the wine to be brought, she went to stand over the bed. Ancus Marcius was stretched out like a corpse, his hands laid on his chest, his face waxen and immobile; but very faintly, his chest rose and fell. His life seemed tenuous. Strange that such a bull of a man should come to this, his rage and power reduced to a thin breath that would hardly mist a mirror.

She stood at his head and looked down. His features, seen from this angle, seemed hardly human at all. Time had eroded him, had eaten him out from the inside.

"They won't like it, an Etruscan as king," Manius said. "You're right, you must make him speak. And publicly, too."

"Rome's kings have always been outsiders," she said, perhaps more sharply than she'd intended. "It makes them hungry."

"Even so." He was right, of course. But it would make her task considerably more difficult.

She turned at the noise of footsteps to see Egerius with the wine, and half a loaf she hadn't asked for, but he'd brought anyway. Sops in wine; that would be the best way, she thought; she wouldn't have to get them to sit Ancus Marcius up to drink, no need for manhandling him. Less risk. With two fingertips she pulled a lump of the bread away; it tore softly, letting crumbs fall to the floor. It absorbed the wine easily; she put it to the old man's lips. A trickle of wine ran down from the corner of his mouth. His jaw moved, and she saw his throat distend as he swallowed; he was so thin now that his shoulderblades were hollow.

A second, and a third sip of wine, and his eyelids began to tremble. A vein in his forehead pulsed.

"Egerius?"

"Tanaquil?"

"Find the curia, those of them that are still in the house."

"Shall I bring them here?"

"Not yet. No, not yet. I need some time. But make them ready."

"Is he dying?"

"Perhaps. He's been like this before but... not so weak." He's never seen ghosts before, she wanted to say, but that was something best kept between herself and Manius.

"Make them ready, and wait till Manius gives you the sign. Have them stand near the door; but not too near."

Egerius was on his way out when she remembered, and called him softly.

"Make sure you have Faustus. Faustus above all. He must be here."

Egerius made no sign, but turned and went. He knew what she intended, she was sure.

She looked down again at the king; he was struggling to open his eyelids, stuck together with the glue of drying tears. Retreating to the head of the bed, she bent to put her mouth close to his ear, and whispered. Even Manius, she was sure, could not hear; but the old man must.

"Your father calls you. Do not be long."

His eyes looked frightened, and his mouth moved convulsively, but no sound came out. She noticed his chest was rising and falling more quickly.

"Who are you? You are not my father."

"I am Vanth, guardian of the dry lands. I am the green skinned demon that awaits you."

His jaw was shuddering. The corners of his mouth were grimed with white paste and the stain of the wine.

"Your father wants one thing from you."

"What..." he said, and sighed, and it seemed all his breath was being sighed out leaving him empty as a dead wineskin. Not yet, she thought, not yet, and made the sign of propitiation with one hand behind her back, sticking her thumb between forefinger and middle finger, squeezing tight.

"Name Tarquinius king."

"I meant to... I meant to do it... I ..."

"Name him."

He was struggling, and his eyes were fixed again the same way they had been when he'd seen his father standing before him. Death was not far; she felt its presence in the room like a chill. She signalled to Manius with her hand; out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand pass the sign to Egerius.

"Name him, I command you."

She heard feet shuffling, the soft whisper of robes. The heads of the curiate assembly were here. The old man's breathing was shallow, fast.

"Name him."

Darkness was falling.

"Father..." His voice was harsh. The breath grated in his throat.

She struggled to keep her voice even and low, to prevent her despair and rage from bleeding into it. It was the last dice throw in a game that was nearly over.

"Name Tarquinius."

"Tarq..." he coughed. It was like listening to a drowning man snatching his last breath.

"Name him."

And suddenly light flared in his eyes, and he said clearly, as if before a tribunal; "Tarquinius," and sighed once, deeply. His face relaxed; his head fell a little to one side. His mouth was open.

She let herself relax for a single moment, crouched as she was at his ear. Then she rose, standing as tall as she could, her back stretched, her head high.

"He is gone," she said.

"He named Tarquinius," Manius said, and she was glad it was Manius who said it, and not her or Egerius, who were under suspicion of partiality.

"He named Tarquinius. But not as his heir." Faustus' voice sounded bitter. Had he really wanted the throne for himself? she wondered; or was it just a growing feeling that old Rome had gone, that the world had changed and left him behind, that made him so crabbed?

"What else could he have meant?" That was a Faliscan voice; two or three men nodded, and one murmured in agreement.

"He might have meant anything," Faustus said doggedly; but his words fell into silence. She knew, and she was sure he knew by now, that he was on his own.

In that moment of silence you might have heard Vanth's great wings sweeping the air, she thought; the stillness was almost tangible. But as they stood uneasily in the presence of death, she heard angry shouting outside. Five men rushed into the room; in front, Marcus Robur, with behind him, two of his men that she recognised, and two of the lictors, caught off guard without their ceremonial axes, trying without success to pull him back.

"What the hell is this?" he yelled. "I can't see my own father?"

Then he noticed the strange stillness; the way every man in the room faced the bed, silently. He frowned; he looked towards the bed, saw Tanaquil standing proudly, queen-like already.

"Get that whore out of here," he commanded. No one moved.

"Get the conniving bitch away from him."

Manius had stepped up close to him. "Your father's dead, Marcus," he said, with a softness unjustified by his behaviour.

Marcus turned brusquely, pushing Manius away. Manius stumbled, and nearly fell; he looked appalled. Marcus stood alone in the centre of the room, angrily looking round; some of the curiates looked down, others looked steadily at the body on the bed. Even Faustus wouldn't meet his eyes.

"What have you done, bitch?"

Tanaquil felt her face aflame, but she stood and stared him down, without speaking. He didn't deserve her words. It was too late for him now; it had been too late, ever since his father had spoken the name.

He advanced to the foot of the bed; he could see his father's body laid out, the open sightless eyes, the wine soaked beard.

"Did you kill him, bitch?"

Yes, she thought; yes, I probably did. I invoked Vanth, I invoked his father's ghost, and they took him, as I'd intended. At the end, I could have made his passing easy, as I'd wanted to do, but instead I called the ghosts he feared. But still she said nothing, only stood there, and realised with surprise that her cheeks were wet with tears.

Then Marcus Robur came towards her, and bent forwards, and she wondered for a moment if he were going to hit her. But he wrenched his father's head up in his hands, like a lover taking a last kiss, and held it, for a moment, close to him. Only Tanaquil heard the words he said; only Tanaquil saw how violently he let the aged head drop.

"Old leech, you should have died years ago."

Then Marcus strode out, all drama and flying cloak like a demon in a pantomime. And as children do when a pantomime demon leaves the stage, the curiates exhaled, and started shuffling about and clearing their throats and shooting sideways looks at each other, to see who had been rattled, who was trying hard to look unafraid. And Tanaquil smiled.

***

The Interregnum was a strange, brooding time; life was normal, nothing was changed, Tarquinius wasn't king, and yet under the surface, deep currents of unease shifted, like water under the greasy, slow moving skin of a deep river. No canvassing was allowed, now; the glittering assemblies stopped, though loose knots of men still formed in the streets, gradually accumulating and as gradually dispersing. No one talked about it, but it was as if everyone had agreed to pretend that nothing was happening, smearing a thin skin of normality over the emptiness and fear that gripped the city.

"Do you ever dream, and then see what you dreamt of? Or have that feeling that you have been at this crossroads before, though you know you have never been there?" Tanaquil trailed her finger round the rim of her winecup.

"Not quite." Manius frowned. "But sometimes I seem to recognise a face, though I'm sure I have never seen it before."

"Only a good-looking one, eh?"

Once, she thought, Tarquinius wouldn't have made that joke. But now, serious talk disturbed him, if it wasn't politics – if it wasn't something he could do, or say, or arrange. He had no time for dreams, only for plans of action and the making of lists.

"I wonder if we're all driven by dreams," she said, and let it hang as a question in the air.

"What makes you say that? The old man's dreaming?"

"I had a dream once, of being a queen in Tarchna, flowers in my hair, queen of the harvest..."

"You'll be a queen, anyway," her husband said.

"It's not the same... not any more. And I aged, and all the gold has faded."

"I remember how things seemed brighter when I was younger," Manius said, "and now everything is the same, and the days seem to pass so quickly. I forget things so easily, and yet I can remember my childhood so clearly – the shimmering light on the river, the taste of wild garlic, the first verse of Homer I ever heard."

"It gets worse," she said. "And the dreams get darker."

"Did you ever wear the flowers in your hair?"

"No; but I did dance the harvest, my last year in Tarchna." And she hadn't danced it with Tarquinius, she thought; she'd been with one of the noble youths, a willowy, laughing boy whose dance flowed around her, whose body seemed to cling to hers in a way the gauche half-Greek never could have imagined.

"Show me?"

She smiled. It wouldn't be the same; and for a moment she felt the sharp pain of loss, as if everything she'd left behind in Tarchna was pulling at her guts.

"It's difficult without the music."

"Show me anyway." He took her hand, insistent.

She rose, pulling her skirts tightly around her legs. She showed him the steps; one, two, pointing the toes of the right foot, step back twice; and again; and then a quarter turn, tight, leading from the hip, and then the steps again, tightly circling.

"That's it?"

"The steps are not the mystery."

"It's so simple. I'm disappointed. I thought it would be something much more complicated."

"Anyone can dance complicated steps," she said; "it's just a question of counting. It's the simple ones that are difficult. You have to dance them with style."

"And I'm not?"

He didn't miss a thing. "Well... you're dancing like a Roman. It's not military drill. Bend a little into the turn; bend the time, too – you can steal a little from the second step to drag the first..." She led him back into the dance, beginning to hum the tune, feeling him relax a little into the rhythm.

"Enough." Tarquinius got to his feet; his face was angry.

Manius staggered as he stopped in the middle of a turn, thrown off balance; Tanaquil had to put her arm out to support him, or he would have fallen against her. Tarquinius stepped towards her, lowering his voice.

"Not in front of me. Not here."

She felt her face burning; not with shame but with anger. And not just her face, but her whole body aflame. How dare he? No Etruscan would behave in this way, shaming his wife in front of a lover. Manius wasn't even a lover; how much the greater the shame.

"I'll talk to you later." She turned on her heel, getting herself under control, and with a voice that flowed like oil, said to Manius; "He doesn't like my Etruscanising tendencies, as he calls them. We had better not tease him."

She was furious, but she went and sat on the couch next to her husband, and steered the conversation to less contentious subjects; the latest pantomime (a new actor-dancer had arrived from Curtun), the chariot racing results, the best wine this season (which was not Falernian, for once, but one of the southern vintages that had benefited from better weather). Manius was something of a connoisseur, but Tarquinius knew the prices. She wondered if she would ever speak of her dreams again; the moment had passed, and she realised now she was too old to hope for change. Too old to hope for it for herself, anyway; she had lost something, intangible as the brightness of early sunlight on a haze of dew, and till today she hadn't realised she'd lost it.

When Manius went, several cups of wine later, she thought the whole episode had been forgotten. Tarquinius was half drunk, still angry; not churlish, as a Roman would be, but cold – all charm, but icy charm, to Manius.

"You taunted me with your dreams," he said. "We used to share every ambition, and now you won't talk to me of your dreams, only to some feckless Roman boy."

"We still share the work," she said. "I got the old man to name you his successor – that was me, I did it, I did it for you."

"But it's all work." His mouth was sour, and she thought, he'll be throwing up tomorrow morning, the way he always does these days after he's drunk too much.

She turned to go to the chamber, and she thought that was the end of it, but he reached up as she passed his couch and pulled her down, his fingers digging into the flesh of her forearm.

"Who did you dance harvest with? You never danced it with me."

"But I chose you."

"Later. You chose me later. Someone else first."

He pushed her shoulders down with his other hand, throwing his weight on to her. She was too stunned to struggle, then paralysed by her pride and anger as she felt him tearing at her clothes. His face was set, not so much with wrath as with the determination to win at all costs. Not lust, but the lust for power, she thought; Rome is not enough for him. He has to tame me, too. Nothing wild but he will tame it, or kill it.

She realised, after he'd finished, and released her arms, that her face was wet; but she felt nothing. Not anger, now, not hurt, purely nothing, the way fresh mountain water tastes of nothing.

But later, she felt that emptiness within her like a tumour, a bleakness that would never leave her; it was a numb place, indigestible. She never looked at Tarquinius again without at least some contempt, mixed as it might be with love, or admiration, or even respect.

***

Manius, of course, had to be kept sweet. Even though Ancus Marcius had named Tarquinius his successor, the Interrex could set that aside at his discretion, for any one of a number of reasons – heredity, or race, or a personal preference, or simply in response to the ebb and flow of Roman opinion. Tanaquil couldn't take any part in lobbying the Interrex; it was too obvious, for one thing, and for another, a woman taking part in politics was tantamount to a declaration of war on Roman decorum. So she had to use someone, and Manius was the obvious tool for her to use; biddable, but not too obviously allied to her cause or that of Tarquinius, and, even though he was a foreigner, not an Etruscan.

She continued to flirt with him, though never again under Tarquinius' eye; she held him in a web of small attentions, hints, half-veiled looks from under drooping eyelids. She let him come into her chamber when she looked still drowsy from sleep, though that morning she'd already been awake for two hours, reading the post from Tarchna, letting him smell the rich warm odours of a slept-in bed. And she schooled him in the arguments he should use.

"Of course the main objection is that he's not a Roman," Manius said. "We keep coming back to that one."

"Not born a Roman, no."

"He's Etruscan."

"No, that he isn't," she said, fixing him with a severe glance. "I'm Etruscan; he's a half breed. And if it makes it easier for the Romans to stomach it, he was pretty close to thrown out of Tarchna, if the truth be known."

"Oh?"

"I was allowed to marry him. But the price was exile." It was, in a way, the truth, or close enough.

"But you're Etruscan."

"Of course. But it's Tarquinius, not me, who will rule."

"They say it's a fiction; you'll rule through him."

She laughed. "How likely is that? You've seen him when he doesn't like something I'm doing; you think I rule him? With _his_ temper? And you can see how little he likes Etruscan customs. Yes, if I'd stayed in Tarchna, I'd be a ruler; here in Rome, I'm just a wife, like any other. I weave, I sew."

"And you go to banquets, which no true Roman wife would ever do."

"Perhaps I go to banquets; but I don't _rule_. I don't go to the Forum. I don't speak in debate."

Manius shifted on the couch uneasily. "Some people are proposing Marcus Robur as king after his father."

"He's a true Roman," she said, and knew immediately she'd said it that it had been a mistake – that she hadn't managed to keep the acid out of her voice. True Roman, she thought; violent, a pig, and thick-headed, and thought women should be silent, except in bed. (And probably in bed, too.)

"Men like him. They know what they're getting. Tarquinius is too subtle, too changeable; they're never sure what he will do."

"He'll make Rome great," she said, a little irritable now. "Robur will only keep it the way it is. And besides, electing Robur would create a precedent for the kingship passing from father to son; and once you start that, you know where it would end."

"No."

"An aristocracy. The birthright of the elite. No room for anyone else. Nothing new, ever."

"Everything we came to Rome to avoid." He frowned. "Yet Robur seems so very much a true Roman."

"What is Roman?"

He looked at her blankly, obviously didn't quite understand the import of her question. She let the silence deepen for a moment, then spoke again.

"Romulus was a fatherless man. He even had to steal his wife. Rome is the city of fatherless men; men without a heritage. Rome is innovation. Rome is freedom. The city open to talent, to hard work, to success."

"And to manipulation."

"That too."

He understood now. The Etruscans, the Sabines, the Greeks who'd swapped the sybaritic couches of Neapolis and Syracuse for the hard bread and rough wine of Rome - this was their city, and it always would be. A city where you made yourself, through hard graft or brilliance or a mix of the two, and where kings were made, not born. As for Robur, they'd turn his Roman blood against him; even the true Romans of the curiate assembly wouldn't vote for a king whose power would threaten their own.

Besides, if Robur would ossify Rome, Tarquinius would make Rome great. You could see his work everywhere; the bridge, the salt works, the temple walls rising in what had been marshland by the Tiber, drained by his instigation; causeways that led straight as arrow flight across the wastelands, bringing wine and oil and gold, exporting armies and diplomats. The future shone brightly, like the tantalising sheen of dew on the grass early on a summer morning; you could almost believe you could reach out and grasp it.

Tanaquil saw Manius' face sharpen, thought; he's taken the bait. And perhaps also he'd taken the other bait she'd hidden in reserve, the scent of her bed, the unaccustomed proximity of her body. She noticed he wouldn't look her in the face, though he was normally so candid. But next to her daring in recasting the good Roman as a threat to Rome, playing on Manius' desires was tame, too easy to be interesting.

"And Faustus?"

"A dupe."

***

"Don't be fooled."

"But if it's north-west, it's got to be good. That's what you said." The girl pouted, her eyes sulky under her thick black fringe.

"The north-west is usually a good direction. But look - the sky is clouding over. The wind is getting up. You have to read what's happening; what _might_ be. You can't rely on what's happening now."

"I thought the whole idea was you looked at what's happening now and it _tells_ you what's going to happen."

"The gods don't ever _tell_ anyone anything. You have to find it out."

"You just make it up."

"No. If it was that easy, anyone could do it." The child was making things difficult for her. She wondered if she was wasting her time. "It's not easy to explain, either." Her mind clouded like the sky; she'd lost the limpid openness that let her divine.

"When can I do sacrifices?"

"When you've learned the sky signs."

The girl kicked a spot on the ground with the point of her slipper, scuffing the dust.

"I've told you this before. Sky first, sacrifice afterwards. The sacrifice is a symbol of the sky; the omens work the same way. We'll stop now, anyway." She was getting a headache. Her temper wasn't improved by Tarquinia's look of delight at the ending of the lesson.

"Still trying to teach her augury?" That was Tarquinius; he must have been standing by the door for some time, but she hadn't seen him.

"Just finishing." She put a hand to her neck, rubbing it where the tension was greatest, but she could feel the metallic heaviness above her eyes and knew she could do nothing to prevent the migraine now. Her mouth tasted of thunder, ozone bright.

"You're sure it's wise teaching a girl augury?"

"If the Romans are going to learn augury, then they will have to adopt our other Etruscan customs."

"Like women as augurs."

His voice was sour. She wondered if he was partly driven by jealousy; he'd never had the gift. She'd never believed that the talent was restricted to pure blood Etruscans, as some of the nobles in Tarchna had said, but that saying scratched away at her composure, and it might at Tarquinius'.

"Like women in the streets. Women at the banquet. Women who don't spend their entire time spinning. Women whose minds aren't only full of wool."

"I'm beginning to agree with the Romans about women who speak their minds," he said, but there was no malice in his voice.

"And where would you be without me?"

He grinned. "In Tachna, I suppose."

"These Romans have women priests already, you know that?"

He didn't.

"Mind you, they have to be virgins. Typical of the Romans, really, to give power with one hand and take it away with the other."

"Let them be chaste. What of it?"

"You know a woman's power is never full unless she knows the power of own body. Those priests aren't women, they're girls, unblooded, unbedded."

"Still, they have women priests, if not augurs."

"Priestesses, they call them, as if they're different from priests. Not as good."

"Well, it's a start."

"That it is."

"And Tarquinia? Still showing no talent?"

"She has plenty of talent, when it comes to bitching and manipulation."

"She doesn't take after you a bit, then."

She ignored his provocation. "No talent for augury at all. Definitely takes after her father, I'd say."

"And have _you_ taken the omens recently?"

"Of course."

"Well?"

She sighed, not so much out of exasperation with her husband as out of a desire to let him think that he had exasperated her. You could never let a man think he had you under his thumb; make him feel you were doing him a favour, and you'd always be able to reel that favour back in, some time, when it would do you the most good.

"The signs are good. Etruria is on the rise, and Rome ascendant. Not one or the other, but both, will rise together. But whether that means an Etruscan king for Rome, that I can't say. The auguries are never that direct."

"But you feel..."

"I feel in my blood it will be that way. But I could be wrong. The hidden gods slant their truths. Shapes in the mist, that's all they show us."

They had shown her blood, too; Rome, Etruria, the laurels, blood. Well, there would be blood, one way or another; a sacrifice, a prisoner, a king. Or maybe her own blood, the blood of an augur, that seemed to beat in rhythm to the hidden gods' involuted dance. There were too many meanings to that vision, and she wouldn't risk telling it to Tarquinius; men always used that sort of telling to justify the shedding of blood, and she could guess whose it might be. Besides, she had her own plans for Faustus, which too early a declaration of intent would frustrate; and killing him would set Tarquinius irrevocably against the Old Romans, might even lose him the dignity he so desired. So she bit her tongue, and tasted the blood in her mouth, and thought; so this part of the vision has come true already, the blood, my blood, and may it be the only blood...

"And we could marry her to Robur, perhaps."

She was startled; she hadn't realised she had drifted into the dreamlike space of augury. It was dangerous, if you got too used to it; she thrust it from her.

"Who?"

"Tarquinia. If she's useless as an augur, at least she can marry."

"That pig?"

"You know it would make good political sense."

"Political. Your Greek words. Gods, I hate Greek. It's slippery. Devious. Politics. That's rape, in Etruscan."

"But it would make sense."

"Yes, it would. Sure. Find yourself a rrumach woman while you're at it."

"What?" She'd surprised him with that. She'd surprised herself, come to think of it; things must be falling apart for her to consider life without him. But he wasn't her Lauchme now; Rome had got into his blood, twisting him. She looked at him and saw a Roman, as if all his Etruscan qualities had been bled out or sucked up; a man who thought things bent to your will, instead of insinuating yourself into the flow of things, weaving potentials together like threads of mist. A man who might have understood augury once, but never would now. A man who was standing, staring at her, his eyes huge and wide and hurt like a child whose father has cuffed him round the head.

"You wouldn't..." he whispered, unsure how seriously she meant the threat; unsure whether she would, as she might.

She smiled, and raised her chin an inch, imperious, looking beneath her lashes at him as if he were beneath her; which, she thought, he was.

"I desire to be Queen of Rome; not a slave of the royal household. And my daughters shall be queens, too, and not playthings for destructive children."

She could see the relief in his eyes. If he thought it was only the prospect of ruling that bound her to him, so much the better.

"Only one voice opposed my candidacy. Only one voice in the whole Curiate assembly."

"Faustus," she said. He nodded.

"Others think the same as he does," she mused. "But they won't speak. They're too cautious. They'll let him make the running... he can draw the lightning, while they hide, and wait their time." She turned on her heel, about to go, but then half turned back, to look at him. "Robur was there?"

Tarquinius nodded.

"And he said nothing?"

Slowly, Tarquinius nodded again.

Tanaquil said nothing, but she allowed one eyebrow to rise very slightly. Her smile suddenly looked not more secure, but more cruel; she knew, now, that Tarquinius would reign, and through him, she would rule.

***

The whole of Rome turned out to see the king invested; or at least, the men, and a few brave women. You could spot the Etruscans not just from the varied bright colours of their clothes, Tanaquil thought, but from the presence of their women, their hair piled high and unhidden by veils. Crowds thronged the slopes of the Capitoline; in their grey cloaks and dirty white tunics they reminded her of dingy sheep. The white heifer stood ready for sacrifice, garlanded with flowers, her horns shining with gilt. Above her, the curule chair had been set up on the terrace overlooking the forum; Tarquinius moved easily as his made his way to it, turning to call to a supporter in the ranks of the Faliscans. She remembered old Ancus Marcius' rigid march, so different from her husband's fluid movement, and smiled sadly; he'd been a good friend, the old man. She'd keep his secret.

But now she had work to do. Looking up, she saw Tarquinius had sat down. Their eyes met; he smiled. As the rex sacrorum stepped forward at the heifer's head, Tanaquil rose from her seat, and went to join him.

She could hear the angry whispering of the Romans, the excited chatter of the Etruscans. Only the Faliscans stood silent. The rex sacrorum looked at her in confusion.

"Carry on," she said.

He took the cup from his assistant, and sprinkled the heifer's head with wine; it ran between the beast's eyes, swirling on the rosette of her forehead, trickling down to her soft nose. Giving the cup back to his boy, and taking another vessel, he threw grain and salt with a flick of his wrist, so that it fell on the animal's hairy back. The salt glittered in the air as it flew; Tanaquil found she was biting her lip.

"Shall I?" said the assistant.

"Be it so," replied the rex.

She looked up; the sky was undiluted blue. Sun shimmered through her eyelashes. She didn't see the executioner swing his hammer at the heifer's head; but she heard the sound of the impact, the thrashing animal falling to her knees, the splash of blood as the priest drew the knife across her throat. She should be used to it by now, the bloodiness and the pity of the death.

They were already butchering the animal when she stepped forwards to take the augury. Plunging her arms into its soft insides, she felt for the liver. The earth was already soaking up the fresh blood; the hem of her skirt was stained with it, red on white. There it was, her hands recognised the shape and the density of it. She lifted the organ high; blood trickled down her arms, tickling on the skin. It was well shaped, healthy; she breathed in deeply. There could be no doubt any more; Tarquinius was the rightful king.

All she had to do now was place the liver on the altar, with the heart and the other organs, for burning. But Faustus was pushing through the ranks of the priests, his face dark.

"Let me see it! I demand to see it! We have a right to know the augury."

Two of the priests were trying to pull him back; no one seemed to know what to do. The rex sacrorum raised his hands as if to apologise; his palms were red. Some of the Romans were shouting in support of Faustus; others were silent, shocked at the sacrilege. Tarquinius, she saw, was leaning forward, though he had not risen from the chair; she caught his eye, and winked quickly. She hoped he'd seen; she hoped no one else had, or if they had, that they'd thought she was simply blinking at the strength of the sun.

Turning, she met Faustus face to face, stepping inside his reach, right up against him. He didn't flinch; give him his due, he was brave. Stupid, wrong, but brave. Somehow that made her even angrier. She needed to show him the liver, though; needed to show him that the augury was a good one, to quiet the rumours he'd seed through Rome like weeds if she didn't. But she didn't have to give way gently. Besides, he was the first to breach protocol. _Be it so_ , then.

Raising her hand, she dashed the liver into his face.

# Master

He didn't know how he knew, he didn't know when he'd been told, but for as long as he could remember he'd known that Velx was the oldest of the Etruscan cities. It was Etruscan now; it was Etruscan as far back as the times of the men who knew no iron; it would always be Etruscan.

It was a city proud of its traditions; it was still a city for fine bronze working, only now, sometimes, the details might be inlaid with iron. It was a city of proud aristocrats; that excluded him, son of a renowned but ignoble warrior.

He never really knew his father. By the time of his first memories, his father had been a broken man; a spear wound in the side had left him crooked, and his breath wheezed. People told him, later, that Arnth had been a great fighter, that he'd held the bridge across the Fiora alone against three men of Cisra; but all he could remember was the pink eruption of that great scar, and that whistling in-breath, bubbling exhalation. By the time he was six, his father was dead.

His father's estate was modest, but it was just enough for what he needed; armour, a pair of horses, time. From the age of eleven, he was preparing for war; his father's name, at least, was good for something, and got him taken on in the household of a retired general. He couldn't aspire to the kingship, but he might rise as far as master of horse; or he could, if he made a name for himself soldiering, acquire his own men. Then he'd be able to fight for any city that would choose him. He'd seen how the general lived, and it was something to aspire to (though in the night sometimes he seemed to hear that whistling breath again, and wondered whether it was that, and not riches, that lay in his future as it did in his past).

He couldn't remember when he'd stopped calling the general 'general', and had started calling him Master Tute, and then, eventually, Vel Tute, and finally Vel. His place in the household was ambiguous; he was a student, and he was an extra pair of hands around the place when anything needed doing; a general in the making, perhaps, and at the same time a boy not yet grown up.

He remembered the day he'd arrived.

"This is the boy," his mother said.

The general looked at him; strode slowly up, with that jerky, too-tight gait horsemen acquired after a while, and looked at him again, closer.

"Can he ride?"

"No," his mother said.

"Can he use a sword?"

"Not really."

"I'll take that as no. Can he gut a chicken?"

"Yes. And he can manage an axe, for chopping wood."

"Good." The general stretched the word out as if he were still thinking whether it was true or not; gooo-ood. Then he slapped the boy (and ever after, he was 'boy' or 'the boy', until he earned another name), and said, having made his decision; "He can stay, then. He'll be useful. And if he manages to learn anything when he's not hard at work, he's welcome to it."

His mother looked unimpressed. She'd known that might be all they would get; even so, she seemed disappointed, and as if sensing this, the general lowered his voice a little, and said; "I might see if I can get him into a decent unit, when he's older, if he shows any talent."

Later on, when he had his own command, the Master would say to his men; "I grew up shovelling shit in the stables;" but that wasn't quite true. He was jack of all work in the household; fetching and carrying, mostly, getting water from the cistern, grain or beans from the dried stores, lugging a fresh amphora of wine in from the storehouse. He helped to butcher the pigs; not killing them himself, but pulling out the long strings of intestine for sausage casings, washing the stinking things and scraping them clean. It was his task to mix the crushed grain into the basinfull of blood and stuff the sticky mixture into the skins for black pudding; it was his job, usually, to sweep the courtyard.

Those first few years, he wasn't given much free time. Even in the evenings, he'd often be called to serve at a banquet, though he usually left before the wine drinking really started, after the sweets had been set out on the tables. Every so often, one of the retainers would remember he was supposed to be learning something, so the boy would be taken out to the back field and thrashed with a wooden sword till he fought back, or made to run laps till his lungs burned and his legs cramped.

After his first couple of years, his mother came to see him. Or rather, she came to see the general; it was a formal meeting, and though he wanted to run to her, to hold her in his arms, he had to stand at a distance as she discussed him with the general almost as if he hadn't been there. Was his work satisfactory? Yes. Was his physical development satisfactory? Yes. Was his attitude satisfactory? Well... yes.

"So you'll be keeping him on?"

He'd not known there was any doubt of it. Now he realised how tenuous his situation had been. It was not an easy feeling. He waited in fear for the general's dismissal.

"He's useful enough." Not 'yes', he noted; it was a grudging acceptance. But it was an acceptance, at least.

After that interview he was relieved of some of the basic tasks; one of the retainers had to sweep the yard in the mornings, and spat after the boy when he saw him taking himself off to his exercise. Now, the general saw to it that one of his men was responsible every day for giving the boy his training; riding every second day, sword and spear on the others.

He'd expected his mother to be there for his third lustrum, his coming of age. She never came. He spent four days sulking.

The next day, there were two new horses in the stables. They were small, round horses with rough hair and uncombed manes, looking nervous and unused to the noise of the household.

"Careful, he kicks," the stable lad told him.

"They look a bit rough. The general's usually a better judge of horseflesh than that," he said.

"They aren't the generals, I don't think." The lad scratched behind his ear. "Came in yesterday. Dunno what for."

It wasn't till the afternoon that he found out. The general called for him, and he went gladly, thinking his mother would be there; something must have delayed her. But he was careful not to run; you didn't run, not in this household, unless you wanted to be shouted at, or known for a child. You didn't show emotion, either, unless you wanted to be teased; so he walked steadily, and showed no enthusiasm.

When his mother wasn't there, he showed no disappointment, either.

"You'll be wondering why I asked for you, no doubt."

"Sir." No need for yes or no. There never was, when the general asked that kind of question. He wouldn't pay any attention to your answer, anyway.

"Right. First. It's time you started learning tactics if we're going to make an officer of you. I'll want you here, every day, straight after the midday meal, and look sharp."

"Sir."

"And secondly. Your mother sent two horses for you. I understand they're rather raw. Completely untrained, in fact. So that's a job for you."

"Sir." He controlled himself with difficulty; he didn't know whether to feel more embarrassed at the poor quality of the horses his mother had sent, or excited at the prospect of training his own horses. Then he remembered his remark to the groom, and flinched with shame.

"Now then, I don't want you neglecting your training sessions. You'll join the men for the sword drill next eight-day, instead of taking your lessons with Karkanas; you're good enough to hold your own, I think, and if I'm wrong, you'll soon learn."

"Sir?"

"What is it?"

"May I... well, do the..."

"Out with it, boy. If it needs to be said, say it."

"Tack, sir. I don't know if my mother sent any tack with the horses?"

"Well if she didn't, ask the lad to sort some out for you. And if you want some help with training you can ask him, too. Nobody else, mind. And remember; no horsetaming till your work's done. Right. You can go."

"Sir," he said, feeling he would burst in a moment if he didn't get out of the room. He walked to the door, keeping his shoulders back and his back straight; but as soon as he was in the yard he looked around, and as there was no one there, allowed himself a hop and skip of joy.

***

It took the edge off his pride, though, when he remembered what he'd said to the stable lad. Best to put a brave face on it? He looked at the lad's wry face; he must have been with the general for years. You couldn't tell how old he was from his thin face and wiry body, but he'd seen a few things in his time. You couldn't put one over him; it would be best not to try.

"Those horses. The ugly ones."

The lad looked up, his eyes bright and sharp. "Mm?" He was sucking on a cornstalk; he never took it out of his mouth.

"They're mine. Apparently."

The lad nodded. He wasn't making this easy.

"Well, they're still ugly. But I suppose they might improve with training."

The lad looked levelly at him, and shrugged. "If it's all you can get," he said, and shrugged again. "You got to train them?"

"When I can get the time."

"Ah." The lad rolled the straw around at the corner of his mouth, his cheek hollowing as he sucked at it.

"I could do with some help." That wasn't right. "I'd be grateful if..."

"Yeah," said the lad, "You would." He turned his back, and walked down to the end of the room; started poking about in a heap of old harness and cloths. There was a stink of rancid olive oil and rubbing alcohol.

The boy thought he'd been dismissed. He stood there a moment, uncertain, wondering whether he should have gone already, taken the hint and walked out, when the lad spoke again.

"You want to try them on the long rein first. Before you put anything on their backs, get them used to the rein first. You'll be needing this."

It was a long strip of oiled leather, soft and blackened with use. The lad held it out, flicking it a little with his wrist to make it curve and whip about in the air.

"Well, take hold, boy." The flickering coils flashed towards the boy's face; he grabbed for it with both hands, managed to catch the thin strip with one finger tightened against his palm, felt the sting of the leather as it snapped against his hand. There's always pain, he thought, even when you're happy there is pain.

He looked up. The lad was grinning at him, a lopsided grin as if one side of his mouth didn't quite work.

"That was well caught." As the lad smiled he showed one tooth was missing. "Name's Rasce, by the way. And you can clean your horses out yourself tomorrow."

***

Then it was months training the two horses on the long rein in the soft dust behind the house, getting them to walk in circles, and to trot, and to canter collectedly, till they were settled and equable. And if the boy had thought his days of servitude were over once he no longer had to fetch and carry for the kitchens, he'd been wrong; he had to lay sand down on the training ground after rain, so it didn't get muddy; he had to fetch the hay for his stabled pair, the feed for them, to bandage their knees with liniment sodden rags, to see to their feet and their grooming. Then there was the sword drill, and the five-mile run, and if he had any time left he might actually manage to get the horses tacked up for training before the sun was too high; then of course at midday there was his session with the general, so that, already physically tired, he was struggling against somnolence for the whole lesson, feeling his eyelids growing heavier all the while he was listening to the general talking about the right formation of the Greek hoplites, or watching him move the knucklebones about his table to show the disposition of a cavalry battle.

But it wasn't for lack of interest that he felt himself growing weary; he began to see beyond the rote moves of the sword drill to how you might use men in a fight, to feint, or to hold, or to cover an excape route. You could use a phalanx to smash your way through the enemy; or you could push a few men forward to draw your enemy out, then reap a bloody harvest with the charging cavalry. He saw each movement of the drill now redolent with new meaning, as if he'd looked down on a dead landscape and suddenly the sun had shone from behind a cloud, filling it with highlights; when he stepped forwards now with a spear, he saw in his mind's eye the whole phalanx pushing on against a bridgehead; when he stepped back, an orderly retreat. Yet it was difficult, even so, to fight against the fatigue that threatened to overcome him.

He never missed his time with the horses, though, even when he could feel the grit in his eyes from lack of sleep. He started them on a long rein, walking them gently, letting them settle, so that he could feel the pull of their mouths against the bit. At first they pulled against him, throwing their heads from side to side; then, as they became used to his touch, they bowed their necks into the bit, rounding their bodies and tightening their stride.

Once they would walk in a loose circle on the rein, he started to make them turn tightly to left or right. The first time he tried this, they sprawled, walking sideways, legs crossed over each other, and one nearly fell as its hooves slipped in the dust. He took them round again, patiently, and as they recognised the command, and began to understand what he wanted, their movements became smoother, the turns tighter.

Sometimes, when they reared, or clipped their front legs with their back feet, he was close to swearing, and he felt the tension in his arms. But he held himself back from striking at the horses, and kept his hands soft on the reins. Patience for him was something hard, harder than anger; to be soft was difficult, but he managed it, and the horses began to trust him.

At last, after several weeks, he had them working well at a walk. He'd worked out their characters through the training; one was looser, bolder, less disciplined, while the other was more tame to the bit, but more easily spooked - it would try to jump the shadows, flinch or even rear if it caught sight of a piece of cloth fluttering or a person it didn't know. It was this horse - 'Flighty', he'd named it - that he decided to trot first. Coaxing it with a click of his tongue, he took it up to a trot, round and round in the soft sand, watching it settle into the rhythm, its muscles firm, shining in the sun.

"Not bad. You could improve it a bit, but it's not bad."

It wasn't till he heard that flat voice that he realised Rasce was sitting on one of the grain sacks, watching. He had no idea how long the lad had been there; he'd not been there when he started, he was sure of that. He glanced back, not moving his head, but finding he could just see the lad out of the corner of his eyes.

Suddenly his hands felt empty, then the rein pulled tight against his left hand; he'd let his attention wander, and the horse was spooking, swerving as a tiny dust-devil blew up the dirt. He felt the sweat spring up on his skin then as he flushed - stupid to be caught out the very moment he realised the lad was watching, but wasn't that always the way? - but keeping his hands gentle, he reined the horse's head in and down, feeling it come back on to the bit, and settling it back into that easy trot. He didn't look behind him again. Rasce would have noticed, of course; he was bound to.

"You haven't ridden them yet."

"No. I want them more settled first."

"Try them with a blanket first. Get them used to that on their backs."

"Thanks. I will."

He eased the horse into a canter then, till it could go sun-wise and counter-wise tightly, and worked it gently till he was satisfied with it. When he finished, the lad had disappeared again, as noiselessly as he had come.

***

Strangely, it was Standfast - as he'd named the other horse - that spooked at the blanket, while Flighty simply twitched a fur-fringed ear a couple of times and snorted at his owner wetly. But they were soon happy to work on the reins with the folded blanket tied to their backs; within a few weeks they were ready to ride.

Then, of course, all hell broke loose; neighing, screaming, bucking, kicking, twisting round, showing their yellow teeth and flaring their blood red nostrils. He tried Standfast first, and was thrown off in seconds; then he realised he'd made a mistake, letting the other horse see what had happened, as Flighty reared as soon as he felt the boy's hand on his withers, and he found himself vaulting into air that was empty except for the flying dirt. Having managed to make a complete circuit of the yard hanging across Standfast's back, arms and one leg on one side and the other leg scrabbling on the other, he felt quite proud of himself until, having finally and clumsily slid off, he realised the lad was leaning against the wall watching him, one side of his mouth twisted up in amusement.

But when Flighty decided to make a dash for the gate to the fields, Rasce moved quickly enough to catch him; and back he came, whispering in the horse's ear and stroking its neck until it was reassured.

"I wouldn't work 'em together just yet." He reached up to pull on the horse's ear; it snorted gently, but stood still. "But you're doing fine." That was the first time he'd ever said a word of approval.

"How long till they get used to being ridden?"

"With me? A day. You'll be doing well to get them both working for you in a week."

The boy groaned. Another week of riding and falling, scrambling to stay on a plunging horse; another week of holding his temper back, reassuring frightened horses although, in truth, he was more frightened of falling than they were of being ridden. Another week of bruises; another week of that dreadful feeling of being cut loose from his own weight as he fell, another week of that awful timelessness in which his heart lurched out of sync with his body and in which he seemed to have for ever to anticipate the jarring impact that would lay another set of black marks on his flesh. (He wondered, when he got up, if dying was like that, a single moment of dread that lasted forever.) The week stretched ahead interminable, dispiriting.

In the event it took him three days. And even then, he knew, there'd be the hard work of making them recognise his commands, the hard squeezing of his muscled thighs or the quick jab of a heel in the ribs. They'd need to be hardened to war - not to be afraid of shouts and screams, of fallen or riderless horses, not to fear the smell of blood or the sound of clashing swords. The harder he worked, the more work there seemed to be done; and even then, he'd not trained them to the chariot. Perhaps, if he made his way as a fighting man, and got his own command - if he survived his first few engagements, and gods knew, even in this more civilised Etruria where human sacrifices were outmoded, and politics a more usual way of solving disagreements than battle, that was never certain - perhaps, then, he might get enough wealth to afford a chariot, and a trained team, better horses than these.

The third day, Standfast was biddable; he stood still to be mounted, walked and trotted as he was asked, quickened and slowed, turned tightly. The boy felt, for once, proud of himself; he'd beaten Rasce's timetable by two days, and though Standfast looked no handsomer than when he'd first seen him, he knew the horse's discipline wouldn't disgrace him. Rasce had told him, once the horses were schooled, he should start riding out in the country, to build their stamina, and the thought of a gallop outside the city held strong appeal in these long days of summer, when the heat lay thick over the house and the dust disturbed by the horses' hooves had a way of getting in his throat.

He walked Standfast a little to cool him, and took him back to the stable. Rasce was leaning on the handle of a fork. From the drops of water still shining silver, not quite yet soaked into the dust, he could see Rasce had just filled the trough the horses shared. It was odd how you hardly ever saw Rasce working; he'd always just finished whatever he was doing, or was about to start, but he was never at work.

He tied Standfast to the rail, and looked over towards Flighty. But he remembered he'd been working a long time with his first horse; and that was after a long arms drill. Time would be getting on. Hoping he still had time, but knowing at the same time that he was deceiving himself, he looked back outside. The sun was nearly overhead; at midday, as always, he had his lesson with the general.

"I've not got much time, have I?"

"You'll want to work that one." Rasce never used the names he'd given the horses, though he never said why.

"I've not got the time."

"You work him. I'll cool him down for you after."

"Would you?"

"Said I would."

He could never remember if he'd said thanks to Rasce; his heart sang as he took his second horse out from the dim stable into the brutal glare of the yard. He could smell the heat; the air burned his nose as he breathed it. Turning the horse's head towards the sun (Rasce had told him about that trick, to stop it spooking at the shadow of its rider), he vaulted on to its back. He was tired; he nearly didn't get his leg high enough, but had to scramble a little to make it. He bit his lip; better wake up. The sun was burning his head, and he blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, then squeezed the horse's flanks gently to urge it forwards.

Walking a sunward circle. The horse's energy was tightly held under him; he could feel its power and discipline through the reins, a connection they'd forged together over these difficult days. Next walking counter-sunwise, turning tightly into the new path; giving the appearance of ease, despite his tiredness. The horse was fresh, ready to trot or rear, but he held it back, pacing it. Looking down, he saw his hands were turning red, raw with the sun.

Lifting his head again, he loosened the reins a little, and clicked his tongue to encourage Flighty into a trot. That was easy, but the horse wanted to go faster, and he tightened up the reins a little, feeling the horse pull against him and shake its head a couple of times before it settled again. Four circuits, and then he asked the horse to make the turn, and go sunward again. Flighty's ears went back; and suddenly the horse was sticking its head down, and kicking out, and since he was already sitting aslant, the horse's shoulders already turned into the corner, he had no way of stopping himself falling forwards, hitting the ground awkwardly and rolling over one shoulder.

At least he'd had the presence of mind not to let go of the reins; and Flighty, having made his feelings clear, was now standing placidly, his head down, relaxed. But the fall had winded him; he sat there a while, trying to get his breath back, and flexing his shoulders gingerly to see whether he'd broken a collarbone. Rasce had warned him this was the commonest injury; most riders suffered it once or twice in their careers. But although the shoulder he'd landed on ached, he couldn't feel any grating of bone, or any sharper pain.

"Boy!"

He would have jumped upright then if he could have, hearing the imperious voice; but as it was he had to put a palm on the ground in front of him and push himself up, turning painfully as he rose to see the general standing, looking down at him.

"You're late."

The sun was, indeed, beginning to decline; it was past mid-day. He'd lost track of the time while he'd been walking Flighty. He couldn't think what to say; the general never accepted apologies, and no explanation could excuse him.

To his surprise, the general reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"You're not hurt?"

"No, sir."

"Good. You'll do all right, I think."

"Sir?"

"I have a mission for you."

This was exciting. A raid? A skirmish? A message to be taken? The boy stood a little straighter, the adrenalin taking the edge off the pain he still felt from his fall.

"I have a dinner organised for this evening. You're to come. I'll need you."

That was strange, but the boy's mind raced; was he needed to spy on the guests, perhaps? Or to be there as a guard for the general?

"I've invited a certain Ramtha. You'll look after her. She likes boys. Amuse, entertain, give her as much wine as she wants. And anything else."

He wasn't sure what response the general wanted. Nothing came to mind. He stood, looking stupid and knowing it. So this was the mission, to let the general pimp him out to some middle-aged matron, part of his favour bank. His eyes smarted, and he could feel the beginnings of a headache.

"Any questions, boy?"

He hadn't.

"Better scrub up then. You look as if your horse dragged you across the yard." The general stopped, looked him up and down. "Come to think of it, it did, didn't it?" He laughed briefly, squeezed the boy's shoulder with his hand.

"You'll do. You know I had a bet with Rasce you'd have them trained properly in four days. Reckon I'll win."

With that, the general turned, and strode away, leaving the boy feeling the ache in his bruised shoulder where that powerful hand had clamped down.

***

The party didn't really start till the shadows were already gathering, though servants had been preparing the tables and couches all afternoon. The boy still ached, though he'd massaged away the worst hurts with warmed oil. His hair was newly plaited, and tied loosely at the back of his head, falling in braids down his back; one of the household women had brought him a fresh white tunic, and a plain blue tebenna that he'd slung over one shoulder.

The general hadn't told him much, but he'd been given more detailed instructions by the major-domo. He should join the other servants, to start with; his particular duty would be pouring the wine. One of the girls was in charge of watering it appropriately; watered to taste at the start of the evening, it would grow progressively more dilute, he knew, as the guests became more inebriated. The general was smart like that; or at least, he employed smart servants. He was smart enough to drink his own wine unwatered, too; his feats of drinking had been legendary when he was still only a fighting man.

"If anyone takes a fancy to you, you join them," he was told. But the major-domo didn't mention anyone in particular, and he wondered whether the general had taken him into his full confidence, or whether his bluff manner concealed a plot within the plot, things hidden even from the high servants of the household.

When he arrived, most of the guests were still strolling in the atrium, only a keen few already sat or sprawled on the couches in the dining room. He noticed the general, usually so sparingly dressed, had put on a huge golden brooch to fasten his tebenna, instead of his regular bronze clip; the tebenna was proudly striped with the purple of rank. He could identify a couple of guests as regular visitors, one older man with grizzled, tightly curled hair, and another whose eyebrows had gone white while his hair remained dark; both military men of the general's generation. There was a middle-aged woman, running a little to fat, and a younger woman with her whose arms and ankles glistened with thick gold; two younger men trailed them, holding an animated conversation in an undertone, one of them waving his hands excitedly.

Despite his disappointment with the task the general had given him, he couldn't suppress some excitement at the occasion. Simply looking at the amount of jewellery some of the guests wore reminded him what wealth and power those assembled here represented; if not the greatest of Vulci, certainly some of the more influential. He was well trained to impassivity, though; not letting his eyes wander, he moved with the ease of the athlete to his station,

where he could see the girl already mixing the wine in the huge krater. He looked down at the dark purple surface of the wine, so dark it hardly reflected the sun.

"When do I serve the wine?"

"When they ask for it. Now, if they want."

He waited while she filled the oinochoe. What did we do before the Greeks taught us how to drink, he wondered; did we belt it unmixed from horns like the Celts? Supporting the bottom of the heavy jug on one forearm, he stepped forward.

"Here. Here, boy."

The man who'd called him was already sitting on the end of a couch. Next to him, a chubby man with scant wisps of blond hair reclined, laughing at what seemed from his expression a rather cruel joke. The sitting man held out his wine-cup.

"Not too much mixed, is it?"

"It's quite dark, sir."

The man squinted at it. It seemed to pass inspection; he tossed it back quickly, then held his cup out for a refill.

"I have to ask. Tite Avle's hospitality is renowned..."

"... not in a good way," the fat man said, and laughed, before holding out his own cup.

The other guests were coming in now, and he was busy for a while; he had to refill the oinochoe twice before all the guests were served, and he realised he'd forgotten how many cups the first guests had had already. Not that anyone had asked him to count their drinks, but he had a feeling that he ought to know; the general might ask him later, and in any case, he'd want to be told if any of them showed signs of getting too drunk. He had only a moment's respite; someone roped him into serving the first dishes, roasted birds and sweet fruit-scattered breads.

As he passed one of the couches to set down a dish of quail, he felt hands brush his thighs. Embarrassed, he thought he'd walked too close; but when he passed next time with the wine, he felt it again. He turned to see who it was; some old woman, he thought, spoiled with soft living. But it was a young woman; older than him, perhaps in her mid twenties. Her black hair was intricately curled, her cheeks reddened with powder. He saw that she'd drawn black lines around her eyes, which shone brightly. She doesn't need to, he thought; she'd be beautiful without it.

"He'll be master of the horse before he's finished, you know." The general had reached out to grip his wrist tightly, pulling him across the young woman's couch, making him stand directly in front of her.

"Very talented with the horses. You know I won a bet with my own head lad over him, don't you?"

"You did mention it." Her voice was sweet but mixed with an acid undertone, like honey and vinegar.

"Oh, I did?"

"Anyway, he'll make a good horse trainer."

"Oh no, he'll make master of the horse all right. He's clever."

"Clever with horses."

"Greek-style clever. Tactics, that sort of thing."

"Oh." One eyebrow raised delicately, she pouted at the general. "Tactics, hm? What about politics?"

The general's mouth tightened for a moment. "That's more your sort of thing, Ramtha, isn't it?"

She smiled grimly. "Master of the horse. How delightful. So, Master. Pour me a cup of wine." She held her cup out towards him, deliberately holding it just short of where he could easily reach it, so that he had to bend forwards to take it. He could smell her perfume, a strong and unusual scent - not floral, as the fashion was, but rather spicy and bittersweet. It reminded him of those citrus fruit the general had bought from a Phoenician trader one winter, in an unusual burst of extravagance; small orange fruit, whose skin burst with strong smelling liquid on to your hands if you squeezed them. He'd never seen them again.

The general had let his wrist go, and he was about to straighten up after pouring her wine, but she refused to take back the cup.

"I think the Master of the horse should rest, if you can spare him." She was speaking to the general, deliberately ignoring him, her head turned to one side. Her nose was sharp, her eyes brilliant; only a slight sulkiness about the mouth spoiled what might otherwise have been a beautiful profile.

"I suppose I can spare him for the night." The general turned, beckoned another servant with a slight upwards tilt of his chin; his staff were well trained, none of them needed a shout or a clap of the hands to bring them to him. The boy winced as he remembered how the general had had to shout at him that afternoon; that shouldn't have happened.

The woman patted the couch beside her, turning her head to smile at the boy. He set the oinochoe on the table and sat obediently at the head of the couch; she stretched lazily, lifting one leg slightly and running her foot up the couch as if stroking it. There wasn't much room; he had to sit tightly up against her, his body against the arm she leant on. He was surprised by the warmth he could feel through his tunic.

"Sometimes I wonder if I need a master," she said, turning so that she could look up at him through thick, dark eyelashes. In another woman it might have been conquettish, he though, or ludicrous, but she could get away with it; more surprising, the general was letting her do it. He must want something badly, the boy thought.

"She's taken a shine to you, eh?"

He was too embarrassed to answer the general's question, but that didn't seem to matter; the general just laughed, picked up his wine, and sank a cupful in one swallow. The boy reached for the oinochoe, but the general had already grabbed it before he got there.

"Leave it, boy." The general's voice was dark with wine already. "You'll have your hands full with Ramtha."

Despite her louche opening, Ramtha was surprisingly easy company once they got into conversation; she'd had her fun with him, and having put him neatly in his place could afford to relax, like a cat with its paw placed on the mouse that it had finished playing with, but wasn't letting go. She proved surprisingly knowledgeable about some aspects of war, too, wanting to know how the hoplite phalanx operated, how infantry warfare differed from the old tradition of chariot skirmishing. He explained how they formed a wall with their shields, how the tight body of the phalanx could advance against looser formations, or hold ground against a cavalry attack, and he saw how even though she adopted the aristocratic pose of disinterest when others were watching, her eyes were keen and bright.

After a while, though, she began pressing wine on him, and he realised he was beginning to lose count of how much he'd drunk. It should have been well watered by now, but it tasted strong, full of tannin that clung to his teeth; he was becoming warm with the slight madness that drink always brought, and aroused, too, as she pressed her side against his. He could feel her breasts through the thin linen of her dress; that didn't help him think straight.

Then she started talking to him about the latest fashions; not something he knew much about, in this household of men, and though of course he noticed some of the better looking women, he wasn't so much concerned with what they wore as what they might look like without that covering. (Better not to think about that, now; he took a mouthful of wine, thinking it might cool his head, and of course it did nothing of the sort.) She took the hem of his blue tebenna in her fingers; it was nice cloth, she said, soft and well woven, but the colour wasn't quite... more saturated shades would suit him better. Looking round, he could see that several of the guests were wearing bright reds and deep orange.

"Like that red?" he ventured.

"I was thinking of purple."

"But only generals can wear purple!" he blurted, then felt his mouth twitch as he realised he'd spoken too loudly. The fat blond man had turned to look at him, frowning; he didn't dare look at the general.

"Precisely," she said, patting him on the knee. "You'll have to earn your purple, master."

***

To his great surprise she didn't seduce him that night, but left with one of the older men; husband? Father? Or merely a political ally? He wondered. Sourly he speculated that she'd only used him to get herself in the mood, and had left with someone wealthier, more useful, more of her own class. One of those young aristocrats, willowy and soigné. For a moment he detested his muscular body, the corded bulges of his biceps, the solid strength of his thighs.

To his greater surprise, the general caught his hand and pulled him back as Ramtha rose, saying "Stay" as if to one of his hounds. The party was winding down; some of the guests wandered into the atrium to enjoy a last few cups of wine under the stars, one was snoring gently on his couch - he'd be picked up later, and put to bed in a spare room, if he didn't get up of his own accord - and a couple of the older men had already come over and said their farewells to the general. He heard a muffled giggle from a dark corner, where two of the guests appeared to be sharing a cloak against the cooler night air. Best not to look too closely. These things happened.

He sat, feeling at a loose end suddenly; all night he'd been pouring wine, or setting food out, or entertaining Ramtha, and suddenly he was without a task to occupy him. The general was chatting to a guest on his left, a conversation the boy felt deliberately excluded from; he was required only to sit, to wait. He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself; he felt coiling distress in his stomach, realised he'd had far too much to drink.

Most of the torches had been extinguished when the general finally rose.

"Come with me," he said, not even bothering to turn his head back as he strode off to see whether the boy was following. He stumbled slightly on the left side; an old war wound, perhaps, or perhaps the effect of the drink he'd taken on board, though his speech was as clear and brusque as ever. He led the boy straight to his own chamber; looked around for a moment, as if concerned there was no one else there, and then sat heavily on the side of his bed.

"Gods. These parties." A deep sigh. Then he raised his head quickly, looked at the boy, and said, "Report."

A moment of confusion, then the boy realised what the general wanted. It was Ramtha he'd had to keep his eye on.

"She talked about the hoplite formation, sir. She wanted to know how it worked. I think she did really want to know; she wasn't just asking me to be polite." He stopped for a moment, aware he'd started swaying backwards and forwards, to still his body, and to chase a thought that was hovering just beyond his grasp. The general waited, silent. "She did want to know. And I think, I think she understands most of it. The tactics. How to make war."

"And she was flirting with you?"

Had she been? He thought back. The evening seemed garishly coloured when he looked back on it, a swirl of different moments which he could only order by hard thought.

"Only at first, sir. I think at the end of the evening she was trying to get me drunk."

"Interesting." It sounded as if the general was amused. "Why would she do that? You'd be no good to her drunk, after all."

"I don't think she was after ... that, sir. Maybe she wanted me to forget the questions she'd been asking me."

The general nodded slowly, his bottom lip sucked in under his teeth as he gave this statement the thought it required. "How drunk are you, boy?"

"A little, sir."

The general patted the bed beside him, just as Ramtha had patted her couch. The invitation was unmistakable; and impossible to refuse.

Was it a seduction or a rape? He was never sure. He hadn't realised quite what was happening; and he was too embarrassed to demur when he did. The general's breath stank of wine and garlic, yet he never relaxed his control; nor did he speak, just, afterwards, the words "That was good", and he turned over to sleep, leaving the boy to pull the blankets across and make his way back to the servants' quarters.

***

That episode disturbed him for a while. More strange was the way the other men had got to know about the general's prediction that he'd be a master of horse some day. A couple of the older men started calling him "Master", sarcastically, but somehow the name stuck, and within a few days everyone was calling him it. Even the general, which surprised him.

Lessons with the general resumed, as if there had been no interruption in their regularity or the relations between the two. The boy found himself sometimes distracted by flashes of memory - the way a thin line of greying hair ran up to the general's navel, the mole on his left thigh - and he'd feel hot and prickly for a moment, with lust or embarrassment he wasn't sure, before he could wrench his mind back to the subject of the lesson. Increasingly, the general touched on matters of politics as well as military strategy; the relationship between the different Etruscan cities, the importance of the Greek settlers, Karthagos as a possible ally. Once or twice the name of the Rumach was mentioned; a nation that had become troublesome, though inconsequential in the scheme of things.

Then a few months later he saw his first secondment. No action at all, really, just a foot patrol; by now he'd realised that military life wasn't all battles and parades, it was more a matter of holding yourself still and ready, long hours of waiting, or of accurate reporting. Like his detail to look after Ramtha; he never knew what information the general had really wanted, or whether he'd given it him, but it wasn't something he was ever going to know. It wasn't his place to know it.

To his surprise, Rasce came with them; Master, and two of the older men from the household. He hadn't understood what use Rasce could be, without any horses on the detail, and he'd unwisely said as much to one of the other men. "Rasce was fighting before you were born," he was told.

But a day's march further on, as they stopped to make a bivouac for the night, he learned why the lad had come with them; they weren't just patrolling the border lands, but they had a mission to find out the strength of the Faliscan cavalry. As they approached the plains of Capena, they took care to remain unseen, lurking in the hedged boundaries of fields, or staying on forest tracks too narrow for horsemen. They were, technically, over the border now. No fires, no using the same spring for water twice, no noise, and if they were caught, no chance. They were to bed down in the dirt, two men keeping watch while two slept; though it was plain summer, the night was cold, and Master woke five, six times, feeling the hardness of the earth under him numbing his side. He must have slept, but it felt as if he'd spent only a minute each time in sleep, and most of the hours in waking, or trying desperately to fall back again into senselessness. In the morning, though he stretched his muscles and massaged his legs into feeling, he still felt stiff and unwieldy.

"Are we in enemy territory, sir?" he'd asked.

"They're not enemies," the captain told him.

"But they might as well be," his second added.

"If we just strolled in, we'd be okay."

"Without arms. Without helmets. Yes, we'd be fine."

"But we're not going to."

"No, we're not."

They lurked for a week on the edges of the plain, living off the dried fruit and seeds in their packs, too careful to light a fire. The nights got no easier; he was ragged with sleeplessness, and felt empty, light-headed with fatigue and hunger.

Then one morning they saw five chariots out on the plain. "Wish me luck," Rasce said, and wriggled forwards, out of the safety of cover.

"How the hell... he'll be run over!"

"No. Look. He's worked out the pattern. They're running manoeuvres. See? This one goes. This one comes back. The same each time. Look! There he goes."

When Master looked, he could see the longer grass just stirred by Rasce's passing.

"They'll stick to the short grass, anyway."

He wondered what they were here for, if Rasce could manage on his own. But that again was something he couldn't ask, and perhaps shouldn't know. Were they there to save him if he was found? Or to show up looking like a regular patrol that had, somehow, got lost in the woods? He thought to himself, if I have my own command, I'll let my men know what's going on.

But Rasce made it back safely, squirming under a low branch before finally sitting up. The front of his body was covered in dust; sticky-burrs and grass seeds had stuck in his hair.

"Nothing new. It's an old pattern," he said.

"The general will be glad to hear that." The captain's voice was even, but his relief was obvious. He wouldn't have to bring bad news.

"They're slack, too. Harness hasn't been cleaned in a while. Chariot axles squeaking. Very slack. And three of the teams are running in young horses. Must have had a few losses recently."

"No sign of the foreigner?"

"What does a foreigner look like?"

"The black."

"No. no sign."

"So it's all a story, then." That was the second.

"Just the fact that we haven't seen him doesn't mean he's not there." A rebuke from the captain. "Still, Rasce tells us there's no new formation. So perhaps..." His voice tailed off.

"New commanders get spit and polish," Rasce said. The captain nodded. "So they do. No foreigner, then. Looks like the Phoenicians aren't doing deals with the Faliscans. That's a relief."

"So we've come all this way to find something that isn't here." The second laughed curtly, a little staccato sound with no mirth in it.

"Correct," said the captain.

***

There were other patrols for young Master that year, and other tasks; running messages for the general, keeping his eyes and ears open, accompanying the general to banquets. He came to know the back entrances to all the aristocratic houses; he carried on a flirtation with the valet of one of the augurs, a young man of delightfully flexible body and even more flexible sexuality; he heard gossip, he heard secrets, he heard what people wanted him to hear, and its shifting counterpoint with the things they hoped he hadn't heard. If Ramtha saw him again, he thought, he'd know more than she did about the latest fashion, and who was setting it.

It was starting to snow next time the general hosted a dinner, and Master was on duty again; that name had stuck, so that if you'd asked one of the younger servants, they would have said they couldn't remember how he'd got the name, or had a hard time remembering it. He knew, this time, that he'd end up sitting next to Ramtha; as soon as she saw him, her nostrils flared and her mouth turned up in a self-satisfied smile.

Outside, the first snow of the winter was drifting down slowly in the still air, making the whole world seem one soft drift of whiteness. In the atrium, the torchlight turned the waters of the pool into dark fire; shattered fragments of ice floated on the surface, like a frosty stain. In the hall, the air was thick with smoke and the smell of lamp oil burning, and the light glared hot and fiery, a defiance to the darkness and the snow outside. It was noisy and close, the sound of voices almost overwhelmingly loud, guests jammed together on the couches; far from the civilised ease and the dainty spaciousness of the summer party. Master felt drunk already as soon as he entered, though he'd touched nothing; he wasn't even holding the oinochoe this time, since he no longer had to serve.

He saw her at once, her hair crowned by a golden diadem, a simple band of tooled gold against her dark curls. As she looked towards him, with that pleased and cat-like smile, he saw the hinged plates of her heavy gold earrings swing with the movement of her head. He remembered the general's hands on him, and flushed, and looked at her hands, long and elegant and beringed with gold and amber, and when he looked up at her he realised his cheeks were burning bright with shame and hope.

She was already chatting to a couple of the older men, the flabby blond one he recognised from the summer, and a bald, skinny man whose head seemed skull-like, his eyes sunk deep, though perhaps that was only a trick of the light or rather the shifting shadows of the lamplit room. It looked as if they'd been discussing something seriously when he arrived, but the conversation quickly lurched off into random shafts and counter-strikes of wit.

"Romans," said the blond with a sigh of disgust. "Good at shagging sheep."

"Any good at shagging women? Or are they like the Hellenes?" skull-face asked.

"I wouldn't know." Ramtha was cool, seemingly unamused. "I don't shag sheep-shaggers." She shrugged one shoulder.

"Their women are supposed to be good at spinning wool." That was fatso.

"They do it a lot; I suppose it comes from the fact that they're all sisters-in-law with the sheep." Skull-face sounded sour, though the blond choked out a small laugh at the joke.

"I don't think I'd want to wear wool," Ramtha said evenly.

"You what?"

"I don't think I'd like to wear wool."

"Too rough for you?" fatso asked. "Too scratchy for your skin?"

"Not quite," she answered. "You never know where it's been."

That had fatso breathless with laughter, wheezing and spluttering. Even the skeleton cracked a smile at that, showing his even two rows of chiselled teeth. Master grinned into his winecup.

"Seriously though..." fatso was trying to keep a straight face. "Seriously though, I think we should keep an eye on them."

"In case they fancy your sheep?" Master asked, then realised no one was laughing any more.

"In case they fancy our city," Ramtha said.

"They seem to fancy themselves, anyway." That was skull-face, his face grim again. "They've started taking over some of the nearer towns. Always grabbing."

"They let Alba Longa well alone." Ramtha was serious now; she'd let Master's hand fall, and was leaning towards skull-face. "So either they're playing a long game there, letting the Albans fight on their side against the other Latins and weaken their army by doing so, for an eventual takeover; or we're wrong about their expansionist policies."

"I don't think we're wrong. Have you ever spoken to a Roman?"

"Roman?"

"Rrumach, Roman, that's what they call themselves. Ever spoken to one? I have. They don't see the world our way. They came from nowhere, or from everywhere, and they see the whole world as simply a blank, something for them to carve their names on. Everything that isn't Roman is there for them to conquer, and their whole life is made of struggle and conquest."

"That's only because they're outlaws, because it's a young city. They'll soon find out about the delights of wealth; and when they start eating, and fucking, and hoarding their gold, we'll know they're not a threat any more."

"I'm not so sure. All their stories are about violence; the sacrifice of the sons, the killing of the fathers. It's wired into them. If they're not fighting, I think, they just die."

Ramtha frowned. "You've been making rather a study of them, Laris. Thinking of joining them?"

"Tinia's balls, no! Everything for them is effort. Look at them breaking a horse."

"Breaking?" Master enquired.

"It's what they call training. They try to break the horse's will; so, breaking. Roman wins, horse loses."

"That's insane! How can you trust a horse you've beaten?"

"Maybe insane. That's the way they think, even so. Win-lose, conquer-die."

"It's rather stark, isn't it?" Ramtha asked.

"Stark. Yes. And remember, one of the things they need to conquer is us. A bit scary, isn't it?" Skull-face's attempt at a deprecatory smile was not reassuring.

Fatso decided to start a long reminiscence then about a Faliscan he'd known who told him how the Romans had got started, some story about a virgin who'd had twins; no wonder the Romans were confused about sex, he said, if they thought a virgin could have children, shagging sheep was an obvious next step. And now Fatso had lightened up the conversation, Laris and Ramtha started joking, too, and that momentary discomfort - the shiver down the back, the darkness between the pools of lamplight - had been negotiated successfully. Besides, now the food was coming round, a fine warming stew of dried fruits and slowly cooked meat, and the room was getting more raucous; wild laughter came from a couch in the corner, and from time to time Master heard what was obviously a punchline, and wondered what the joke had been.

It was only later, after some of the guests had already left - early, but pleading the snow as an excuse; it was drifting high now against the courtyard walls, and in the streets it must be thigh-deep, Master thought - that the talk turned serious again. The lucumo had taken on a new adviser; that in itself wasn't startling, but what was odd was the fact that this new man wasn't from one of the noble families, but a trader, son of a woman from Spina and a local farmer.

"Not a drop of noble blood in him," fatso said. (And Master had found, having named him 'fatso' to himself, that this was in fact the name everyone used for him; though once, Ramtha called him Tulumnes.)

"Suspicious," Ramtha said.

"Unusual, certainly," Laris said, "but not suspicious in itself. Still, the lucumo does seem to be taking rather an interest in the lower classes."

"As long as he's not shagging sheep." They all laughed at fatso's joke, but the laughter was uneasy.

"I can see the point of it to some extent." That was Laris, reasonable as ever. "This new man has particular knowledge that is useful."

"If knowing about marshes and frogs is useful."

"He knows about trade."

"Yes, exactly. What does he know about policy or war?" Ramtha was pressing hard.

"Policy and war aren't the only things that matter."

"He's common. You just have to look at his clothes. He can't even tell a joke properly. And he has that thick northern accent." Ramtha closed her nose between finger and thumb, mimicking the marshland dialect of Spina. Master winced; her beauty was spoiled, somehow.

"He's got a good mind." Laris wasn't letting go of his topic. His insistence made his skull-face implacable; there was something uncompromising about him. Seeing she was making no headway with her mockery, Ramtha became serious again.

"Look, these rrumach, you've already told me how they see the world differently from us. Do you think the lower classes are any different? They have no heroes; they aren't individuals, the way we are. There'd be no poetry if they ran the cities. No charioteers, no single combat."

"It was outlaws from the Rasenna cities who founded Rome," fatso added. "Perhaps they're all like that, without the values that make us what we are. Look at the Romans; dull grey people, not a single character anywhere. No sense of greatness. No valour. No bravery."

"I don't know about that," said Laris. "One of my men saved my life at Clevsin, and he was only a herder of goats."

Fatso was silent then, thinking, but Ramtha continued to goad her opponent.

"Would I know his name?" she asked. "Did he become a great warrior, then? Why have I never heard of him?"

"He died."

That faced her for a moment. Then Fatso changed the subject again, talking about the wine; a nice warmed wine, with a little added honey, that he'd obviously had too much of already.

Master was abashed. He detested Ramtha's ideas. Hadn't she been interested in the hoplite phalanx? Didn't she realise that it depended on those low class men, the men she didn't even think were real Etruscans? And he wondered, with a pang, whether that was how she saw him, whether that was the sting behind her naming of him; the master of horse who could never be a master, not even a real man.

Master was careful with his drink that evening, but Ramtha was flying now, drinking the honeyed punch as if it were water. Master looked over to the general; what to do, he wondered; was his job to keep Ramtha sober, or ensure she was satisfyingly pissed by the end of the evening? As Ramtha lifted her winecup again, the general looked straight at him, and nodded; drunk it was, then, and from then on Ramtha's cup was filled before she asked for it, even before it was quite emptied.

"A toast!" She stood up, looked towards the general. "To all valiant men!" She threw the wine down her throat. "May they never want for wine!"

The general stood, extending his winecup to be filled by one of the servants. "To all beautiful ladies! May they never want for men!"

That witticism got a shout of approval from his table. He'd thrown down the gauntlet to Ramtha now, and they matched each other toast for toast, from the witty to the bawdy to the merely silly as they got drunker and the room got rowdier. It was only when Ramtha staggered while proposing her last toast, and her legs buckled once she'd finished it, that Laris leant over to Master, and said softly in his ear, "I'll take her home, if you think it would be best." And Master, having had no instruction to the opposite from the general, nodded his assent.

***

The end of the party was a protracted, shambolic affair. A few of the guests were still dancing in an unsteady line between the tables; every so often one of them would knock a cup or a dish to the ground and the smash would be greeted by cheers or groans, and once by a yelp as one reveller stood barefooted on a piece of broken crockery. One or two lay snoring on couches, while a couple of the younger men were leaning together for mutual support, looking ill as if they'd gone straight from drinking into hangover with nothing in between. A clutch of women were arguing vociferously in one corner; they sounded serious, but you couldn't hear what they were talking about \- it could have been anything, from democracy (that wild new Greek idea) to the himation (another wild new Greek idea) and how to wear it.

The general held a hand out. "If the master would deign to assist the general," he said. Almost everyone else had tired of that joke now, but the general never did, and somehow, Master loved him for it. He was helping the general up when he heard a ragged shout behind him; one of the dancers had managed to turn a table over, and everyone else had fallen over it, or each other.

"Time to go," he said, and the general gave a sort of snort agreeing with him, or perhaps it was just a belch only half suppressed.

He realised, as the general's weight pulled on his shoulder, that the toasts had got him thoroughly soaked. They said the general could hold his drink, but not tonight, he couldn't. He bent to boost the general up, hooking the older man's arm round his shoulders, matching his slower pace.

"Did she talk about... tactics again?" The general's breath came heavily, as if he'd been running hard.

"No. Politics."

"Tell me tomorrow."

He got the general to his bed, and sat beside him for a moment, supporting his sagging body. His breath smelt of stale wine. The general raised a hand, felt uncertainly for the boy's arm, grasped his wrist.

"You know who she is, of course..."

He dribbled a little on to the pillow.

"Dear boy. You were..."

The general's grasp relaxed, and his hand fell back on the bed. He was asleep.

***

The next morning Master went in to see the general as soon as the sun was up. It would be better to help him up privately, before his majordomo found out the state he was in. He got sworn at for his kindness, between bouts of puking; thin bile, stained purple with what wine the general hadn't quite digested, and stinking.

"I'm getting too old for it." He retched again, brought up nothing but a string of spit.

Master saw the general's arm, thin dry skin like the skin on boiled and cooling milk, wrinkling softly. For the first time he noticed the liver spots on the general's wrist, and thought; this is no longer a man in his prime.

"You were tactful last night," the general said.

"It's nothing," Master said. "You needed your bed. I got you there. Any good man would do the same."

"I didn't mean that. I meant with Ramtha. You don't agree with her ideas."

I don't, he thought, but I'm not going to say it. I did what you asked; I humoured her, I listened, I remembered.

"I'm not sure I do, either. Not much place for me in her little world of noblemen."

That was news; the general wasn't noble? He'd always assumed anyone of his prominence would be a member of one of the great families.

"Can't tell how much of it she means, though," the general went on. "Strikes me as a woman who likes to make an effect. Likes to dazzle her men. Doesn't work on me, though, and she knows damn well it doesn't. Did she say anything worth telling me about, though?"

She hadn't. Not this time. But Master knew she would, eventually. And if she did, the general would hear about it.

"You're tactful this morning, too. I know I drank too much. Doesn't agree with me any more. I used to be able to drink any of my men under the table; not any more." He retched again; nothing came out but a foul smelling, bubbling belch.

Master wiped the general's mouth. "There'll be a few more people who have heads on them this morning," he said.

After that, things changed between them; it was as if Master had passed some kind of test. Yet he was still doing the same things; training, running errands, riding his horses out when he had the time. Something, though, had changed. It was like one of those winter days when a cloud passes across the face of the sun and suddenly, where you're standing is in shadow, but across the valley you can see a hill slope prickly with bright sun. And then there was Ramtha; glorious, infuriating, opinionated, grandstanding, beautiful, implacable Ramtha, who became his regular banquet companion but still never yet his lover. She filled his dreams, and when he did find the time to visit the augur's valet, which was less and less often as spring came, and early summer succeeded, he found himself wondering what it would be like with her.

***

Lessons were harder than ever; strategy, politics, and now also understanding of trade and how it affected the affairs of the cities and their rivals. Master had a feeling Ramtha wouldn't have approved of that aspect of his lessons, and he never discussed it with her, though sometimes he heard Laris saying things that were very similar to what the general had told him, and wondered whether they had talked - though he had never seen them together, and never carried messages to Laris' house.

One day, Master had told the general about Laris' statement that his life had been saved by a goatherd. The general laughed sadly. "Yes. And mine. Not the same goatherd, I don't suppose."

"Could you tell me, sir? Was it a war?"

The general smiled. "No. Not a war. It was in Clevsin - a chariot race. I was one of Ramtha's golden youths, you know; one of those heroes who could drive a chariot through the ranks of the enemy without getting scratched. And I did, too. Stupid. Bloody stupid. Chariots though. They do something to you." He fixed Master with his eyes. "You ever driven one?"

Master shook his head.

"You wouldn't know then. It's glorious. Everything is tense; a sprung pole, a lithe axle. You're balanced on a springy leather floor; everything in balance, everything moving. You can feel every rut and pebble under the wheels, every leap and spring and unwinding of the horses' withers. Terrifying. Marvellous."

"You must have been very athletic, sir."

"Maybe. It's not that wins races though. It's cunning and speed of thought. I could spot a hair's breadth of space and angle my way through it, I could see before they moved just how the chariots in front would approach a corner.

"There were four of us that day. When we came up to the second from last turning, I was last. A gap opened up.

"I saw my chance and shot in between the next pair - hubs grinding against each other - just enough space. I came out of that corner in second place. Only one team ahead of me, a driver from Cisra I remember, with matched white horses. Flashy.

"By the next turning. He was turning wide. Worth the risk? I thought it was. I knew how I could win. It wasn't pretty. I caught him broadsides, turning tight, flipping him over. I thought the race was won.

"Then I felt the axle give and the whole chariot tip. They told me afterwards the lynchpin had gone. Perhaps smashed when I went between the last two, or against the turn when I went tight, I don't know.

"I was rolling in the dust, and I felt the reins tightening around me. You always have a knife on you, just in case. But when I went for it, I couldn't find my knife to cut them away, and I was being dragged behind the horses. At least I got myself on my back, but I couldn't last long.

"I never saw Kavie - everything I know, I've been told since. He ran across - under the hooves of the oncoming horses - one of the chariots swerved across the track, the horses spooked - ran across and jumped for the horses, hanging off their necks till he had managed to cut through the reins and I was free, and lying winded on the sand."

He stopped short. Master realised the general was breathless, as if he'd been trapped in the chariot reins one more time, as if he'd been facing a fear he'd thought he'd forgotten. He looked into the general's eyes and saw a beaten man.

"You think you know all about leadership. How to inspire men. You know nothing. Nothing, you hear me? Till you see a man risk his life for you. Everything changes. Everything."

"What happened to him, sir? Did you reward him?"

The general clenched his hands into tight fists. "Yes. I gave him a hero's burial. And I cut the throat of the horse that killed him."

The general closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed out slowly. When he looked up again, his eyes were bright; the tension had drained from his face.

"Boy, will you compete at the games? I'd like you to."

***

Master had both his horses well trained now. He'd made Standfast less stolid, Flighty more reliable, and though they were never going to be thoroughbreds, they both had the authentic energy of the great racer. He'd trained for stamina, but now he pulled them back to a shorter distance, pushing them all out for speed. He worked them both together, vaulting from one to the other in mid-gallop, riding bareback and bridleless and controlling them only with knees and heels, and a slap of the hand against the neck to turn them.

There were games for funerals, and games for triumphs - though those were few, now that the cities no longer fought each other, but were joined in confederation - and then there were the games for the greater feasts, the harvest feast and the midwinter and the summer fires in honour of the hidden gods. He had a month till the midsummer games, and he felt it wasn't quite enough, but he trained hard, and the general had relieved him of all his duties, except for his studies and the horse training.

He couldn't win the main race, he thought; neither of the pair was quite good enough, and the nobles could afford better horses, faster, taller and longer-striding too, which counted for something. But in the two-horse race, practice was more important than talent or birth; jumping from one horse to the other, watching for the other horse's stride, waiting for its quarters to move, catching it right at the bottom of its gait so that you came down to meet its rising. He had a chance at this race, and if he won it, there'd be more games to compete in, in other cities, and perhaps a sponsor for a chariot. He dreamed of driving his chariot in the games at Clevsin; but dreams, like horses, had to be held on a tight rein.

The week before the games, he took the horses out to a patch of marshy ground, and ran them in the soft, feeling their legs sluggish, hearing their heavy breathing. That was something the general had taught him; work them in mud, swim them in the water, build the muscle and the endurance. Then when you run them back on the good ground, they'll be faster. But it was Rasce who told him to do it secretly; "Cover them in mud," he'd said, "and they'll look like carthorses. You've got an advantage there. Laris's boy's got a good chance, but every time he takes that flashy pair of chestnuts out, there's someone watching him."

He wasn't innocent any more, though. Rasce's advice was sound; Master didn't want his opponents knowing how he trained. But he knew Rasce was having a bet on him, too; there was that horse involved that he'd been trying to buy all year, a cobby, deep-chested black stallion that rumour said the lucumo was interested in.

Despite his best attempts at secrecy, though, the last day of training, he became aware there was someone watching him. It started with an uneasy feeling between his shoulder-blades, like when you hear your name, or think you do, in a crowded room, or when late at night you hear a rustle of leaves somewhere that no one should be. He deliberately didn't turn to look, but raced the horses along the flat ground by the stream, out and back, out and back, turning as tightly as he knew how, not stopping. Once, he caught the sight of what might have been a tussock of spiky grass, except he knew there was no grass there. Next lap, it was gone again.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two laps. He slowed the horses to a walk, to the slowest walk he could pull them back to, asking them to walk deep, their necks arched and heads tucked in, to cool down. He still had that uneasy feeling. As they approached the middle of the track, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was barely audible even to him, but they stopped immediately; he could feel the one he was riding rest the foreleg it had picked up, the hoof poised delicately on edge. The other horse shivered, twitched its tail once, and was still.

"You can come out now," he said.

He wasn't surprised to see Rasce straighten up. He knew from that mission in the Faliscan borders that Rasce could wriggle like a snake through the grass. But he hadn't expected to see the general, too, running a hand through his bushy hair to clear the dust and grass stalks from it. The general smiled in that slightly forced, glum way people have who know they are in the wrong, and still hope to get away with it.

Master vaulted off his horse, landing lightly on his toes, letting his knees bend and his body dip before he straightened up.

"Like what you see?" he asked. The general shrugged.

"Dirty bloody carthorses?" Rasce said, and spat, and then burst out laughing.

But on the way back, as they walked together like three peasants coming back from the fields, the general leant towards Master, and tousled his hair.

"Y'know," he said, and paused a moment; "I'm fond of you, m'boy."

***

The games would last two days. The boxing and the wrestling and the swordplay and javelin throwing on the first day, and the horse racing and the chariots on the second.

There was blood. There was always blood. What would the hinthial have to drink if there was no blood spilt? Hands wrapped with leather thongs split scalps, spread noses open; blood spat into the air, spattered the dusty ground. He saw one man, a cut over one eye and a mouth full of blood, spit a red fountain over his opponent, blinding him; it didn't win him the match, for a lucky swing caught him on the ear, stunning him.

Then the wrestlers came, oiled bodies glistening wetly in the sun. They grappled like crabs, four arms, four legs scrabbling sideways in the dirt, turning one way, then the other, till one man managed to flip the other over. Phersu-masked men lurked, green-faced and scowling, to keep order, or drag the injured off the field. Phersu waited for the dead man after the doors of the tomb had closed; and these Phersu too dealt with death, though their huge hammers were now only ceremonial, like the bronze axes of the lucumo's guard. But they still cast a gloomy pall on the occasion; some of the children hissed them, but their parents passed by trying to avoid their glance, and some made the sign of the fig with their fingers to avert the ill fate they represented.

There was no training during the games, so Master had left his horses with Rasce, and came to watch with the general. They'd met Laris, who had a pair running in the two-horse race as well as a chariot sponsored for the next day; the general had asked him about the chariot race, and Laris, caught in the trap, had talked about his chances, his trainer, his driver, and forgotten all about the fact that Master was entered for the paired event till the general proposed a bet it, and then he'd stammered some kind of excuse. Master could see how his eyes turned shifty, flickering about till he saw some acquaintance he could claim to need to join. The general turned to him as soon as Laris' back was turned, and winked, with a cruel, momentary half-smile.

Ramtha was there with a Greek visitor, an aristocrat from one of the southern colonies who called himself Tyrant, whatever that meant, and wore a laurel circlet on his head. His face seemed set in an expression of disdain; clearly the flower of Etruria's athletes meant nothing to him.

"But they're _wearing clothes_ ," he said, with a shudder, as if this was something horrible. Then he used a Greek word Master didn't understand, _unhygienic_. Ramtha asked him to explain; it was something to do with a goddess of housekeeping, but the explanation was too long-winded, and didn't make much sense. What they did find out was that the Greeks competed naked, which appeared to make good sense - less to get hold of in the wrestling, for instance, though Ramtha insisted with a wicked laugh that it left at least one thing you could get hold of for a win to be certain.

Still, the Greeks understood gambling, though the Tyrant didn't seem to have a good grasp of local odds; by half way through the day Ramtha was on a winning streak, the general was on an even keel, and the Tyrant had lost several amphoras of wine and half next year's crop of olives.

The last event was the long footrace, a stamina event that Master would have considered had he not been involved in the horse-race the next day. There were seven men in the field, and two women, one young girl who didn't look old enough to line up, and a tall woman in her mid-twenties who was well muscled and had thrust her hair into a woollen cap to keep it out of the way. (Strangely enough, the Greek was shocked; not at the extreme youth of the girl, who the general thought shouldn't be running this year - she hadn't reached her full growth, she might damage her future prospects - but at the fact that women were running at all. What on earth did women _do_ in Greece, Ramtha asked. Not much, seemed to be the answer.)

The first few laps saw the field bunched up, no one willing to make a move, to go in front, to make themselves vulnerable, to give the others their slipstream. It felt uneasy, all the competitors watching all the other competitors, all the spectators watching for the break; shifty eyes, distrustful. No one was willing to drop back, not knowing how far off the pace they might end up, how much ground they'd have to regain. They ran, fast but not free, constrained by their mutual suspicion.

Then about the fifth time round, not quite two thirds of the way through the race, the older woman broke free, moving into a new more flowing rhythm as if she'd heard a wild music to which the others were deaf. After a second, one of the men followed her - not one of the youngsters, but a veteran, a thickset man who pumped his arms and legs hard, looking clumsy against her fluid style. The two of them moved ahead, opening up a clear space between themselves and the rest of the runners, she ahead, he a few paces behind, him running a stride and a half for every stride of hers.

They came into the last lap with her still ahead, but as they rounded the last turn Master saw a movement out of the following pack; it was the young girl, suddenly surging, picking up her feet and pushing herself forwards. Within a few strides she was making ground on the leaders. The veteran looked behind - fool! Master thought; you look the way you're going, to look behind is to fall behind, a sure way to lose \- and sure enough, his rhythm began to falter. He'd be tired after the pace the woman in front had set, and he'd still never closed the gap on her. Half the distance to go on this last circuit, and the girl had caught the veteran's heels, and now she was past him, and hauling in the leader, as if she had her on a string. The woman in front never looked back, never lost her rhythm, but stride by stride the girl was closing the gap, running with the fresh energy of youth, and the advantage of her easier race with her; so that when they crossed the line, the older woman was just a step ahead.

The two women slowed, jogging to a stop, breathing hard; and then the younger woman took the older in her arms, and kissed her on the mouth, hugging her hard. The veteran, overtaken by a younger man, had taken fourth place; the others were straggling in, as the two women raised their arms in the air, and their voices in a scream of triumph.

In that moment, Master looked at the two women, and knew what he wanted from life; he wanted to win.

The older woman had taken off her cap and was shaking her hair loose when the general approached to congratulate her. "Second time you've won, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, but I lost last year. To one of your men, I remember." She was still stretching her legs out, paying half attention to him, bending to take her ankle in her hands and push the foot straight out.

"And the second girl. Not bad. But too young to run, I would have thought. Only looks fourteen. Never like to see anyone in the long distance much before fifteen."

"She's fourteen. But it's her last chance to run against me. I'm retiring next year, so I told her if she wanted to, do it now."

"Your lover?" the general asked, casual and polite.

"My daughter."

***

The two-horse race was the second to be run on the second day of the games, after the single horse race and before the chariot races. The sun had risen unclouded on low mists, but the ground was still firm, with no give in it. It would be a fast race, Master thought, as he walked the course that had been laid out, a long straight, unlike the loop of the chariot course with its tight turns.

He'd already been to the stables, before sunrise, wanting to groom his horses; but Rasce, seeing his nervousness, had thrown him out. Rasce would do it, instead; there was no point Master transferring his nervousness to his mounts. "Go and walk the course," Rasce had told him; and he had obeyed. He was the only living thing on the field, except a solitary crow that was picking over the debris from the day before.

Time seemed to be running slow; he paced the course with his back to the sun, yet when he'd reached the end of the course and turned around, the sun had still not fully risen, its lower edge still bleeding liquid gold into the level of the horizon. The crow hopped twice, fluttered its wings, settled again to its inquisition. He wanted to shout, to run, to hit something; instead he forced himself to calm. He felt, suddenly, the pressure of Rasce's and the general's expectations, the need to impress Ramtha with victory, the weight of the bets that had been made on him. He tried not to think about it; and realised of course that trying not to think about it had made his thoughts even more obsessed with it, and his mind was circling, looping back, and again he had to still himself by breathing deeply and feeling his breath, feeling the sharpness of morning air in his nose and its burning in his lungs. But how he would get through the rest of the morning he didn't know; he was driven, his body on edge. The crow croaked at him; he flinched. Getting jumpy.

He walked the course twice more, deliberately loosening his stride, trying to shake the tightness out of his limbs. By then the sun was beginning to warm the air; he could feel it becoming drier already. And still the world seemed to sleep; just him and the crow, and far off, a single bird flying across the lightness of a morning sky, too far for him to recognise. An eagle or a vulture, perhaps; just as well he didn't believe in omens beyond the strength of his own arm, the speed of his horses.

He thought of going for a run to settle himself; the steady pounding of his feet always deadened the incessant questing of his mind, eventually, and pulled him into that stolid rhythm, so that when he came back from a two hours' run, he couldn't remember anything but the first few hundred yards of it. But he needed his strength later; he couldn't run the risk of using himself up now.

In the end he decided to climb up one of the slopes overlooking the competition ground, to gain some distance; and he lay on one of the rocks that the sun had begun to warm, looking up at the sky and feeling his anxieties dissolve in the sense of infinite distance, letting his eyes and his mind lose focus, till he drifted on the ground as a bird might in the air. He heard the first horse race distantly, the cheers and the shouting; it was too far to hear the low thrumming of the horses' hooves, or perhaps there was too much other noise. Then it was time to go; lazily stretching his limbs, he yawned, and came back to the world. As he sat up, the cold air touched his back and made him shiver; he raised his head, and looked at the field of games, his eyes narrowed. There was the course, a narrow strip of clear ground; he gazed at it steadily for a moment, seeing it distantly, then turned, and loped easily down the hill.

He wondered if, sunk in his contemplative state, he'd left it too late, but when Rasce met him with the horses he told him he was in good time. The horses looked almost splendid; their lack of breeding was still apparent if you looked carefully, but they shone, brushed skins and oiled hooves, the crimson and orange of the blankets thrown over them gaudy in the sun.

He was still holding himself calm as he readied the horses for the start. To his surprise, there was only one other contestant, a boy from one of the noble house's stables that he didn't know, with a pair of horses that looked flashy, but too thin-legged. The boy looked too young to be competing, fourteen at the most; how he could have the strength needed to switch horses four times over the course, Master couldn't imagine. He'd thought the race would be more keenly contested. But he held calm, reminded himself not to underestimate his competition, not to hold the race run already; he'd seen that girl come a close second yesterday, and he would have given her no chance in the footrace.

Then the augur was raising his lituus, and a silence fell over the raceground for a moment as the crooked stick seemed to still time itself, the augur's arm outstretched, in the way time seemed to freeze in a statue or a painting, and Master saw, for a moment, the whole scene immobile and lifeless in an eternity of waiting; and then the lituus had fallen, and the horses had already leapt forward into their first pace, and he felt like a man falling from a mountain peak, or a bird learning to fly, and he was leaning forwards and gripping his mount, urging him on with his whole body, with heels and calves and knees, and the calm he'd spread over himself like a drug was gone and replaced by a single drive. Already he was leaping from his first horse to the second, almost without looking, so habitually judging the moment that he now longer needed to think about it. From the side of his eyes he could see his rival make the leap, a dark shape indefinite that he would not turn to see, or take any notice of. The second leap made, effortlessly, and now he was back on his first horse, and his rival had leapt too. He had a vague feeling that his rival had dropped back, but he looked ahead to the end of the course, willing his horse on, readying himself for the third leap.

He knew as soon as he left the first horse's back that he had misjudged it. His second horse was dipping, swerving a little, and he was falling further than he'd meant to, unbalanced. He sprawled, still falling forwards over the horse's further shoulder, his trailing leg free in the air, no use to him for holding on. His head was close to the horse's neck, and he scrambled to pull his weight back before it was too late, clawing for the horse's mane with one hand. He felt the horse stumble, and it was all over. He'd lost sight of the course, of his destination; he was going to fall; all he could see was the horse's side and the ground below.

And just then, in the corner of his eye, he saw his rivals' shape making the jump; then nothing. His peripheral vision was clear.

Still clinging on, he felt the horse gallop unevenly beneath him, its rhythm impeded by his badly slung weight. Gradually, he managed to get his body balanced again, got his leg down so he was properly astride. He heard voices raised, couldn't think what it was about for a second, before he realised he'd crossed the line.

His first horse was still with him, matching the other stride for stride, and he eased them both down to a canter, then to a jog, then to an easy walk, before turning back to the end of the course. There was no sign of his opponent, which was odd.

Rasce was already slipping through the crowd to take the horses in hand, and he could hear the cheers, for that, he realised now, was the noise of voices that he'd heard as he struggled for balance. But he still didn't know the result; how far he had been beaten, and he must have been beaten, he'd lost so much time in regaining control of his mount.

He jumped down. An awkward landing shot pain up through his right leg, and he drew blood biting down on his tongue, but the tingling aliveness of the race hadn't yet faded, and he grabbed Rasce by the shoulders. I finished! he wanted to say; he'd finished against all the odds, he'd finished despite his mistake, despite nearly falling. His ears were ringing; he couldn't hear what Rasce was saying, and when he did, he didn't believe it.

The crowd was thick; people were crowding to touch the horses, to shout congratulations at Master or at Rasce, simply to see the victors. Eventually they pushed their way through to where the general was standing with one of the augurs, at the head of the course. Through the crowd, Master could dimly see the livid green and blue masks of the three Phersu, the colour of old bruises or rotten meat. They seemed to be lugging some monstrous weight behind them.

The general was offering his congratulations, and boasting to the augur of how the boy would be master of horse some day, and the augur simply said, "Yes." Then his eyes went vacant for a moment, as if focused on something incredibly far distance, and he said, slowly, "Not that long, I think." Another moment, and he was back with them, talking about the speed of the race and the training of the horses, and the bright future of any youth who won a few horse races, his language nicely generalised and devoid of particular meaning, though you could read what you like into it. Like omens, Master thought; leave your words open so the wind can rush through them, and claim it is the breath of some ambiguous god.

The phersu were coming closer now; many of the crowd had turned to look. Some turned away when they saw the phersu's burden; a body, slung by two legs and an arm between them. Master was not so delicate; he was not afraid to look at it. But then he saw what had revolted them; the head bulged strangely, one side of it a dull pulp of soft brain and fragmented bone and hair matted with blood. Then he realised why Standfast had stumbled. He had killed his first man, not in war, not in a fair fight, but absently, without knowing. He rubbed his hands on his tunic; there was blood on them, he thought, there would always be blood on them.

But Ramtha was making her way towards him now, her eyes bright. She shone with gold; a huge pectoral, massive bracelets, earrings as big as the bracelets hanging heavily, a ribbon of gold in her braided hair. At last, he felt real joy in his victory; he felt like shouting. At last, no longer confused or abashed, he felt a true victor. His blood thundered in his ears.

She gave him her hand with exaggerated graciousness. Of course here, in front of everyone, she had to be careful, he thought. But she would fall to him, to the victor the spoils, when he chose.

"A true master of horse!" her laugh was falsely high. He wondered how many people besides the two of them remembered the origin of his name. He smiled, and was silent in his pride. The tables were turned now; he was the winner, the warrior, no longer the boy who could be called or turned away by an imperious noblewoman. The general would pimp him out no longer; he'd take what he wanted, when he wanted it.

A short man stepped forward from behind Ramtha; he was wearing a purple tebenna, a sign of rank, but he managed to make it look scruffy. A tuft of hair that stuck up from the side of his head gave him a look of permanent surprise.

"You... did rather well, I think."

Master muttered some formula of gratitude. He was going to have to get used to this, he supposed. The man was an idiot. _Rather_ well. Indeed.

"Oh, not winning so much, no. But staying on after that," the man searched for the right word, "that stumble, I thought that was really impressive."

"Anyone could have done that."

The man raised his eyebrows. "Your competitor did not."

There was no answer to that.

"I forgot," the general broke in. "You don't know Avle, do you?"

"No," Master said, rather churlishly, not liking the way he'd been played.

"Avle Vipienas. We call this one Master. It was your wife who gave him the name."

"Well, perhaps he'd like to be a real Master. You've trained him as well as you did your last pupil?"

"Better. I've learned a little in the last ten years."

"Then send him to me. Two days, if you will, Avle Tite."

Vipienas turned to Master, and gripped his forearms in greeting, before turning away, already distracted by some thought. Vipienas; Ramtha's husband, then, if the general could be trusted. And now his master. Things were not playing out quite as he'd expected. But as Ramtha turned to follow Vipienas, she looked Master in the face, smiled, and beckoned with one slim finger. As he reached her, she spoke.

"You'll come when I want," she said, and went, leaving Master with the general. They were alone now, since the crowd had lost interest, and the chariots were already being prepared for the next race.

"Of course he won't make you Master of the Horse at once," the general said. "Probably break you in with a small company, let you work under one of the wing seconds for a while. But it's better than I could do for you. Keep smart, work hard, you could be Master of the lucumo's Horse in three or four years."

"The lucumo's Horse?" he said, startled.

"I thought I'd introduced you to Vipienas. No? Mind must be going. I could swear I had."

"Of course, sir." It was a struggle to keep the surprised 'o' of realisation from his face.

They walked in companionable silence towards the starting lines for the chariot race. Master realised, with sudden greed, that in three or four years he'd almost certainly have got his own chariot, Master of Horse or no. One of the horses reared up for a moment, resisting the harness; he saw its hooves glitter in the sunlight.

He'd pack this evening, not wait till he had to go. This was the end of one part of his life, the beginning of a different future; a beginning that grew out of victory, hard won if, when it came, unexpected, even confusing. He hadn't much to pack, just his arms and a few clothes, and the spare harness for the horses.

The general had given him a good training. He must have known he'd send the boy to the lucumo; that's why he'd taught him politics, as well as military tactics. That's why he'd put him so often in front of Ramtha. Clever general. And now he had an eye in the lucumo's house, and a voice perhaps; but Master would make him pay for that voice, depend on it. You'll get nothing, unless it suits me, he decided. Then relenting, thought, perhaps it will suit me, none the less.

The chariots were already jostling for position as the general found them a place on the low stage that had been erected by the starting line. The augur had not raised his lituus yet; one chariot was not quite ready, the driver taking his time in coiling his reins and settling his team, a handler checking the bit in one horse's mouth. The general took Master's hand in his; an old, dry hand, the skin hardened and cracked. "You won't forget?" said the general, and didn't say what it was that was not to be forgotten, but Master turned and looked at him, and though there was triumph in his thoughts, there was also a sudden pity at this one admission of loneliness and age. Then the general coughed, and said in a determined voice, "I have a bet on the blues this year", and turned his eyes to the racetrack again.

# Tanaquil

Tanaquil was pushing her horses all out, now she was on level ground. Such speed courted disaster, and it was that edge of disaster that she loved; the feeling of death so close she could almost reach out and touch it, yet averted, in the last split second, by her own skill. It made her blood race and sing.

She thought bitterly of her first few years in Rome; confined to the house, or to the smothering modesty of grey woollen veils whenever she went out. But Rome had changed now; it was becoming almost civilised. Though the old patricians all said they would never allow their daughters to lie on a banqueting couch, or choose their own lovers, their daughters had different ideas. They might still spin, but it was fine yarn in brightly dyed colours; and it was the maddening music of the reedpipes that you heard these days, not the booming of the war trumpets.

This year she'd at last won Tarquinius' assent to her buying her own chariot, and a finely trained pair of horses. (She'd wanted a quadriga, but Tarquinius' caution intervened.) The chariot had no pretensions to grandeur; plain leather and wood, not the ornate gilded bronze of the best Etruscan work. But it was made with painstaking craftsmanship to equal the best; lightly sprung, finely balanced, so that she could turn it tightly; the wood pared down to lightness so that it weighed almost nothing. Standing on the leather straps of its floor she could feel the flexibility of its response, its components shifting continually to adjust to the ground or the course she took. She was an eagle balancing on air, imperious, invincible.

She knew the old Romans disapproved. Chariots were for war, not pleasure; for men, not jumped-up Etruscan women. That was part of the joy of it; but the angry hot satisfaction of seeing their hatred was only a small part of her joy. It was the speed she loved, the freedom, the edge of danger, the wind on her cheeks and the breath racing in her lungs.

Such horses, too, fast as the wind, quick not only in their pace but in their response to her hands on the reins; dark, sprightly horses with bunching muscles and sharp black hooves. She reined them in with pride, harder than she would usually, relishing the lurch of the deceleration, and cornered tightly just before they came to a standstill, scattering the loose gravel of the plain.

She'd been tempted, once, to ride at full speed through the streets of Rome; but she had enough sense to cool her hot blood, and rein the horses in before driving home.

She wondered where her dog had got to. It was a white bitch, this latest dog, perhaps the granddaughter of the pair she'd brought to Rome with Lauchme; though you never could tell with dogs, they'd sneak out to fuck any passing bitch, and you ended up with mongrels like the Romans, no clear lineage and no way of telling who they belonged to. She whistled, a long rising note.

That was unusual. She'd trained this little bitch herself; it usually came running, once her gallop was over and it was time to start for home. She whistled again. It wouldn't do to lose the bitch; she was a good hunter, chasing down hares more often than she missed a kill. Tanaquil felt the anger rise as she whistled a third time.

At last, she saw a glimpse of white in the longer grass, and the truant trotted towards her. There was blood on its white mouth, and blood dabbled across its chest, and it jumped easily on to the floor of the chariot and sat, stretching its bloody muzzle up towards her.

The bitch had killed, obviously. It was irritating that it hadn't brought its catch back. Tanaquil stilled it with one word, and it lay, its head on its paws, quietly as it had been taught. She clicked her tongue against her teeth, and the horses started forwards, at an easy walk, back towards the city.

She was about half way home, about to ascend the sharp bends that led uphill towards her house, when she saw Faustus ahead of her, walking alone. He hadn't seen her; he seemed abstracted, his head bent towards the ground, as if he were thinking something over and pacing to keep time to his thoughts. One side of her mouth turned up in a lopsided smile.

Very quietly, she hissed, and let the reins loosen. The horses were well trained indeed; immediately they reached out, leaping into a canter, then a full gallop, as she steered the chariot full towards the yet unaware Faustus. Only at the last moment, as she saw his face turned towards her, did she swerve to one side. She'd left the narrowest of margins between them, almost brushed his clothes with the sides of her chariot. And she laughed, and let the horses run on, faster and faster, till she stopped at the bottom of the hill in a splendid shower of dust.

***

"All things have their time."

Tarquinius was talking philosophy again. It was interesting, up to a point, she thought. At least it was more interesting than Roman conversation; men talking about their latest military exercise, women about their babies and their weaving. But if she had to choose between those two Greek disciplines, philosophy and politics, she knew which she'd choose. And anyway, the _lustrum_ was an Etruscan concept.

"Their time is given by the gods, you know that."

"I'm not talking about religion," he said tetchily. "It's more about..." he seemed to be searching for the right words. "It's more to do with natural rhythm; as if we were all part of a sea that surges and retreats. A wave rises, but then it must break."

"And its crest is highest just before it breaks."

He shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "That may be true. I was thinking more of ... that this is the right moment for Rome. To become a civilised city. An Etruscan city."

"With you as its lucumo."

"Each king has his time."

"So you do," she said. "Ancus Marcius had his time, and now you. But who can tell how long your time will last?"

He laughed. "It lasts as long as it lasts. I'm not going to worry about it."

She frowned. It was getting cold; one of those evenings when the light turns cold long before the sun has set. "You've never thought that the Rasenna themselves might fail?"

"How could we? It is our time. And Rome will be ours. That I'm sure of."

"But the wave has to break."

"I wonder. Sometimes I think it need never happen; if there were an endless sea, without a shore, then the wave would never break." Then his face darkened, and he looked down at his hands, then up at her.

"My father told me once he'd seen, somewhere in Greece, gigantic walls, walls made of huge polygonal blocks fitted together without mortar. It had been a city, once, he was sure, but now these huge walls, and the massive gate in them, guarded nothing but a dusty plain. I wondered if it had been the city of Agamemnon, perhaps, or of one of the great heroes; but he said no, he thought it was older than that. And no one could make that masonry now, so precisely fitted, no two rocks the same, and every block massive, so that five men together couldn't lift it. That, he said, was what frightened him; the fact that we had so forgotten the technique, that as fine as our buildings are, we'll never approach that hugeness and that precision again. So long ago. And no one knows their names or the name of the city."

"It's chilly," she said, and called the dog over to sit by her. "Best not to brood on those things. We're young enough, and this city is young. We should enjoy our sunlight while we can."

"But the sun is setting." And it was, now. Sometimes, she thought, it was best not to believe in omens.

"Oh by the way," Tarquinius said rather too casually, "Faustus claims you nearly ran him over with your chariot."

"So I did. Nearly; but I avoided it. Narrowly."

"He says your horses bolted."

She smiled, and said nothing.

"I find it hard to believe." His eyes showed his amusement.

"I suppose his view is that no woman could possibly control a chariot pair?"

"Well, yes."

"I thought he might think so." She'd got away with it, then.

"You weren't trying to run him over, for Tinia's sake?"

"Of course not! You know I control my horses better than that. I just thought I might scare him a little. It was a close run thing, though. Closer than I'd necessarily wanted; after all, I do have a motive for keeping the bastard alive."

"You do?"

"Never forget; he may hate you, but he heard Ancus Marcius name you his successor. And his damned Roman virtue will never let anyone challenge you, not now. Much as I hate Faustus, he may yet be our best friend."

***

The house always seemed to be busy these days; there were Senate elections, and this time, there were a hundred new places to be filled. She remembered the debates about that; Tarquinius claimed that the growth of the city necessitated a larger Senate, while Manius objected that the new Senate would be too big, too unwieldy when decisions were needed. Neither of them mentioned the main point of the expansion; all hundred new men would be Tarquinius' men, owing their promotion to him and knowing it.

Manius was a frequent visitor; she had grown to like him, and she treated him like an Etruscan courtier, letting him into her bedchamber in the morning before she had risen, talking to him while her women robed her and dressed her hair. Once or twice she'd pushed his floppy blond hair back with her hand, and he'd flushed and looked down, confused as only a Sabine could be at a woman's touch. She wanted to tease him, but she felt there was a darkness in him that wasn't safe to touch too closely; and she saw Tarquinius brooding, too, when she flirted with Manius, and kept her voice light and her gestures non-committal, never quite touching Manius when she leant towards him.

The dark days came again, and this year they hosted a banquet at which Tanaquil presided openly, and the Etruscan women sat beside their husbands. Some of the Sabines and Faliscans brought their women, too, but the Romans almost to a man kept theirs at home, and came in the plainest garb as if to protest the purple and gold of the princes.

"Black crows and grey rooks," young Tarqunius said. "Carrion eaters." Tanaquil thought, let them eat dust; though her husband worried, as he so often did these days, and went to sit with them, leaving Tanaquil to hold the high table on her own.

News came from Tarchna early in the new year; her brother had become lucumo. That was the message; a single line in a letter, the bare fact, but she knew that beneath it, the political allegiances and priorities of Tarchna were shifting, like a winter pond cracking and shifting deep below the ice. She would need someone she trusted there, someone who could balance on the unstable surface and nudge Tarchna's policies towards Rome.

It was Egerius who suggested it. He'd never been quite at home in Tarchna, but he was interested in its politics, with the forensic detachment of an outsider. Veii, he said, was playing for influence, and so was Cisra; but Cisra, of course, had a long history of rivalry to overcome, and its Roman trade through Pyrgi was hurting the Graviscan seatrade of Tarchna. There would need to be some adjustment made there; Rome might, indeed, take a part in that adjustment itself, in order to sideline Veii and its northern allies.

For a moment, Tanaquil considered returning to Tarchna herself, for the first time in so many years.

"You can't go," Egerius said.

"Why on earth not?" she flared, unused to contradiction.

"You're too committed. You have family interests; so does Tarquinius."

"You go, then." Her anger still flamed icy within her.

"I have family, too."

"Half a family."

"Enough of a tie to make me seem biased."

Her jaw tightened. He was right, of course; even though he'd never known his grandfather, he was tied into the bonds of the house of Demaratos, as she was to the royal house, and neither of them could stand apart from the twisted currents of Tarquinian politics.

"I don't think you can send any Etruscan," Egerius said. "No Etruscan can stand apart from the affairs of the Confederacy."

"Even a priestess?" she asked, thinking of Thanusa at the shrine of Menrva.

"Even a priestess is bound to her own city," he said. "We have to send a Roman. A Roman not of Etruscan blood. Manius, for instance."

She nodded, and kept nodding, like a cat pushing its head forwards and backwards as it sniffs at the air, thinking. Manius. He had clean hands, no affiliation to any Etruscan city or tribe. Still, so did others; and she didn't want to lose him, even if it was only her own vanity that made her keep him close.

"That might work," she said. "But Tarquinius doesn't trust him."

Egerius stuck his tongue in his cheek, the way he always did when he was thinking, and squinted down at the floor.

"Manius knows that," he said, not meeting her eyes. "He said something about it to me when we were working on the saltings."

"Yes. Tarquinius complained the two of you were as close as a conspiracy."

"No conspiracy." Egerius laughed humourlessly. "Manius said Tarquinius thought he was behind the sabotage on the Tiber bridge."

"Stupid," she said. "So he tried to get Manius to sabotage the saltings?"

"Not as stupid as that."

"I'm glad to hear it. I don't like to think I married an idiot."

They were silent for a while. She thought, the trouble was that Tarquinius would never give Manius a chance to either damn himself, or clear himself; he'd always keep too close an eye on him. And then she thought, why not use that as the reason to give Tarquinius for sending Manius to Tarchna?

That evening, she made sure Tarquinius had drunk a couple of cups of Faliscan wine, warmed, with spice; just two cups, to warm him gently; she didn't want him fuddled or belligerent. Once, she'd have trusted in her unaided powers; and once, he would have trusted her political instincts; but they'd grown apart, somewhere in the past few years, and she needed the alliance of Fufluns, the unbalanced god of the madman and the drunkard.

"I've been thinking," she said.

Tarquinius groaned. Maybe that had been the wrong opening; he'd been alerted already.

"We need someone in Tarchna."

"You've got your brother."

"Of course; but we need someone to look after the interests of Rome."

"Won't he do it?"

She wanted to shake him; stupid, lazy thinking. Pushing down her frustration, she laid a hand on his and said lightly, "Cisra's bribing him; Veii's taken gifts. Everyone has an ambassador there, except us."

"Well, he's your brother. You look after him."

She shook her head, trying to look sad rather than angry. "I'd love to go. Believe me, Tarquinius, I'd love to see Tarchna again. But it won't work. The other families will never have it. You know what they're like."

"Yes, and you're married to a half-caste. Poor Tanaquil," he said nastily.

"Quite. I've got dirty hands, as far as they're concerned." Her voice was crisp, too sharp in her own ears. She lowered it, made it more breathy. "We need to send someone quite unconnected with Etruria."

"Send fucking Faustus then!" he said, pushing her away from him. "He's unconnected with anything that matters."

"Oh, I'd love to get him out of the way. But I think he'd only upset them, with his Roman ways."

"Who, then?"

"Why not Manius?"

"I don't trust him. I never have trusted him, since that bridge business."

"I know."

"So why send a man I can't trust?"

"Precisely because you don't trust him."

Tarquinius turned to her. Shocked and disbelieving, he shook his head once, hard.

"He won't show his hand in Rome. But in Tarchna, if he really can't be trusted, we'll find it out. Don't forget, I have my brother; we have our contacts. We'll know what he's doing before he can do any damage. And if Manius behaves himself, we'll know that we can trust him."

Tarquinius shook his head again, this time slowly, but said nothing. She filled his wine cup again.

"Did you like the cheesecakes at the feast?" she asked.

"The ones with the red berry sauce?"

"Yes. We had some dried berries left; I thought they'd make a good sauce, with a little honey. Tart, to offset the creaminess of the cheese."

"They were good. Any left?" His face was greedy; his cheeks were fatter than they had been when she first knew him, and beginning to show the red crazing of broken veins.

"There might be." She snapped her fingers, to bring one of the women. Of course there were a few cakes left; she knew how to manage Tarquinius after all these years, and if it was food now more often than sex, she still knew how to get what she wanted.

***

Neither Tarquinius nor Tanaquil had ever become accustomed to the Roman gods; Tarquinius believed in nothing but the power of the human mind, while Tanaquil maintained her devotion to the Huntress and the hidden gods of prophecy. It was, for her, an inward, not an outward devotion; there was no temple to the Huntress in Rome, and no opportunity for her to carry out the office of haruspex, since sacrifice was reserved to the King and the Flamen. But the skies were always open to her view; and when she hunted, she felt the god with her, always.

But there were few other believers in Rome. Some of the other Etruscans had started worshipping the Roman gods, claiming they were, after all, only the same gods under different names; Venus was Turan, and Tinia Jove. She told Tarquinius that, one evening, thinking he'd laugh at the romanizers' outrageous shoehorning of Etruscan gods into Roman clothes; but to her surprise, he thought there was more than half a truth in that.

For him, the gods were a polyglot crowd, like the outlaws of early Rome; Greek, Asiatic, Latin, even Gaulish, mixed like the tongues that named them. His gods had always been as confused as his blood, his father's Olympians, the gods of Tarchna and the hidden gods of Etruria, and his mother's hearth-gods that she'd brought with her, and would go with her oldest daughter when she died, like a pet tortoise or a long-lived servant.

"Father worshipped Dionysus. I never really knew much about it when I was younger, but when I was about fifteen he asked me whether I'd considered the initiation, and he seemed upset at my lack of interest. But you see, I'd always thought of Dionysus as Fufluns."

She'd smiled at that; Fufluns, the spiteful prankster of the vineyards, the wild boy of the woods. No, you wouldn't worship Fufluns; you'd bribe him, perhaps, with a jug of wine and a couple of cakes left under a coppiced hazel, and you'd hope that would be enough to keep him from turning your wine sour, or striking your vines with a late flurry of sleet.

"Dionysus is more than that," Egerius said. They'd almost forgotten he was there, he could be so quiet.

"He'd need to be," she snorted.

"The old Etruscans, I think, didn't need Dionysus; they had the dance. They'd dance all night, till the trance took them."

"The Greeks dance, in the theatre," Tarquinius pointed out.

"Yes, but it's a very precise dance. Choreographed."

"One of your Greek words?" Tanaquil asked; not one she'd heard before.

"Dance-drawing," Tarquinius said.

"Dance-writing," Egerius said, almost at the same moment, and looked apologetic at his correction of the older man. "The Etruscan dance isn't like that; it's spontaneous, danced for the dancer, not for an audience."

"Have you ever danced it?" she asked. She never had; it would have been considered rather quaint and old-fashioned in Tarchna, if not rather low class.

"Once," Egerius said, and smiled. "Just once, when I'd ridden out into the hills, and I found one of those little towns where the women still go to the sacred spring. The kind of place that hasn't changed in generations; straggling hilltop streets of pale yellow stone, with pigs rootling behind the houses, and naked children playing in the dust. Staties, I think it was called; a nice place."

"Can't say I know it. The hills are full of places like that," she said.

"When was this?" Tarquinius asked.

"It would have been the summer after I came to Rome."

"Ah. When you disappeared after working on the saltings at Ostia. I always wondered where you'd got to."

"I'd arrived late in the evening, when the sun was already pale, and one of the priests of the spring volunteered to put me up. She was good looking, with huge eyes and that half-blond, half-dark hair you get sometimes in the north, but I suspected she'd only invited me to be polite. Still, I hoped. Then as the sun sank in the west, the drums started. I'd forgotten what night it was. The moon was already high in the sky, pale in the deepening blue.

She took me to the dance after we'd eaten, and at first, we stood a little way from the drums, and talked. I've forgotten what we were talking about. I don't suppose it was important. Then after a while, I found my right foot was tapping out the rhythm; I hadn't even noticed.

It wasn't the drums so much as that halting rhythm of unshod feet on bare ground that captivated me. It's a sort of shuffle and hop, but that sounds all wrong; it's not funny, there's a kind of archaic dignity in it, and... and a kind of love, if that doesn't sound too pretentious."

"And then?" Tanaquil asked.

"And then the priest took my hand, and we joined the dance."

Egerius was silent for a moment. It wasn't shyness, Tanaquil thought, as it might have been if he'd been granted the priest's favours for the night; it was more a deep withdrawal, a taking of breath.

"Once you join the dance," he said, "there's nothing else. You can't think, or talk, or stand apart. The dance is you, and you are the dance. And when I hear the Greeks talking about Dionysus, that's what I understand; the maenads' feet pounding the earth, the clouds of wine fumes swirling in their heads." He looked at Tarquinius. "Were you initiated, in the end?"

"Yes."

"You know what I mean, then." His voice was low.

"Yes."

There was an uneasy moment then, and Tanaquil broke it with a light slap of her palms, and a flirtatious smile.

"Not like Fufluns at all, then!"

Tarquinius grinned. "You can see why I wasn't really interested in being initiated. I thought Dionysus was some vineyard god. Instead, he turned out to be something much... different, anyway."

He'd kept that side of himself well hidden from her, she thought; but she was not surprised that it was there.

"Still," Tarquinius said, "Tinia and Jupiter are not so very different. They both have their thunder, they both have their rules."

"So does Zeus."

"Zeus has more fun with women," Tanaquil said.

"And boys," Egerius corrected her, and shook his head with laughter.

Tarquinius was obviously pretending not to notice their moment of complicity. "If you believe some of the Greek thinkers, we invented the gods anyway. So the gods are a reflection of our common humanity; you'd expect them to be similar."

"And just how do you square that rational approach with your devotion to Dionysus?" Tanaquil asked.

"I'll admit, it's not easy."

"It's illogical!"

He shook his head. "It's two different things. The initiation is - it's like what Egerius described, a sense of being, or becoming, something else. I don't literally believe in the panthers or the hunt or the feeding on human flesh, or the ritual chanting, or..." He stopped, suddenly realising he'd said too much. "I can look at it as a rational man and say it's like sex, or drunkenness; it has an effect that I'm aware of, that is nothing to do with a god."

"But even so," Egerius added slowly, "when you're there, inside the dance, it's different."

"But neither of you go to the Roman ceremonies. Yet to hear you talk, it wouldn't matter if you did; they're the same gods, just figments of the imagination. It wouldnt make much difference."

"Just as it doesn't make much difference if we don't go," Egerius said.

"Of course I have to go to some of them," Tarquinius said. "It's one of those things Ancus Marcius could never quite explain; I think it probably came in with the Sabine traditions under Numa. The king is also the high priest, and the high sacrificer. So I have to kill bulls for the good of the city, much good that it does anyone. There's no getting out of it."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure," Egerius said. "After all, you already changed the Senate."

"What's that got to do with it?" Tarquinius was interested; Tanaquil could see the way he'd sat forward, one hand half raised.

"Rome's getting bigger. The city needs more governing; you bring new men into the government."

For once she was impressed by Egerius' reasoning. "The city needs more bulls, so get more butchers."

"I might have put it more elegantly, but, effectively, yes."

At least she knew now Tarquinius would understand why she needed to take time to visit the shrine of Diana at Aricia. She still wasn't sure that Menrva and Diana were one and the same; but some of what she'd heard about the cult of Diana suggested she might find it similar.

***

The lake of Aricia shimmered before her like a baroque pearl, the wooded sides of a crater sloping down to the water. As the breeze picked up, she saw the surface of the lake darken with ripples, as if a cloud had passed over; but the sun was not occluded, it was the wind only which had done this, and which now passed leaving the lake shining silver once more. She felt herself shiver, and wondered if it had been an omen, or just a trick of wind and light.

She'd set off with her maid Hercla, but the girl had got sunstroke, so she'd left her at a small village just off the road, and struck on, rather than wait for the girl to recover. So again she approached the god alone, and as she descended the slope towards the lake and the sacred grove she wondered if that was how it was meant to be.

Where the chariot track ran out \- she'd been warned about this - she unhitched the horses, hobbled them, and let them wander. Picking up the hem of her skirt, she took the path onwards, downhill between scattered trees and then across a broad greensward towards the grove. As she descended, the wind dropped, and she felt the sun warm on her skin. She twitched her light tebenna over her head to shield herself from the heat, looping it over her forearms, so that she was mantled in floating scarlet.

Down by the lake, a rough circle of ancient oaks stood, their leaves shivering in the slight breeze. There seemed to be nothing else; no temple, no priest, nothing but the lake, the trees, and the sky. She stepped between two of the trees, into the grove; the light dappled and wavered as she passed, and then the sun was shining again on her. The sky seemed to be a deeper blue, and the water more silver than gold now, as if her perceptions had sharpened or changed; even the whisper of the wind in the leaves seemed more sibilant.

She stood there a moment, turning her head to scan the grove. She realised after a few moments that she was counting the trees, numbering them in her head; thu, zal, si, huth, mach, sha... and when she came round to the tree behind her, she realised that she'd counted to thirteen, yet she could have sworn there were only twelve trees. She tried to resist counting them again, but it was impossible, as long as she looked at them; shutting her eyes, she turned round, facing the gap between the two great oaks where she'd entered the circle.

When she opened her eyes, there before her stood a grey-clad woman, her veil pulled over her face. She started, recoiling from the apparition; she hadn't heard the woman's footsteps. Surely if she could hear, as it seemed, each individual leaf shivering in the trees, she should have heard the priest's approach? If indeed this was a priest, and not a hinthial, a revenant from the dead land.

The woman stretched her hand out; Tanaquil saw the flesh wrinkled and spotted with age, the fingers bony and thin. Even with her arm at full stretch, the woman didn't quite touch Tanaquil; after a second, she stepped forwards, till her hand struck Tanaquil's shoulder, and after a moment's grasping Tanaquil's tebenna, groped slowly upwards till she could feel her cheek, the line of her jaw, her nose.

"Daughter," the old woman said. It was not a question or a greeting, simply a statement of fact.

The woman lowered her hand to take Tanaquil's right elbow, and began to guide her slowly towards the lake side of the circle. This was no hinthial, Tanaquil knew; her hand was dry but warm against Tanaquil's arm.

"Here is Diana," the woman said, as they stopped on a patch of bare earth in front of the oldest of the trees; and with a start Tanaquil realised that the living tree had been carved with the likeness of a woman, the bark slowly growing back to enclose her. It was an archaic representation, the body represented only by the small protrusions of perfectly circular breasts and an incised necklace, and a deeply carved triangle beneath. Huge blank eyes stared from a long face. There was something chilling, Tanaquil thought, about a statue so inhuman, reducing the form of the warm body to such cold abstraction.

Tanaquil reached into the bag she carried with her for her offering, but the old woman must have heard something, for she laid her hand on Tanaquil's, and whispered urgently; "No offerings."

"But surely I need to bring something for the god?"

"Nothing made by hands. You cannot worship her with metal or with wood, or with bread. Only with the sacrifice of blood."

Tanaquil frowned. "I should have brought an animal to sacrifice, then."

"No. Diana drinks only the blood of her worshippers. Look." She pulled her mantle back from her arms, which were deeply scarred with crisscrossing cuts. "Do you have a knife?"

"Of course." Tanaquil reached for the knife she kept in a leather scabbard on her thigh; she'd sharpened it yesterday, and she tested it tentatively against the tip of one finger. It was still sharp. "How must I..."

"A single slash on one arm is sufficient."

Tanaquil laid the knife against the white flesh of the inside of her left arm. For a moment, she paused, and bit her lip against the fear; and then, realising that if she didn't do it immediately she would never do it at all, she slipped the edge of the knife quickly across, watching the blood well up in tiny drops, which flowed into each other and joined and started to trickle silently down her arm, and then to the ground.

"Is it done?"

"It is done." The blood was beginning to darken the earth, first in tiny circles where each drop had fallen, and then pooling a little, though the thirsty ground drank it up quickly, leaving only a rusty stain.

"It was Orestes who brought Diana from Tauris," the woman said, her voice slightly heightened in telling a story she had repeated time after time, a story that had become a ritual. "In Tauris, she demanded the blood of every stranger washed up on the coast; man or woman, slave or free, their blood washed her altars like the waves of the sea."

Tanaquil shivered. It wasn't the pain that frightened her, but the fact that it had intensified every sensation; she could feel the pulsing of her blood, now flowing freely to the ground, she even felt she could taste the blood in her mouth, smell its richness. The pain was suddenly an intense pleasure; you know you're alive when you're bleeding, she thought. And women know this; every month that we bleed, we're more alive than a man could know. Then in savage joy at the sharpness of the pain and pleasure, she slashed her arm again, a thumb's breadth from the first cut she'd made, and deeper, and heard the blood begin to spatter the ground.

She'd almost lost the thread of what the priest was saying, and forced herself to listen, repeating the words in her own head as they were said to fix them there.

"Any slave who flees here can seek sanctuary in the grove. But he must fight the king of the grove, and it is always a fight to the death. Diana is not a merciful god. If the slave kills the king, he will become the new king; and he will live until he too is killed in combat in the grove. And so Diana feeds on the blood of men, and rules by killing men."

Tanaquil thought of her own part in Ancus Marcius' death. This Diana was cruel - not her Menrva; but perhaps this god understood her only too well. To rule by killing men. Still, men ruled only by killing other men, particularly Romans; they might find it unacceptable in a woman, or in an Etruscan, but they themselves were nothing but murderers and thieves. At least she had a reason for her ruthlessness, not mere imperium but the bringing of civilisation to Rome. And they had what, exactly, as their motive?

She wondered if the king of the grove knew the weariness of power. She imagined his wariness, always carrying a sword, his eyes for ever scanning the trees of the grove for the stranger who might step between the them, carrying his death in potential. Did the priest only greet those who clearly came to worship? She knew from Tarquinius the air of a man who didn't get enough sleep, the creases at the corner of the eyes, the way his eyes would always slip away from you, scanning the crowd for enemies or putative friends.

"I feel you have some power," the old woman was saying, her voice no longer the sing-song of the storyteller but a whisper like dry reeds. "Yet you are not used to blood."

Oh, I'm used enough to blood, Tanaquil thought; I've made enough auguries, shoving my hands in the entrails of the future. And yet even so, to see me own blood flow, that's something...

"I have not worshipped a god that needed my blood," she said, choosing her words precisely.

"But you will worship her in future. With your blood, and the blood of others."

Tanaquil knew it was true; and she knew she did not want it to be true. She knew that something in her had changed. She promised herself, though, that she would remain faithful to the god of her first vow, to Menrva the wise huntress; when she returned to Rome, she would ensure that she had a temple built to her. Perhaps not yet, perhaps not for some years, but when her rule was established and secure. Despite the edge of pain and pleasure that came from Diana, she rededicated herself to her Etruscan gods. She looked up at the sky, hoping to see a bird, or a cloud, that would confirm her rededication; but the sky was blue and empty, devoid of meaning.

Bowing her head, she looked again at the spattering of her blood on the earth. Her cuts were beginning to close, the blood thickening and congealing.

"Bless me, mother," she said, and the old woman once more put her hand out to touch Tanaquil's face.

She had spent how long in the grove? She couldn't say; one hour of the morning, perhaps? But when she came out between the two great guardian trees, the moon was already high in the slowly dimming sky.

# Tarquinius

It hadn't been easy. Nothing was ever easy. Tarquinius had known the old Roman centuries had no chance. They were underpowered. The stupidity of a people who wanted to take on the world, but limited the size of its army to a few well-born natives! He'd already expanded the senate; now the army too needed to be increased in size.

He hadn't expected the opposition that he met, nor the quarter from which it came. Faustus, for once, had thrown his influence firmly behind Tarquinius. That was the nice thing about Faustus; with him it was just Rome, Rome, Rome. What was good for Rome was right for Faustus. With Faustus came most of his faction; some eagerly, some reluctantly, some with a bloodthirsty look. Killing was in the offing. A few remained to be convinced.

That was before the attack. Just before dawn on an early summer morning the Sabines had ridden into Rome. A disorganised small force of cavalry split up, driving their horses hard, shouting and screaming. Anyone who gave in to the natural impulse to go to their doors, to see what was happening, was summarily disposed of; a thrown spear or the rapid backhand of a sword put an end to them. That accounted for some thirty men and boys, and one woman. Tarquinius, with more prudence, ordered the doors of the house locked and bolted with the huge oaken beam that hadn't been used since the day he moved on to the Palatine. It hadn't been needed; the Sabines didn't get that far before they turned back.

They didn't stay. They weren't interested in conquest, even in theft; the raid was a warning, Tarquinius thought. A pre-emptive strike. They must have come down from Subiaco the day before, along the Anio, and crossed the river into Rome early in the morning. They'd slipped by the scouts he had posted, too; or else they'd paid them off.

No point pursuing them; they'd be long gone, and the Roman infantry were slower, even if the horses were tired. With only three centuries, he couldn't afford to send one away, either. He needed more men; and he needed cavalry, but the Romans restricted horsemanship to the nobles. The only way he was going to get good horsemen was to send to Etruria. He might build a larger unit in Rome, later, but he needed them now. And he'd need a good cavalry teacher, a good tactician. He cast about for whatever names he could think of; there was Chiron in Felsina, he'd heard good things of him, and there was a master in Velx who was supposed to be good.

"Is it over?" Tanaquil had asked, unperturbed by the Sabine raid.

"The raid's over. I can't say the same for the political situation."

"The Sabines will never be happy neighbours."

"No one will ever be happy neighbours for Rome."

Her eyes narrowed. She didn't have to ask him; he knew that look well enough by now.

"It's not up to the Sabines. But if Rome insists on seeing themselves against the whole world, seeing the whole of the universe as just so much land to be conquered..."

"Isn't that how you see it? Just land to be surveyed, divided, marked out?"

"It's not the same..." He was uneasy. "You know we stop when we have enough."

"And how do we know when we have enough?"

"Well, the gods..."

"The gods you don't believe in, Lauchme. You never did."

"Never mind the gods," he said crossly. It was a bad sign when she used his Etruscan name. "Look, people like us..."

"Etruscans."

"Yes, Etruscans know when to stop. It's a matter of boundaries. And yes, there are contentions, and yes, there are quarrels and the occasional raid, but we put those in front of the Confederation princes and we sort them out. We keep things running properly, everything in its place, and we make sure the boundaries are kept."

"Oh, we do. Don't we."

"But these Romans have a thirst. They have to conquer. And that makes the Sabines uneasy neighbours."

"I'm hardly surprised," she said, looking down at her toes, which she was curling and uncurling inside her sandal. Then she tapped her foot; she'd reached whatever conclusion that toe-curling had been leading her to. He waited. She'd tell him if she wanted to.

"Perhaps the Etruscans ought to be less easy with Rome than they are," she said.

"Ah."

"Except that we're not Etruscan any more, are we? I'd forgotten. What are we, Lauchme? Romans? Mongrels? Half-breeds?"

"Don't remind me."

"Sorry. I didn't mean... but we don't belong to Tarchna any more. So what do we do? Warn the cities? Or hope to bring enough of our people to Rome that we can Etruscanise it?"

"Etruscanise? That's an ugly word. Did you just make it up?"

"What if I did?"

"You can try. But that thirst. That's something else. A Greek, an Etruscan, they drink when they're dry, they stop when they're satisfied. But Romans don't stop. And it's going to be hard to make them."

"Yes. And the Sabines know that."

"Yes. And the Sabines are the ones with the horses. And the men."

"What are you going to do?"

"Go back to that question of getting extra men. They'll vote me the numbers I need now."

She smiled thinly. "I think they might."

***

And so he'd told the Romans he needed more men. He'd called them into the Forum, near the Black Stone, and talked to them, reasonably, not with Greek eloquence but simply with business-like clarity. He'd not promised them war on the Sabines; with so many half- and quarter-Sabines in Rome, that might not be tactful. Nor had he mentioned the weakness or treachery of the scouts. But he'd won them over, all of them. All bar one.

When he called the vote, one man stood apart; one man in the conical hat of an augur. Under it, you couldn't see his eyes. Perhaps that was the point. One man, standing alone on the bleak grey pavement.

"Attus Navius."

The augur remained silent. Tarquinius suddenly felt frightened, as if he were six or seven again, standing in front of his father waiting to be punished. There wasn't a sound from the crowd, though out of the corner of his eye he saw a few men shifting away from the augur, putting a clear space between him and themselves.

"Attus Navius. Say what you have to say."

Still the augur stood, and held his tongue. Tarquinius had to bite down his anger; he felt the tension, wondered how long it would take for some of those men in the crowd to feel it was safe to edge back again towards Attus Navius. Still not a sound.

"Attus Navius. Tell me what you have to say."

He saw the edge of the hat lift a bare inch as the man's head came up; but the eyes were still in shadow.

"Romulus made Rome."

Tell me something I don't know, Tarquinius thought. Then he wondered; where is this leading?

"Romulus made the laws. And the laws say how many centuries there must be. And that is not going to change."

"Look, Attus Navius, you are outnumbered. The vote is clear. I'm sorry, but there you are; it's the will of the people."

"The will of the people. Not the will of the gods."

Tarquinius could hear a couple of people muttering. He looked at the crowd; as his eyes travelled along the front row, the muttering ceased. He was still controlling them, so far; but he'd have to decide this quickly or he'd have lost them completely.

"Then tell me how the gods express their wishes?"

"Ignorant Etruscan. Do you not know?"

"In augury, I suppose?"

Attus Navius stepped forward angrily. Tarquinius raised his hand to stop him, and was about to step forwards himself when a woman's voice rang out across the forum.

"You dare talk of augury to man crowned by an eagle!" It was Tanaquil, striding towards Attus Navius from where she had sat, half hidden behind Tarquinius. Her chin was up; her eyes looked dangerous. But as she passed Tarquinius, her eyes slid sidelong towards him, one eyebrow raised; it was as good as a whisper.

"See that stone?" she said to Navius, pointing her chin towards one of the boulders that still stood just outside the paved space, where they hadn't yet cleared the rough ground.

"What about it?"

"Could you cut it?"

"Of course not. Nor could you."

She faced him. One, two, three. Tarquinius knew this trick. Fill the air with silence. Make an emptiness for your opponent to fall into.

Navius looked again at the stone, looked again at Tanaquil. She noticed a tell-tale crinkling at the corners of his eyes. He thought he'd outsmarted her, of course. They always did.

"You think you're stronger than the gods? Cut that stone with a razor, then."

Tanaquil allowed herself to look anxious.

"Go on, do your augury."

"Isn't it more normal to... oh, I don't know," though she did, of course, "...to look for birds in the sky, or lightning, that kind of thing?"

"You wouldn't see lightning if it hit you." Navius got a laugh for that, but it was uneasy laughter, that fell silent quickly. "Cut that stone." Another burst of laughter from one quarter of the crowd, soon stilled. The silence was heavy, like the still air before a storm.

She didn't overplay the dumb Etruscan. It was important to know just how far you could go; and Navius didn't.

"So it's an augury, then?"

Navius nodded.

"You'd better look at the razor," she said, fumbling in her pouch for the splayed leaf of metal.

"You carry a razor?"

Of course she did. All Etruscans shaved their skin smooth. Only the Romans went about hairy as the wolf that had brought up Romulus.

Navius took the razor. Tried its edge with his thumb, winced as a drop of blood welled up from the tiny cut. He obviously hadn't expected it to be sharp. Turned the razor over, and then over again. At last he handed it back to her.

She was ready to advance to the stone, but Tarquinius said, "Wait," and she turned to him, her face composed and blank.

"Let us be clear," Tarquinius said. "Attus Navius, you consider this to be an augury. If Tanaquil cuts the stone, she has proven the consent of the gods to my changes? Is that right?"

"Yes."

"The razor," Tanaquil hissed at him, so low that no one else could have heard it.

"And you have seen the razor. It is sharp. It is, however, an ordinary razor. Nothing magic about it. Nothing suspicious."

"Correct."

Tarquinius bowed his head for a moment, then raised it, smiling. "Then let us proceed."

Tanaquil went to the boulder. She raised the razor, its edge sparkling with a single star of light as the sun caught it. She brought her arm down.

The two neat halves of the stone lay rocking where they had fallen.

***

"No doubt the history books will garble it", Tarquinius said later. "They'll probably say it was Attus Navius who cleft the stone. No one will admit an Etruscan did it. Or a woman, come to that."

"You think the Romans will ever have history books? Greeks, yes. Romans? Maybe."

"I keep having to tell you not to be so superior. We _are_ Romans."

"Sort of," she said grudgingly.

"But I would like to know how you did it."

"Oh, we _real_ augurs have our secrets," she said.

"Just a hint?"

"Well..." She moved closer to him on the couch, leaning against his side. "You notice how I made him inspect the razor."

"Of course. It wouldn't do to have anyone suspect us of cheating."

"He didn't look at the stone."

Tarquinius frowned. "But there are hundreds of stones scattered across the plain. How could you know..."

"Remember how it happened."

Slow recognition smoothed itself over his face. "You strode up to him. You pointed at the stone. He followed. Tanaquil, you are a wonder."

"I am indeed."

"But..."

"Yes?"

"But how could you have known Attus Navius would object?"

"Politics, dear. Politics."

"No, I'm not buying that. He's not part of Faustus' faction. He's never spoken before - not at the assemblies, not privately. He had nothing to say when I took the throne, he never objected to that, he never objected to any new laws before this. So how could you have known he would object?"

"Tarquinius, my dear." She laid a finger on his lower lip, pressed firmly; took her finger away, and kissed him lightly where it had lain. "You must allow us augurs to have a few secrets, after all."

***

He used his new army for the first time a few months later. A surprise attack; two could play at that game, he thought. Scouts had reported the Sabines massing, assembling in the country towards Rome; they'd crossed the Anio, their traditional border. But so far, there had been no action. If Tarquinius struck quickly, he could head them off; and, perhaps, deliver a defeat crushing enough to declaw them for ever.

He was taking his own men up river, a hand picked bunch with a small column of mules. They threw dirty sheepskins over their armour; their swords were stuck under the lashings of the mules' loads. If they were ambushed, they wouldn't be able to get them out, and a couple of the men had objected; but that wasn't the point. Disguise was more useful than defence, he'd said. Egerius nodded with a slightly wolfish grin; Faustus said something about Greeks being too subtle for their own good, but he was in good spirits, having been given command of the right wing, and softened his mockery with an almost imperceptible smile.

Ten men, and twenty mules loaded with firewood, and a few long poles, carried between two of the mules with a few bags slung off them; the only thing that looked out of place was the number of men, Tarquinius thought. Maybe he should have left more of them back with the main force. But he'd need them, when the time came. And they'd be out of danger then, in the marshy ground near the river's headwaters.

His breath caught every time he saw a shepherd on the hills above, or the shifting of a cloak let the glitter of metal show. But they marched on unchallenged, walking beside the mules as drovers or packmen would, though Gaius, second in command, was one of the few Romans who could handle a chariot well, and they were all cavalrymen but one, the scout who had showed Tarquinius the drovers' path up the valley.

They arrived at the headwaters in late afternoon; one of the men got a fire going, and they settled down to wait. Timing for this raid would be important; Egerius and Tarquinius had worked it out together, looking at the flow of the river, and the distance to be covered. Wait till sundown, then a couple of hours should do it.

The men were on edge. This was a long time to be sitting, without action, exposed in this empty country. Any countryman might wander along and ask what they were doing. This wasn't the time for great speeches, indeed for any speeches at all, but Tarquinius spoke to all of the men over the course of that afternoon, somehow managing to communicate to them a calm that he didn't quite feel himself.

"It's all planned," he'd said to one of the men, a Faliscan with a broken nose that made him look stupid and surprised at the same time. "Everything is planned to work at the same time."

"But vy did we come zo far from the zity?"

"We'll start before Egerius does, before Faustus does," he said, not answering the question. "We have further to go."

"Yes, but vy start vrom here in the virst place?" The Faliscan wasn't as stupid as he looked.

"You'll have to trust me." Tarquinius had never felt so untrustworthy. "It's all in the plan, and there's a special part of the plan."

"And ve have too much virewood."

We do indeed, Tarquinius thought. But he wasn't telling.

As the afternoon drew into evening, the men settled down; some took pasties from their bags, washing them down with well-watered wine (you had to water that rotgut, Tarquinius thought sourly), others leant against the rocks and dozed, half-erect, half-wakeful, like cats. Gaius and one of the older men kept up a desultory game of knucklebones. No game was too childish for a Roman, as long as money could be bet on it. Tarquinius walked up the hill a little way, till the noise of his men was as distant as the river's sound. In the distance, between the darkening slopes of the valley, the river shone golden where it caught the remaining light.

The sun fell with terrible slowness. At another time, he would have noted the beauty of the sunset; the huge molten disc of the sun, which illumined the torn banners of cloud, pale cool pink, flaming orange, saturated purple, each layer strikingly distinct in colour. At another time he would have enjoyed that hollow silence that always accompanied dusk in the back country, that echoing quiet in which you could hear a sound made miles away as distinctly as if it were next to you, in which a single bird's song would reverberate endlessly. At another time he would have sat relaxed to lose himself in it, instead of pacing to and fro, biting the inside of his cheek as his jaws worked with the tension. At another time, he would have wished for time to stand still, to be able to experience every momentary flicker of light against the clouds, every infinitesimal change of hue or intensity. But tonight, though he could observe all this, he only wanted the time to pass; wanted it to be dark already, wanted the plan to be set in motion.

At last there was only a sliver of light above the horizon; then, though the clouds, now darkened to purples and the deepest almost-black blues, still gave off some light, the sun itself had gone, and the hills were sinking into flatness and at last into obscurity. When finally he could no longer distinguish the horizon, Tarquinius noted the position of the moon; it had been an hour from sunset, he reckoned, till the light faded away, and the full moon still hugged the horizon, opposite the smeared afterglow of the evening, far to his left.

He wondered idly how Egerius was filling his time. Egerius had the longest to wait; it could get on a man's nerves, the waiting. Would he be one of the eager ones, whetting his sword, talking to the men, or one of the nervous ones, checking and rechecking his arms, his armour, muttering the battle plan under his breath? Probably a quiet one, Tarquinius thought, probably a thinker; but in the end it didn't really matter, only that he turned up at the right place, at the right time, and fought, and lived or died. As the gods willed it, or as chance had it. That was all that mattered; winning or losing.

"Tarquin?"

Gaius had come silently, almost startling his leader; Tarquinius felt his jaw tighten with anger at having let that happen. He'd not been awake, properly.

"Do we go yet?"

Tarquinius looked at the sky. It didn't tell him whether they would win or lose; he saw no eagles and no gathering thunder. It told him only that the night was still not two hours old. That much at least he had learned in his training; to tell the hours, to tell the cardinal points.

"We wait. Not long. Have the men make ready. Two fires, by the river, twenty feet apart. Is the woodpile set up?"

Gaius nodded, and turned to go.

"And Gaius?"

As Gaius turned back, Tarquinius saw his face in the firelight. The light fell across it, shadowing his eyes; for a moment Tarquinius saw a skull glowing in flames, and then the moment was gone. He felt a cold wind on his spine and never knew if it was real or a sending.

"You might let them into the secret. It can't matter now."

***

He watched the men lighting the two fires down in the marsh by the gravelly shore of the stream; the intense yellow of the new flame, so pale it was almost white-hot, and dark shapes in the shadows, sometimes silhouetted by the flame, at other times half melded with the darkness. It seemed so far away from him; if he closed his eyelids he could see the fire still flickering on the inside of his eye. What was stranger was to see the fire and not be able to hear its crackle or the roar of the flames as they got up; the scene was uncanny in its silence.

He looked up again at the sky, using his hand to sight south, along the river valley. The moon was not quite a third of the way towards the zenith. Two hours past sunset; it was time.

As he neared the closest fire, his sheepskin still thrown over his head against the night chill, he was aware how two men silently flanked him, coming round him to the rear, cutting him off from retreat. Two others turned towards him, easily, as if by pure chance. Good, he thought; they're on their guard.

"A cold night, to be zure," he greeted them, wondering if they'd fall for it.

"You're out of your way here, grandfather." He couldn't see who had said that; the two men facing him were silhouetted against the fire. That was a smart move.

"I'm cold," he said, ignoring the implicit question. "That's a nize vire, by the look of it."

"Where have you come from?" Still polite, but insistent.

"Over them hills."

The man on the right stepped closer, and though he couldn't see, Tarquinius felt the prickling of hair that told him the two behind were closing on him. He wondered when it would become too dangerous to maintain the masquerade. Stupid to put the action at risk for a game.

"Over the hills and var away."

Suddenly Gaius laughed; at first nervously, then as the others realised the joke and joined him, louder, till Tarquinius threw back his sheepskin and let them all see. In the flickering light he could see a trickle of liquid down one man's cheek, like a slug trail; it might have been the smoke, though, that had set him off. The laughter was slightly manic, as if this release had broken through the tension that had surrounded them all afternoon; as if they were already tasting the slightly berserk courage they might need later.

"I'm proud of you," he said, pitching his voice over the laughter, calling them back to mindfulness of the task awaiting them. "It's good to see such a well guarded camp fire."

"It was that obvious?"

"No, Gaius. It wouldn't have been, to anyone but me. Don't forget who gave you those standing instructions."

"Really not?"

"Really. Not obvious at all. And most efficient." He knew that word would appeal to Gaius. Personally, he'd always preferred elegance to efficiency; he'd learned the difference between the two from a Greek tutor. Efficiency meant getting the job done; elegance, getting it done in the best and least wasteful way possible, without brute force or too much effort. But the distinction would be wasted on Gaius.

"How are we doing with the bonfire? All ready? Gaius, did you tell them what we're doing?"

"I did."

"Then men; it's time. Let's start the celebration."

Anyone viewing the scene would have thought the men had gone mad. Perhaps, a stranger would have wondered if they'd been touched by one of the savage and chthonic gods of the land, a local Bacchus ready to rip men limb from limb, an Athene on the hunt for mortals to tear apart, some mad imp who'd stolen Tinia's thunderbolts. The men were building up the bonfires to a great height, the flames roaring up into the night sky; they staggered under the weight of the bundles of wood they carried, throwing them into the fires from a distance since the heat was so great they could no longer get close.

"Pitch first!" Gaius yelled at one man who'd forgotten to soak the faggot he was carrying before throwing it on the bonfire. Soaked in the sweet smelling pine resin, it burst into flame almost at once, spitting bright malevolent sparks around it.

"Right," Tarquinius shouted. "Time for part two."

Now the men ran for the long poles, jamming them into the fire to lever out the flaming bundles, and push them into the river. One man flicked a bundle up into the air with his pole; it streamed flame behind it like a comet before hitting the water with a hissing shower of sparks.

"Oy. No throwing," Gaius yelled. He was right of course; it was too dangerous. But there was no holding the men back now. They yelled, they screamed, their mouths wide open pits of darkness in flame-lit faces. They seemed mad, driven by the desire to burn the whole world, to set the very river on flame.

In four hours' time, those burning bundles of kindling and pitch would arrive at the city on the Anio. In four hours' time, the first of them would bump across the wooden bridge at the entrance to the city. In a little over four hours' time, the first struts of the bridge would begin to burn, cutting the Sabines off from their city. And then, and only then, the Romans would attack.

***

Downriver, Faustus had started his operation with the first faint lightening of the sky, well before sunrise, marching towards the Anio with his infantry widely dispersed, hoping to catch every Sabine patrol in their net. "Be obvious," Tarquinius had told him; "I want them to know exactly what you're doing." Faustus' objections - how could this be a surprise attack if everyone knew what he was up to? - had been overruled; and when he'd asked how to make it sufficiently obvious what he was doing, if that was the point, Tarquinius just said "Do what you do normally," with a nasty look on his face.

It had been easy. (So far: Faustus added his habitual reservation.) He had divided his forces into three, sending the left flank far wide to mop up any outlying enemy dispositions; the right contoured a small stream which looked likely to be the effective limit of Sabine concentration, since the land further south of it was rough and broken. Meanwhile he took his own hundred straight down the middle, marching fast forward. They covered the first five miles before dawn. The Sabine scouts would have reported their positions last night; there was no way anyone could have expected an infantry force to make such a rapid advance.

Usually, battle strategy dissolved into random skirmishes as soon as the enemy was sighted; within seconds, the clarity of the plan was smudged and crumpled. Even the unanimous line, the solid shield wall that faced the enemy \- and nowhere more solid than in a hundred under Faustus' command - started to waver as some men pushed forwards, others fell behind or simply fell. But today was an exception. As Faustus' men marched forward in their order, they saw the Sabines retreating before them. Apart from the first few patrols caught napping, and quickly despatched, not one enemy unit resisted. Seeing the unbroken line of Rome advancing, the enemy turned and retreated, willingly, though in good order. They must have had orders to regroup beyond the Anio if challenged, Faustus thought. They must have thought they would be safe there.

So there was none of the usual disorder of battle. Everything went smoothly; disappointingly smoothly, to tell the truth. No one said anything - no one would dare - but Faustus could feel his men getting impatient; no battle, no loot, no chance for glory or, perhaps more to the point, promotion. Pushing the enemy back beyond the Anio without killing a few of them wouldn't do much for Rome, either; the Sabines would be back again, and again and again, and Rome would never be safe unless she could dominate them entirely. Or extirpate them totally, Faustus thought; that would be safest. So blood was needed, not just to appease the gods, but to give Rome security.

"Can't be far to the river now, sir." That was one of the younger officers; Gaius or Gnaeus, Faustus thought, he should be able to remember which. This was the kind of slip-up he'd be hot on if one of his men made it.

"We should see it soon. Beyond the next ridge."

"And we just drive the Sabines back?"

"As far as the river, and no further. Those are our orders."

The officer's face didn't move; he was well trained. But Faustus could see his distaste for that order in a slight relaxation of his shoulders, a slight coldness in the eyes.

"The men are hoping for a skirmish at the river. But the Sabines might be too fast; it's almost as if they're drawing us out."

"Yes, it looks as if they've been ordered to withdraw if threatened."

"You don't think they have some other scheme?"

"Like attacking our flanks if we push forward too far?"

"Well, yes, Sir."

"That's why I've sent our wings out so widely. I'm fairly certain they can't have any dispositions we won't have picked up. Nothing to cause us trouble. And our wings are driving them all towards the centre."

"Towards the bridge, in fact."

"Correct. If they run, they're back behind the Anio where they belong." (Though how long they'll stay there, Faustus thought, is anybody's guess.) "And if they don't..."

The officer's mouth twitched very briefly before he brought his expression back to the obedient blankness of the Roman soldier.

"Tell you what," Faustus said, unbending a little in the way he knew all soldiers responded to best; "Why don't we force the pace a bit now we've got them on the run, make them work a bit harder?"

That got a grin from the officer; tight-lipped, but definitely a grin. He suppressed it, but not quite quickly enough for Faustus not to notice it. Good. That would be a popular decision with the men, he could tell.

They upped the speed of the march; tricky to do that and still keep the line, even trickier uphill, on the long upward haul towards the low ridge ahead, but they managed. They were well drilled, Faustus' Romans. They might not have the aristocratic dash of an Etruscan chariot squad, but by the gods, they were efficient. Disciplined and efficient. In front of them, Faustus could see the Sabine retreat falling apart; units dispersed, each man for himself in the scramble to get away.

As the Romans reached the top of the ridge, the view opened up below; the river gleaming like metal as the early sun caught it, the landscape around it blurred as if with mist, and still monochrome, the indistinct shapes of trees and hedges without depth in deeper or lighter grey, the hills sagging behind in sad brown; only far in the distance had the sun caught the snowline of the further mountains. On this side the river, the Sabines were still retreating down the slope, scattered bands of men making for the bend in the river where a slim wooden bridge connected them to their camp. Once past it, they would be safe.

Faustus ordered his men to halt.

"Now, sir?" one said.

Faustus could already see how many others' eyes had slid sidelong to look at that ill-advised soldier. He hardly needed to say anything; that man would have it in the neck from his colleagues for the rest of the campaign, assuming he survived. Still, he couldn't let it pass.

"When I give an order you obey it. Now. When I give it you. Not after you've done a bit of thinking, wondered whether I mean what I say, tried to translate it into Gaulish or Ionian Greek or Persian and back again, and shagged a couple of sheep on the way. Now. Got that?"

"Yessir."

Of course Egerius would have been more succinct and Tarquinius a good deal more sarcastic. But Faustus found his own approach effective enough; he didn't need rhetoric.

"Anyone else wondering what I'm about?" There was silence in the ranks. Good. "Right. The Sabines are on the run and we're not pursuing them. You're too smart to ask me. Well, all of you except our sheep-shagging friend here." That got a laugh, of course. "Then let me tell you. We have a plan. And if you want to see how that plan works out, this is as good a panorama as you'll find anywhere in Rome. Except the Tarpeian Rock perhaps, and we hope you won't end up there." That got a laugh, too; though if any of them had actually seen a traitor pushed off the Tarpeian, they might not have laughed so loudly. "And the plan is... no, I won't spoil the surprise. You'll have to wait to find out. But let me assure you; there'll be blood and guts and trophies and loot enough once the plan's worked out."

They waited as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the mists began to disperse, leaving only streamers of fog adrift in the bottom of the valley. It wasn't till a while later that Faustus realised one wisp of grey hadn't been fog at all; it was smoke, which thickened and darkened, till it rose high and threatening above the plain. The bridge was burning.

And now the patterns below them changed. The Sabines had been flowing downhill like streams gradually converging, each band joining others, towards the bridge. Now, while some continued towards the bridge, obviously hoping they could cross over before it burned completely, others retraced their steps, or fled along the banks of the river looking for a place to ford it. Confusion reigned.

Still Faustus' Romans stood, watching from the high ground. They knew, without asking, that the firing of the bridge had been part of the plan. They knew they were impregnable; the Sabines could not regain the high ground, could not - now their danger was clear - launch a fresh attack. Let the Sabines scatter, that was the plan.

***

Down by the river one of the Sabine cavalry detachments was making for the flaming bridge at speed, hoping they could cross before the fire grew too hot to withstand. Flaming, half-sunken bundles of wood wallowed in the water, caught by the closely set piers of the bridge and the lower tie-beams; the upstream side of the bridge was blazing. The downstream side hadn't taken yet, though the wind was gradually getting up and flames lurched across unpredictably, blocking the passage though not burning the deck of the bridge.

The leading horse reared suddenly a few yards from the bridge, wheeling round, nearly throwing its rider. He pulled its head to the side, so that it turned in a circle, till it stuck its head down and started bucking. Its squeals unsettled the other horses; not one would go further. Some stood, terrified into immobility; others danced sideways. One threw its rider, turned, and galloped off, swerving to avoid two of the hindmost horses; it missed the first, but hit the second broadside, carrying them both to the ground. Most of the men were dismounting now; there might be no hope of saving the horses, but they could save themselves.

Some drove their horses off with a slap from the flat of their swords, or a well aimed handful of loose stones. Perhaps they were counting on being able to retrieve the horses later, once the Romans had gone. Others must have rated the certainty of loss less intolerable than the possibility of Roman gain, and drew their blades across their horses' throats, soaking the ground with blood. The infantry had to scramble to the bridge across the lumpen corpses; loose horses ran to and fro, spooking at new arrivals and swerving round, only to find another source of fright.

The first arrivals were already half way over the bridge when a gust of wind carried a blast of heat across it. One man's hair blazed out, a sudden corona; he leapt into the river, screaming, a scream cut short as his armour dragged his down. Another made it to the other side, but as he reached it he realised his clothing was on fire, and threw himself to the earth, rolling over and over trying to stifle the blaze. More and more men were pushing on to the bridge now in panic; some didn't make it, but were pushed out at the sides, into the river where some sank, others floated. Those who fell on the downstream side were lucky; the others, falling among the burning bundles of sodden wood, found their way blocked. Some tried to clamber on to the kindling bundles; they screamed as their hands burned, and the sticky pitch adhered to whatever they touched - their clothes, bodies, faces. Those who dived underwater to swim beneath the fire bundles might have made it, if the river hadn't been so full of debris already. Bodies were already bumping against the bridge, the force of the water piling them up with the kindling wood in a horrible parody of the funeral pyre.

Still Faustus' men watched. All they saw was the plume of smoke, and the aimless scurrying of man and beast on the plain below; and the fact that hardly any of the Sabines had reached the sanctuary of the opposite bank.

Then in a moment things changed. In from the right swept an arrow-head of cavalry, slanting down the hillside toward the river. Where it met groups of the Sabine stragglers, it seemed to swallow them up, moving on unstoppably, clearing the plain behind it of all movement. Ahead of them the Sabines scattered and ran. And on the left, where till now the land had lain open, a dark, slow-moving line of infantry had appeared; Faustus' own left wing, having flanked the Sabine retreat, were coming in for the kill.

This was the moment Faustus had been waiting for. Now, and only now, he could give the order to move; now that every way of escape was cut off, now that the Sabines were penned in between ridge and river, and being driven back into his path, it was time to move. Time to march downhill, driving the Sabines into the Anio and out of the way of Rome's manifest destiny.

That was the way Faustus saw the battle. Egerius saw it differently. To him, it was the man who slithered desperately trying to balance on the blood-slick riverbank before the crumbling edge gave way underneath him. It was the blazing body that fell from the bridge, and continued flaming as the river swept it downstream. It was a horse staggering on three legs, not realising that the fourth was broken, the bone sticking through the flesh. It was a man's face terrified and pleading before Egerius' sword fell and carved its flesh away from the bone.

Some of the Sabines had tried to swim the river. The smart ones had left their armour behind; some of them made it. The river wasn't that wide, though it was fast; some were swept along, in to the flotsam of bodies and burning timber that the bridge had dammed. Most of those who tried to swim in their armour sank at once; a lucky few managed to strip the heavy plate from their bodies before they went under.

Most pitifully, one man stood on the brink, looking now at the water, now at the Roman soldiers approaching, frozen with terror. Twice he stiffened his body as if to jump, and the third time seemed to be summoning up his courage when a spear found its mark in his guts. The force of the blow did for him what he'd been unable to do himself, pitching him into the river.

Just as Egerius called a halt, by the end of the now smouldering bridge, the charred piers finally gave way against the press of bodies and timbers that had piled up behind. The swift water tumbled the corpses, so that their arms and legs lashed out as if they were alive. Days later, Egerius saw the bloated body of one Sabine thrown up on a beach of the Tiber Island, the stomach distended as if by famine, and blackened as if by fire, and thought back to those pallid arms writhing in the flood; they darkened his dreams for months afterwards.

***

It was strange, Tarquinius thought, how his reign was now defined by war. He thought of his successes; the saltings, the port of Ostia which was beginning to thrive, the creation of the neatly colonnaded lines of shops around the edges of the Forum. Rome was beginning to define itself; it looked like a town now, rather than a few scattered clusters of houses. High above, a slash of white on the Captoline Hill showed where he'd begun the foundations of a temple to Jupiter, massive blocks of stone being levered into place. Rome was becoming a civilised city; one he wouldn't have to apologise for when he received ambassadors.

But it was only war that people were interested in. The ambassador from Velzna hadn't been impressed by Tarquinius' plans for the Capitoline; he'd only wanted to probe his intentions as regards Tarchna, and the likelihood of a further thrust northwards by Rome once the Sabines were subdued. Tarquinius had no plans for Velzna - he had his hands full with the Sabine townships - but it wouldn't do to let that fat diplomat get too comfortable; he'd said that Tarchna would be interested in any overtures made by its rival, thrown out a slight suggestion of a pincer movement on Veii - knowing full well Velzna's dislike of the southern city - and then taken the ambassador to see the new Fourth division of Horse on an exercise. (He hadn't pointed out that its numbers had been swollen by riders seconded from the First and Second divisions; let the ambassador earn his keep by finding that out, if he could.)

What did he owe the Etruscans anyway? They'd thrown him out, in a luxurious way admittedly, with his vineyard and his chariot and his high-blooded wife, but they'd thrown him out; or rather, he thought, they'd never really let him in, not in any way that mattered. His mother was dead, his sisters married, one gone to Greece, another to one of the new northern cities; there was no one left in Tarchna he much cared about. And of all the Etruscans he had loved, there was only Tanaquil left now. Tanaquil who had advised him on this latest triumph.

"Impress the Romans," she'd said. "They don't know what a real triumph looks like."

"They fight well enough."

"Yes. But give them a proper triumph; chariots, a parade of the spoils, sacrifices, games, the playing of the aulos..."

"They'll call it an Etruscan innovation. You know them. Anything new, they hate it."

"Not this time. You've won them a war. Show them some Sabine armour piled up, throw a bit of silver around, they'll be eating out of your hands."

So he was holding an Etruscan triumph and an Etruscan games in order to inspire his Romans to fight against Etruscans. Because that would, inevitably, be the next step, once the Sabines had been conquered. Etruscan culture would be its own undoing. He wondered why Tanaquil couldn't see that.

There'd be boxing; sinewy Etruscan fighters, stocky Greeks, stinking of olive oil, their hands bound with strips of cloth or leather. Wrestling, too, at which the Greeks excelled, and the horse and chariot races which marked every turn of the year in Etruria, in which the nobles only would compete. (They used slave drivers now in Velzna and Curtun, he'd been told; the noble owners no longer risked their own necks. But he'd stick to the old traditions, for once; owners racing their own teams, taking all the risks themselves.)

But his mind kept coming back to how his rule had been defined by this war; and now there were calls for more wars, more conquests, fresh campaigns. He hadn't meant it to be like this; like Ancus Marcius, he'd wanted the port, the salt, ready wealth and ease, a civilised life. He'd built temples, paved the Forum, brought the games and the augurs to Rome; he and Tanaquil had brought Etruscan culture - fine weaving, the arts of the goldsmith and the bronzecaster, the elegance of a well turned line of poetry or the infinitely varied ornament of a piper's lament. But to defend the new city, he'd had to increase the size of the army; he'd had to extend the arm of the state. New laws were needed to trim excess, to ensure the success of his programme, to defend it from opponents. Somehow he'd become something other than what he'd intended, an enlightened ruler among his striving equals; Egerius said he'd become a _basileus_ , a king, but _turannos_ was as good a word, and perhaps more accurate. Tarquinius, tyrant of Rome, was not what he'd sought to become, but he had grown into the name as a fig tree grows into a crevice, and ends up twisted.

Even now he thought the Romans would call his bluff. They respected him, as far as Romans ever would respect a king; they were stubborn people, rebels by nature, like dogs never happy to obey unless you'd beaten them first to prove you were their master. There were rumours in Rome that his name had been Lucumo, that he had been a king in Tarchna, that divine fire had flamed around his head when first he came to Rome; and he did nothing to stop those rumours. Let them believe, if they wanted. But still he felt fraudulent, somehow; the half-caste boy pelted with mud still hid, trembling, under his purple mantle. He envied Tanaquil her ease, her confident assumption that she had been born to rule; Tarchna, if not Rome.

He woke often in the night now, which he never had before. He found his head swimming with words, Etruscan or Latin or Greek, which buzzed incessantly at him, stealing his sleeping hours from him. Eagle, battle, blood. Fire, conquest, love. Blood, love, blood. His thoughts whirled; a word mistook, an alliance left in the balance, a plan that hinged on another, and might fall apart, worried at him until he felt empty and bleached as a gnawed bone. Sometimes a sense of embarassment kept him awake, as when he once asked an ambassador a question he'd already answered, and he kept repeating the question to himself all night, he wasn't sure why.

When he did sleep, he fell straight into nightmares; not the kind that had you wake with a sudden lurch, your heart beating fast, but more insidious nightmares in which he wandered the streets of Rome with a companion, but when he turned, his companion had disappeared, and the streets were empty; or one in which he stood alone in a huge temple, lit only by a single brazier by which he stood, and which was dying, the darkness gathering in the corners of the great cella, and voices of dead cities whispering from the dark. He woke limp, his eyes baggy and a heavy ache on his brow that he could never quite shake off.

Tanaquil brought him a herb infusion some nights, when he'd given up turning in the bed and trying to sleep, and had got up to pace the room. He never asked what she put in it. It helped, sometimes.

"Why me?" he asked her one night, in the fearful stillness between late night and early morning, when the hours to go till dawn still seemed interminable. She turned, surprised.

"Why what?"

"Why me? Was I simply your escape route from Tarchna?"

Her eyes were cold. "Why would I want to escape? I could have ruled Tarchna. My father did."

"And your grandfather."

"For a while." She scowled; she never liked being reminded of her exiled grandfather. Political failure was not something she wanted to run in the family.

"But you wanted Rome."

"No. I wanted you."

He stopped, shook his head. She needn't lie so transparently. He didn't need to hear that.

"You were different. When the pure-blood Etruscans looked at me I could see in their eyes how they thought they could own me; I was something they _deserved,_ something they were entitled to, like their chariots and their horses and their fine family tombs with the paintings of their horses and chariots and slaves. But you never seemed to feel that; you always treated me as if I were incredibly precious, as if you had to beg even to be allowed in my presence. It was heady stuff for a girl."

"I must have looked ... ingenuous... naïve..."

"Yes, you were sweet. And you were handsome."

Thankfully she didn't stress the past tense. He knew he'd got fat, and his thin frame didn't carry it well; he felt somehow less alive than he used to, with so much dead weight, and his muscles so loose on him. He couldn't remember when he'd last exercised; there was never time for it. There wasn't time for a lot of things now. He turned again, still pacing restlessly, putting a hand up to scratch the back of his neck where one of his hair ties had come undone. "Sweet and handsome. Sweet and handsome. Do you have any idea how trivial that makes me sound? Sweet and handsome."

"But it was more than that. You thought about things differently. You actually did think about things, and that was more than anyone else in Tarchna ever did. And you had an ambition that blazed in you."

"I did?" That did genuinely surprise him. His response seemed to surprise Tanaquil, too.

"Of course you did! I could see your bitterness, right from the first - that you weren't allowed to take your place in Tarchna. But you wanted so much; to know everything, to rule, to take everything the world could give you, or that you could take from it. That's what I loved."

"And you still do?"

"I still do."

He smiled at last. "For the same reasons?"

"Of course. You still want everything. Just... you seem so tired, sometimes."

"It's hard work running things here. So much opposition."

"You don't have to meet it head on."

"It meets me. Navius, for instance. I had no idea that was going to happen."

"That he was going to die?"

"No," he said. She raised an eyebrow at him. "I had no idea he was going to oppose my plans for the army."

"Ah," she said. "He was a strange one, that Navius. Touched by the gods, you might say. Touched, anyway."

"I can deal with the obvious suspects. Faustus, for instance. Give him a job to do, keep him happy, keep him occupied, keep his mind off the deeper meaning and the greater strategy. Let him think he's being efficient, when all the time he's working for me and against his own objectives. That, I can deal with. But when something like Navius happens, it shakes me; that a single accident, one man who's seen a vision or heard a voice in the night, could bring down everything I've been working for. Everything feels too precarious, too dangerous."

"Even so, having Navius killed was going too far."

"Perhaps."

"It was obvious."

"Like something Faustus would have done."

He couldn't answer that, but looked away, wondering, really, why he _had_ done it. Navius had lost his credibility; he had no faction, no supporters. He was a distraction, not a threat. But he'd had him killed, anyway.

"Did you enjoy it?"

He couldn't work out the expression on her face; didn't know whether she wanted him to say yes or no. He'd got into the habit of not tolerating opposition, that was the way of it; and he'd not given a thought to the implication of that command.

"Well, did you?"

"No," he said. And he really believed it was true.

***

Faustus was happy, for once. And that meant Tarquinius was, for once, not uneasy.

The war against Apiolae had been a success, and not only against the obvious enemy. To be honest with himself, Tarquinius thought, Apiolae was a scapegoat rather than an enemy of Rome; any Latin town would have done. Or Volscian, or Umbrian, or Sabine, even. He didn't know, really, why it had been Apiolae that they selected for conquest. Some town had to be conquered, and Apiolae fit the bill. Casting his mind back to the councils before the war, he seemed to remember one of the older men who knew it pointing out that it lay in the plain, that its defences were inadequate, that two nearby settlements could be taken to give Rome a foothold. Was that the only reasoning, he wondered? Well, it had been reason enough; and Apiolae was conquered.

He'd given the Romans what they wanted; victory. They thought they had the right to take the whole world; and that made them easy to manipulate. It was as simple as leading a duck into a trap with a trail of corn; show them a war, and they'd go, and not wonder what were his reasons for it, or why he wanted them to fight. It was all too easy, he thought suspiciously; but it had fooled Faustus, and that was the point. Or at least, part of it.

He pulled on his purple toga; the golden braid of the hem scratched his neck, and he shrugged it away irritably. Victory had been declared; and victory meant a triumph, and a triumph meant games.

He could hear the scuffling feet of boxers sparring in the courtyard; they wouldn't land a blow in practice, jabbing and leaping and dancing out of each others' way. He'd brought them from Tarchna; the elegant arts of boxing and wrestling weren't known in Rome, it seemed, where an ugly flat blade decided any quarrel. He'd announced a prize for the chariot race, too, a golden krater made by one of the Tarchna workshops. It looked munificent on his part; not tasteful, perhaps, but then the restrained style of his youth seemed no longer to be the fashion in Tarchna. Goldsmiths had better taste in the old days, he thought; and almost as soon as he caught himself thinking that, he recoiled, shocked. Only old men thought like that.

The thought of his apparent munificence, though, brought satisfaction. Tanaquil had found one of the goldsmiths swindling her; he'd made earrings of silver, then gilded them, but sold them to her for the price of gold. Tarquinius couldn't have told the difference; but Tanaquil knew instantly, by the weight. Half the weight, she'd said, and a quarter of the value. She was the wrong person to try to cheat. She'd said nothing to the goldsmith, but a few weeks later, she'd advised Tarquinius to order a golden krater, and to be very sure to say he wanted it pure gold, not silver gilt, _for once_. The goldsmith got the message. The krater was delivered, pure gold as ordered, and without any mention of payment.

That should bring them in - the best contenders from all the Etruscan cities. They'd run four at a time; he hoped they'd have enough for at least five heats, winnowing out the competitors till they had a final quartet for the climactic race. The Romans had learned the use of a horse, but they had no great gift for it. This would be a magnificent display; an Etruscan one.

But the details of the event were a bore. Ten years ago he would have loved the work; planning for the scaffolding to be erected for the racetrack, twelve feet high; marking out the track, level and straight. Now, he was tired. He thought back to those happy days in the saltings, working on the land with his men; it seemed to him now that he'd known them all by name, that he'd dug alongside them, his hands crusted with the mud of the marshes and his face stung by the salt spume. But it all seemed distant, as if the mist had come in from the sea. Strange how feeble memory was sometimes, and yet other things protruded sharply through the haze of time; he could still feel every clod of dirt the boys had flung at him that day in Tarchna.

It was time. It must be time. He turned round to check that the fabric was draped properly at the back, reached for the circlet of gilded silver laurel leaves and fitted it on his head, pushing it down firmly till it held. Outside, a horn ripped the air with its groaning call. Time to go.

# Egerius

Egerius wasn't surprised when he was called to the Palatine. Nothing Tarquinius did surprised him; they had the easy telepathy of brothers, he sometimes thought. And in any case, Tarquinius often called on his skills as scribe or historian, or even geometer; though Egerius' knowledge of surveying wasn't the equal of Tarquinius', the king needed an impartial third party for court cases involving land. Or as impartial as you could get in Rome, where the Etruscans suspected the Faliscans of duplicity, the Faliscans thought the Romans were pulling a fast one, and everyone was suspicious of the Greeks.

Still, the call, when it came, was something of a nuisance. Folding up the four copper leaves he'd been reading, Egerius placed them neatly in a stack on the left of his desk, ready for the evening. He'd be reading the new poems to a small gathering in a few evenings' time, but he wanted to make sure he had the scansion right; these freer, ode forms were tricky, and the Greek wasn't quite the same as he'd been taught. He sometimes regretted the heroic days; he daydreamed of the clear skies of Ithaka and the wine dark sea, the simplicities he found in the blind poet's ringing voice. But that regret was the luxury of a spoiled scholar; and though he felt smaller for it, he had to admit that he was glad he didn't have to get his verse by heart, but only read it out.

He closed the shutters against the late afternoon light. "Wait," he called to the servant who'd come to fetch him, and slipped the little knife he used to peel his fruit into his belt. You never knew. (And that was different from the heroic days, too, when there were good men and bad men and you knew which side each kind was on.) Looking quickly round the darkened room, he ascertained that he had left everything in good order, and went to join the servant at the door.

When he reached the Palatine he found Tarquinius in expansive mood, every inch the Etruscan nobleman, his hair neatly braided and oiled. There was no one else in evidence; perhaps Tarquinius wanted to talk to him before the others arrived. That was not good news; it would be a long night if that was the case.

"Have some wine. It's freshly warmed."

"I won't, thanks. I'll need a clear head."

"Not today you won't."

"Oh?"

"You're not here for a court case or a council meeting. Truth told, Egerius, I've been over-using you recently. I feel a little guilty about taking you for granted."

"It's nothing." Egerius shrugged. "You're family." And now he really wondered what was coming, and whether he would be able to get away. Still, he took the wine; the honey made it thick, so that it coated his mouth with warm sweetness, too much sweetness really. But he smiled, and took another mouthful.

"I miss having time to read," Tarquinius said, and for the first time Egerius could hear a genuine note in his voice. "Tanaquil used to read me some of the Etruscan poets, but she doesn't any more."

"I've been reading some Greek lyrics recently."

"I only know the Odyssey, and the Theban poem."

"These are new. A woman on Lesbos has been writing. They're rather good."

"Hm?"

" 'Some say an army of horsemen, or a line of infantry, or a fleet of ships is the loveliest sight on our dark world, but I say, it is whatever you desire.' "

"That's forthright. And good. They're all on that theme?"

"All. Though she sees love in different ways; shared pleasure, beauty, desire, possession, obsession."

"It's all of those," Tarquinius said, and sighed. "The fire in the blood. The worm in the apple."

"You should write yourself."

Tarquinius laughed sourly. "No time. And to be honest, the way things are in Rome at the moment, I'd rather see an army of horsemen than any lover; as long as they were on my side."

"You have no time to read?"

"I tried, a couple of weeks ago. I cleared some time, shooed the servants out, unrolled my Homer. I hoped to spend an hour or so with the brave Achilles; but I couldn't settle to it. I kept thinking about Veii, and the war, and the floor plans of the shops they're building on the edge of the forum, and my mind skated away from the verse. I found I'd read twelve lines and yet I couldn't remember anything that had happened in them, not a single word from them. I must have re-read it, I don't know, five or six times before I finally gave up."

"I'm reading the new verses to a few friends next week. You could come."

"I doubt it. There's always something. And Tanaquil says I have to be careful what I get involved with; there's always some way Faustus' lot have of turning an innocent interest into a political manoeuvre. Coming out pro-Hellene, they'd call it."

"But you are half Greek, after all," Egerius said, and then wished he hadn't.

"Half. And half Etruscan. Both halves hated by Rome. And Tanaquil doesn't really understand the Greek half. I don't think she ever did."

Tarquinius seemed about to confess something; Egerius had been the recipient of such confidences before, and he could always tell when they were coming. It was a certain earnestness of tone, he thought, and a hint of tears in the voice, or the strain of keeping them out of it. Then the moment was gone.

"I haven't even had time to finish the temple I vowed to Tinia, up on the Capitoline. And I can't pay the workmen till I get the spoils from the next city we take. It's a treadmill; a war to pay for my projects, then a war to pay for that war, and never any sight of an end to it."

There'll be no end, once these Romans get their teeth into the world, Egerius thought; but he was too canny to say so. And besides, he didn't want the discussion; he wanted to get back to those poems, the wreaths of hyacinths and violets in a girl's hair, the moon that looked distantly down on lovers and was the same to lovers and to the unloved.

"And I need to get that last acquisition productive. Which brings me on to the main subject; Collatia."

"Isn't that done and dusted?"

"Conquered, yes. But now we have to set it to work. You're in charge."

No. No really. That was a very bad idea. Sent to the back of beyond to manage some wretched little town and make it, as Tarquinius said, productive. Not civilised. Productive.

"Of course, I'd expect you to do a little more than simply producing the right amount of tribute. Of course we need the money. But we need to make Collatia part of the Roman world, properly. Which means..."

"Which means soft soap, spin, a few cheap slogans, and tax."

"Not at all. Well... partly. But I thought we could do better than that."

Egerius refused to be drawn. He could smell the emollient in Tarquinius' voice like a rotten tooth on the breath.

"Rome is... Rome is difficult. I wonder sometimes if I shouldn't have stayed in Tarchna. There's something wild and dour about this city that won't change, no matter how many peoples it swallows up."

"I don't know," Egerius said softly. "There seem to be enough of us. Etruscans, Greeks, men and women with open minds and some culture. Rome might amount to something yet."

Tarquinius shrugged. "It might. I have to hope for that. But I look at the Tarpeian rock sometimes, and I look at the Black Stone in the forum, and I think the roots of Rome go too far back in blood and in darkness for it to change. I walk through the Forum sometimes at night and I can feel the wolves pacing besides me, the spirits of the unhappy dead hissing like waves on a dark shore."

Egerius knew what he meant; there was something grim about this city. And yet living on the Aventine, where rose blossom blew in summer, and there was always the scent of rosemary in the air, Egerius thought he'd put enough distance between his life and the dourness of the Romans. And here he was dragged back into it again.

"You'd have a free hand in Collatia."

"No," Egerius said levelly, "I wouldn't."

Tarquinius was half surprised, half angered by the contradiction. "You would."

"Only if the town produced the tribute you demand. That's not a free hand. Not really."

Tarquinius laughed. "Technically, I suppose you're right. But as long as you deliver what's needed, you can choose your own ways and means. I'd like to see what you make of Collatia. Take your books, take your scholarly friends, your artistic young nobles, your poets and pipe-players. See what you can make it."

That was a temptation, even if Tarquinius seemed not to take it wholly seriously. To create, in Collatia, a blended culture, part Etruscan, part Greek, part Italic; to fuse the different nationalities in a way Rome never had, to create a space of freedom and experiment; that was a heroic challenge, something to be taken on with fear and yet with desire. Despite himself, Egerius warmed to the idea.

"But don't forget civilisation needs wealth to underpin it. That's what I learned from Ancus Marcius. First the wealth, then the civilisation."

"But wealth without culture..."

"The culture will be there. But I'm relying on you to make sure the city produces the economic inputs we need."

Economic. Oikonomia. A fine Greek word. Tarquinius might have tried to live up to Tanaquil's Etruscan aspirations, Egerius thought, but his merchant father's attitudes showed through that veneer. Fifteen rough terracotta amphoras for every finely painted krater.

"You can't push it too hard. Freedom of thought demands leisure and security."

"And security takes armed men, and armed men need to be paid. Or fed, at least."

Egerius still struggled against the alluring prospect of cultural experiment. There would be too much work in it; too much administration and accounting. He might be able to establish a place in which artists and philosophers could think freely; but he might leave himself no space for his own thoughts. He frowned; what was most important for him - to write his own lyrics, tame as they were beside Sappho's magnificent fervour, or to create a free city, a place where both his Greek and his Etruscan heritage could find expression? He looked at Tarquinius; was that really what you'd wanted to do with Rome, he felt like asking, to mould a place where you could be whole?

"I'm useful here. I have things to do in Rome."

"You have your little coterie of poets."

"That's unfair."

"No, it's not. You have your little poetry readings. And for me, you do nothing another translator couldn't do. I'm giving you the chance to create your own city - another Romulus, another Tarchon - and you'd rather read some Greek girl-poet."

Egerius felt his face blazing. It was unfair; and it was completely justified, this insult. And he knew it.

Tarquinius must have thought he'd pushed him far enough; he softened his voice to nearly a whisper, as deep as a lover's.

"You understand what I'm trying to do."

Better than Tanaquil would, Egerius thought, isn't that right?

"We have the same blood, you and I."

Egerius recognised the old soft soap for what it was, but even so, it was working. Tarquinius' mellifluous voice, stroking down his prickles, like oiling down your hair after a bath. He really didn't want to go; but the temptation was too great. Before he realised it, he was agreeing to the secondment, and Tarquinius was congratulating him, as if it had all been Egerius' own idea.

They had some more of the wine then, and lazed on the couches watching the sky slowly turn from deep blue to a hazy rose pink, darkening to purple like a bruise. Egerius looked across to the Capitoline, where the marble stumps of the interrupted temple stood stark, like shattered teeth. One of the household cats wreathed round Tarquinius' legs, rubbing its chin against him; then, suddenly too proud to be seen with a mere human, leapt on to the long table, and stalked to the other end, from where it glared at them.

Tanaquil had her dogs, which lay quietly curled at her feet or looked up at her with unthinking loyalty and wet mouths; Tarquinius had only the half-wild cats that came and went as they wanted, and gave him the purely conditional love of the hungry and untame. The cat's eyes gleamed green and amber in the light, uncanny, as if there were a light shining from inside it. Egerius shivered. Night was coming.

He was reaching for another cup of wine when he realised he'd forgotten all about the lyrics waiting on his desk. Ah well. He wouldn't be reading them next week, anyway.

***

Egerius convinces Tanaquil she should trust Manius

Tarquinius still doesn't... give him responsibility, he says, you'll see he'll use it properly

on the saltings - he knew he was being watched, he told me

but Tarquinius unhappy at the way Tanaquil lets Manius visit her when she's en deshabille - suspecting an affair.

Her response that it's none of his business

his feeling that a Roman must be able to trust his wife

a split here...

she's minded to seduce Manius just to spite him...and knows she has Manius under control, just like a greyhound

Faustus talking against it... Etruscan take-over...

typical Roman bluntness, no finesse

Egerius thinking you shouldn't say that, Faustus, Tarquinius is not your friend

but only if I can take my household with me... striking a bargain - wants to take Gaius

talking about Faustus; Egerius impressed by his work at the battle

Tarquinius sounds less certain, won't praise him - very cool

Egerius wondering if it is only becaue Faustus spoke out at first against him as king; yet since the election, Faustus has been loyal

his idea of diplomacy not in the Etruscan tradition... says Tarquinius

but effective, none the less, said Egerius. Remember how he drew a circle in the dust round the Cornutum ambassador with his spear?

As if he were conjuring a demon or a god.

And said; there is safety within it, and if you step out of it, there is only death that waits for you and your men.

So?

the ambassador could see the men standing with Faustus, each one with his spear in his hand. He looked at the dust. And he did not step out.

Not subtle though - a binary choice.... the Greeks are more subtle.

True.

Egerius eventually gives it up; a lost cause?

Egerius sighing as he realises he'll have to cancel his poetic symposium -

egerius and manius - to be trusted?

# Tarquinius

It didn't really matter what Egerius was doing. Collatia's revenues would help pay for the next war; but it was the next war that was important. Latium was subdued, though the Latins glowered like feral cats and rebellion had always to be watched for and suppressed; and to fill garrisons enough to put down thoughts of revolt, Tarquinius needed fresh wealth coming into Rome, fresh men and supplies that could be funded only by further conquest.

He'd been innocent, back when he was in charge of the saltings, he thought. He'd really believed Ancus Marcius' idea that Rome could grow by commerce alone. Well, if that had ever worked, how had Greece or Phoenicia not conquered the world by now?

(It was strange how often, now, he thought of his father. Had his father ever looked back, as he was doing now, and felt trapped by his life? Had his father, beneath that omnipotent façade that every father shows to his children, ever wondered if things could have been different? He remembered his father's stories of Greek poverty; the tiny farms that kept going on the edge of ruin, scratching shallow furrows in dry soil, the farms where younger sons eked out precarious livings. It made him wonder, sometimes, whether his father had really been the exiled aristocrat he'd held himself to be, or just another chancer running away from a Greece to poor to stay alive in. And what did that make him, Tarquinius?)

So with Latium pinned down - in order to keep it pinned down - he needed new targets. The nearer Etruscan cities; or rather, those that were both nearer and weaker. If he needed it, he had good reason; there had been Etruscans fighting with the Latins at Nomentum, at Corniculum, at Ameriola. He had no evidence that their cities had sent them, of course; but that need not matter, if he struck a deal with the stronger Etruscan cities for their support.

"And then..." he said, drawing a line with the condensation his winecup had left on the tabletop.

"And then what?" Manius asked.

He hadn't meant to speak; but his thoughts pushed him onwards, with the inevitability of history, or of drunkenness.

"And then. When we've mopped up all the small cities, the weak ones. The ones where the ruling family has no alliances, no relatives among the kings of the greater powers. The ones without much trade..."

"And then?"

"And then we strike at the Federation itself."

"Mmm-hmm," Manius said, as if it was obvious. But Tarquinius had seen his eyebrows flicker in surprise. To be honest, the thought had even surprised him; but it was obvious. Once he'd cut off the smaller cities, once the Federation had been deprived of its little agricultural feeder-states and artisan cities; once he'd chopped the links that still bound the ruling families across Etruria, the intermarriages and cousinships and fosterages, he'd have weakened the Federation without their even realising that he was doing it. And then even striking at Tarchna would be possible.

"But for now," Manius was asking, "the deal with Tarchna holds?"

***

"Disgusting," Faustus was saying, and it was clear what he was referring to. Thresu glanced over, his face tight and suspicious; Teitu, his partner, was too well schooled to show that he had heard.

Tanaquil stepped forward, as if to cover Faustus' faux pas with an oleaginous paste of bonhomie and politesse; she murmured a welcome to the Etruscan pair, passed them to greet the other couple, Sethre and his wife Pure Ancarui, and bring them forward to meet Tarquinius.

Sethre was looking at the place with a dealer's eye; working out the value of the furnishings, Tarquinius thought. It was a long time since he'd been in Tarchna, and he didn't know what the current taste was; but gold was gold, whatever the style. Sethre should be impressed. Though was Sethre looking for a clue to the wealth and power of Rome, in which case he would be impressed; or was he, rather, looking to see which way Rome leant culturally - towards Etruria or Greece, towards aristocracy or the rule of the rough bandits who'd had Rome before?

If they'd been in Etruria, there would have been more ceremony to go through; but Rome still took a certain touchy pride in its brusqueness. Once Tarquinius had grasped the ambassadors' arms in greeting, they were done. That was it, though the Etruscans seemed to expect more, from the way they were standing, expectant, ready, not yet relaxed. He almost felt sorry for them, till Tanaquil had explained the custom to them; and still, Pure looked disapproving, and Thresu puzzled.

Tanaquil was, as always, the competent hostess. She'd quickly managed to put herself between Teitu and Thresu, flirting with both of them; Tarquinius thought sourly that if she was going to sleep with either of them it wouldn't be Teitu, with his sharp black beard and lively face, but Thresu, a little older and running to fat already. Like me, he thought, and didn't know whether to be complimented or simply annoyed at her perversity. And anyway, she wouldn't sleep with either of them; not with the Romans watching her every move. She might no longer love him the way she had, but she cared enough for their joint project not to sink it stupidly.

He left her to flirt, and made his way past her to rejoin Sethre and Pure; another odd couple, Sethre lean, with a great scar down his left shoulder and arm that seemed to have healed jagged, and his stocky, heavy-browed wife. Yet somehow you could see at once they were both pure-blooded Etruscans; there was a rangy ease to them, a certain tip of the head, a flaring of the nostrils, and the same cruel, amused smile he'd seen so much on Tanaquil's face recently.

"A wonderful palace," Sethre was saying. "You must be proud of what you've achieved here..."

It almost seemed as if he'd said the word 'though', it was so clearly implied in the way his voice modulated, fell, fell silent.

"I couldn't have done it without the foundations laid by Ancus Marcius." He knew Faustus was listening; give the Romans some cheap credit, let them feel that their culture wasn't threatened, keep them quiet. Turan's tits, he needed a piss already, and even if Rome didn't go overboard on ceremony, he'd have to stagger through another half an hour of this...

"Your wife", Pure was saying, "is in mourning?"

"'No." He couldn't help the surprise in his voice.

"I merely wondered... she is so plainly dressed..." Pure's voice fell; she realised she was on the verge of becoming impolite.

"Oh, it's a Roman thing," Tanaquil said evenly, turning to address the other woman. "Women are only supposed to wear what they can weave themselves. Homespun. Rough and ready."

"But I'd heard..." Pure stifled the rest of the sentence.

"I was the best weaver in Tarchna in my day? Of course." She lowered her voice a little. "But Roman women are altogether simpler in their tastes. It wouldn't do to outrank them too obviously."

She gestured at Pure's tebenna, a chequerboard of bright colour woven so finely it floated up whenever the woman moved. Pure grinned. Neither woman needed to say anything.

Tarquinius was amazed that Tanaquil could speak so coolly about the matter. He'd told her to wear the thick undyed wool, so that she would not outshine the Roman women - those that their husbands allowed to come; she'd thrown her chair at him, turned over the table, and screamed, so that her dogs ran, and one upset the tripod, splashing wine over the floor. Yet now... well, that was Tanaquil; neither fire nor ice, but when she saw the need for it.

Dinner was less formal than the reception; only those were invited who were part of Tarquinius' inner circle, like Manius, and those he really couldn't avoid inviting, like Faustus, together with the family - young Arruns taking a couch for the first time - and the Etruscan guests. Thresu and Teitu had clearly been schooled not to make their relationship too obvious, so they didn't share a couch, as they would have done in Tarchna; but though they could keep their hands off each other, they couldn't keep their eyes off each other. Tarquinius wondered how long they'd been together; their relationship had the shine of newness, before you find out your partner has sour breath in the morning, while you still find their little habits charming, before they start to irritate with stale repetition. That was one of the things his spies hadn't bothered to tell him.

The conversation was determinedly trivial. Pure started them off talking about chariot racing, for some reason; she'd run a couple of horses herself, a while back. Tanaquil hung back, remembering the presence of Romans in the room, but Arruns was keen to know more; Manius turned out to know the latest odds on the big races out on the plain past the Palatine. Only Faustus wasn't drawn into the talk; he sat silent, solid, and Tarquinius couldn't help thinking, disapproving.

"I used to drive," Thresu said, unexpectedly. "Not any more." He patted his stomach, slightly puffy though not fat. "Too old, too fat."

"You are not!" Tanaquil said, the polite sociable lie that was needed.

Thresu smiled, the polite social smile that acknowledged her politeness, though he must have wished the negation had been more genuine. "I thought it was better to retire while I was still winning."

That was something else his spies hadn't told him, Tarquinius reflected; they'd said Thresu used to compete, but not that he'd ever won. Unless he was lying? But a look at Pure's face disabused him of that notion; she'd surely have known if that was a bluff, and it would have shown. And Teitu was looking at his partner with infatuated pride. No bluff, then.

"Is my brother still competing?" Tanaquil asked.

"I would have thought you'd know," Pure said. "Doesn't he write to you?"

Tanaquil's laugh was silver, light. "Oh, we have better things to talk about."

"He won the last spring games with his skewbalds."

"Holy thunder! Is he still running those ugly things?"

"They may be ugly, but they're fast," said Thresu.

"Like you," said Teitu.

"How like me? The ugly bit, or the fast?" Thresu grinned. That must be a regular joke between the two of them, Tarquinius thought, as he saw Thresu aiming a punch at Teity that his lover caught before it landed.

"Both," said Pure. "Silly old fart." She muttered those last words to her husband, but they were clear enough to Tarquinius; and perhaps to Tanaquil, as she steered the conversation quickly away.

Subjects flickered in and out of focus; music, poetry, the new fashions in jewellery (there was some kind of new filigree work that a goldsmith in Tarchna had invented, or in Cisra, they laid claim to it there too, but then, what Tarchna did today, Cisra always copied tomorrow), the work of the Velx sculptors, poetry again (that Greek girl Egerius had been mad about), the best way to cook hare, the sturgeon Manius' friend Numa had served at the Lupercalia. It was all luxury, the multiple uses of wealth, what you did when you got bored with your riches and your leisure, and he could see Faustus' intense disaste. But what else could they talk about? Tarquinius thought - carding wool? Five different kinds of dry biscuit? Military drills?

"So, Tarquinius, what about the treaty with Tarchna? Are we still on? You still want us to gang up on Nomentum?"

Oh you bugger, he thought. Thresu had to go and mention the one subject they absolutely needed to avoid tonight. And to go and blurt out the name of his next target like that, in front of the Romans, when he'd kept it secret for weeks. He'd even suggested a march on Sabine Reate, with the idea that he could take his troops out along that road, and turn suddenly to attack Nomentum, catching the city by surprise, taking it without a long drawn out siege, if he was lucky... Faustus was staring at him; he'd not heard the last of it from Faustus, he was sure, and now Faustus knew, it would be all round Rome in hours, and no chance of winning the advantage of surprise.

But he smiled, and laughed, and meanwhile his brain (and, he was sure, Tanaquil's) was working double speed to come up with some indirection.

"Oh, the treaty. Yes, yes of course. You know, with our trade through Ostia and yours through Gravisca, we can tighten the screws on Cisra, too. That's to your advantage."

"Nomentum is a side issue," Tanaquil said.

Sethre was looking at Pure, who nodded. "Yes, we can see that. But of course we have to be careful; the Federation won't stand for overt aggression."

"Oh, any overt aggression will be on our side," Tarquinius said.

Luckily that was the moment that the aulos player began to tune up for the dancing, and the noise stopped any further talk on that subject - or any other; and then the dancers, five young men (and no girls, out of respect for the Romans' sensitivities), stepped out, and the dance began. But the damage had been done, Tarquinius thought.

If this had been Tarchna, they might have ended the evening there, with the dancers joining the guests on their couches; Pure was flirting with one of the youths, but Sethre coughed and slid his eyes in the direction of the flint faced Faustus, and Pure got the point, and shook her head at the dancer, who backtracked, his face studiedly impassive with the same little upturned smile Tanaquil so often used to greet bad news. (Was that why Tanaquil always beat him at the game of stones? And he a Greek, and they'd invented the bloody game...)

Tarquinius rose; and instantly, the dancers drew back, and the conversation died. Time to call it a night, before the Etruscans got out of hand, or the Romans got too shocked. Time to let Faustus go back to whatever scared and colourless woman he kept, time to let Pure make her own discreet arrangements with that dancer, time to let Tanaquil put him to bed. Time to take a piss, too, he thought, and realised he'd drunk too much; his steps were less steady than they might have been, and he hoped the ambassadors would put it down to age, not drunkenness. On his way out, he leaned on Manius' shoulder. Dear Manius, dear untrustworthy Manius...

"Come to me tomorrow. Not too early." He saw Manius' short nod.

Teitu and Thresu preceded him out; that would have been a breach of etiquette in Etruria, he thought, but not here, and he wasn't quite sure whether to interpret it as a deliberate insult just nicely calibrated enough that he couldn't object to it, or simply the fact that he'd stopped for a moment, leaning on Manius, and they'd kept going. Then again, their expressions left him in little doubt that they were both thinking of a warm couch, and perhaps more wine, and the absence of a moral censor like Faustus, who'd sat staring at them like the figure of death on a monument. Thresu was leaning on Teitu, his steps a little unsteady; well, Tarquinius wasn't the only one who'd had too much, then.

He heard Pure suddenly squeal with laughter. He looked over; the dancer she'd been ogling was standing behind her, had grabbed her hand and was trying to push it inside his clothes. Tarquinius had ended the party just in time; he looked out of the corner of his eye at Faustus and Manius, but the two Romans hadn't noticed; they were busy in a conversation of their own, watching Thresu stagger over the threshold.

"At least they'll die out," Faustus said. "One thing to be said for buggery, no chance of getting a bastard."

"They say Thresu has a wife in Tarchna," Manius said lazily. Faustus spat.

***

The works on the drainage of the Velabrum should have started decades before, Tarquinius thought. It was so clear to him that the marsh had to be drained, he couldn't understand how preceding kings had never seen it. As long as there was marsh here, Rome could never grow, could never descend from the slopes of the Capitol or the Palatine to become more than a tiny hill city, like Staties or Arretium.

And so now they were working on the great drain, in the stink and ooze of the marshes, that were only ever clean when the Tiber flooded and the river waters scoured the low lying land. It was tricky work; the land was too flat for the water to run out of it, so they had to calculate a gradient steep enough to pull the water with it, and yet still arrive at the Tiber above the level of the river water. The tolerances were fine, the plan had to be nicely judged; besides falling just the right amount, at the right gradient, the channels had to be planned to follow the contours, to clear every stagnant pond and marshy dip; and that was not so easy, the geometry of the meandering channels would turn back on itself if you weren't careful, or you'd end up leaving a morass in some crease of the landscape undrained. And though you might have thought the easiest way would have been to drive a straight channel right down the middle – and that was the way the Romans' minds worked – that would either have left half the marsh waterlogged, if it was shallow, or if it was deep, would have flooded the whole plain with Tiber water every spring, when the rains and meltwater came down from the Apennines.

Once, Tarquinius would have taken the measurements himself; would have paced the distances, settled the groma, known every wrinkle of the waterchannels and hump of green-slimed mud. Now, he looked at the land from the back of his horse, and saw only an expanse of slime and mud, small channels and pools and the plants that straggled across the greyness; an expanse indeterminate and unchartable, by him. He struggled to follow a particular meandering channel, but as it twisted, he lost sight of it, or his eyes seemed to slip to another channel, so that he couldn't be sure if he was still following the one he'd originally chosen. The marsh seemed flat, and yet as he looked, he saw how streams disappeared into hidden dips, how as his horse moved, the map of the marsh seemed to shift, to well up and ooze out. Only the white painted posts the surveyors had knocked into the ground let them find their way safely, Manius in front and him behind, and he saw the posts were already leaning, crooked, as the ground around them cracked, sank, swelled.

In the mud, the slowly receding water had carved fernlike branching patterns.

The bare, half-dried dirt had a surface like leather; when he rode across it, his horse's hooves split the surface, and water welled in the crescents it had left. He smelt marsh herbs, and the rankness of a stagnant channel where the water was scummed with green decaying weed.

The men were working on the central channel now, hammering in posts and marking each with the ring of of black that showed the point from which they'd measure three feet down, down towards the base of the post now deep in the soft ground. Tarquinius looked over to Manius, who'd ridden a little to the side, and stopped his horse.

"We'll walk from here," he said, swinging himself heavily down to the earth, feeling his feet dig into the dirt. It was hard going; he looked at the soft scuff of his footprints.

They were all Romans, these men working here; Manius ran through their names - Gnaeus, Gaius, Caius.

"My gods! Do they all rhyme?"

They laughed dutifully at that, but he had a feeling they'd laugh at it differently later, when he was gone; the old Etruscan, who didn't understand this new city that he ruled.

"No, they don't," said Manius, literal minded as ever, and introduced Paullus, Tullus and Aulus, Tertius, Sextus and Decimus. That was worse, Tarqunius thought; Third and Sixth and Tenth? What was the sense there? (And who, these days, had ten sons anyway?)

"Don't they have names?" he muttered to Manius, keeping his voice low so the surveyors wouldn't hear it.

"Those are their names," Manius said.

Now he began to understand what Tanaquil meant about Roman girls' names. There was something wrong about calling a man a number. And they had so few names, these Romans; if you were writing an epic, he thought, you'd not have put together enough Argonauts or enough warriors for Troy before you found you had to repeat the names, so you'd have two Publiuses or three Marcuses...

And where were all the men who had worked with him? Gaius - his Gaius, not this new Gaius he'd just met - was long gone by now, into Collatia with Egerius; Manius was here, of course, but where were all the others - Publius and... and... he realised he'd forgotten their names, and when he tried to think of them, he could see them standing there in the saltings, lined up under the burning sun, but he could no longer see their faces clearly. They seemed blurred, smoothed out as a potter smooths out the clay of a pot that collapsed on the wheel, before making it anew. Gods, was he so old? Were those days so far past?

"... facing the walls with stone?"

Tarquinius was unnerved. He's missed what Manius was saying; he'd never used to do that. He frowned, hummed gently to himself, looked as if he was thinking. "With stone?"

"Wickerwork would hold the banks back, but it would need replacing every few years. Stone would be mure durable."

"Stone it is, then."

"But..."

"But what? You want stone, or you don't?"

"But it costs more, of course."

"Stone," he said determinedly. Manius wasn't completely up to date on the plan; he thought it was just a question of draining the marsh. But Tarquinius' plan went further; the stream would run in a great conduit through the centre of markets and wharves, a whole new city below the great peaks of the palace and the Capitol.

It was a strange gift, this ability to coax the landscape into comformity with human desire; it was not pure engineering - you had to be able to look at the landscape as if through half-closed eyes, letting its lineaments sink in, and then superimpose on that the changes you wanted to make. So though all Etruscan temples shared an orientation, between north and east, in the fortunate quadrant of the heavens, none faced exactly one compass point; and though Etruscan towns shared the same plan of two crossing main streets, they adjusted it to the landscape - Staties long and thin on its sharp ridge, Curtun with its sprawling X and roughly squared circle of walls, the sinuous streets of Velathri. It was like dancing with landscape, each partner bending towards the other, interweaving their distinct patterns with a music that, he now realised, few would ever hear, and even he only heard the distant echo.

("You drive a channel straight through the middle," Manius had said, the first time they came out here. A typical Roman; straight down the middle, the simplest, most brutal way to solve any problem. They took the same attitude to landscape, to the Latins, to women; an Etruscan seduced, a Roman raped. He could easily credit the story of the Sabine women, no matter that the more civilised Romans told him it was a myth, or at the very least a gross simplification. "Straight through the middle; there."

"Not quite," he'd said; "you need to come in at an angle, there, from the Palatine, to get the gradient. And you need to turn in the middle, contour that ground there, and meet the Tiber here;" he carved the air with the edge of his hand, showing the curve of the channel.

"It's longer." Manius' voice held an edge of complaint.

"Look where you would put your channel." Tarquinius stood behind Manius' shoulder, forcing the Roman to look in the direction he wanted. "You bring the water in rushing, then stop it dead, then you have to cut through this rise, and " - he turned Manius round, so they faced the river - "then your stream enters the Tiber upstream, against the flow, so that eventually, the whole of this side of the bank will be worn away, and the water will back up whenever the Tiber's high. The land wants it this way."

But he could see Manius was not convinced.)

Well, there was nothing to do out here today. He might as well have taken that decision on the stone facings sitting in his palace as down here; he'd have had a better view of the marshes from up on the Palatine, too, without the strange foldings and blurrings of the landscape that disorientated you at ground level.

He looked up the valley, such as it was; more of a nick between two hills, a narrower tongue of land between two plains. He dreamt of the water flowing between white marble walls, curving towards the Tiber; of paved squares instead of pathless mud. And at the same time, he knew the retaining banks would be of travertine, porous grey, not marble, and the squares would be cobble, rough and easily torn up. But that dream of a shining city was not completely false; it drove him on. Though he might not build it, he could make the foundations.

****

"It's not going well?"

Tanaquil always seemed to know when there was something on his mind.

"It's going very well," Manius said, before Tarquinius could answer.

"Not badly," he said, "at any rate."

She had one of her greyhounds with her, leaning its head against her leg; though it looked up at the two men coming in, and its tongue crept half way out, it neither barked nor stood up, just breathed somewhat more heavily.

"Not badly," she repeated.

"The surveying is pretty much done. It will work."

"So there's a problem with the digging?"

"Not at all," he said, wishing she would steer away from this line of questioning, at least while Manius was there. "Everything is in hand."

"Fine," she said, in the bright voice that meant; it's not. "Well; will you have a cup of wine, Manius?"

Manius had been looking increasingly confused; Tarquinius' incipient depression was invisible to him, he couldn't read those small signs of a tension around the corners of the eyes, a slightly deeper line across the forehead, that Tanaquil knew so well how to decipher. He stayed for a single cup of warm wine, and when Tanaquil's dog came to sniff him, he fondled its soft ears; but he excused himself from a second cup, and went, quickly enough for Tarquinius to see that he was fleeing a fight he didn't understand.

As soon as Manius had gone, Tanaquil's questions recommenced.

"What is it, then? If it's not the great marsh drain?"

"It took me back to the saltings," he said.

"Is that such a bad thing?"

"I feel old, Tanaquil. Those boys at the diggings; they're all Romans, not an Etruscan among them, and not one that I knew."

"You had Manius. We could draft a couple of Arruns' friends on to the team, if it's young Etruscans you want."

He shrugged. He doubted any of Arruns' friends would be interested. The Etruscans who'd come to Rome with him had made their money; their children weren't interested in the hard work of surveying or construction, or trade, or drilling their troops. They studied poetry or music, not as a noble accomplishment but full time; they thought they were above work, above history. She'd missed the point, anyway.

"Where did all the years go?" he asked.

Her eyes looked suddenly hard. Then came that cruel smile.

"Is that it?" she whispered, and stepped closer to him, running her hands down his flanks to his hips. "The years, the flying years." She put a hand up to his neck, and wound it in the braids of his hair. " You think I don't see them? The wrinkles at the corner of my eyes, the grey hairs among the black? Years gone, and you may well ask, where did they go, like a wind that dies, or snow melting away."

Was it sympathy, he wondered, or was she twisting the knife? His nose was prickling the way it always did when he was close to tears; there was a tiny pinprick of headache above one eye. He felt her breath on his neck.

"I felt old," he said, and put his hands over hers.

Later, though, he looked out from the palace, to the Capitol, to the other hills; smoke drifted up from the houses that clustered on the slopes of the Viminal and Esquiline. He remembered all the times he'd done this, over the years; tried to see Rome again as he'd first seen it, before the Tiber bridge was made, before the houses straggled down from the hills towards the valley bottom, when the city was half the size it was now. They'd achieved something with all those years, then, he thought; but the sense of achievement he'd expected was missing. He could no longer see where their first house had been; and no doubt it had been knocked down long ago, replaced by a newer, larger building.

"How did you like our new diplomats?"

He turned away from the window, to the dim splendour of the chamber. "Well enough."

She pulled a wry face. "My dear husband isn't talking, then? I'm not one of those Roman women, you know, bred for breeding and nothing else."

She never tired of that little dig. It annoyed him and amused him in roughly equal measure.

"Besides," she said, "my perceptions may be useful. Admit it."

"True enough." He would choose which battles he was going to fight, and that wasn't one of them. "Well, it's Sethre we have to deal with, I think. It's quite clear that he's the leader of the delegation."

"The official leader, anyway," she qualified.

"The official leader. Now as for Pure, she's blunt, undiplomatic, even crude. But that's a useful game for him; she tries to draw other people out into indiscretions."

"That business with the dancer?"

"I think she was seeing just how far she could go. I stopped the dance; she's worked out the conflict with the Old Roman faction."

"She knows just how far you can go."

"Hm."

"We should keep an eye on her."

"Agreed. Now what about the other two? Teitu's only there because of Thresu."

"You might be right."

"You're not convinced?"

"He's young."

"That's what attracts Thresu, I suppose."

"That's not what I meant. He's young for a delegation; but he's learning. I think he's been sent to watch the others, to learn how the game is played. He'll be a power, in a few years."

"And Thresu? Why in the hidden gods' names has he been sent here?"

"Well, it was an interesting test of our Etruscan culture, sending the two of them."

"But he's an old fool. Jokes, nothing but jokes. Stupid enough to mention Nomentum."

"You think that was stupidity?"

"A secret I'd kept from everyone on our side, and he blurts it out with Faustus there."

"He knew it was a secret?"

"Of course he did! Everyone knew. Strictest secrecy. Destroy the message."

"So he's forced our hand."

"Why? Why, for Vanth's sake?"

"You didn't deny it."

"I couldn't."

"So you've lost the chance to pick your next target. It has to be Nomentum. And you'll have to move fast, now, before word gets out and the city has time to prepare itself for a siege."

***

Naturally, the real work of diplomacy was not conducted at such public events as the delegates' welcome banquet, although Thresu's intervention had changed the rules somewhat in that regard; there were numerous meetings over the next few days, one delegate or another with either Tarquinius, or Tanaquil, or Manius, though Manius' brief was carefully limited to tactical questions and matters of logistics. There was a decided advantage to this as far as Tanaquil was concerned; she could not be seen to involve herself in front of the Romans, but behind the scenes in the palace she was free to negotiate with the Etruscans. And, since they were Etruscans, they were quite ready to negotiate with her.

Pure and Tanaquil made an odd pairing; Tanaquil's archly elegant slenderness, Pure stocky and forthright. But both showed their Etruscan allegiance in the clothes they wore, bright turquoise and red and purple, in their huge circular earrings and the heavy gold around their necks.

There were honey-cakes and dried apple rings set out on the table, but Tanaquil noticed that Pure only played with them, pushing them around on the dish; and the level of the wine in her cup never went down. Nor had Pure been distracted by the youth Tanaquil had asked to serve the wine, the same dancer Pure had taken a liking to at the banquet; she had simply smiled fleetingly at him, then turned back to Tanaquil.

"I'm glad you still keep your Etruscan customs at home," Pure said. "I must admit, when I saw you in homespun at the banquet, I wondered if you'd gone native."

"Just the fact I was there at all should have told you the opposite."

Pure shrugged. "I suppose. Dear gods, that was a trial. Only two women in a crowd of men. It's simply not natural."

"I worry for my daughter," Tanaquil said, though that was a half truth; it was Tarquinia's passivity and lack of talent that really worried her. "Women in Rome now are slaves, all of them."

"Aren't we all slaves to men? In one way or another?"

"It's not a metaphor here. It's their actual legal status."

Though Pure's face was well schooled, and her voice steady, Tanaquil could see that this had shocked her; it was the eyes, you could always tell by the eyes, they rounded and opened that infinitesimal fraction, even though the rest of the face remained set.

"They belong to their fathers; later, to their husbands, who can dispose of them as they see fit," she said. "Actual slavery."

"You'll change that, of course?"

"I hope to."

"And Tarquinius agrees with you?"

"Of course."

"It must be difficult," Pure said, feeling her way slowly, "expanding Etruscan influence while retaining Rome's independence of action."

"You mean it's difficult giving them Etruscan culture while they see your cities as the enemy."

Pure looked at her sharply. Well, thought Tanaquil; you're not used to blunt speaking from others, though it's a tactic you use yourself?

"It's difficult giving them any culture at all. Remember, Pure, it was outlaws started this town, all the riff raff the Albans and Sabines and Latins had thrown out. Just getting some respect for the rule of law is hard enough."

"Respect for the gods?"

"Difficult to say. They respect the practice of augury, but none of them understand it. They think it's simple; healthy liver equals good news, you will meet a tall dark stranger kind of stuff."

"It isn't?"

Tanaquil was aghast. Pure might not be the highest level of augur, but surely she knew enough to... then she realised the woman was laughing at her. Oh, she was up against an opponent her own size, all right; at last! At last! After years dealing with blunt, earnest Romans and gloomy dull Sabines, to find someone who could actually surprise her made her blood run warmer. She laughed, throwing her head back and tossing her braids.

"We give them hints of the Discipline. But they don't seem to take to it."

She had her own theory about that, which she'd mentioned to Tarquinius a few times. To see the meaning in things, you had to be, yourself, fluid; to flow into things, to extend your senses like tendrils of ink in moving water. So to be too sure of yourself, of the boundaries between your own being and others, impoverished you as an augur. A woman who could not sense the god in her own blood, who cut herself off from maleness, would never see clearly into the branching futures. The Romans imprisoned their women because they feared what was female in themselves; they were desperate to prove themselves men. You could see that from the way they punished themselves; cold baths, military discipline, plainness in clothes, building, food - they even made a virtue of ugliness. And until they freed their women - until their women took that freedom on themselves - the Romans would always need the Etruscans to read their auguries for them. She still hadn't convinced Tarquinius.

Pure shrugged. "But you still keep to the discipline?"

"Of course."

"And your husband?"

"He's half Greek, of course, you know that."

"Yes," said Pure, with a small pout.

Duly noted, Tanaquil thought; I'll do what I can for Tarchna, but at least now she knows my own resources are limited. She led, now, into a discussion of the alliances within the Etruscan Confederation, which seemed to change and shift like the braided channels in the wet sand of the beach, now meeting, now diverted, even the water always flowed in the same direction in the end. Cisra might be with Velzna and with Veii, though Veii and Velzna were at odds; there were leverages that could be used, there were small cracks into which doubt or dissent could be seeded, that might eventually split apart the strongest coalition. It was like augury, diplomacy, the way Etruscans did it; part of the flow.

That didn't stop Pure being brutal, at times. (It didn't stop Tanaquil, either.)

"Look, you could ally yourselves with Veii, but why in all the hells would you want you? They're hidebound reactionaries. Aristocracy is all very well, but you know, and I know, you need your Greeks, your Carthaginians, to get things moving. Maybe you don't make the first generation full nobles, maybe you set limits on how many you take, but they're crucial. But Veii would rather purebloods live in squalor than let the darkies or the bum-fuckers in. You'd be better off with Velx."

Bum-fuckers, Tanaquil thought. I'm married to one.

"What's with Velx?"

"The Vipienas think pretty much the way the Spurinnas do. Modern. Talent, competence, new ideas. They wouldn't have too much of a problem with the way Rome does things, I should think."

starthere

***

Tarquinius

Tarquinius' nightmares, the darkness

The stone against his head

reaching out, and everywhere is stone...

***

# Tanaquil/Faustus

sending Faustus to head the attack on Nomentum

at the head of the army - prestige

openly, Tanaquil has pleaded to forgive Faustus

but secretly, Tanaquil has arranged for the mining of the town defences to be arranged so that Faustus will be buried alive with his advance guard

she has also arranged for Manius to be brought in as leader of the 'diversion'...

Manius waits, and waits deliberately too long

buried alive... swallowing dirt

while the main force goes in through the main gate, Manius and Tanaquil together having organised a neat treachery

# Master

He was 'Master' now; they never called him anything else. His youth had been burned away in service, and so had his name.

Old Tite Vipienas still ruled, nominally; but he stayed hidden behind the blank walls of the great house, in darkened rooms that felt cold even in summer. It was the brothers, Caile and Avle, who controlled everyday business, and when they visited the old man, Master accompanied them as far as the threshold, though no further than the great brass bound door.

Master of Horse; that meant more than it seemed to, since he was in charge of all military matters now, and managed the brothers' household. He managed Ramtha, too, her complacent husband leaving affairs to him; and owned his own slaves, a Gaulish woman for warmth, a Greek boy who did the cooking and knew how to massage aches from Master's muscles. And meanwhile, he learned the secrets of diplomacy, whether from Ramtha or from the brothers, directly or by eavesdropping, and he began to pin together an idea of the way the Federation was moving, the eastern cities drawing together against the western, and bringing the further northern towns of Arretium and Felsina into their ambit.

Ramtha taught him to be bound and to bind; she taught him the ways of pain. This wasn't the honest pain of a ten mile run or the ache of a morning after a bivouac on hard ground; it reminded him of that almost forgotten pain when his mother had left him with the general, and not looked back. He learned the delights of cruelty, something he'd never been tempted to with horses or with his men; the precision of a fingernail drawn down the curve of a buttock, the exact pressure of bite needed to hurt without piercing the lobe of an ear. He learned the taste of blood and the taste of power.

"Does your husband do this?" he asked once.

"That's not for you to know."

He pulled her back against him, forcing her spine into an arc; he could break it so easily, just another inch of torsion, and she knew it, her mouth turned up in a strange smile.

"He can't please you, the way I can."

"Did I ever say that?"

He'd pushed her away then, hard, and turned her over, pinning her to the bed and taking her; taking was the right word, like taking a city, with all the hardness and tightness of his practised body. And yet once he'd finished, and heard her whimpering softly under him, he wondered if she hadn't played a double game, if he hadn't himself been taken and betrayed.

***

Nothing was ever said about it. He assumed Vipienas' compliance; it was common, though most women preferred younger, softer men. (Ramtha's taste was for gamier meat, in this as in all things.) But occasionally, he wondered if he was being set up in some obscure way; or if, simply, Vipienas, so acutely percipient in every other way, was blind as a day old kitten in his own house, his eyes dazzled by the extravagance of Ramtha's personality.

So any meeting convened outside the normal business of the week, outside regular hours, or on a red day rather than a black, made him anxious; more so when one of his own guards had been sent to fetch him, and hadn't disarmed first. Far more so when the call came close to midnight; when he'd already stripped for his lonely bed, when he'd already drunk far more than he should have the day before a cavalry muster, when he knew most of the household was asleep. He was half asleep when he was called, and worked his mouth a couple of times before he answered, so that his sloppy muscles wouldn't betray sleepiness in his voice; that was a trick he'd learned from the general.

By the dim glow of a slow burning taper (another of the general's habits; never let the darkness become complete) he pulled his tunic over his shoulders, tugged at the arms to straighten them out and make it hang comfortably, slipped his sandals on. No sense doing more; no sense even looking for a knife. He'd have no chance to use it.

He followed the guard who'd been sent; out of the silent house, their footsteps echoing in the courtyard, and up the street towards the Vipienas' mansion. The moon lit one side of the street, but the other was in darkness; the whole town was washed pale, as if it weren't quite real. This was what an old man would see, he thought, through filmy eyes; what you might see on the verge of death, all the colour leaching out of the world as it became infinitely thin, intangible. Death wasn't blackness at all, nor green-skinned demons and winged tormentors as they wanted children to believe, but this strange cutting-loose, perhaps. He shivered.

He shivered again as he passed the huge oak door of the mansion, studded with metal gorgons' heads, and it shut soft and heavy behind him. No way back now.

A single lamp was lit in Vipienas' study; he could see Vipienas sitting at the desk, one hand on top of the other on the table, but the man's face was in darkness, so that when he spoke, the voice seemed to come from nowhere, or from a long way away.

"Prophecy," Vipienas said. "Foreseeing. Foretelling. What do you know about it?"

"Not much. I'm a practical man, you know that. Horses, arms, tactics. Augury's not my forte."

"I wasn't talking about augury. No, prophecy is a much more mysterious thing."

"What's the difference?"

"Augury, in its way, is quite simple. Ask questions, see signs, get answer. But this prophecy thing... I can't grasp it. It's like watching faces in the fire, or seeing landscapes in the clouds. And the worst of it is no one knows quite what it means."

Vipienas seemed almost to be talking to himself, his voice low. His eyes were still in shadow; it was impossible to tell where he was looking. He lapsed into silence; one finger tapped the table.

"You haven't heard of Cacus?" he said.

Oh, that's what it's about, he thought. Said, "The end of the world. That one."

"Yes. It's an old prophecy, of course; the idea that our Etruscan world will only last so many lustra, that it will die in fire and convulsion, or simply fade into the distance of history, till all that's left is a name, like Troy, or perhaps nothing at all. Everything grows, and changes, and dies; a tree, a flower, a nation."

"So why are you interested in this Cacus, if it's an old prophecy?"

"Master, you know you will die?"

"Yes," he said, and wondered if he'd been right after all about the purpose of this midnight meeting.

"Yes, in the abstract; you will die, at some time, close or distant, in this place or another. But if you knew you would die tomorrow, would that be different?"

"Of course!" He wondered how; he felt the wicked slice of iron at his throat, a stabbing pain in his side, the throbbing and roiling of poison in his body, and at the same time his thought raced ahead to how he might leave the city before Vipienas' assassins came after him, if it was indeed, as Vipienas had said, tomorrow, and not now.

Vipienas was silent for a moment, his hands still on the table. Master felt sweat cooling between his shoulder blades, and his hair rose; he didn't flinch, though, as he would not ever flinch in the face of an enemy's blade or spearpoint.

"I've alarmed you, have I not?" Vipienas said softly. "With my talk of death, and when it might come. It was only to illustrate, only to illuminate my theme. You see, the old prophecy is like a knowledge of mortality in general; the Etruscans will decline, grow old, and die, but it doesn't set a date, and so while we live, we never know whether we have reached our zenith, or whether we decline already. I sometimes wonder if all we're doing with our days is waiting for death..." His voice tailed off, and he seemed to have difficulty recollecting the thread of his argument; then with a little jerk of his head he started again. "Cacus is different; he says we are dying now, that our successors and killers have arrived already, that in a hundred years we will be gone. And that... that I cannot afford. Cannot allow."

"So you want him stopped."

"I don't like this talk of the old world dying and a new world waiting to be born. He won't say where the new world is, but of course people draw their own conclusions; it's Felsina, or Gaul, or even..."

"Yes?"

"Some people say it's Rome."

Master burst out laughing; then when he saw Vipienas' face, stopped suddenly, troubled.

"A bunch of outlaws, you're thinking? It's unlike you to miss a strategic shift, if I may say so."

"You think things have changed?"

"I know so. A new king, new trades, crafts they've learned from us. We have to be careful how we play this; a treaty with Rome might work to our advantage against Tarchna, but it might also destroy the Etruscan confederacy. We need a very delicate touch."

That was the first Master had heard of it; his eyes narrowed, as they always did when he was considering new information - the only show of emotion that still defied his schooling. Rome would be worth watching. He didn't know how he would make use of the knowledge; but he would watch it.

"So," he said slowly, teasing out the gist of Vipienas' words, "you want Cacus killed."

"Maybe. Eventually."

"And now?"

"Captured. Taken into our protective hands. I should like to talk to him. His prophecies are so vague, they dissolve into mist whenever you try to make sense of them; but perhaps, by asking the right questions, by leading him gently, I might be able to find the more concrete truth, to find a pathway through the mist. Perhaps."

"And if you can't?"

"A tame prophet could always be useful."

"You think he's real, don't you?"

"I'm not sure."

"There's no such thing as a real prophet," Master said stoutly, but he wondered even then who he was trying to convince.

***

Tracking Cacus down proved difficult. He was a throwback to the old days; a man who took the ancient trackways, who claimed to talk to lasas and the fading hinthials who wandered aimless, forever banished from the cities of the living. He had no house, no family, few belongings; he would deliver a prophecy in the streets of Curtun or Persna, then slip away, almost as if he too were a hinthial, a drifting shadow. Tracking a man like that was like trying to grasp water in your hand, or weave a rope of mist.

They'd got a lead, though; a guest of Vipienas' who had just arrived from Aretna said he'd been seen up there. Well, that information was a good few days old, Master thought sourly; but then Cacus was travelling by foot, whereas the aristo had been riding fast, so that evened things up a bit. It was off to the north then, packing light and taking the fastest horses. He'd force the pace, and change horses at Clevsin and Curtun, and at the waystations if he could; Vipienas' golden token was good over the whole country, for everyone knew the wealth of Velx.

He was only taking two men; Larth Ulthes and Marce Camitlnas. Marce was a good man, quick on the uptake and quick with his weapons, too, though he tended to be a little too quick sometimes, jumping into a fight before the word had been given. It was easy to be fooled by his drooping grey hair and diffident nature, but he was one of the most efficient fighters Master knew; and nasty with it, at times.

Larth was a good man too, solid and efficient and unimaginative, the kind of man who wouldnt go to pieces if a prophet called the Underworld down on his head; but Larth had been master of the household once, and serving Master was a demotion, so they had never been on easy terms. Still, Master would rather have Larth than any two of the other men, particularly given the nature of the job; he knew Larth never got spooked.

Vipienas had told them to start in Aretna, but Master was sharper than his lord, for once, and started asking around as soon as they got to Curtun, in case Cacus had been heading south from Aretna. They'd taken quarters with an old colleague of Larth's, who had stayed on here after a campaign in the marches; their changing of horses had already attracted notice, and Master thought it would be better if they made no mention of their business, but stayed as veterans with a younger colleague.

It was a crowded bivouac; all four of them bedded down in one room, which soon stank of dirty feet and sweat, the male smells of any barracks. Only the military habits of tidiness and self-containment made it bearable. Soldiers came in two types, Master thought; the ones that went to seed, drank too much, sank into squalor without a CO to shout them into shape, and the ones who lived their lives as if they were still on campaign, everything in their lives precise and ordered. Laris was one of the latter. He didn't even drink, though he was happy to send out for a jar of wine for the others.

Laris had heard nothing about Cacus beyond what everyone knew; that he was foretelling the end of the Etruscans, that he said the world was changing, that doom was here. Laris hadn't given it much thought; madmen appeared from time to time. There had been one, last winter, he said, who had foretold the coming of the Age of Gold, but two days later they found him frozen to death in a cowshed.

Master took to the streets, telling Larth and Marce to do the same; listen to what people are saying. Try to draw them out. He just needed to find that loose thread in the tapestry that he could pull on, but he had no idea where to start; it might be anywhere. Marce headed for the agora; Laris was going to take Larth into the guardroom; and Master headed out to the streets of the town.

Curtun wasn't a gracious city; the streets were narrow and damp, the houses closely packed. On the main street that ran aslant the city, people scurried past, or slipped into dark doorways; no one stopped, no one loitered. On the side streets, so steep they were almost staircases, he saw one woman shelling beans, who glared at him as he went past, and a small naked boy pulling a toy horse and sucking a dirty square of old blanket. Nothing more.

The street turned a corner on to a tiny open space, spattered with the purple of fallen mulberries. On one side, the ground fell away, and beyond the walls of the town the bright fields shone pale in tenuous sunlight, and then the darker marshes spread to the horizon, featureless and brooding. Still no sign of anyone in the streets; he went on, descending now towards the edges of the town. Roughly laid stones tipped under his feet; the alley turned sharply round the corner of a house, then back again, but always running downwards, sometimes steeply, sometimes less steep.

At the bottom, he found a barren square, where two old men sat, one each end of a low wall, selling olives and local wine. At least, they must be trying to sell them, but in the absence of customers they simply sat. he wondered wondered how many years they'd done this, every day, coming into the town in the morning, going back as the sun sank behind the hills; there were not enough people passing to make it worth their while. An entire life spent not making a living.

One of the men looked up towards him, his face crafty.

"Red wine? White wine? Very sweet." A whole sales pitch reduced to six words over half a century, like a stew boiled dry. Master strode on.

He took a road now that led upwards, not steeply towards the middle of the town but slanting across the slope of the hill, between gardens and rough houses. The path was rough earth, worn out of the hillside by the passing of feet. A cockerel called, untimely, from a back yard. A wall ran beside the path for some distance, too high to see over. At a sharp corner, the path ran upwards again, now between walls. It looked very like the road he'd taken previously; this would be an easy town to get lost in, he thought.

He was beginning to get discouraged; two old men, a child, a dog, a solitary woman. No way to eavesdrop on a conversation; he didn't want to be seen asking questions. It felt wrong, as if a plague had devastated the town, or as if this was the city of the dead, and the living had gone to live in the graveyard. It was too quiet.

At the next turn in the road, there was a small temple in the angle of the corner. Two sphinxes and a god looked blindly down at him, red terracotta striped with white, which looked like glaze but he realised was pigeon shit. On a whim, he went in.

There was no one there, and nothing; no statue of the god, just a truncated pillar for an altar, and an unswept floor that showed traces of sacrificial blood or wine, he couldn't tell which. He realised, after a moment standing there, feeling conspicuous, that he didn't know how to pray; he could no longer remember the words. And after all, he thought, it was just a draughty room, with a wooden roof that let the light in where a tile was missing.

It was only as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness within the temple that he realised he was not alone. An old man was sitting in the shadow, his back to the wall. He sat erect, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, as motionless and dignified as a god.

His head jerked suddenly towards Master.

"Who's there?"

"Oh... I ... just dropped in. I was passing." Master realised two things as he said this; first how lame the words were, how meaningless; and then that the man was blind, or half-blind, anyway. Looking closer he could see how the old man's eyes were filmy with age.

"You come at the God's bidding, then."

No, he thought, his flesh crawling, I came at no one's bidding. Only my own.

"The God calls to him those he wants to serve him." The priest got up, fumbling a little to pull his robe clear of his feet. His head on one side like a blackbird listening, he made his way crab-like towards Master.

"Do you have a gift? Coin? A cake? Gold?"

That's your game, thought Master. And mine is; do you have information? But yours is every bit as dirty as mine. He turned for the entrance as the priest reached his arms out, feeling at the air, and almost knocked him over as he strode out. On the threshold, he blinked at the light, shook his shoulders free of the nastiness.

"Sir! A gift, something for the God." A whining voice, wheedling him. Quickly he turned the corner; anything to get away from the old man. He hadn't looked before him, and ran straight into someone else. He smelt sour wine on the other man's breath; pulled back, apologies in his mouth but his fists curled, ready for trouble.

"Consenting gods! Master! What on earth... I haven't seen you since the races in Vipsl. You remember? You'd just won your first couple of races, and you were the favourite to win the krater that Karkanas had put up, but one of your horses ran lame in the second circuit. You must remember..."

He couldn't remember a thing.

"And I was racing for one of the Tarchna houses, and came round the last corner wide, and lost the race to a Felsinan who came up the inside."

The name swam up from somewhere in the darkness of his mind. "Ranazu."

"Yes, that's me. And they all said you'd thrown the race, but I don't see how you could have. I saw how your horse came off, stumbling on three legs... Let me get you a drink. My friends are at the races, like half the city, but they'll be back afterwards, and meanwhile we can keep ourselves amused. I've got a nice little wine from down south, you'll like it, I think..."

Master let Ranazu witter on. This was just what he needed, he thought sourly; then realised it was indeed - a local man with no discretion at all, who was already half cut, and would talk about anything without remembering what he'd said. And if everyone was at a chariot race, that would account for the city's deserted feel. (A couple of years back, he wouldn't have missed the races here; but he was in a different league now, and Curtun was too provincial for his patrons.)

Ranazu was talking about some local potentate now, a story of skulduggery in the purchase and immediate resale of a Gaulish slave; Master cut in.

"That drink you mentioned..."

***

Ranazu took him to a fine house, laid out around a narrow courtyard behind smooth, white-painted walls. A brooding gorgon policed the single doorway; tiny gorgon's heads spied from the serrated edge of the tiled roof. Everything seemed new. The room Ranazu took him to was half empty, and cold. It was as if he'd only just moved in. (And now he thought of it, there were no masks of the ancestors in the atrium.)

The wine was good, though; and Ranazu's friends had won, which put them in a good mood, so they opened some more.

"We made it on the third race."

"Well, it helped to know Velnies was going to lose."

"Yeah, you could tell he wasn't interested."

"You didn't need to bother. Everyone knew how much Aristodemos had paid him."

"Not everyone, thank gods."

"Heh heh. You're right of course; if everyone had known we wouldn't have got our bet on."

"You make a fair bit racing?" Master asked.

"Oh yes. It keeps us in style," Ranazu said.

"Though it's been a bit tricky this last month or so. A few bad results."

"Good today, though."

"Maybe your luck's changed."

"It always does. It always does."

He wondered quite how changeable their luck was. Big house, no furniture. Fine wine, cheap thick-walled cups.

"You run any horses yourselves?"

"Not now. We used to."

They talked a bit about the current season; how everyone fancied the Tarchnies horses, but those in the know had heard of this farmer up near Felsina who had a team that was beginning to win in the smaller races, and win well. Only a farmer, not a noble, but up near Felsina farmers got rich; it was good land there, and those that had got there early enough had lots of it.

"It's not so easy in Curtun. The aristos keep themselves to themselves. And the money seems to stick to their fingers."

"Not like Rome."

"I keep hearing about Rome," Master said. "What is it about Rome that seems to fascinate people so much?"

"No aristos there. Everyone there started on the ground floor, the way we have."

"You get to Rome, you're a free man. It's the opportunity. I'd go, if we weren't starting to do well here."

"We bought the house, you see. Got a good chance and took it," said Ranazu.

"It wasn't in your family, then?"

"We made our money the same way you did."

"Anyway," put in one of the others, "Cacus says the Etruscans are finished, so perhaps we should throw our lot in the with Romans."

Suddenly the room went silent. Ranuzu was scowling at the man who'd spoken; the others seemed suddenly very interested in their winecups.

"Cacus? What do you know about him?"

"Only what he said," Ranuzu said quickly. "That he's prophesying the end of the Rasenna. Everyone knows that."

"There's more though, isn't there?"

Silence again. It was the kind of silence that meant yes, there was more; but whether he would get to find out what that more was, that was the question.

"You know where I come from. You know where I started. I'm rather interested in this Cacus."

"You mean your master's rather interested. We know who you work for."

"You know who I work for. You have no idea. No idea at all," he said, and even if he was making it up as he went along, the rancour and the bitterness were real. "I'm just a thing to him, like a horse, or a krater, or a house, just a thing he can make use of. I've worked my way up, every day a bloody grind, and he keeps his dainty fingers clean sending me to do what he needs doing." Even screwing his wife, he thought savagely. He looked up; they were convinced, that could be seen. So, to his surprise, was he.

"What do you want with Cacus?"

"The same thing you want with Rome. Opportunity." And that, too, was true, in its way. Not perhaps in the sense these men would think.

"You're going in the wrong direction," Razunu said, at the same time as one of the others said "Shall we trust him?" and the other started "Well," and then they all three looked at each other and a silent word seemed to pass between them.

"Cacus says the slaves will be freed."

"Not of interest to me. I'm no slave."

"And there will be no indentures, ever again."

"All men will be equal."

"Where is this?"

"Might be Velzna."

"Might be Rome."

"Might be pie in the sky, might be spelt pudding with pigs' guts."

"You should hear him. You should. For half an hour, I believed it all..."

"It wears off after a while. You believe it for a bit, then after he's gone, you start thinking, and it's like porridge gone cold. But it's good while you're listening."

"No, I believe it. I _still_ believe it."

"He was here?"

"Two or three days ago."

"Where's he gone?"

"Up the valley."

"Following his spirit."

"Following what?"

"He has a spirit."

"A lasa."

"I wouldn't mind having my own lasa! Never have to sleep alone again! Do you think they'll do the cooking?"

"If you ever capture one, I'm sure she will."

"How the hell do you follow a spirit?" He was getting quite cross now. Were they giving him the runaround?

"I don't know. But he does."

"He's gone up the valley, we know that much."

"Towards Arretna. Stirring things up there, I reckon."

"I've got to go to Arretna anyway," he said. "Might see if I can catch up with him."

"He's not easy to talk to," Razunu said, his eyes anxious. "I mean... he doesn't take to being questioned. And he's not straightforward. Anything he says, you could take several different ways, and he won't help you."

"Nice to think of a place where the aristos don't have it all their own way, even so," Master said, and grinned sourly at them. "Even if it's Rome. A toast?"

And that, as always, was a popular request.

***

He got back to the lodgings late; the first stars were already showing through, though the horizon still held the pale light of late evening. He was walking in the over-careful way that betrays the half-drunk man; at the door, his hand missed the latch first time, and he had to move his fingertips across the wood to find it. Inside, he heard raised voices; no; one voice raised. He opened the door; quickly, stepped in, and closed it behind him.

Larth was standing with his back to him, saying, loudly, "Where is he?" Larth raised his arm, brought it down, palm open. Smack. A toothless murmur in answer.

Smack again. Larth had his prisoner tied up in a chair, and was slapping him first one way, then the other.

"Disappeared."

Smack.

"Where?"

"I can't tell you."

"Bullshit!" Larth was roaring now; he put his whole body into the next blow.

"I don't know."

"Shit!"

Suddenly the prisoner was sobbing. "I really can't, no one knows, he never says where he's going, he just goes, he disappears, no one knows." Words dissolved into babble, into sobs, into silence.

Master turned his head. Marce and Laris were standing at the other end of the room, looking on. Marce was pale with anger or with fright, he couldn't tell.

"Bullshit." Another smack.

"That's enough."

Larth turned round, saw Master, turned back. He spoke with his back turned.

"It's not enough. Not till he tells me what we need to know."

"I know already. That's enough."

Larth shrugged, sighed disgustedly. "I would have got it in another half an hour, anyway."

"You would have got something. Whether it would be true or not... where did you pick him up, anyway?"

"He was at the agora. Marce brought him in."

"Why?"

Marce spoke, behind him, softly. "He'd been talking about Cacus. Cacus was here three days ago. He seemed to have been listening rather closely. I brought him back here to talk."

"He hasn't done much talking," Larth observed.

"Well, we have a problem."

"We do?"

That was the trouble with Larth, Master reflected; a bit slow. "We were going to keep our mission under wraps. I don't see how we can do that after the way you've treated him."

"We can pay him off," Marce offered.

"No good. We can't be sure he won't talk."

"We can always kill him."

"Ah. We could, yes. And then we've got another problem."

Larth looked down at the floor, whistling almost soundlessly between his teeth.

"Laris? Can you look after him?"

"I'm not involved in this."

"You are now."

"I don't think I can. Not unless he's tied up. And then when we let him go, whenever that is, I'm going to be in trouble."

"You know who he is?"

"Not actually know, no. But I think he's one of the Kilni."

"That could be bad for you. I see. Well, we'll have to take him with us."

He realised the man in the chair was crying, almost silently, and felt his conscience turning like a knife. Not conscience, perhaps, as the General might have expressed it, but rather a vivid sympathy; he could imagine what it would be like to sit in that chair, mouth bloody, face bruised, and hear his death discussed coolly, as one of a number of equal and equally practical options. He still wondered if somewhere on their way, Larth would find a way to rid them of this inconvenience. Marce had better keep an eye on him.

***

They left Curtun the next morning, early, heading along the higher ground above the marshy valley floor. The four of them; Master and Larth in front, Marce with the prisoner behind.

The views across the marshland were extensive and clear; but even so, he thought it would be easy to miss one man on his own. They didn't even know what Cacus looked like. Different people gave different accounts, Master knew that; some said he was bearded, others that he was clean shaven apart from a sharp point of trimmed hair outlining his chin. He was old; he was young; he was tall; he was fat. The only thing people knew of him was that he preached the end of the age, the end of the Etruscans; fire and flood, burning and drowning. That, they remembered, but forgot the man who had foretold it.

"What does he look like?" he asked the captive.

"A man."

"Yes. But what like?"

"Just... ordinary. Just an ordinary man."

Master held his patience. "How tall?"

"Like an ordinary man, not tall, not short."

"Fat? Thin?"

"No. Not specially. Just ... normal."

"What colour eyes?" Normal drill, though he knew it wouldn't help him identify Cacus from a distance.

"Blue, I think. I wasn't that close. Blue... no, more green."

"Green eyes."

"I'm not sure. Not really. Or blue. Might have been."

"So, a very ordinary man. A man you wouldn't notice."

"Yes."

"But you might be lying. He might be a giant, for all I know. Or a dwarf."

"He isn't."

"But he might be." Master barked out a laugh. "You could tell us anything. We'd be none the wiser."

"I'm not..."

They kept on, following the ridge. From time to time the path dipped down into the fields, but it always rose back up the slope to the scanty woods and heath above the valley. It was an easy walk, though they would have gone faster without the captive, unused to the rough paths; deprived of his balance by the rope that tied his arms behind him, he stumbled on small stones or tree roots, and had to be helped down the rougher scrambles.

That night they bivouacked on the edge of the woods, above the fogs of the valley. Before they turned in, Master bound the captive's feet together; he probably couldn't make a run for it, with his hands tied and in the darkness of a moonless night, but it was as well to be sure. Larth tugged the rope on the man's hands to ensure the knots were tight, and smiled when he gasped with sudden pain.

"Leave him be," Marce said.

"Just checking."

"Leave him."

Larth came over to the fire, still only a flicker of light that gave little heat. Marce had laid roughly formed flatbreads over the larger sticks. They wouldn't cook, Master thought, not on this tenuous flame; the outside would char, solid black and burned, and the inside would be flour paste, uncooked, sticking to your teeth like a bad lie. He'd eaten worse; or gone hungry, on night patrols.

"We'll let you go once we've got Cacus, you know." The captive showed no sign of having heard Marce; he was staring into the darkness, hunched as if dreading a blow. (Which he might have been, Master thought.)

"Unless you're lying."

"Give over, Larth. Look, we're not going to harm you. All we want is Cacus. That's absolutely all we want."

Nothing.

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Don't tell him. We don't want to know." Larth's voice was suddenly loud. Master looked up from the fire. The stars were cold in the silence; a patch of deeper darkness resolved itself into the figure of Larth, standing apart from the fire.

"Enough." Master forced himself to breathe evenly, to keep his voice relaxed. "Leave him, Marce. Larth, come to the fire; you'll get chilled."

The men were sullen; neither dared to start a conversation. The bannocks were burnt, as Master had known they would be. The night was cold. No one slept much. They set off before dawn, as soon as the mountain ridges were visible against the sky.

The captive was stumbling badly, whether with cramp from being tied all night, or inability to see his footing in the dim light. Marce fell back to help him. He didn't ask for the man's hands to be untied; yesterday, he might have, Master thought.

Once Marce was far back enough not to hear, Master spoke.

"What was all that about last night?"

"All what?"

"You shouting at Marce. He was only trying to befriend the captive. If we want him to give us good information, it would be just as well to keep him on side."

"I don't want to know his fucking name."

"It's only a name."

"I don't give a fuck. If I'm going to kill him, it's easier if he doesn't have a name. You know?"

He didn't.

"We had a tame lamb once. It used to follow me around. My mother called it Agnas."

"Ah."

"We'd had lambs before, and they grew up, and went for the slaughter, and we'd eat lamb for a couple of weeks and enjoy it. But this one had a name. You see?"

"Yes."

"I didn't even get to kill it myself."

***

By midday, Master reckoned, they'd got about half way to Arretna, and he reckoned they could take a short rest. The captive looked all in, which didn't stop Larth from retying his feet and tightening the bindings on his wrists.

He realised his idea of Cacus' philosophy was still vague; Vipienas hadn't told him much, and it was interesting that while the men in Curtun seemed to think Cacus was a social revolutionary, Vipienas hadn't dwelt on that - though you'd have expected him to. What did Cacus really stand for?

He took a sausage out of his pack and started to cut a piece off it. He looked over towards the captive.

"Want some?" he asked.

The captive looked up.

"Sausage." He held it towards the captive. "It's not bad." He finished carving off a slice, put it in his mouth and began to chew. It was tough. You had to chew it for a while before the flavour started to emerge; slightly iron-like, like blood, overlaid with dry herbal aromas. Sage, he thought, or one of the mountain herbs that grew around here. He looked again at the captive. Don't be too eager, he thought; give him a silence to fill. Strange how often people would fall for that trick.

"Pork?"

One word, but it was enough; he'd drawn him in.

"Beef. Here."

He sliced a piece off the top, held it towards the other man's mouth, and watched him lean his head forward to take it with his teeth.

"It's tough at first. It gets better."

The captive chewed for a moment, then parked the half-masticated meat in one cheek in order to speak.

"It's food, anyway. Thanks."

Master sat back again, waiting. The other man chewed, swallowed.

"So." Master considered his next words carefully. "You're a follower of Cacus."

"Not really."

"Mmmm."

"Cacus doesn't have followers."

"A lot of people seem to want to hear him speak, nevertheless."

"But they don't follow him. Well... they try to, but he just wanders off. He won't lead them. He doesn't _want_ followers."

"I don't understand this very well. He speaks in public. But you tell me he doesn't want people to listen."

"He wants them to listen; he just doesn't want them to follow him. There's no organisation. He tells people to follow their own hearts. That's the whole of his message."

"So what if their hearts tell them to follow Cacus?"

The captive sighed, exasperated. "That's not the idea. He ... he's evasive. He talks about the freedom of the spirit; the freedom that comes from trusting only your heart."

Larth snorted. "Ridiculous. How would society function at all if people did that?" Master looked up at him, held his hand up for silence, and Larth obeyed, though the set of his mouth was surly.

"No, that _does_ interest me," Master said smoothly, "the social message, but I assume it's not as simple as Larth suggests? And what about the end of the Rasenna?"

"It's not the end of the race he means." The captive spoke slowly, like a man finding a way across cracked river ice, tracing the lines of the cracking before advancing a foot. "I think, but this is only what I think, mind you, that he's talking about the state of ecstasy, when we are not Rasenna any more but pure being, pure spirits, and at that point, we no longer need a society, we will all be free, but because we are listening to the spirit, we will know how to work together. That's what I think, anyway."

"It's not the most practical message," Master said tactfully, and heard Larth spit on the ground behind him. "Still, it has its appeal." But not to him; he'd never wanted that kind of freedom. It seemed aimless to him, without the stimulus of an objective. And the best objective was getting others to do what you wanted; to conquer them, force them, make them recognise you.

"And you see _he's_ just wandering," the captive said; "he comes, he goes, he never says where he's going. We don't know where he came from; some say a village in the forest, others a place in the marshes east of Felsina. I've heard them say he came out of the earth itself, that he grew like a tree or a river, not a man."

"You don't believe that."

"No. But then, with most men, it wouldn't be even vaguely credible. Whereas with Cacus, you can almost find yourself believing it. He's elemental, in a way; always flowing, like river or wind."

Master gritted his teeth. He'd already begun to feel he was following a fairy tale, a myth, a figment, something made of air; and this confirmed it. He wondered if Vipienas had sent him on a fool's errand merely to get him away from his wife; he could almost believe that Cacus didn't exist, that the prophet was a mass hallucination, a rumour that had taken on life. He realised, as he thought it, that this was in its own way a strange and unreal thought; that was the nature of the nightmare in which he was engaged, that the whole world had come to seem unsubstantial, or at least strange.

They were always a step behind Cacus. He was supposed to have been in Curtun, but they hadn't seen him; and the intelligence that he was headed to Arretna might have been wrong. Such slender hints on which to base their progress.

That night, they arrived in a grove where the priest, a young woman just out of her sacerdotal schooling, told them a man had passed earlier in the day, but not stopped.

"He wasn't local?"

"I don't think so. I couldn't place his accent, but I'm sure he wasn't from around here."

"What did he say?"

"That it was hot. And he was hungry. And... we talked about horses."

"Horses?"

"You know, the way a horse always knows when it's going back to its stable, and once it turns its head that way, you'll have the devil of a job getting it to go any other way. I don't know why we got talking about that, really; he hadn't got a horse, I haven't, it was just one of those things that comes into your head. Perhaps he meant he was headed home... but I don't think so."

"So what else did you talk about?"

"He asked me about the work I was doing... about my time in Velzna... I think, really, it was me talking, he just listened, most of the time." She seemed a little disconcerted; Master thought of the way people he'd interrogated suddenly realised how much they'd told him, and there was always a difficult moment – if you got it right, they carried on talking, but if you mis-stepped, they'd clam up altogether. She'd been drawn out, and she'd only just realised it. He wouldn't mind betting that it was indeed Cacus she'd spoken to, and that Cacus was another master of his art, like himself. That would make him no easier to find; and no easier to control, once found. A challenge, then. Master smiled grimly.

It was getting late, but they decided to press on; they were six or seven hours behind the man they thought was Cacus, and there was only one track he could have followed, across the pass at the head of the valley. Larth grumbled, and the captive was looking weak, but they made reasonable progress over the more open land. They kept going through the dusk; the colours of the country faded into grey, then black, outlines blurring into a soft darkness, till at last they were following only a rough direction in blackness towards the horizon, where the shapes of the hills were still vaguely sketched in a junction between the brownish dark of the land and the bluish dark of sky. It had been full dark a half hour or more before Master let them stop at last, and they started off the next morning in the star-shot grey before dawn had come.

Yet still Master felt they were falling behind.

That morning the captive stumbled, again and again. He wasn't used to this life; it wasn't so much his body as his mind that couldn't cope, Master thought, couldn't cope with the need to keep awake, alert, such long hours. Towards mid-morning, as the heat began to rise from the plain, he decided to leave the man behind.

"He knows nothing," he said to Larth and Marce; "we'll go faster without him."

Larth took his dagger out of its sheath, looked towards the man. Master stopped him wordlessly, showing him the flat of his hand, frowning. If anyone was going to kill him, it wouldn't be Larth, he thought; he'd do his own killing. But the man was in no shape to get back to Curtun; he'd be hard put to make it to the grove again, without food, and they had none to spare.

It might be a kindness to kill him. And for the first time in his life, Master wondered whether killing could be a pleasure; whether cutting the man's throat, slowly, in cold blood, would delight him. He'd killed men before, in battle, in beserk panic or cold need; but he'd never toyed with the decision, never thought it would take a hold on his mind in this way. He looked again at the captive; bone tired, he thought, but he'd kept going, hadn't just given up.

The man looked up at him, his eyes cold. _He knows I'm thinking of killing him_ , Master thought, and in that instant he knew he couldn't do it.

"Get back to the grove," he said; "you're no use to us now."

He dispatched Larth forwards to spy out the land; they were coming down now towards the other side of the hills, and they'd have to be more careful of their direction. But he with Marce for half an hour, watching their former captive stumble downhill again towards the stream, towards the grove, until his form disappeared among the sparse bushes and rocks far below in the valley.

***

The frustrating chase continued. They met a shepherd, about an hour after noon, who was sitting in the shade of an oak, watching his flock with a couple of rough dogs; he said a stranger had passed, on his way to the grove at Lakiri, half a day up the valley, on the heights to the north. But when they got there in the late evening, the tall trees of the grove casting long shadows across the hillside, the place was empty, but for a patch of grass that had been pressed down, as if a man had been lying there.

They followed the ridge trail to a rough hut, where Marce found a few crumbs of spelt spilled on the ground, and the scuff of footmarks in the dust. They slept there; Master kept the first watch, and made Marce take the second, just in case Larth was tempted to try to make his way back to take care of the captive.

In the night, Master dreamt of blood; he dreamt of slicing through flesh, watching droplets of blood well up, each one a perfect globe, spreading and flattening as it grew, glittering like metal, till eventually the drops ran together in a red flood. Then he cut deeper, till the flesh on each side parted, evenly, the wound falling open, showing the white bone – white, red, white, life laid open before him. It was all silent, but for the small hiss of the knife. When he woke, he realised he had bitten his tongue as he slept, and his right hand was on the hilt of his knife.

The next day, early, they came across a place by a stream where someone had camped; there were a few crumbs of spelt, again, and a patch of grass had turned yellow, as if starved, where a mat had pressed it down. There were not even the remains of a fire. This man travelled light indeed, Master thought; as light as a ghost.

"He moved on before dawn; there's dew where he slept. If we'd been here an hour later we've have missed it," Marce said.

"Yes, but where did he go?"

There were no tracks in the dew. There was a path that led onwards, along the slope above the new valley that ran down towards Arretna; but from here they could see the next village, on the other side of the stream.

"We'll cross the valley," Master said.

"No," Larth said. "He's gone on, I'm sure of it. If he's heading for Arretna, he won't stop so early in the day. He'll go straight on. And the high track misses the marshes; he'll make better time."

Master shook his head. That kind of directness was the way Larth thought, so Larth assumed Cacus would be like him; but that wasn't the idea Master had of the man they pursued, not any more. "He's gone down, I'm sure of it."

"How sure? Are we even sure the man we're following is Cacus?" Marce asked.

Master wondered; but he wasn't going to admit his doubts to his men.

"We'll lose time if we cross the valley," Larth said. "If he's gone straight on, we're only a couple of hours behind him now, but we'll lose as much again going down to the village, and coming back."

"And if we get ahead of him?"

There was no answer to that. They scrambled down the slope into the headwaters of the valley, going as fast as they could despite the boggy patches where they sunk up to the knee, or which they skirted, but at the cost of doubling the distance taken. Once, they came across a sheet of water surrounded by reeds, where the water brooded darkly as if it contained a shadowed world from which the sunlight had been sucked out.

Master saw a man above them on the hill near the village, so far and so minuscule to the sight that he wondered if he had imagined it, till Marce pointed out the tiny moving shape. Once, they came across footprints in mud, and some flattened reeds, and thought they'd found his tracks; but they'd somehow got turned around, though they shouldn't have, for the sun was clear overhead and if they'd followed their shadows to the north they couldn't have gone wrong, and they realised the tracks were their own and they'd lost a long hour in their wandering.

"We'll have lost him now, you know," Larth said. "Whatever he's doing."

Master knew better than to answer. Sometimes it was best to pretend not to have heard, rather than make a mutiny out of a single complaint. But it was true, none the less, and neither of the choices he could make now was a good one; to retrace their tracks to the ridge, and make straight for Arretna, or to carry on and hope they found the village. And now, the village itself was invisible; the world seemed to have contracted to the tall reeds and the silvery mud and a tiny patch of blue sky, and whichever way they looked, the reeds seemed to fill the way.

Flickers of thought lit through his mind. He must be on the other side. I saw a lake from above; where is it? We don't know it was him. You can't see how long the lake is. There were sheep above the village. A river down the middle. Wet feet. There may be a ford. We would see better from the ridge. Can't lose time. Heavy going. Too much time lost already.

They pushed on. The reeds clustered closer; at one point he had to cut the path open with his sword. (That will dull the blade, he thought.) It wasn't clear, now, whether they were on land or in water; the path streamed with water, every footstep splashed sparkling.

And then suddenly, the reeds ended, and there was the village on the hillside above them.

They didn't need to go into the village, in the end; they found a hamlet, no more than a couple of round huts, by an inlet. The place stank of fish guts and smoke.

They found two women at work; one slitting fish, tipping the guts into a great clay vessel where they'd rot down to a thin sauce; the other spearing the splayed bodies on twigs to lay them on racks in the sun. The younger of the two did much of the talking; the elder, a tall woman with a tight mouth and a hint of moustache, hung back a little, silent but disapproving.

Yes, there was a lake – down the creek, but you couldn't see it through the marshes; yes, a traveller had come through, but he'd gone already; yes, they did have something other than fish to eat here, but not much, but a bit of bread and some cheese, they could manage that.

"I don't suppose you get many people through here?"

"We don't often see this many. You're trying to catch up with Cacus?"

"No, not really." Master thought quickly; at least they knew who they were following now (unless, he reminded himself, this was another bluff, determined to put him even further off route than he already was), but he couldn't alarm the village. "We were headed to Arretna – we were going to meet some of his followers there."

"A strange coincidence," said the older of the women.

Master shrugged. If only Larth had the sense to keep his mouth shut, they might yet be all right. But having gone on hints and supposition thus far, he wondered if it wasn't all coming too easily now; if he was being fed what he wanted to hear.

"Strange coincidences have a habit of happening wherever Cacus shows up," he said, allowing a little portentousness into his voice.

"Don't they just?" said the younger woman. "But _he_ says" – the stress on that single syllable showing her veneration, perhaps also a little too much docility- "that there is no such thing as coincidence."

Master nodded. He hoped he looked suitably reverent, rather than anxious as confused, which is what he was.

"It's the birth of a new age! The age of the man who burns and is not consumed! An age that will be birthed in the blood of a king!"

Master could imagine what Vipienas would make of that statement. So, he supposed, could the old woman, who coughed, and looked meaningfully at the younger, who looked away, embarrassed.

"You'll be going on to Arretna," she said. "Who were you trying to find?"

"Ranazu didn't say."

"Sounds rather unorganised." Her voice was dry as kindling, and as dangerous.

"Make for Arretna, and you'll be met. That's what he said, and we trusted him. But..."

"Yes?"

"I'm wondering if he meant for something like this to happen."

Her eyes were cold, and he could see her brain worked as coolly as his; incessantly weighing thoughts, discarding, rebalancing.

"He must have hoped..." the young woman had started, but the older cut in.

"You're on the wrong side of the river. How could he have known you'd cross it? And why did you cross it anyway? The straight track lies the other side."

"Crooked trails are sometimes the straightest." Again he tried to force that note of fanatical reverence into his voice.

"And we think we were followed," Marce added. "So we've taken a few detours, just in case..."

"So it _is_ a coincidence." The old woman's face seemed to soften, though she did not smile.

"There is no such thing as a coincidence," the younger said. "Cacus won't go to Arretna now; they're waiting for him. He's headed to a cave on Amiata. He said he's withdrawing from the world of men; he needs to prepare for the new age."

"He's moving on," said the older, "always moving on. Some of us settle, we put down roots. We compromise. But he's always looking for something that isn't here. I've known Cacus for years, but when he was here, when he looked at me, it was as if he were looking through us. As if he was somewhere else."

Yes, Master thought; it's like that time with the general, when I seemed to be watching from a very long way away, and the world seemed to have slowed down, and time was sticky, like pine resin, and everything looked blurred. You look out on reality, and what you're really thinking about is something else, or rather, it would be truer to say, a vague feeling of... of what? Futurity? Some time or place where or when you could be fully present, revealed to yourself, when you would look out without that presence, always, of the commentator in the back of your mind, the hinthial that lurks within. Perhaps that's what Cacus calls the new age. But it's no use; it never will be any use. This world of strangers is all we have to work with.

Was that, then, what Cacus stood for? Or only to him? And he thought; that's how he does it. We do it to ourselves. We find a way to understand him, and when we do, we think he spoke our thoughts. We see in him what we want to see, like the wind-shimmered mirror of a lake reflecting the sky.

"Do we follow, then?"

"Sorry?" Master blinked; he'd nearly fallen asleep in the sun.

"Do we follow Cacus to Amiata?"

"Yes, Marce, we follow him."

***

It took them two days to make their way back towards the great mountain; they'd walked in a huge curve north from Curtun, and now they were heading south-west again. This whole mission they'd been walking in circles, Master thought. He was used to the skirmish, to the frustrations of war – the only difference between success and failure was that success was a matter of two steps forward, one step back, while failure was one forward and two in retreat. But this was different. At least in war, you knew where you were going, forwards or back, you knew who the enemy was.

He dreamt of Ramtha in the night, angry-faced, curling her fingers into talons to strike at him. Her face was greenish blue, her teeth long, she was Vanth, the goddess who brought death; when she scratched his back in ecstasy she tore his soul out with it. And then in another dream she taunted him with his failure; angrily, he threw her to the couch, and hit her, and tried to take her, but he could not get hard, and when he woke he felt empty, his mouth sour, his eyelids heavy as if he had not slept.

At least they could move faster now since they had no need to try to track Cacus, or cast about for traces of his presence. They knew where they were going, quite precisely; Marce knew the place from his childhood, where the youthful river Fiora had scoured out a round pool in the gorge. You could tickle trout there, he said; and there was a cave above it. The young woman they'd met had claimed this was another of those coincidences that were not coincidences, of course; and Marce had brought them up through the narrow valley, in the sudden cool below the chestnuts.

Cacus was there; an ordinary looking man, not anything Master had expected. Even the trained eye would find it difficult to pick out any distinguishing factor. Typical, Master thought; his philosophy gives me nothing I can get a grasp on, and the man himself seems to evade me, almost as if his face is pliable, always changing. And yet as soon as they spoke, Master liked him.

Everything Cacus did, he did simply. The word 'elegant' wouldn't do, Master thought; it implied a certain self-consciousness, a certain artful quality that just wasn't there with Cacus. He knelt to place the bread and salt by the three men, in traditional greeting, and the gesture was not rough, not hasty, just right in some indefinable way. They sat companionably in the sun, breaking the bread and dipping it in the salt for taste, and watching the light shimmering on the pool below. Sometimes a leaping fish broke the surface, and the ripples spread out long after it had gone, slowly, lingering.

Master never could remember quite how the conversation had gone. He'd tried to draw Cacus out on that matter of a king's blood, but somehow instead they ended up talking about how you could never feel quite solitary in nature, and how on the other hand you could end up feeling completely alone in the middle of a city, and how, however high you climbed, however far you went, there would always be some peak unconquered.

"We are a people made of boundaries," Cacus said. "Yet we need to exceed those boundaries. Man is made of the land, and yet we must be more than the land."

"Is that why you believe in the new age?" Marce had asked.

"There will be a new age, whether we want it or not, whether I believe it or not."

Larth had been silent till now, but this was the kind of talk he responded to. "You're right we need to break out. Gauls to the north, the Rrumach, the Greeks – we let ourselves be encircled by enemies."

Cacus said nothing, merely looked at Larth, a look which carefully said nothing; not interest, not inquiry, not contempt.

"Life is just conflict, from the day we're born. Some wage war, others just shout. You win or lose. Nothing else."

Cacus smiled. "Nothing else? Life is... look at the circles on the stream. Close your eyes and feel the sunlight. Tell me life is nothing else."

"Light and water. And then?"

Cacus smiled again, and did not answer.

Marce was frowning. "But nothing changes."

"Exactly."

"But you said it will be a new age."

"Yes."

"So how..."

"Everything changes, nothing changes. Look at the ripples in the water; same water, new ripples. Why does anything have to happen? And then, there is always something happening; the river passing, the sharp iridescence of a dragonfly."

"How do we know who we are if we don't act?" Larth was getting angry. "We need war. It makes a man."

"Makes him what?"

"Makes him what he is."

Cacus sighed. "So what makes us Etruscans? The land? Our traditions? Our language?"

"At least we're not Gauls. Not barbarians."

Master smiled. "That's what the Greeks call us."

"We're not Greeks either."

Cacus smiled again, but there was something sad in his eyes, Master thought. "It's easier to see yourself in a mirror, it's true... those who want change will possess it; those who want enemies, will have them. And that will never change."

Master felt doomed to failure. How could he win, in this world of shifting visions and fragmentary meanings? He could see so many endings to this mission; he could, quite simply, take his knife and cut Cacus' throat, or have Larth do it (and Larth would do it with pleasure). Though that would not silence the rumours, the cloud of ideas Cacus had set swirling like a dust devil through the Etruscan cities. Or he could try to win Cacus over, to have him spreading a more acceptable message; but then, he thought, Cacus didn't even have a message, just questions that could never be answered. No, that wouldn't work either; there was no way to hold this man fast.

Cacus hadn't even asked their names or where they had come from; he'd greeted them without surprise or suspicion. Did he realise that even now, Larth was assessing the right trajectory of a thrown knife, Master weighing up the likely success of assassination?

As the afternoon wore on, shade fell over the pool; the conversation flagged. Larth tried to catch Master's eye a few times, but Master turned, pretended not to have seen. Marce seemed pensive, struggling with some thought he couldn't straighten out; and Cacus sat, quietly, watching the water.

Nightfall found them in the cave; more properly, the shelter of an overhang in the soft rock. They shared a simple meal, of spelt cakes and a couple of fishes Marce had caught in the still deep water, and a rich brown cake scattered with poppy seeds, that tasted of sweetness tainted with rot. Not unpleasant, Master thought, that touch of sourness.

He grew tired; not honest tiredness, after physical labour, but the sort of lazy deadness that steals over you on hot afternoons, when fingers grow too heavy to lift and you want to close your eyes and drift into the dark of complete surrender. He struggled against it; he tightened his hands into fists till he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms, a tiny point of sharpness against the fog of fatigue.

At some point he began to realise it wasn't just tiredness. Snakelike trails of thought wound through his mind, but he couldn't quite catch hold of any of them; some dim sense that he was in a maze, that he was himself a maze, made out of glaring light and dense darkness and sweet clinging honey that pulled at him and would not let him move. He had forgotten where he ended and the world began; he was the darkness inside the cave.

He bit his cheek savagely, hoping the pain would bring him back to himself. It did, for a moment; _it must have been the poppy seeds_ , and the darkness was lit up with flashes and smears of fire, and the echoes of humiliation. _I couldn't get hard enough_ , last night's dreams running through his head, his impotence, the failure of his mission. The world against him.

Pain no longer an answer. Larth's figure looming through the fog, his shadow huge in the firelight; _kill him, kill him or we won't be safe_ , he didn't know whether it was he who had thought it or Larth who had spoken. Larth who knew his failure, Larth who mutinied, Larth who laughed at him, the cruel mockery of the rich boys who'd never been fucked. Then he got up, shaking off his fatigue like a hunting dog shaking glittering water from his fur, seeing the sparks fly from him in the hot dark, and took his knife, and slashed, and caught Larth's throat, and saw, as if time had slowed, the fan of blood spreading from the cut he'd opened, spraying in crystal geometry droplet by droplet, pulse by pulse, and Larth's throat opening wide like an evil mouth.

# Tanaquil

Tanaquil never really understood Roman culture. In Rome, the king's wife became a priestess; but it was a strange kind of priesthood, a matter of prohibitions and taboos. The priestess of Jove, for instance – or rather the wife of the priest, it came to the same thing - undertook to wear her hair uncombed, to wear a veil, never to mount a horse or a staircase, never to touch a dead body, nor dogs, beans, or ivy. And from what she heard they were forbidden to eat cakes in bed, though that might have lost in the translation. Fortunately there was no such extensive list of prohibitions applied to her, only a few restrictions on her dress and the requirement to offer sacrifice on particular days, for which she was grateful.

This whole 'priestess' thing was strange to her. In Tarchna, a priest was a priest was a priest, whichever sex, and a zilath was a zilath; and though female zilaths weren't common – there hadn't been one in Tarchna for five generations – still it was not unknown, and little girls were allowed to dream, even to aspire. She remembered how at four, she'd proudly declared she wanted to be an augur and a zilath and a priest and a dancer and a chariot racer, and it was only the last that had drawn a smile from her parents – she'd been a clumsy toddler, it wasn't till she got into her second lustrum that she'd changed; she still remembered how it felt, as if over the space of a few weeks she'd grown into the body that had been there, waiting for her. An augur was someone who had the sight, and who had trained it; and a priest was someone who offered sacrifice and did the will of the gods, and that was the same whether they were man or woman. But the Romans divided the world so that a priestess and a priest were not just different words, but different things.

And this idea of married couples being priest and priestess; quite ludicrous, she thought. If your husband became king, that made you a priest; with no training, no self-searching, no retreat into the uncompromising place where nothing existed but gods and the dance of time and space, the dance that picked you up and went on, and had always gone on, and always would go on, washing you up on the bank as a broad river leaves a wrecked tree on the shallow mud of a meander. A dance was joy, but it was inexorable, it made its demands. But what did the Romans know about that? They thought you became a priest just because the man you married became a priest, and he became a priest simply because he was king.

Look at Tarquinia, for example; she'd be a priestess, if she married a king of Rome. It was impossible to think of anyone less fitted for the role; she was a beautiful girl, but her head was as thick as a tree stump when it came to augury. It was impossible to teach her to float, to swim, to drift into the augur's place; she was rooted, firm, clenched into the world she felt and saw. But the Romans would make her a priest, none the less, though she had no idea of the numinous, couldn't tell an omen if she'd seen a man aflame with crazy lightning or found an oak sizzling and bleached where the thunderbolts had struck.

Even so, Tanaquil was a priest, in both the Etruscan and the Roman sense; and so when Tarquinius held his games, she officiated, dedicating the games to Tinia, to Uni, and to her own patron, Menrva. She poured the half-milled spelt from a clay dish into the flame; the flame flickered, the stink of burning fouled the air. She was half aware of the crowd below the podium, watching her, and half aware of the track laid out in the great bowl between the Aventine and the Palatine hills; but when she smelt the burning grist, she seemed to be back in Tarchna, making her first offering as a girl, aware only of the presence of her father and of the god. (At three, they were much the same thing. She felt her mouth flicker in a brief smile at the thought.) The dish was the same simple clay; she handed it to the boy server as she'd handed it to her father then.

(Out in the crowd, Faustus and Manius were watching. As Tanaquil turned away from the altar, raising her hands to the crowd to show the successful completion of the rite, she realised she was smiling, and recomposed her face to the solemnity required. Her eyes seemed to lengthen, and her mouth moved from wistful to cruel; for a moment, Faustus believed he'd seen into the true wickedness of the foreign woman, and then all emotion was wiped from her face, so that it was like an ancestor mask, unfigurable.)

It was always difficult to come down from the altar, to switch from the swimming ecstasy of the sacrifice, and the excitement that always played through her nerves when she was up there, in front of so many eyes, to come down from that and rejoin the ordinary world, on a level with the others. From the altar she had seen the whole land laid out around her, the vault of the sky above and the basin of the earth below; and now she couldn't see over the shoulder of the man who blocked her way, couldn't see the start of the first race for the crowds. She made her way through the crowd, looking for the charioteers' corral; she might not be racing, but she still wanted to check out the horses.

There were a couple of greys from up north, Felsina or Atria or one of the smaller towns, with sturdy legs and muscled shoulders; shortish, but they'd turn well, she thought, compared to the leggier piebalds Tarchna had entered.

She saw one driver picking up his horses' feet to check them. He was wiry and hard, but that wasn't what attracted her attention; it was a certain quality of stillness in him, when he'd finished, the ability to wait motionless in a field of movement.

"He's trouble, that one. Look at his eyes."

Tarquinius had found her; he must have know she'd be here, by the horses, not with the sociable crowd. She looked again. The driver stood, and not even his eyes moved, or shifted to track the bodies in the crowd.

"He's angry," she said. Tarquinius nodded.

"I'll bet on him, mind you," she said; "men like that win."

"Or die."

"Sometimes. But I think he'll win."

There was too much to do that morning to pay much attention to the games; there were ambassadors from some of the nearer cities, there were traders and musicians and painters and engineers and augurs applying for Tarquinius' patronage, or sometimes for Tanaquil's, who had to be spoken to seriously and flattered and allowed to present their projects, even if there was no intention of bestowing either approval or patronage. (One was quite made, Tanaquil thought, with his idea of turning the slopes of wild Soracte into hanging gardens. Still, such men were touched by the gods; and what an idea it was, though impracticable. She gave him a laissez-passer to the palace and arranged a meeting with one of Egerius' poet friends, a half Phoenician, half Roman girl with huge hooped gold earrings and the stride of a javelin thrower.) Tarquinius' pick, the northern team with its greys, started too quickly – Tanaquil thought the horses had bolted before the starter actually called the start of the race – and the chariot turned over on the second bend; but Tanaquil's driver came through all his heats, competently though without excitement.

They had meant to see the wrestling, in which one of Tanaquil's younger cousins was going to compete, but half way there, realised the crowd was too thick to see both that event and the final of the chariot races, and started to make their way back to the scaffold from which they would watch the race. They were still stuck in middle of the crowd when the chariot race began, so they didn't see the drivers take their teams down to the start, or see how quickly Tanaquil's champion began the race. When Tanaquil got a clear view of the track, the chariots were already half way down the opposite straight, the whole line level across the track. They'd started fast, flat out; no one was prepared to lose ground, to wait their time.

"It'll be fun when they come to the turn," Tarquinius said.

But all chariots made it round the first turn safely, though one of them ran wide, losing a couple of lengths. Was that deliberate, Tanaquil wondered, or had the horses taken the easier path despite their driver's urging? When she saw the driver, she had her answer. Along the nearside straight, he started to make up ground; his horses were travelling easily, despite the hard pace, with room all around them and a clear space ahead. By the end of the straight, he had already overhauled one of the other chariots, and just at the turn, he swerved in behind the leaders to take the inside. The chariot behind him was forced to turn wide, the horses throwing up their heads as they nearly caught the back of his vehicle with their forefeet.

Two in front, one behind.

Tanaquil looked at the last chariot. One of the horses had broken rhythm, its ears flat; it wouldn't be a threat. Two more to take.

The leader's horses were beginning to falter; they were stretching out their necks, their heads nodding at each stride, looser and looser. She could see the effort in their legs, the heaviness building up in the muscles, the way they were losing their easy rhythm, and every step was more of an effort than the last. And she realised the charioteer at the back must have seen this, too, as he steered a line that curved gently and took him outside the leaders, boxing in the second chariot which had nowhere to go. She could see its driver reining in his horses, trying desperately to stop them smashing into the now struggling leader. At the next turn, back into the home straight, the man with the angry eyes was in front, and he took the turn tightly, sweetly.

But now, she saw, though two of the chariots had fallen back, the one that had been fouled earlier was fighting back. The nearside horse was tossing its head, angry, but none the less, the chariot was making headway, slowly reducing the other's lead.

She wondered if she was going to lose her bet at the last. The leader was belting his horses with the end of the rein, but they weren't picking up; they weren't flagging, but there was no acceleration left in them. The other chariot was coming up fast. The leading driver glanced behind him; and before he was eyes front again, he'd already twitched the reins. The chariot began to swerve, dangerously hard, to the right, cutting in front of the second team; but quickly, the other driver switched to the inside, his way to the finishing line clear and his horses still full of running.

"You've lost your bet," Tarquinius said.

Tanaquil laughed. She knew what was coming. She'd recognised that man's way of thinking; it was her own.

And sure enough, he jerked his chariot back to the left, cutting off his rival again within a few strides of the line. It was a dangerous tactic; these racing chariots were light and tough, but they weren't built for this kind of manoeuvring. Before he'd brought his horses down to a canter, one wheel had started to wobble on its axle; the peg must have come loose. He'd got them trotting by the time it finally fell, slewing the whole chariot on to its side. He must have known it would happen, and loosened the reins ready from around his waist, for he was able to jump out, running alongside his horses till he could catch their bridles and pull their heads down. He stood, covered in the grey dust that the horses had raised, only his eye sockets pale where his natural skin showed through. The horses' flanks were covered with white foam, and their nostrils were flaming red. He stood there still, and held them till they had stopped fighting for breath, and he did not even smile.

But he'd been past the line before his chariot fell apart.

***

At the palace later there was a good deal of discussion about that driver. He went by the name Servius, slave, which was odd; she wondered if it was an act of protest, or a recognition of his untried status in the new order of things, or simply if he'd had a Roman sponsor called Servius, but she couldn't find anyone who knew. He was a soldier from Velx, a general or a mercenary depending on who you listened to. His horses and his harness were not at issue – unlike the northern team, which had used a strange crossed harness that might apply scientific principles to redistributing the weight, but was probably ornamental, but if it wasn't ornamental was definitely cheating, at least as far as Manius was concerned, though what did Manius know about chariot racing anyway, one of Gaius's friends asked.

Anyway, about this new driver and his tactics, that late switch in front of the runner-up (who, it turned out, must have had some inkling of what was about to happen, and pulled his horses up smartly, avoiding most of the flak). Some said it was cheating; others believed anything was legitimate in a chariot race.

"He didn't prove his horses were the best," said one Sabine; "isn't that what these races are about?"

"Anyone can buy a good horse. But he was the best driver."

"That move was dangerous."

"Drivers know the risks they take."

"He deliberately deceived the other driver. I just don't like that kind of behaviour."

"He won, though," Tanaquil said, and her acid tone stopped the chit-chat, or at least, they found something else to talk about.

She made her way through the crowd to find the driver – smartened up a bit, though his hair was still dusty and the nape of his neck smeared with dirt, and with a flimsy wreath of thin beaten gold leaves sitting cock-eyed on the tight curls of his hair. She didn't head straight for him, but stopped to speak to friends – an Etruscan girl who had helped her with some weaving a few months ago, a couple of Sabines she'd helped to settle in when they moved to Rome from Eretum; she kept her eyes on him, though. He had a cup of wine in his hand, but she never saw him drink it; he spoke to a number of people, and yet none of the conversations lasted more than a few sentences before his interlocutors drifted off.

When eventually she did approach him, she'd decided to be direct; congratulations meant nothing, he wouldn't want them or value them, and she had ten second, she thought, to capture his attention. This wasn't a man who had time for the easy fictions of politeness.

"How long did it take you to train the horses not to bolt when you crash?"

For the first time she saw his eyes flicker; interest or anger, perhaps both.

"You don't approve of the manoeuvre?"

"On the contrary. I admire it. I would have done it myself."

He moved back on his hips a bit at that, and looked at her sceptically. "I suppose you drive?"

"I've won at Tarchna. I came second at Velzna, once."

His frown lifted very slightly, and the wrinkles of his face seemed to smooth out.

"That tight track at Velzna is a bastard."

"So, how long did it take?"

"Over a year, till they stopped spooking."

"You have a lot of patience."

He didn't answer that.

"You went very wide the first corner."

"I thought there'd be trouble. It was too fast, some of those horses running a bit too free for my liking. And I knew I could make up the lost distance."

"I thought you'd beaten that last team, though. They looked completely unsettled. And then they came back into the race."

"Yes, that was tricky. Mine didn't have too much running in them. But I remember, a long time ago, out on patrol in the bad lands, I learned my lesson. An enemy's still a threat till he's dead."

"You're still alive."

He nodded, grim. "He isn't."

***

Servius was invited to dine with them a few days later; he was staying in Rome, at least for the time being, and Tanaquil guessed he might be looking for better opportunities here. What exactly qualified as a better opportunity, though, she was unsure; from what she'd heard, he was close to the ruling family of Velx, ran the city's army and most likely its intelligence, and had been used on a number of confidential missions. She wondered whether his presence in Rome was part of some subterfuge on Velx's part, or whether he'd fallen out with the Vipienas.

Tanaquil had worried that Servius's dour bluntness would make him poor company at a banquet, but she was surprised; he turned out to have the makings of an excellent raconteur. He told the story of his first pair of horses and his first victory, which prompted Tarquinius to remember that long-ago drive from Tarchna to Rome; the blazing blue skies, the peewit's call, the huge emptiness of the land.

"The third day of our journey," he said, "I was wearing a cap; the sun was strong. An eagle swooped and took it from my head," he said. "It was an omen, of course. The king of birds took my cap, and gave me a crown."

It hadn't been like that at all, Tanaquil knew; but no doubt after so many retellings, Tarquinius had come to think that this smoothed-out version was the truth, and not the terror, the suddenness, the confusion of the moment. And what she knew, and had never dared to say aloud, was that the same eagle that brought a crown could also take it.

That led to a round of story-telling. Elissa, the half-Phoenician, had a tale that was both scabrous and oddly touching about a one-legged Phoenician sailor and a seventy-year-old Egyptian temple dancer; Tanaquil, once she had stopped nearly snorting her mouthful of wine over the tablecloth at the dirty but apposite conclusion, put on a straight face and told a mournful story of human sacrifice she'd learned from an augur in Velzna. There was a brief silence when she finished; it was like one of those moments in the country when, suddenly cold, you realise a chill wind has started to blow, and blacker clouds are shifting over the softer white of the sky, and where you were in sun, you are now in shadow.

"I can't match that tale," Manius said; "but if it's not presumptuous, I can offer a story of the ghost at the wedding. It's an old story, a story that came to me from my grandmother who came from Curtun, a story of ancient Etruscan lore, and..."

"Get on with it." Elissa sounded sharp, but she was grinning.

"Wait for it," Tanaquil said. "He's got to tell us how his grandmother got the story from a one-eyed priest in the grove at Velzna on a midsummer morning, and what that's got to do with the family's Etruscan looks."

"Go on," Tarquinius said, leaning forward. "Ignore the women."

It was a good story, though Manius told it rather hesitantly – a story set in a time of war, when families and friends were separated, and news was hard to get. Looking round the table, Tanaquil realised almost every guest had lived through such times; it was the way things were, even though Manius told it as if such days were past.

"Arnth and Urfe had grown up together; they were inseparable friends. Nothing ever came between them, until, early in Arnth's eighteenth year, he fell in love with a young woman from the next village, and so did Urfe.

"Now neither of them would give up his claim, and Arathia – that was the girl's name – wouldn't decide between them. Grandmother said it was because she wanted to be scrupulously fair; I think it was because she enjoyed playing them off, one against another. But perhaps my grandmother didn't know the women I know.

" They held little contests for Arathia's sake – who could bring her the best game from the hunt, who could bring her the finest jewellery, even if nowadays we'd look at it and just see a few glass beads. Sometimes they would race against her, or they would compete in the dance. It was good-humoured, but there was always an edge to it.

"Then one day in the cornfields where they had been reaping she asked them what they would do for her – how far they would go to please her. Arnth said he would give her his house, his horse, and his armour. Well the horse, she said, would please her; but as far the armour, it wasn't her size, and she knew the house belonged to his mother. Urfe said he would keep his armour, then, but he had an orchard his great-grandfather had left him when he was only a baby, and he would give her the orchard and all the fruit from it for ever and ever. But she said that while the orchard was fine, his horse wasn't as good as Arnth's.

"And so it went on, with the boys bragging and the girl laughing and denying, until Arnth said he would bring the stars down from the sky for Arathia, and she laughed at the idea, and Urfe said he would come back from the dead for her. She didn't like that, and stopped the game – it was unlucky to mention death, she told him, and it was getting dark, and cold, and time to go in.

"War split the two inseparables in the end; Arnth managed to get himself taken prisoner in a raid, and he was ill for some time, and two years later when he came back to the village, as an exchange for a prisoner of the other side – otherwise he would have been sold – Urfe had gone, off fighting in the north to give aid to Curtun against the Celts. And Arathia had grown up, in those two years, or perhaps had just done the calculations and worked out that she was better off marrying Arnth than losing both of them.

"So Arnth and Arathia were married, and held a feast, and invited the village. It was a pity, Arnth said, that Urfe could not be there, but these were times of war, and no one knew when he would come back, or – gods forbid – whether he would come back at all, and there was no point their waiting. He had waited long enough.

"The procession started from Arathia's house as night fell."

"Night was falling over the Palatine, too, and the wind sighed in the poplars as he spoke. Even the minimal noises of wine cups picked up and set down, bodies shifting on couches, were stilled as they listened in the half dark.

"It wound up through the woods, where the road curved deeply hidden between steep banks, and the drifted leaves muffled all footsteps. They traversed the plateau, where their torches strung out in a long line of fire, stumbling in the ruts that generations of carts had carved in the limestone. And at last, past the yawning black gateways of the houses of the dead, and across the river, they came to Arnth's village and to Arnth's house.

"No one could say when Urfe joined the procession. Some said he had been there when they had started out; some claimed to have seen him making his solitary way across the fields towards them. One man said he'd seen him hanging around near Arnth's house earlier, though no one believed him. What was strange was that though Urfe had always been much liked, no one remembered having spoken to him at all, or even seeing him speaking to anyone else.

"When they got to the house the moon was up and full, though it kept slipping behind clouds, so that sometimes the whole village was silvered with light, and sometimes lost in a pool of blackness. There was music, and good humoured scrapping, and dancing, and it wasn't till late that the priest was summoned to make the libation so that Arnth and Arathia could join hands.

"It was then that Urfe walked out of the crowd towards the threshold of Arnth's house, where the bridal couple was standing.

"The dance stopped. Everyone wanted to see what would happen. Would Urfe congratulate Arnth on his victory? Would he try to stop the marriage? Would he attack his former friend? No doubt there were people in the crowd who wanted to see punches thrown, a little drama to go with the wine and dancing.

"Urfe stood there for a moment, swaying slightly. Arathia had stepped back; her eyes were too wide, like a horse when it's about to bolt. Arnth had put his arm around her, and stepped forward, between her and Urfe.

"At that moment the moon came out from behind clouds, low in the sky. and shone full on them. Suddenly, Arathia fainted, and Arnth staggered under her weight, and where Urfe had stood, there was nothing but a drift of smoke.

"Two days later, the few survivors of the army rode in from the north. They were tired, hungry, two of them wounded. Most had lost their armour.

"Urfe had led the assault. Urfe had fought with the desperation of a wounded tiger. And Urfe had died, a week ago, in the bloody slipping mud and rain.

"My grandmother always called that story 'the ghost's revenge', though some people called it 'greater love'. I was never quite sure what she meant."

Manius had reached the end of his tale, and took up his winecup to refresh himself. It was Elissa who broke the silence.

"It would have been a better story if you hadn't already told us it was about a ghost."

That was true, of course, Tanaquil thought; ghost stories were always predictable; but Elissa's sneer had broken the mood. Tarquinius clapped his hands; the servants brought lamps, Tanaquil refilled her cup, Elissa was reaching out for the honeyed nut pastries, Manius was drinking.

The conversation seemed to divide after that, as if people were bored with the story format; Elissa and Tarquinius were discussing some kind of new game with Manius, which seemed to be all the rage, though Manius maintained it was only slightly different from fox and geese, and that was so old-fashioned even seven year old boys would be ashamed to be seen playing it. Tanaquil turned to Servius; she might get to know him a little better, after all.

"Elissa's right," she said; "ghost stories are predictable."

"Most of them are lies, too. If not all of them."

"Oh, you don't believe in ghosts?"

He laughed. "I know you're an augur, so you must believe in spirits, or gods, or omens. But ghosts? No; no, I don't think so."

"You don't think so," she said, her voice as smooth as the surface of a quicksand, and as dangerous. "So why is it you say only most of them are lies?"

"Well," he said, "you never can be quite sure;" and suddenly serious, he began to tell her about his search for Cacus. How he searched for Cacus the prophet, and found him, and realised that there was a traitor among his men; and in the darkness of the night, found who the traitor was, and cut his throat, and killed Larth, his second-in-command.

Tanaquil was impressed despite herself. She could feel her eyes were wide. Quite deliberately, she opened them even further, turning to lie on her front and look up at Servius from slightly under her lashes. It worked; he flushed. She could still use that magic when she wanted to, even at her age.

Then he surprised her. He laughed grimly, and sat back. "Of course when I woke," he said, "I found I'd done nothing of the sort."

"What?"

"Cacus must have put some psychotropic drug into the flames. Or perhaps he drugged the wine. Larth was asleep on the floor next to me, snoring like a sow in mud. He didn't wake for two hours. I'd not laid a hand on him. And Cacus was gone, of course."

She got the impression he'd made this into a finely crafted story, a performance; he was hiding something, something that made him uneasy about the episode. Something that made him wonder if just a few ghost stories might actually be true.

The party broke up shortly after; Tarquinius was tired, Manius was drunk, and Tanaquil knew if she didn't pack them off, things would go wrong in one of two ways – either the men would get drunk and argumentative, or the rest of the evening would be punctuated by long, embarrassing silences when no one could think of anything to say and half of them couldn't remember what they had just been talking about, either. Manius went first, a morose drunk rather than a fighting drunk, thank the gods; Servius made business-like excuses, and Tarquinius reeled off to bed on the shoulder of one of the younger servants. He'd probably sleep with him, she thought sourly, though he probably hadn't enough energy to bother him much.

The servants had all followed Tarquinius; she had to find Elissa's mantle herself.

"That will keep off the chill from the marshes," she said as she draped it round the younger woman's shoulders.

"There's always a chill in Rome."

Tanaquil laughed without much humour.

"You were a bit mean to Manius."

"Hm. Yes. I don't know why, but whenever I'm sleeping with a man, it makes me mean to him."

"If you slept with Tarquinius you'd have good reason."

Elissa, wisely, ventured no comment, and kissed Tanaquil lightly before departing.

***

Servius had heard the news of of Tarquinius' chariot race, and the golden krater that was the prize – who hadn't? It was the talk of Etruria, such a rich donation – far beyond the gold-ornamented harnesses that most victors walked away with. Only the team of horses given as a prize at the great festival of Velzna was worth more; and the northern states had never been represented at that festival, so the competition at Rome would be more intense, the prize more glittering for the difficulty of achieving it.

He'd have been in Rome for the race anyway. But what he hadn't mentioned to Tanaquil was his last quarrel with Ramtha.

"You couldn't fuck me, now you want to fuck my husband," she'd shouted at him when he'd criticised Vipiena's policies. "Master of Horse isn't enough for you; you want to be king? Never. A boy from the stables. A boy from nowhere."

His face was still stinging from her slap, but more from the shame of his impotence shouted aloud. It would be all round the city in hours. And it was true, he wanted to be a king, now he'd seen what a king was, what a king could have. Obedience, of course, he was accustomed to – but only from his men at arms; it was less tangible than that. Men argued with Vipienas, spoke behind his back or to his face, but it was his word that counted, in the end, and his policies that were carried out, and if Master thought that appeasing Rome was right, or wrong, that counted for nothing, or at least, for less than he would have liked. He tasted blood in his mouth where she'd split the tender inside of his cheek.

He looked at her and saw only a harpy, an eager, devouring face and sharp claws. He stuck his tongue into his cheek and felt the wound, licked the blood. Anger rose in him, like a thin vomit, and he reached out to grab her wrists, pulling her towards him, feeling her bones twist under his hands.

He pushed her down on the couch. Fear entered her eyes then, and like the taste of his own blood the sight of her fear set something in him on edge, like the cold fury of the chariot race or of battle. A bell from one of her dangling earrings came loose and fell to the floor, and rolled tinkling across the marble. He still held her wrists, he had his knees between her legs. One of his hair braids came untied and fell across her face; he tossed his head to clear it, but it fell back again.

"Bitch," he said, and took both her wrists in one of his hands, gripping hard, to free his other hand. He pushed her skirts up. "Bitch."

She fought him, or at least he thought she was fighting, and that spurred him on, but at the end he wondered whether she had simply manipulated him into doing what she wanted, for nothing was ever simple with Ramtha and she'd always played with the edges of compulsion, and his anger melted into the familiar goose-pimple sensation that immediately preceded his climax. And then, suddenly, she was pushing herself free of the couch, taking advantage of the momentary relaxation of his grip, and he was falling free of her; as he fell, he felt his cock spurt, and saw the four separate pulses of seed fall on her thigh, on the couch, on the floor, and felt suddenly lost and ashamed.

She tugged her clothes around her. She reached for the krater of wine. She seemed not to see him; it was as if he didn't exist, as if she had erased him from the world. (Was this how hinthials felt, he wondered, unseen by the living?) Apology was impossible; he'd crossed a border, just as surely as the dead crossed over.

He hadn't looked back. Hadn't said anything. There was nothing to say. But she hurled a single word after him.

"Slave!"

And when he came to Rome, it was that word he had adopted as his name.

# Tarquinius

The new man kept surprising Tarquinius. It wasn't his judgment of horses, though that was good, nor his cynicism in dealing with dealers, though that was notable – after all, he was a chariot racer and trainer, Tarquinius had first thought to employ him as an agent for bloodstock acquisition, these skills were part of the trade. It wasn't even his brusque manner; unusual for an Etruscan, perhaps, but then by the sound of it Servius had had a tough life, and perhaps that had left scars on his character as well as his body. It was the fact that Servius – unlike almost everyone in Rome these days – talked straight to Tarquinius; if he thought an idea was a bad one, the most stinking, stupid, badly planned crock of shit since Avle defied the oracle, he'd come straight out and say so.

Tanaquil seemed to like him; was promoting him, in fact, which disturbed Tarquinius slightly, as many things about Tanaquil always had. The older he got, the more he wondered whether he shouldn't have settled for a more comfortable woman, one without her fierce visions and wild ambitions; he could have been happy in Tarchna, moderately wealthy and perhaps influential, even without formal power. Yet she was still a fire in his blood; just to look at her, to catch her eyes on him, stirred him, like a trout disturbing the mud at the bottom of a clear stream. He wished he could live without it; but the truth was, he couldn't. So he accepted Servius, as he accepted many things about his wife.

"He's ambitious," she'd said to him, and that was a warning sign, too.

"A charioteer?"

"He's more than that," she said; "I've been checking up on him." He didn't ask how; she had her ways, she had her people.

Need more stuff here – some plot

***

The auspicious day had arrived. He'd waited two years for this; two years of patient clearing of the ground. Smashing down houses, felling trees, burning the scrub. Two years of splitting, gouging, levering out the great blocks of tufa, soft as cheese till it hardened in the air. Two years reducing the rugged ridge of the Capitoline to flat land. He'd changed the city forever, already; and now the great temple could at last be built, the temple that would stamp Etruscan civilisation on the skyline.

He'd been waiting two months since his foremen told him the site was ready. That was easy to see; the ground scoured clear everywhere, the rock raw. Only Tanaquil had insisted on waiting for the auspicious day; the day set by the gods, the day of beginnings. All things in their time, she said, and all things in their place.

They were bringing the victim now. The horns were blaring as the procession wound its way up the path from the Forum. It was a sound that always made him shiver; like a thing in pain, an ancient creature from the dark before man rose from the furrows of ploughed earth.

He would mix the victim's blood with the mortar; it would be forever part of the temple.

He shivered again. The air was cold up here on the hill's top; he looked down towards the bend of the Tiber, its surface ruffled by a gust of wind. He thought of the head they'd found, buried right at the centre of the hill under a mound of rocks, entombed in a rough kist made by stone slabs. It looked almost as if it was cast in bronze, the delicate pathways of wrinkles and creases still precisely etched on the leathery surface of the face, the hair tightly curled. The eyelids were closed; it bore an expression of great resignation; and it sat upright, staring through the stone in the direction of the Tiber mouth, on its neatly severed neck.

He'd shivered when he saw it. It was uncanny, like the blaring of the horns. He'd wondered if he'd been right to build his temple here, on ground where before Vegoia gave the Rasenna their land, before Athens and Corinth, some barbarian tribe made their sacrifices, or sorcerors their oracles. He'd seen the head brought up, and wished immediately it could be buried again; but it was too late.

Tanaquil had whitened when she saw it; then, suddenly, laughed.

"Go ahead," she'd said. He winced at the implicit pun.

"What does it mean?"

"What does anything mean?" She was in a spiteful mood. She let him dangle, then shrugged. "If you want a meaning, it's a head. Get ahead. Head of state. Dead ahead. Heading up. Caput, capitol, capital. Meaning you are the head of Rome, Rome the head of an empire. If you like."

"And if I don't?"

"Then make something up yourself."

They never found a body to go with it.

He'd put about what Tanaquil had told him, that Rome would be the head of an empire; a great Etruscan empire, he'd said, but Tanaquil sniffed, and told him the Etruscans already found the compromises involved in confederacy hard enough to manage. What chance was there the cities would agree to be subsumed in his imperial project? Rome would be head of the world, he said, and left the question of exactly how and in what form vague.

The trumpets blared again. The procession had reached the turn in the path. One day he'd build a staircase here, Tarquinius thought; steps which led straight up to the front of the temple, not turning in those two tight twists between rugged outcrops of rock. He closed his eyes, seeing Rome, his Rome, the Rome that was to be.

They hadn't wanted this temple. He was spending wealth his soldiers wanted themselves. The loot from Apiolae, from Corniculum and Nomentum, snatched back from the army's hands to pay for the works. Men were drafted to work in the dust of the quarry who thought they should be fighting. He'd had all the gold from his conquests melted down; he remembered a pair of filigree earrings, tiers of tiny lions' heads growling, encrusted with the dusting of granulated gold. He'd seen them nibbled away by the heat in a matter of moments, reduced to a skeleton which then itself dissolved into the melt. Hours of a master's patient work, gone in a few heartbeats.

Tanaquil was laying out the plan; walking the walls that had not yet been built, with her augur's crook in one hand, and the spiked hat of the augur on her head. She'd called him a hypocrite. Raping the wealth of Etruria to build a pseudo-Etruscan state.

"I thought we were on the same side," he said, and knew as he said it how lame it sounded.

She'd raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.

He thought of those earrings he'd melted; they would have looked right on Tanaquil. Lions for a lioness. There was no going back; the gold was melted. It would become something new, as Rome would become something new.

He saw Tanaquil stop, stop and turn, turn and start walking again. The western corner. Behind her, a line of livid cinnabar red marked the boundary line; powder scooped out of a bag with one hand, laid down at every step, her arm trailing in a languid arc. She paced evenly, slowly, her paces the measure of the temple; as accurate laying it out as Tarquinius could have been with rope and pegs and sighting board.

The tufa blocks were ready on their sledges; they'd move them over tomorrow, to make a start on the massive podium, as tall as a man; the temple's foundation would be higher even than the hill had been, before he'd flattened it, higher than a man, soaring above the city. That would be this year's work, just building the base, and the great stairs that led up into the temple; and then the temple itself would rise, great columns capped by a pediment, and the quadriga and the statues of the gods topping the pediment, and the great golden statue of Tinia in the dark of the cella.

Tanaquil had reached the northern corner. Stop, turn; pointing one foot at an exact right angle before she turned her body, sighting down the line she would walk; and then having turned, walking again, easily, evenly, a measured pace.

Head of the world. Rome everywhere. He imagined Celtic amber, Greek ideas, the wealth of Phoenicia, all brought to Rome; imagined the lands beyond the Pillars, the rich cornlands of Africa, ancient Egypt with its cats and hawk-headed gods, the fire and silk of Persia, lying open to his armies. There would be no land that was not Rome. Rome would be head of the world; Rome would be the world.

Tanaquil stopped; the line of red was now continuous, before her and behind.

The victim was here. He heard a scream of trumpets one last time, before the call for silence.

In a moment he would cover his head; he would take the cup of wine and pour it on the white ox's gilded horns. In a moment he would scatter grain and salt on its back, and run the knife of execution along its back from its forelock to its tail. All this he had done before, so many times, but every time he still shivered with fear before he took the hammer from his acolyte. In a moment, he would swing the hammer at the victim's head, just between those gilded horns where the red wine stained its white forelock. He would not look at the man who cut its throat, but he would feel its blood splash his feet, as he always did; and it would be warm, as it always was, but it cooled quickly.

They were waiting. This was the time of beginnings. Let it begin.

He covered his head.

# Tanaquil

She would always remember that huddled, shrouded form. The silence in the forum. The slow, slow pace of the procession; the lictors, the bier, the straggle of mourners.

Six men carried the bier. On it, what looked like a doll, swathed in linen; a body, sitting as if enthroned, its head nodding slightly with the sway of the bier. Such a tiny body, such a pitiable body, she thought. The head was shrouded, the face invisible; all identity swallowed up in death. And yet, Tanaquil knew, the woman was still alive.

Out across the Quirinal, down to the scrub below, on the fringes of the marsh. A pile of freshly dug earth was their destination.

Men had been here since morning, digging out the dirt. An excavation six feet by six feet by six feet, already beginning to collapse under the weight of earth as the soil dried out; trickles of dry crumbly dirt fell like miniature landslides. Next to it, a dozen long planks were stacked, raw wood still pale like a scar.

The bearers set their burden down. The woman sat still; Tanaquil could see her eyes, the only part of her visible, staring blankly. Two of the lictors approached. They took the woman by the shoulders and pulled her up; she hung limply, didn't struggle till she saw the pit in front of her, and then she just raised her hands, scrabbling at the air, but the thick shrouds smothered her movements. One of the other lictors leapt down into the pit, made his arms ready to catch her.

She began to scream then, a thin, high wail that seemed to have no breath behind it, that sounded like the wind or a marsh bird in a storm. It wasn't human; it was the cry of someone already dead. There was no more struggling; she collapsed into the arms of the lictor in the pit, who sat her down against the foot of one of the walls. He reached up, to take a small beaker, a lit lamp, a half loaf; he put them by her side, and patted her absently on the head as he waited for a rope ladder to be thrown down to him.

She was still crying as they laid the planks across the top of the pit. The lamplight could still be seen in the gaps between the boards, for a while; then the men began to shovel earth over the wood. The bigger clods stuck, sealing the pit; but trickles of dry earth fell through the gaps – Tanaquil could hear the rustle and rattle of dirt and stones hitting the floor below. Each spadeful of dirt was thrown across, scattering it. After a while the wood could no longer be seen, only a patch of dug earth, like a scab, and they could no longer hear the woman.

"That's it," the lictor said – the one who had leapt down into the pit; "you can go."

Only two of the lictors stayed, guarding the execution site; they would stay there for three days, till it was certain the woman was dead.

***

"Thank you," said the woman across the table from Tanaquil. "I don't know how I could have borne it without you."

Tanaquil shrugged. She would keep her horror to herself. To kill a girl for losing her virginity; that was barbaric. The Etruscans might have sacrificed virgins, once; but that was a long time ago, even in Felsina they wouldn't do that now. At least, she thought, she hadn't known the girl; had never seen her alive, undrugged, never seen her face.

"It counts as incest, you know."

"What?"

"The Vestals are under the guardianship of Rome itself. She is a daughter of Rome; so her crime is incest. Technically."

As if that made it all right to kill her. She looked at the other woman; a wrinkled face that would have looked kindly, but for the hard, thin mouth. It would, she thought, be easy to be misled. You didn't get to be senior Vestal for forty years without a certain toughness. And for twenty of them, near enough, Fabia would have known the dead Vestal; would have seen her grow up, from a child of six or seven when she was brought in, to today's execution. She was tough all right.

"You never missed having a man?"

Fabia shrugged. "Not really. I could have left after thirty years; that's the rule."

"And you didn't."

"Never even considered it. To be some man's slave..."

"There are other options," Tanaquil said.

"Not in Rome."

"I don't know. I live like an Etruscan princess. The first few years, it was difficult, but now..."

"That depends on Tarquinius."

"He'd never..."

"Maybe not. You're lucky in him."

Lucky? She thought; there was no luck involved, she'd chosen him, and whatever had happened, however far apart they'd drifted in some things, she'd choose him again.

"Tarquinius ... he's Etruscan too. He'd never put limits on my freedom."

"What happens if he dies?"

"I retire to Tarchna, I suppose."

"Not if your sons object."

"What?"

"You'll be under the guardianship of your sons. They could prevent you, if they wanted to."

"Why would they want to?"

The Vestal smiled. "You've no idea, have you? Retire to Tarchna, and you become a focus for opposition."

"Like Robur..."

"Exactly. Even if you have no intention of playing the game, you're too dangerous. So they might not let you go."

"I'd be gone before they knew it."

"And your estates? You can take gold; but the vineyards, the palaces, the slaves; they'd all belong to your sons."

"I do know that. That's the reason I'm here."

That had startled Fabia, she could see, though the older woman hid her surprise well; only a flicker of one eyelid, a slight sideways shift of the eyes, betrayed it.

"Am I right in thinking the Vestals have absolute power over their own possessions?"

"Yes."

"And yours are... considerable, I think?"

Fabia didn't hide her shock this time so well; her mouth tightened, and her voice cracked. "They are."

"A house on the Viminal; vineyards; an estate near Alba. You were negotiating with Marcus Faber for a house on the Via Sacra; did you complete?"

"What's that got to do with your inheritance?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

It evidently wasn't; so she explained. Over time, Tanaquil would transfer ownership in selected properties to Fabia; she couldn't do it with everything she owned, but she could transfer enough for her to live comfortably on the income, whatever her sons decided. She'd have sufficient funds to indulge herself in politics; if she didn't retire... though she couldn't imagine a life without involving herself in the diplomacy of the Etruscan cities; she'd been playing that game since she was fourteen, after all.

Where it got really clever was in the small details. What happened if the senior Vestal died, for instance; the estates would all go to separate Etruscan temples, as donations. Donations exceptional only in that it was still unusual for a pure-blooded Roman like Fabia to leave funds to an Etruscan temple, outside the city; but then, the Romans would probably believe that an old, unmarried woman might have strange fancies. No one would dare overturn her expressed wish. And none of them, Tanaquil thought, would realise that all the temples were her foundations, or controlled by her allies, so that their treasuries would, if she needed, be open to her for whatever purpose she required; though Fabia had, naturally, seen through that straight away. (Good; it was never smart to use stupid people.) Clever in the little detail that Fabia was to swear her testament in a binding oath before Vesta, so that she could never have second thoughts, or at least, if she did, couldn't act on them.

Tanaquil might never need to call on these resources. Life was uncertain. If Rome became an Etruscan satellite, as she purposed, she'd never need her security; if her Etruscan blood and customs ran true in her sons, she'd rule in Rome through them, as well as through Tarquinius. Arruns would be no problem; but young Tarquin was wild, ungovernable, and it was impossible to tell whether he'd settle down, perhaps with a good marriage, or acquire the political wisdom that any king of Rome needed. It was possible, too, that she might die before her husband; though she rather thought not...

"You don't miss having children?"

The Vestal smiled. "I have my daughter."

Tanaquil frowned. She thought the Vestals were enjoined to strict chastity; hadn't she just seen one buried alive? Was this Fabia's secret, revealed in a sort of quid pro quo for Tanaquil's own confidence?

"Your daughter," she said, careful to keep her voice very flat, not to stress either word. She deliberately did not look away, not to the sides, not down, but kept her open smile fixed, looking Fabia in the eyes, as if she'd been offered a third cup of wine or a recipe for fig jam.

"The junior vestal. Not a relation by blood; or a very tenuous one, to be precise – her mother is a distant cousin. But my daughter, none the less."

"Blood is..." Tanaquil thought of her own blood shed in painful childbearing, a sacrifice to the sons who tore her body for their release; thought of young Tarquin biting her tit as he fed, savage from the start. Fabia didn't know what motherhood was. Yet she knew what love was; and Tanaquil filed that information away, for use, if ever needed.

"Blood is different? Yes. This is better. She'll never marry away from me; I'll never see her join some man's household and leave mine. We'll share the same household till I die, and she'll be there to catch my last breath. And you know, I chose her; she is all mine, not some chance of or sport of mixed blood, but mine alone."

"I'd rather have my sons," Tanaquil said.

***

Riding back, Tanaquil wondered whether, if she'd been born in Rome, she would have become a Vestal. At least these women were free from ownership; they held their own fates, their own lands. They were even allowed to drive; something that would have been dear to her. Yet somehow, it was typical of the Romans to allow a woman to become a priest only by cutting off a part of herself, forcing her into chastity, into powerlessness. No Etruscan woman would ever accept that, just as she'd never accept a husband who insisted on what the Romans laughably called fidelity, even if a woman was faithless in every other way. Perhaps she would have done what she'd done with Tarquinius, choosing the right man; though she wondered if there were any men of the right sort in Rome. Maybe not.

Tarquinius had changed; power had made him negligent, age had blurred his keenness, bleached the colour from his hair, rubbed the gilding from him. She wondered sometimes if he'd drifted into Roman ways, even without realising it. He'd become lazy; once, he'd kept his own informants, gone out into the city to find out what people thought. Now, he relied on her spies, if he was clever, and on his little coterie of yes-men, if he wasn't. When she thought of him, she was conscious of her own superiority; and it was that, not age or familiarity, that killed love.

She looked at her son Tarquinius sometimes and saw in him a certain energy and vague ambition not unlike what his father had possessed at that age. But the boy was wild and proud, where his father had been earnest; he took Rome as his birthright, expected subservience and praise as his father never had, and that, she thought, blinded him, and left him vulnerable. As for Arruns, he had been a dull child, and had become an even duller man, as if his parents' qualities had burned out, leaving only the ashes of their fire.

But when she looked at Servius – it was then that she saw the same bitterness, the same ambition she'd once seen in Lauchme, all those years ago, when he'd had a different name and a different city. Servius had the same intelligence, too, though he was cynical in a way Tarquinius had never been.

Servius was much in Tanaquil's counsels now; his contacts among the Etruscan military were useful to her, sometimes, in planning her diplomatic strategy, or Rome's (he'd grown to realise that the two were not always identical). Alliances were made and broken, grew tenuous and thin, or were reaffirmed and strengthened, according to the intelligence they had from the cities. It wasn't the easiest game to play; the Federation was not a state, but a web of shifting allegiances, many of them not explicit, but understood. There were the politics of Rome, too; and friendships made in Rome might prejudice relations with Etruscan cities, or vice versa, so that Robur's links with the Campanian cities, for instance, had to be kept in mind, or her own relationship with Tarchna. Art, music, sex, family were just political tools for Tanaquil; except, he thought, for her love for Tarquinius. That, he thought, was the one thing she would never give up; the love for which she'd sacrificed her homeland and her royal status. He wished he had ever had such a thing in his own life. Would he be a different man now if he had?

"Then we have to marry Tarquinia off," Tanaquil said.

"But who? She's worth more to us unmarried, surely. If our position changes from day to day..."

"Then the situation becomes much less fluid if we marry her. Yes, I understand that; once we've allied to one house or another, or to one city or another, we lose the advantage of flexibility."

"Right now, it's not worth it. None of the cities are a safe bet right now."

"You weren't a safe bet when I made it."

"That was a bet to win or lose in an afternoon. This is a much longer term game."

She shrugged. "Robur?"

"Make him safe?" Yes; Robur, married to Tarquinia, would be brought under control; and that would bring all Ancus' old supporters into the fold. "I haven't heard much of him recently. He was in Campania, a while ago, maybe a couple of months, but it's gone a bit quiet."

"What was he doing?"

"Making friends."

"And you have two daughters?"

"Yes," he said, a little surprised by this turn in the conversation.

"Brought up in Velx?"

"Yes, at the general's and in my own house."

"And they're Etruscans?"

"Not of the full blood. Their mother's a Gaul."

"A Gaulish wife? How unusual."

"Not my wife. I bought her."

"Slave?"

"Freed, now." As he was, though he didn't say so.

"Well. Well. Of course my husband isn't pure-blooded either. And I suppose... if she's not your wife, you would be free to marry?"

This was strange. Was Tanaquil was trying to make him a pawn in one of her regional power plays? To marry him into a ruling family in a small hill town – one of Clevsin's satellites, perhaps, or even up north into the oligrachy of Spina? He nodded, slowly. He was free, after all, but he wasn't eager to lose that hardly won freedom.

"Tarquinia, now," he said, heading Tanaquil off his own affairs and back to the safer matter of foreign alliances. "Marry her into Velzna, into the priesthood there. That's a powerful alliance; Velzna itself, of course, and that's a strong town and a rich one. But you bring the priesthood on side, too. And that can swing some of the other cities behind it."

"I have greater ambitions for Tarquinia."

"What could be greater than Velzna?"

"Queen of Rome."

"But... won't her brothers..."

"They're too young, still. Arruns is dull, Tarquinius is immature. They won't be ready in time. And you know, our kingship is still elective."

"That can be fixed."

"Yes, and I intend to fix it. But first; Tarquinia. If you want her."

# Egerius

Collatia was growing; Egerius had brought colonists from Rome, other Etruscans and Greeks had come too, outnumbering the native population, and he'd started laying out the new city, on a hilltop opposite the old town, which was being razed. Some with their families; some without, leaving wives and children behind till things were more stable, till they'd carved out their place in it. A new start, Egerius had said; a new start, and new gods, though he'd propitiated the old ones with sacrifices, just in case.

Some of the Collatians had come across to the new town. Others had disappeared, into the countryside, or to other Latin towns where they had family. Kallirhoe reckoned half of them had gone, their place taken by the incomers. There were teachers, surveyors, architects, artists; but they'd lost many of the farmers, and they were always short of hands for building. Still, they made do.

Egerius could have ruled as a king, like his half-brother. Instead, he made the very concept of ruling moot; it was up for discussion, as were the laws. Who should rule? A king? A council? The people, directly, by vote on each issue? Gaius argued that votes should depend on an individual's contribution to the city, power apportioned to those who worked the hardest; but as Kallirhoe pointed out, it was difficult to measure it. "If five men build a house, but one man designed it, and a woman plays the flute to encourage the builders, who did the most work?"

"The builders, of course," Gaius had said; but Simonides had disagreed, and no one view carried the day. The debates continued, but around them the city was being built (since whatever you thought of the philosophical problem concerned, pragmatism cut in once people realised they had nowhere till live until they had constructed it); though it took faith to see in the rough rubble and skeletal timbers the agoras and atria of the new Collatia. Only Egerius' house stood proud, its maze of rooms around two great courtyards; and even though most of his co-founders of the city had moved into it with him, it was still only half-done, some rooms unroofed, the kitchen still open to the air, the entrance, for the moment, on the short side as the great columns of the main door hadn't yet been fitted.

"There should be no compulsion," Kallirhoe had said. Egerius tended to agree with it, as he agreed with many of the things Kallirhoe said, even if he also saw how difficult her ideas might be to bring into reality. Not everyone on the council was so compliant.

"Encourage free thought," Simonides said, "and people will start denying the gods."

"Well, there may not be any gods," Egerius said, though it might have been wiser to keep quiet. He felt rewarded by Kallirhoe's smile, sudden and radiant and momentary as it always was; but he realised from Gaius' scowl that he'd upset more than one of his council with that statement.

"Oh, it is true," Simonides said, "very true that there may be no gods. That is possible."

Gaius started to speak, but Simonides raised a hand, and continued smoothly.

"There may be no gods. The world may be made of tiny motes of dust, congealed for a moment into the forms of men or beasts or plants, before they fall back to dust again, and there may be no gods. It is possible. But it is only the gods that make us honest. If I was certain there was no god, I could take what I wanted,take whoever I wanted, rape, murder, perjure myself."

"You couldn't do that," Gaius said crossly. "You do that rhetoric stuff."

Simonides looked at him sharply.

"I think he means...." That was Karite, her voice so smooth you knew she meant trouble. "He means that if everything you say is ambiguous, how could you ever be pinned down to a statement so unambiguous that a court could decide it was perjury?"

"Anyway," said Gaius, "rhetoric man, I don't care what anybody thinks. But with no compulsion, how will you get your agora built, tell me that."

"It's getting built," Simonides pointed out. Gaius grimaced.

"It's getting built because people can see that their cooperation will achieve mutually beneficial aims," Kallirhoe said. "Without compulsion. People are free to work on it or not. But they choose to work on it because it is beautiful and necessary."

"So do they work because they think it's pretty or because they want somewhere to buy turnips?" Gaius asked.

She shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"And how do we make sure another bunch of people don't decide to build a second agora somewhere else?"

"We don't."

"Let every flower in the field bloom," Egerius said.

"Some are weeds," said Gaius, but Simonides nodded slowly.

"Some will thrive, and some will die," he said, "but let them all bloom. That is wise. There is so much energy in people, that in most cities is worn away, and wasted; here we can use it. All the energy, like the wind that blows and the rain that falls."

Gaius grunted. Poetry was not to his liking. But Egerius smiled, and Kallirhoe clapped her hands three times, and Karite nodded her head and grinned and said "And if we could harness the wind, like Pegasus, we could conquer the world!" Then she realised what she'd said, and reddened, and said rather quietly "without compulsion, of course," and covered her face with her hands as the others began to laugh.

"No marriage or giving in marriage, either," said Kallirhoe then, and that surprised them all.

"No marriage? How then do you get children?" said Melkart, the Phoenician who had come with the first settlers.

"Rather typical," said Gaius, "that the first time Melkart speaks it's about women."

"Hush," said Egerius. "That's not what she means."

"Thank you, Egerius, but I think I can speak for myself." Her voice was tart. "I mean no marriage. No contracts, no property, no compulsion. Women and men free to give themselves to each other, not to be given or forced or sold."

"And whose are the children?" Gaius said.

"Their own."

"The father's? Or any man to whom that woman decides to give herself?"

"Why do children need to be owned?"

"Because a man wants to know he's not bringing up another man's bastard."

"But isn't that about ownership? And didn't we decide there was to be no ownership, but common ownership by the people?"

"So every woman is to sleep with every man?"

"A woman is not property. Children are not property. Men are not property."

Simonides coughed gently. "You are proposing that men and women enter into an arrangement only for as long as they both desire it?"

"Indeed."

"So once desire wanes..."

"Then the arrangement is concluded."

"Ah," he said sadly. "The heartlessness of the young."

"Heartlessness? You call that heartless! And a father selling off a girl of thirteen to some old general – what do you call that?"

Simonides shook his head. "Desire is like flame, or wind, or water ruffled by the breeze. It comes and goes. And when you're my age, my dear, it goes more often than it comes..."

Gaius guffawed at that, but he'd got the wrong end of that particular stick, and quickly realised his mistake from the silence around him.

"So the beloved walks away, and the lover is broken. Shipwrecked, alone, however many vows you made each other, however many times you said you loved each other to death, to Hades, to distraction. And you think that isn't heartless."

There was something in his voice that they all felt – something raw, pained, and something that (as if he'd realised he was suddenly naked in the agora) he closed down decisively, his face suddenly hard.

"You can't legislate people into virtue," Karite said, but no one felt like picking up that conversation from where it had been before Simonides spoke.

Egerius had learned from Lauchme the sort of tact required of a host. Quickly, he clapped his hands to bring one of the servants, and whispered for the dancers; not a singer, he thought, but dancers, a spectacular display to take everyone's minds off Simonides' admission and smooth over the uncomfortable moment.

It wasn't the Etruscan dance with its forceful rhythm, the harvest-dance that hypnotised with its slow stamped beat; it wasn't the Greek dance, artful and mimetic, not the Roman shield-dance with its acrobatic leaps and martial posturing, but a mix of all of them, melded together into a varied choreography that contrasted frenzied passages with slower, more fluid movement, till at the end the two dancers accelerated into a duel, each leaping the other, higher and higher till at the end, they joined hands and spun around each other, faster and faster, their bodies leaning further and further out, their movement dizzy, their limbs now a blur of speed. Then at last they dropped, with the suddenness of a hawk stooping to its prey, their legs and arms and heads tucked in to a ball.

Then everyone seemed to have forgotten Simonides' admission – everyone except Egerius – and the conversation became general; they talked about dancers they had seen, from the brothel dancers of ***Piraios*** to the dancing priests of Carthage, the mimes of the Greek theatre or the great Nepos who danced the **Salic*** dance as no one had before him and no one ever would again, leaping nearly twice his own height over the shields. The disappointment of seeing the celebrated Agapos of Mitilene, years after his prime, when his movements were stiff with age and only the focus and precision of his acting were left, like the faintest echo of pure song in an ampitheatre after the audience has gone. And then talk of port brothels across the islands and the seas, of architecture, of landfalls seen from the sea – the white mirage of Ibosim's cliffs, the stagnant spreading marshes of Spina, the towering cliffs of Thira. According to Simonides, none of these could compare with the view of the Acropolis from Piraios, but Karite flatly gave him the lie; "You can't see it from there," she said; "Well, I never have. And I'm Athenian." Which he, evidently, was not, and there was a bit of good-humoured squabbling about the relative age and importance of Sparta, Athens, the Ionian island kingdoms, in which Karite, Kallirhoe and Simonides, naturally, were the main disputants, but even the Carthaginians and Romans joined in. (Gaius, naturally, thought Sparta the best of the Greek cities, for its military discipline and its regular methods of government, though when Simonides informed him that the Spartan women exercised naked alongside the men, Gaius almost accused the Greek of lying, he was so shocked at this licentiousness, as he termed it. Sometimes, Egerius thought, people conform to the stereotype so well that you wonder whether they have ever had an individual thought that wasn't laid down in their blood by some great-great-great-many-times grandfather; he still couldn't work out why Gaius, Old Roman archetype par excellence, had volunteered to join the community at Collatia. Either Gaius was more devious than he seemed, or it was the one surprising thing he had ever done.)

These symposia went on till the small hours, usually, and tonight was no exception; even Gaius unbent a little with the consumption of a wine less watered than usual, and Melkart taught them all a Phoenician clapping game that was ridiculously, childishly simple until you speeded it up, and then forced the most ridiculous mistakes. And through it all, Egerius' Persian slave, Daryush, continued to bring wine whenever it was wanted, and shrunk back silently when he was not needed, discreet as good servants should be.

Egerius was on his way to his bed, feeling modestly happy with the way the evening had gone; not that it was a particular celebration, not that it would create a good omen, but he did feel it was important for his first little band of settlers to know each other well, to create some feeling of community. It wasn't easy, with Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Greeks, all mixed together – and a few of the Collatians, too, though there had been none there this evening. And it was good to discuss the basic philosophies on which his new city of Collatia would be founded, whether it was, as Karite had maintained, an enlightened tyranny, or as Simonides suggested, a republic. His way from the dining hall to his bedroom should have been a simple walk through an arcaded corridor, but this being Collatia, and half-built, he had to detour around a pile of dumped sand and a couple of massive roof beams laid across the corridor, waiting to be slung up above the columns that were already in place, and then out and through a dimly lit yard, and then back into the house by a rear door. He was about to come out into the yard when he heard voices – angry, though hushed – and stepped back into the darkness, waiting.

"You said no marriage and no giving in marriage."

"Which doesn't mean I'm sleeping with you."

That was Kallirhoe, but he didn't recognise the other voice for a moment.

"No marriage, so you're free to sleep with me."

"Yes, and I'm free not to."

"Free love," said the other voice, which he now recognised as Melkart's. "Isn't that something we believe in?"

"I think we have different ideas of freedom," Kallirhoe said, and there was a sound of something soft hitting a hard surface, and a scuffing of feet in the grit of the yard, and a grunt, then footsteps heading towards the door where Egerius was hidden. He shrank back into the darkness as someone passed, so close he could feel their mantle brushing his feet. He couldn't tell which of them it was. Someone left the yard at the other end. He should have been able to tell from the sound of the footsteps, he thought; surely they would walk differently? - and he tried to recollect the way Kallirhoe walked, tried to visualise her moving, but he couldn't, nor could he remember how Melkarth walked; all he could see was their faces. He couldn't even remember what they had been wearing at dinner. Strange how the human mind is so limited; at dinner, Simonides had been praising the power of man's thought, little less than god-like, and yet when you came to it, memory was so tenuous, thought so uncertain.

***

It had taken five days to put the columns of the stoa in place, and now they stood uneasily, insecure, waiting for the beams to be slung across between them and the frames of the roof set up. You felt you could push any of the columns over, weighty as they were; one of them rocked on its base, as a couple of the masons had taken great delight in demonstrating to anyone they thought might be frightened by it, till Egerius told them to stop.

Kallirhoe had planned the work, tracing the figures in a wetted sandpit and supervising the carpenters who squared off the beams with their adzes and fitted up the triangular frames. They regarded her as something of a witch for her ability to tell exactly how long a beam needed to be, just by scratching a few lines in the sand and working out the figures on her fingers, as if she was making a cat's cradle with invisible wool. Simonides, though, said it was the new way, her generation the first to make use of such mathematics. Only once she was wrong, and that was because the main beam had a twist in it, where it had warped while still green.

The stoa was a long, thin building, only one room deep at the back, with an open arcade at the front where, she said, philosophers and poets could walk in the coolness, though Gaius had told her it would probably be colonised by market traders, if she was lucky, and drunks if she wasn't. The huge frames for the roof were ready now, and would be lifted up beam by beam, each mortice and tenon fitted together, and the great ridge beams nested into place.

The first beam was the most difficult to get up there; one of the builders would have to climb up the scaffolding to the top of the back wall, and rope up one end of the timber to haul it up. Once that was in place, they could sling ropes round it to bring up the other beams, and throw planks across from the end wall to the beam to provide a secure footing for the roofers. But the first beam was always a hassle, and a bit of a risk, and no one was surprised when the work was held up for two days "on the say-so of a chicken", as Simonides remarked, Egerius having ordered an augury to be taken.

Gaius had put the labourers to paving the area in front of the stoa for those two (otherwise lost) days, but now he'd brought in every man he could, aiming to get the main frames up as quickly as he could while the weather was good and the labour was available. As for the secondary timbers that ran along the building, those could be tacked on later, and the tiling would only take two men; he could free up the bulk of his men then for the other works Egerius had planned.

That is, if they agreed to work. He'd already had two walk out, not through dissatisfaction with the pay or the work, as they might have done in Rome, but simply because they had drifted away to the shade of the trees by the stream, where Karite had begun teaching with Simonides. They called it teaching, but it looked more like just talking; everyone argued with the teachers, and people came and went as they liked. You couldn't teach carpentry that way, Gaius thought, or accurate surveying.

You couldn't manage a work gang that easily if people were going to wander off, either. He'd had a word with Egerius about that.

"We did decide," Egerius said, "no compulsion."

"But it makes planning impossible."

"Not impossible. Just difficult."

"Someone could just decide they want the stoa over the other side of the agora."

"No, they couldn't. You've started building it now."

"And how did we decide that?"

"You know. You were there. We talked about it. You had a voice in it, Simonides did, Kallirhoe did. We didn't take any decisions till we were all together, here."

"That's not quite true," Simonides said.

"How so?" Egerius was puzzled.

"You'd already razed the old city. That was a decision."

"But that was decided in Rome."

"True, but that doesn't alter the philosophical point."

Egerius frowned; Gaius had grunted, and turned away. Simonides was right, but he didn't care who was right; he wanted the work done. True, both the men had come back to work today; even Simonides had volunteered his services, for what they were worth, though only after asking Gaius who had given him leave to build, which Gaius thought was probably, though not unambiguously, a tease.

Work was slow. Gaius reckoned they should get each cross-beam secure and firmly socketed into the timbers thrown across to the next column before bringing the next beam up; that would ensure there was always a stable platform to work from. But one of the Greeks wanted to sling all the timbers up first, and the men started arguing; the dissenter's Latin wasn't good enough to understand Gaius' explanation, and when Simonides tried to translate for him, one of the Romans objected, on the grounds that they were using a language he didn't know to work out something, he wasn't sure what, that would be to his disadvantage.

"Like what?" Gaius asked, his temper getting shorter by the minute.

"Like they'll give me the hardest work. Or they'll wait till I'm up there and then knock off. I don't know."

"Well if you don't know, shut up, then."

They got started in the end, but the rope slipped a couple of times and had to be thrown up again, and Gaius wondered whether he should have built a proper scaffold instead of simply hauling the timbers up; though that, of course, would have taken another day's work. He'd thought this building was just small enough to get away with the direct approach. By the end of the day, though, the first third of the roof structure was in place, with temporary plans laid across the joists and lashed firmly to provide a secure footing for the builders. It was a start.

***

Egerius probably didn't realise quite how much he annoyed Gaius by dropping in to Karite and Simonides' informal symposium every morning. He was every bit as enthusiastic about the stoa as he was about the philosophy sessions, but the stoa was getting built without his help; and what was he going to do, anyway, that the carpenters and masons couldn't do better without his interference? Whereas diffident as he was about his talents, he did feel he was contributing something to the philosophical discussion; and that was, albeit on a more abstract level, an equally important part of building the new city. Rome, he thought, had grown piecemeal, haphazard; whereas Collatia would be planned, its institutions as much as its roads and buildings properly constructed, its laws as precisely engineered as its temples.

Temples, of course, were for gods; and that was one difficulty they considered. Each nation had its own gods; the Punic Ashtart or Tanit, and Baal, the Greek Olympians, who both were and were not quite the gods of Rome; and the Etruscan gods, both those named (Tinia, Menrva, Turan) and those unnamed, who were, of course, the more important ones. Would the temples be erected to all the gods of the constituent nations?

"There's no need," said one of the Etruscans who had turned up today (no one could remember his name, later on, and as it turned out he never came again, though Melkart claimed to have seen him working in the kilns). "You only need to build a temple to the gods of the place."

Egerius nodded. To an Etruscan, that was obvious. Every god had a place; or rather, every place had a god. The world had come into being with its gods; they formed its landscape, its caves and promontories and sinkholes and rivers every one of them the home of a god, or rather, the god's integument, like a snake's sloughed skin. That was the way the world was.

"Gods of the place?" Karite had said. "Those would be Etruscan gods, then? Or Latin gods? So what would we do, those of us who don't worship those particular gods? Where would I worship Athene?"

"Isn't Athene just Menrva under another name?"

"Ah, see," Melkart broke in, "gods and names, that's a whole other subject – we were just talking about that the other day. So our gods, for instance, we have Tanit and Ashtart, or sometimes we call her the Lady -"

"Despoina," murmured Karite -

"- but Baal has no name at all."

"How does he have no name, if he's called Baal?" Simonides, as always, hot on the trail of illogicality.

"Baal simply means the Lord; or master, perhaps, you'd say. Not a name."

"So the Lady has a name. The Lord doesn't."

"Correct."

"That's just the reverse of the Romans!" Egerius was triumphant; but Melkart looked puzzled. "I mean, the Romans don't give women names at all; they're just numbers – Tertia, Secunda..."

"Not in that order," said Simonides.

"Or they have their father's names made into the feminine gender, Cornelia, Julia, Marcia, Horatia, but not names of their own. But in Carthage it's the god who doesn't have a name; the goddess is dominant."

Simonides nodded, sucking his lips in, squinting a little as he did when he was thinking hard. Melkart nodded too, slowly, then looked up.

"Of course," he said, "that doesn't mean we believe men and women are unequal. You can't take Roman society and just argue across that we're the opposite. People do try to do that, sometimes. As if all we do is to copy the Romans, but in reverse. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? Sidon, Sur, Sarfet were great cities when Romulus and Remus were still sucking a wolf's tit."

Egerius smiled. "Gently, Melkart, gently. After all, Collatia is even younger than Rome."

"So Tanit; does she correspond to Aphrodite? Athene? Artemis? Juno?" Karite asked.

"She's Aphrodite, surely," Simonides said.

"She is all goddesses," Melkart said.

"How can she be the mother and the virgin at once? It's not..."

"Logical, you were going to say?"

"She can't be a virgin and a mother at the same time." Simonides was obstinate.

"She is a goddess. She does as she pleases."

"It's interesting," Karite said, her voice quite cool but very clear with the careful projection of an actor, "that we are discussing the gods. Not worshipping them, but discussing them. Yet even when we discuss them in a rational way, or at least, I would hope trying to do so in a rational way, we fall into the old patterns of defending our own gods, our own ways of thinking. So you can explain how a man lives by the god he worships. And perhaps that is their real importance; look at our gods and you know how we live. We create our world by making our gods."

"The gods are real, though," Melkart said. Karite laughed.

"I'm not denying that. They're real enough – I know that. But you chose your gods, and the Greeks chose theirs, and the Etruscans chose yet another set, and it's the choice you made that tells us what we need to know."

They were quiet then for a while, as if frightened by the daring of their thoughts, till Simonides said, very quietly; "If we choose our own gods, I wonder if we don't make them... as we are making our own world here. Perhaps we need a new god for a new city."

"Why not all the gods?" said Egerius.

That was what they decided, in the end; a temple dedicated quite simply "to all the gods", no names, no images, just a simple round altar on which only grain and milk and honey and wine were ever to be sacrificed, and which was to remain untouched by the blood of any victim.

Only Karite held aloof from the decision. "Homer would say the gods were jealous of each other," she warned; "you know what happened to Paris after he dared to judge between the goddesses, even though they asked him to make the judgment."

"Well," said Kallirhoe, who had up to now remained silent; "if the gods are that petty, they don't deserve to be worshipped at all."

***

Egerius had been a bit wary of Kallirhoe at first; she was sharp, she would fly off into anger, but just as often into an enthusiasm that was tinged with insanity, and she abominated all constraint. She'd never said why she'd come west, and never talked about home; though he guessed, from a few things she said, that her family was wealthy. He wondered, too, how she'd managed to negotiate her way out of the usual domestic slavery, the darkened rooms of the women's quarters and the smothering veil; though the Greek families of Italy were, it was true, more liberal than those who had remained in Greece. He would have asked, but she had a cold edge to her that didn't invite such intimacy.

Yet he realised he'd started to spend more time in her company; though they arrived at the symposium each morning separately, he'd often wander away from it with her, down to the river below the town, or into the woods. There was always the sound of birdsong; sometimes a deep whirr, throaty and congested, or a sharp cheeping, or a sudden crescendo of loud squeaky exclamations that stopped as quickly as it had started.

That day he'd startled a bird out of a thicket; it screamed as it flew, then, perched invisibly nearby, continued its tirade, a repetitive, nagging rhythm of three scolding notes.

"I've upset it, I suppose," he said to Kallirhoe. "Any idea what it is?"

"Karite can tell every bird by its song. I'm not sure. A blackbird, I think."

"Oh." He laughed. "I don't know a single birdsong. Karite told me, once, some bird or other, and while I was listening to it, it was so clear, all the characteristics of its song, I was sure I'd remember it; but the day after, I walked here in the woods, and the first bird I heard, I realised I'd forgotten completely."

"You must know one or two, surely?"

He shook his head. He knew what they were meant to sound like – as a child he'd been told so many times what each bird said, the one that cried 'teacher, teacher', the one that said 'soup with a spider and a fly in it please', or the one that senselessly repeated 'few, few, few' – yet when he listened to the real thing, he heard just noise.

"Ducks," he said. "Chickens. I can recognise chickens."

That brought a half-smile from her, one side of her mouth turned wrily up, a slight creasing of her eye that wasn't quite a wink.

"Look," she said, lifting up a branch heavy with dark green leaves; "here's why you upset it."

There was a nest, an incoherent straggling mass of twig and straw on the outside, but inside, a hollow of mud as smooth as the feathered breast of the bird that had rounded it out; and in that hollow, three eggs, pale greenish blue, a blue he'd never seen in sky or sea, a blue that was somehow sad, and unique to these microcosms glowing against the dirty brown-grey of the nest. He brushed Kallirhoe's arm as he stepped back, and saw the branch bounce a couple of times after she'd dropped it, and felt the unexpected and disturbing warmth of her skin on his. He turned to go ahead on the narrow path.

"She'll come back, I suppose?"

"Probably," Kallirhoe said, "they do, most of the time."

"You seem to know a lot about birds."

"Not much, really. More than you; but that's not difficult."

"So where did you learn..."

"Oh, you pick these things up, here and there."

Perhaps, he thought, when the city was established, everyone would be like Kallirhoe, educated in all the different ways that the world had to offer – able to perform calculations, knowledgeable in the ways of birds and beasts, interested in philosophy and poetry alike. Practical like the Romans, subtle like the Greeks, there was no reason you couldn't combine both; talk about the gods, or about the habits of chickens, or how to calculate the right lengths for roof beams, or even – which she'd suggested, a few nights ago – the distance from Collatia to Olypmus, using the same method, though he wasn't sure whether that was a joke or not. You never could tell, with her.

Another day they were sitting on one of the old drystone walls around the former citadel that hadn't yet been cannibalised for building materials; they could hear the silvery chink, chink of stonemasons' hammers and chisels from across the valley, and sometimes they would hear shouting as one of the larger blocks was levered into place, or a beam hauled up to a roof. Here, though, everything was still; from time to time a dry leaf rustled as a momentary breeze picked it up and tumbled it a few times before letting it drop, or a lizard would scrabble across the dust, holding its legs high like a parody of a dainty girl holding up her dress to cross a stream.

There were lizards everywhere; they were attracted by the breadcrumbs Egerius had flicked from his lap into the dirt, darting in to grab a crumb in their jaws before streaking away again. Sometimes one lizard would rush at another to head it off, and it wasn't always the larger one that won; there was a brief tangle of limbs, sometimes one or sometimes both lizards would flip over, almost too quickly to see, and then both were gone, as if sucked into the cracks of the wall.

After one of these antics, Egerius laughed; but Kallirhoe's brows met in a frown.

"You know something? I wonder sometimes how those lizards see the world."

"What?"

"Do they recognise each other? Do they have memories of each other? Or do they just see another lizard, and fight it or fuck it or run away? What does a lizard think?"

"Does it think at all?"

"It must do. It has some perception of the world. But it can't be the same as ours. How does it see us, I wonder? Do you think it realises we are living beings, or just very large moving objects, like a tree or even like the shadow of a tree?"

"You think about things like that all the time?"

"Sometimes."

He shook his head. Life was complicated enough without worrying what the lizards thought.

"The city's coming along fast," she said. "The stoa's nearly finished, and the agora's paved."

"Good to get the pavement done before the rain starts."

She nodded. They sat companionably for a while without talking; she was swinging her long legs out and back, out and back, her sandal heels scuffing the dirt where they hung loose from her feet.

He remembered all of this as he lay on the couch beside her at the feast after they opened the stoa – even though it had still not been completely roofed; a feast to which everyone had been invited, and most had come, and for which he'd ordered an abundance of dishes, even going so far as to bring fish in from the coast (though half of it was spoiled by the time it arrived, and was only good for fermenting into fish sauce). Karite was there, and Gaius, and Simonides, though Melkart had left the table – probably after one of the Collatian women – and there were new faces, too, since now that Collatia was on the rise, more and more immigrants were coming in, attracted by the freedom of the city and the opportunity to make a new life. He'd invited a few friends from Rome, too; they'd been polite about his achievements so far, though gods knew, well built as it was the stoa couldn't compete with the Capitoline temple, but they'd carry word back to Rome that the new city was a success, and that would bring new settlers and new investment.

Egerius felt the relaxation that came with wine and success, and stretched himself, and remembered the lizards, the blackbird's nest, the soft smoothness of Kallirhoe's naked arm against his; but Gaius kept talking.

"After we've roofed the stoa, I want to talk to you about the drainage system; if you don't get something done this summer, we're going to have problems when the rain starts – the whole agora is a shallow basin, the water will pool in the middle of it, we should really have done something before we paved it, but it's not too late to do something now, I'll have to dig up a channel through the pavement and then cover it over again, as long as we lead the water off we should be able to control it. We could even have a cistern fitted up, that would help with the dry weather, and if I built a further channel out to the market gardens, we'd be able to take advantage of that to irrigate..."

Only the prospect of further building work could make the normally blunt and sober Gaius so loquacious; but why on earth did it have to be now, just when everyone wanted to relax? Egerius turned to Kallirhoe, interrupting Gaius' flow.

"How big a cistern would we need for the whole summer?"

Her eyes turned upwards; she always did that when she was thinking, even when she wasn't counting on her knuckles or mouthing numbers to herself. There was a tiny v-shaped depression between her eyebrows, that deepened with thought.

"You don't listen," Gaius said. "That's the problem with you, Egerius, you just don't listen." He pushed himself up off his couch, and raised his fists; Egerius couldn't be sure whether he'd meant to signal his impotence or was preparing for a fight, but a moment later he pushed his arms very deliberately back down at his sides, set his jaw, and turned.

"Gaius," Egerius said very softly. "Tomorrow. I've drunk too much tonight."

"Tomorrow, then," Gaius said, but he didn't stay.

Egerius turned back to Kallirhoe. "What got into him?"

"You were a bit offhand."

"It was an important question. He's always wanting to build things, whether people want them or not."

"See?"

"See what?"

"Your attitude. You don't like him."

"That's not true."

Kallirhoe shrugged. "And I'm sure he thinks I'm sleeping with you."

"Why not? ... Daryush, pour the wine."

But though she never did tell him why not, she didn't sleep with him, either; and his hangover made the meeting with Gaius even more painfully tedious (both more tedious, and painful) than it would normally have been.

***

It was Ascanius who had given Daryush to Egerius, back in Rome; Ascanius, a no-account trader who'd wanted Egerius to back some venture or another, but it had come to nothing. Darush was a Persian, at least according to his name; slender, dark, and just grown out of boyhood, which meant his value had been falling as his voice broke and the stubble appeared on his cheeks. Egerius had planned to train him up as a scribe, or perhaps an accountant, but he'd had no time to devote himself to the affairs of his personal household, and Daryush's training had been one of the things that got forgotten, or pushed aside by greater priorities.

Who knew where Daryush had come from? Ascanius didn't; the auctioneer had inquired, but no one seemed to know; the boy had been through several pairs of hands, one noble family, a Greek trader, and a brothel; the slaver who brought him originally had gone out of business, and though his successor was helpful, at the end of his search he knew only that Daryush must have been part of one of three lots that had been bought in, and split up. He might have been already a slave in the crew of a ship that had been taken off the coast near Pyrgi, and sold to Rome some months later; or he might have come off another trading ship, that took passengers, but was rumoured to have rather flexible lines drawn between passengers and slaves, if they couldn't pay their bills; or there was a whole household that had sold up, down in the southern Etruscan confederacy, when the father died and the daughters had all moved to Tarchna with their mother; he might have been one of the slaves of that household. Those were the possibilities, assuming the written records told the truth, or something like it. Perhaps ultimately he'd come from Greece; they had a lot of Oriental slaves there, the auctioneer said.

And the woman he'd been sold with might have been his mother, or an aunt, or elder sister; or she might have been no relation at all, except that, like Daryush, she was Persian. At fifteen years' distance, it was difficult to know; and Daryush had been too young then to know himself.

He'd asked Daryush once what he remembered of Persia. "Nothing," Daryush said, and then his eyes flickered away, and he said, "a door, a door open, and the light beyond it." A light that glared and burned as it never did in Italy; a light that sucked you dry.

Daryush was always quiet, as if he feared to be noticed. His long dark eyes were blank, showing nothing, his face unexpressive. Even when Egerius took him to his bed, Daryush showed no emotion, only a small catch of his breath at one point, almost imperceptible.

In the end Egerius found the boy's silence unnerving; he'd not sent for him after the feast, and not for the week after that. He could have slept with one of the other slaves, but he was too fastidious to want such intimacy with more than a few; he felt, every time, that he was diluting himself, that one day he'd wake and everything that made him Egerius would have been washed away, taken, sucked out. There was too much to think about with a new lover; a new body, new emotions, new preferences, the hundred different ways a lover could sigh or groan or simply exhale; the way bodies fitted or didn't fit, naturally curving into each other or crashing elbows and knees in a tangle of limbs – and then the feeling, always, that he'd revealed too much of himself, that he'd surrendered completely while his partners had always left something of themselves unexposed.

He hadn't the resource to deal with a sulky boy; he'd have to eventually, perhaps, but he had too many other calls on his time, and those were urgent. There was the Ligurian that Gaius had reported for unauthorised building operations.

"He doesn't need authorisation," Egerius had said.

"No, but he's building a hovel bang in the middle of the agora."

"I can see that could be difficult." Still, he'd told the Roman, there was nothing that couldn't be solved by the application of good sense and goodwill.

He'd set out immediately with Gaius. The agora was deserted; no one was working on the stoa, though it was still only half finished. Though the roof frames were all in place, only half of it had been tiled; the sight was vaguely disturbing, like a skeleton with the flesh partly eaten away. A statue of a god lay on its side in front of the building, bound around the waist with rope that trailed on the ground; one arm had been broken off while trying to lift it to the pediment.

In the centre of the agora, the Ligurian had already erected four sides of a small shack. He'd used some of the leftover timber from the work on the stoa to make a rough frame, just one end-piece wedged in some rocks and a long ridge slung on to it, perched at the other end on an unused capital; it was only a couple of feet off the ground, but that would give enough space to lie down, with more height at the front. When they arrived, he was already slinging branches against the ridgepole, building up the sides; he was built like a bull, massive shoulders but thin legs, and he was sweating as he lugged the branches across from the pile where he'd slung them earlier.

He introduced himself as Ambro, though that might have been his nationality or his family, there was some confusion; from what they could make out, he'd heard there was land for everyone that came to Collatia, so he'd made the journey, slowly and on foot, to take possession of his own steading. He didn't much like Gaius' attitude, a dislike increased by his difficulty understanding what he was being told.

"You must take that down."

"Is my ome."

"Not here."

"I wants a buildit ere."

"Well you can't build it there." Gaius stonewalled with the best, but he was up against it.

"Vynott?" the Ligurian asked.

"You just can't," Egerius said. Then he realised what he'd just said, in the city of the possible, of freedom and choice; "You can't." So he began to explain; how the agora was public space, how the capital would eventually be used, though it hadn't been just now, how the Ligurian could have land out towards the river. It was no use.

"I wants a buildit ere. I buildit ere."

"Look," said Gaius, suddenly stepping in and sounding very reasonable, indeed quite emollient – which for Gaius was a stretch, Egerius knew; "You heard the man. You can have a decent bit of land near the river. Not just enough for a house, enough for a garden. You can keep a cow, or goats, or grow vegetables, so you'll have a trade. It's better land there, too. This is crap. Look, all these stones. You'll never grow anything here."

Sheer bribery, Egerius thought; but if it worked, he'd approve it. The problem was, it would work once, but then other incomers would get to hear of it, and Collatia would be swamped. Still, he could deal with that later; he'd ask Simonides to help devise some systematic way of apportioning land, since much as he disliked compulsion, they would need some way to ensure the city grew as it was intended to. Something that wasn't too much trouble; something simple, a land for labour swap, perhaps.

Then there was the growing rift between Kallirhoe and Melkart, each of whom had gathered a little band of followers; Kallirhoe, for all her espousal of strict anarchy, living a life of restraint and contemplation, while Melkart advocated the exploitation of freedom for the purposes of greater enjoyment. Melkart's followers never stayed longer than a few weeks with him; they burned brightly and noisily, fuelled by wine or drugs, and then one day they were gone. Some Egerius had seen about Collatia, working on the building programme, and one or two had ended up with Karite and Simonides, strangely quiet and withdrawn; others had disappeared totally, and he was never sure quite what had happened to them. That could happen, in a place like Rome or Collatia; people appeared, like the Ligurian (who'd already been nicknamed 'Build-it-ere'), and just as easily disappeared, and you never really knew them.

Tired by his responsibilities, Egerius sometimes found sleep evaded him for a while; he couldn't stop his mind obsessively listing the tasks he had still left undone, running on without him – when he tried to think of something, of anything (a phrase of Homer, a dance tune he'd heard, the burnished curve of a gold earring) to still it, he could hold on to it for only a few moments before the incessant listing resurfaced and swept it away. But when he did eventually sink into sleep, he slept heavily, unwoken, through to gritty-eyed morning.

One night he had more than the usual trouble sleeping. He'd drunk too much, or perhaps not enough; he was too strung up to sleep, and not awake enough to get up and read (if he did, his eyes would skip down the page, but he knew after half a page, he'd realise he couldn't retain a single word of what he'd thought he'd been reading). The bed was too hot; he shifted to the unslept-in side, which was cooler, and then in a few moments he was too cold, and pulled the warmer part of the cover back over himself. He could look forward to this all night, he thought, and began to feel angry, and realised that he was now even less likely to be able to sleep.

From somewhere in the house he heard a whimper, a sob. He turned over, pulling the cover over his head; but as he did so he knew it wouldn't really shut the noise out. And now he'd heard it, he was listening for every sound, preternaturally alert; the wind-rustled leaves of a tree, a grunt as someone turned over in their sleep, the slow creak of a tree trunk bending. The silence seemed pregnant with the promise or threat of sound to come; it kept him on edge, waiting for the next sob.

It came. And again.

In the end, perhaps the sixth or seventh time he'd heard that stifled sound,he swung his legs over the side of the bed and levered his body up. Outside his room, in the atrium, he waited till he heard it again, trying to determine from which direction it had come. It took several repetitions; he'd move a little, towards one side of the court, or one corner, and listen again; the sobs were more closely spaced now, as if whoever was crying had tried to stop, but couldn't – as if the pain, whatever it was, was getting worse. Sound was deceiving; sometimes, he thought he'd followed the echo and not the sound itself. But eventually he found himself standing in a low storeroom, from which three doors led off; waiting again, then standing outside one of those doors, the one from which, he thought, the sound had issued; and when another whimper came, he went in.

He stepped carefully; there was hardly enough light to make out the far wall, and the floor was a pool of blackness, his footing uneven and tentative.

"Who's there?"

"It's Egerius. Is that you, Daryush?"

"Go away." The boy's voice was thick, so soft and small that Egerius could hardly hear it.

"Oh Daryush, Daryush. Hush, hush" – he realised he had sat on the bed, felt for the boy's shoulder, pulled his head to him, as if Daryush was a child who needed comforting – "hush, darling, don't cry, don't cry." But it was no use, the youth was sobbing now, his body lurching against Egerius' with each outrush of breath, each desperate inhalation. Egerius held the thin body in his arms, felt Daryush's head on his shoulder, his face turned away into Egerius' neck as if ashamed, or burrowing like a blind kitten into its mother's fur; he was murmuring "hush, hush", and words he knew were nonsense, were nothing to the point, just to say something, anything, over the senseless sound of Daryush's distress.

Once Daryush had given way to his weeping, he sobbed wildly, sometimes seeming almost to choke himself, so that he had to draw breath hurriedly, like a drowning man surfacing between two waves, trying to snatch breath before the next paroxysm pulled him down again; there was no rhythm to it. It was only after some time that he quietened; his breaths became shallower, his sobs more regular, till at last his tears were silent. He snuffled a little, and wiped his eyes, but he still wouldn't look at Egerius.

"What is it, Daryush? Tell me, what's wrong?"

"Don't send me away; please don't send me away."

"I shan't. You're wanted here. Hush." The youth had obviously thought his dismissal from Egerius' bed was final; he probably thought he'd done something wrong, that Egerius had another favourite; perhaps he'd seen him with Kallirhoe... Egerius lowered his lips to Daryush's neck, just under the downy edge of his curly hair, to kiss him, tightening his embrace. Daryush squirmed in his arms for a moment, and said: "I thought I had done something wrong;" Egerius said nothing, didn't need to say anything, made his hands make his explanation for him.

Daryush was softer and more feminine that night than he had ever been, Egerius thought; more compliant, more yielding. There had always been a certain reserve in Daryush; it was as if his tears had washed it away. Egerius tried to console him, making love to him tenderly, gently, trying to persuade him into pleasure; Daryush curled into him, shivering at last into quiescence and dozing in the warmth of Egerius' embrace.

But half way through the night Egerius was woken again by Daryush's sobbing.

"Do you have a lamp?"

"Yes."

"Light it," Egerius said, and Daryush obeyed, quick as he always was at command.

"Tell me."

The boy looked ugly in the fitful light. It wasn't just that his eyes were puffy, his face smeared with wetness; there was often something arousing about the sight of a graceful boy in tears, but there was a hardness to Daryush's features that aged and disfigured him. Daryush shook his head.

"Tell me."

"You don't understand."

"Tell me."

"This.... What we do. It is evil."

Egerius could hardly speak. He was bemused, he was hurt, he was angry. How could it be evil? There was no law earthly or divine against it in Etruria or in Collatia; and he was a good lover; and besides, he owned Daryush – it was not for Daryush to make moral distinctions.

"Men who lie with men are lovers of The Lie," Daryush was saying. "The Lie and the Darkness. I have chosen the Darkness and the Lie against the Light of Aura Mazd, and I dread the fire, the eternal fire."

***

Despite the many contradictions and arguments, these were invigorating days; every morning was a new dawn, the world fresh as a field grey with dew in which no footsteps had yet imprinted their darkness. They called it the city of the possible, where all things were possible; the city of freedom, where all things were free; and it was a city of the young, where everyone, or nearly everyone, was young, and beautiful, and intelligent, and those who weren't well educated were working on it with the help of those who were.

Karite's school had grown; Simonides now held separate classes in the grove, and she'd asked Egerius to lecture on poetry, though he could only spare a few mornings every month. He'd asked her what it was divided her classes from Simonides'; was it the level of the teaching, or the subject matter, or was it simply a way of coping with the increased number of students?

"It's difficult to say," she'd answered. "We talk about the same things; but I think we're asking different questions. Simonides wants to ask, what is the good life? \- but I want to know what we are, what the world is. When I look at the stars, what am I seeing? When a baby looks at me, what is it seeing?"

"You're not interested in how to live the good life, whatever it is?"

"Yes, but I don't think we can understand what that is till we understand what the world is."

"I don't get it."

"What is the soul? Do you have any idea?"

"It's the bit Vanth takes away when you die. Er, your mind? Your individuality?"

"That's three different things, Egerius."

"Well... so it is. So what?"

"Does your soul die?"

"I have no idea. No – no."

"No, you have no idea, or no, it doesn't die?"

"Well, it can't die, or Vanth wouldn't take it, I suppose."

"So, leaving aside whether we believe that Vanth is real, the soul is immortal."

"Yes."

"But imagine if it wasn't."

"Does that make a difference?"

"If this is all there is. Just this, the world we see, and when we die, it's over."

"It's not over. If you died right now..."

"Thanks."

"... just for the sake of argument, not meaning anything personal, but if you died right now, the world would still exist; I'd be here, I'd be seeing your body, everything would go on."

"Not for me it wouldn't."

"This is true."

"So for me, the world would end. And perhaps – how do I know you are real? That you aren't an impression in my mind?"

"I know I'm real."

"But I don't. And so if I don't know you are real, and if this world is all there is, why shouldn't I do whatever I like – whatever best pleases me? Is there any moral constraint?"

"No constraint," he said, and thought; none at all, none, just like the republic I wanted to found, and how difficult that's been, gods know. "No constraint at all."

"So you see, unless we know what the world is and how we perceive it, how can we live a good life?"

He wondered what Daryush would have said to that; that the world was a lie, and darkness? And he wondered whether what he'd always done, which was to live as best he could, to try to be virtuous, even in the absence of fathers or gods, was somehow lacking in rigour, and consequently a doomed attempt; would Karite even call it immoral to ignore the intricacies of her thinking about the world before setting out on an ethical course? He wondered, and kept silent, not knowing how to speak without opening up more questions, like ripples spreading on a pond and gradually destroying the bright reflections in which he'd put so much faith.

For Kallirhoe, on the other hand, Karite's speculations were a source of pure delight; the more outlandish the ideas, the more she enjoyed them – it was a game for her, like trying to throw five knucklebones in the air and catch them all on the back of her hand. (And she could do that, too; Egerius could never manage more than four.)

"Imagine! The whole world might be contained within the breath of a god. Or it might be only a reflection of a thought..."

"...in the mind of a god?"

"In the mind of a woman milking a goat on an island in another world, for all I know, and when she stops thinking that thought, we will be nothing again."

"Don't be silly," he said, "that's not going to happen;" but the idea still disturbed him, as if he'd been given an apple and knew there was a maggot in it.

Gaius, of course, was not happy. He wanted practical skills to be taught – stone carving and surveying, forging or engineering. The Etruscans, he said, were good at such things, but Egerius spent too much time on luxuries like poetry and goldsmithing. That was the trouble with nobles; that's why there was no room for them at Rome. Romans had to work for a living, yes, even the kings. (He was slightly uncomfortable when Kallirhoe reminded him how useful her calculations had been in planning the stoa; but then mathematics, well, that was practical knowledge, he said; not like philosophy, no use to man or beast.)

Egerius could have kicked himself; he'd meant to do something about surveying, but for some reason the settlers were short on Etruscans – perhaps the cities of the League were so wealthy that Etruscans didn't want to emigrate, perhaps they wanted to go to cities where the trading networks were more established than in Collatia. He'd have to do something about that; perhaps he could ask Tarquinius to bring a young augur over from Tarchna – but then even Tanaquil didn't really swim in the currents of Tarchna society any more. They were becoming more Roman than Etruscan, that family; and he didn't feel he could ask Servius, whose links were more current. These ideas always seemed so easy, till you started planning how to put them into effect; and then problems began to arise, like brambles tearing at your clothes and sticky-burrs pulling you back, and a whole undergrowth of difficulties barred your way.

Still, the school, or the grove, or the academy, or the studium as some called it – that was one of the things that happened in Collatia, names were never fixed, so that the Stoa was also The Parade, or The Walk, or The Arcade, or to some The Greenmarket, depending on the race or occupation of the speakers or just their individual preferences – the school wasn't a problem. It took people away from the practical job of building Collatia; but not too many, and not too often. He could cope with it. And as Simonides said, if people learned to think, they'd apply that thought to every facet of their lives, just as Kallirhoe had applied the new calculations to the job of getting a building erected.

"Teach a man to think and he'll design you a government," he said; "or a temple, or a stoa, or a better ship or chariot."

("Teach a man to think?" Karite had said in response to that.

"You can try," Kallirhoe had said sourly; then she'd winked at Karite and the two had burst out laughing.)

It was Melkart who was the problem – Melkart and the stoners. Simonides asserted freedom of thought; Melkart was an out and out libertarian. He wanted total freedom; he disconcerted Egerius by reminding him of his commitment to liberty.

"What is freedom if we don't use it?" he asked. "We owe it to ourselves to use our freedom; to experience everything – drunkeness and sobriety, vice and virtue – every kind of intoxication, every science and every art..."

The words tumbled out in a jumble; Melkart was improvising, and sometimes would break down, then take off in another direction as a word snaked its way through his brain and set off a reminiscence or a new thought. It was strange, Egerius thought, that despite what he said, Melkart seemed more interested in investigating the liberty of intoxication, rather than that of work; and though only a Roman would think that sexual freedom was a vice, any Etruscan or Greek would feel ashamed to spend all day in bed, without achieving anything more.

"I had a marvellous idea, Egerius. A wonderful, wonderful idea." Melkart waved one arm in a sweeping gesture that included the whole of Collatia, and swayed slightly as he did so. "You need to... you ought to..." He closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

"Your great idea," Egerius prompted.

"Did I say a great idea? Did I ..." Melkart started to sway forwards and back, forwards and back, like an old tree in the wind. "Experience everything possible... everything..."

One of the students began to laugh. For a moment Egerius thought the girl was laughing at Melkart; then he realised her eyes were closed, she'd not seen any of this, and he couldn't even be sure if she'd heard any of it.

Melkart jerked his head up, scowling at Egerius.

"You've never been there, have you?"

"Where?"

"There..." He waved his arms vaguely; he might have been demonstrating the girl who was still giggling quietly, and he might not. "You never have, have you?"

"No."

"You're too rigid, Egerius. You don't bend. You don't float. You need to do like us... how can you see the future if you don't have visions? You think a city's built with bricks."

"Isn't it?"

"It's built with dreams. Beautiful dreams. Come and dream with us, Egerius."

"I can't. I have no time."

"Time? What is time?"

Egerius felt his face tighten. Simonides had been asking that same question; but he meant something else by it.

"Take the drug with us. Come!" Melkart took a pinch of brown paste from a pot beside him and crumbled it in his fingers.

Egerius shook his head. He didn't want to go there; where laughter welled up like vomit in your mouth, where your eyes were filmed over, where the world distorted and fell apart. Not those dreams. Rather the warmth of wine, the simplicities of hangover or sleep.

Melkart became insistent. "Eat it, Egerius."

"I don't have the time for this."

"Eat it, boy."

The students were watching them. Even the stoners seemed to realise something was happening; they'd stopped mumbling, were sitting with their almost vacant eyes on Egerius.

"You don't dare," Melkart said. "Full of piss and wind and great ideas, but you don't dare eat it. You're scared."

Egerius could never decide, later, whether Melkart was devious enough to have been leading up to this challenge all the while, or whether he was simply flinging out stray drug thoughts; whether Melkart had intended the challenge, or had no idea what he was doing. He could not refuse, he knew; he couldn't let Melkart hold this threat over him.

"Give."

He picked his way towards Melkart, through the tangled limbs of stoner students. Not bending, not willing to bend, he held his hand out for the drug.

The paste was thick, gritty, brown as rotten apple, sticky as squashed fig. He chewed doubtfully, feeling grains grate on his teeth. The taste came slowly, as the paste dissolved in his saliva, separating into a thin syrup and the hard seed that remained. He held it in his cheek, swallowing the liquid, pushing at it with his tongue, wondering why it seemed so familiar, what it reminded him of. He waited for the drug to work.

Waited.

Waited, looking at Melkart.

Waited, and thought; my left hand is tingling. Perhaps that's the beginning. Or perhaps I've just held it down by my side too long, perhaps it's just pins and needles. The light is dazzling my eyes. Blink. It's still dazzling. Perhaps that's it. But I still feel... very much the same. No god descended, no sudden blaze of light shone forth, I am not suddenly benevolent or all-loving or all-knowing, just Egerius, as I was yesterday and probably will be tomorrow. Nothing.

He waited, everything silent around him except distant birdsong and one giggling student.

And Melkart laughed. Laughed uncontrollably, nearly choking himself with it, his body shaking and sagging. Laughed at Egerius standing there with that earnest look on his face, waiting for something that wasn't ever going to happen.

"Sorry," Egerius said; "it does nothing for me."

"Of course it bloody doesn't!"

One of the students was laughing now, too, high and thin, goat-like, and this nervous laughter spread to others as Egerius stood there, puzzled.

"Does nothing for him! Does nothing for him!" Melkart was roaring, breathless.

"What's so funny?"

Melkart looked at him squarely then, stilling his laughter. "Dried figs. Dried figs. What do you expect dried figs to do?"

"Might make him shit," one of the students offered sotto voce, and a few of them sniggered. Melkart swigged from a jug, passed it to the girl next to him.

"You fool! We take our poppy juice in wine!"

***

"Come quickly!" Kallirhoe whispered. Egerius was about to answer, but she laid a finger on his lips, taking his hand with her other hand and drawing him with her, out of the house and down towards the river. It was nearly midday; his skin felt hot and raw where the high sun fell on it. The water shimmered; the hills were hazy. She pulled him along, down to a tumble of rocks, where she fell to her hands and knees, crawling up to the crest of the little ridge, peering over it. He crawled up behind her, till his head was at her shoulder.

"What it is?" he kept his voice low, but even so she frowned, before she whispered back; "Simonides. Look. Careful. Don't let him see you."

He drew himself up, pulling on his arms as if swimming on the rock, and looked over, his head in the angle between a boulder and the rock face.

Down below, Simonides was standing, very still.

"What's so interesting about that?"

"Wait." Her voice seemed strange, denuded of all resonance or pitch, just a dry hiss like wind. "Wait; you'll see."

Simonides moved a leg up into the air, extended almost straight. He began to sway, windmilled an arm, regained his balance. He bent his knee, slowly. He stood there a long time, before leaning forward very slowly, carefully, starting to fall; and as he did so he bent the other leg, but the motion of his fall pulled him on to his front leg, and he fell sideways. He got up, stood again, quite still. He repeated the actions, but this time didn't bend the leg, so that when he began to fall forwards, he came to rest on his outstretched foot, his entire body sloped forwards; but then he stood still for a long time, not seeming to know quite what to do. When at last he began to bring the other leg up, he unbalanced, and though he didn't let himself fall, he drew himself up again, and stood still.

Egerius' face was taut with the effort of not laughing at this strange ritual. He let his body drop back behind the stones; Kallirhoe raised an eyebrow – he nearly laughed out loud, then remembered, and swallowed heavily.

"What's he doing?"

"How would I know?"

He wondered for a moment whether Simonides had gone mad, or been drinking Melkart's poppy wine; another problem he didn't need. But Simonides wasn't the sort; or at least, he'd never thought so before.

Once Egerius was back in the city, though, he had no time to think about that odd display; there was too much to do. They had a new recruit that day, who had to be shown around and found lodgings, and introduced to people he should know. And Gaius needed to round up a few workers to help get the stoa roof finished; "It's already starting to come apart," he'd said, "where the edges of the tiling were left unfinished." (It was just as well Anicius had turned up when he had; instead of being diverted to either of the philosophy groups or Melkart's 'school of experience', he could be directed to help with the building works. Not every new arrival would have Egerius greet him, of course; but Anicius had been sent by Manius, who had hinted that the man was 'useful', and that was a word that for Manius, as for Tarquinius, held potent multiplicities of meaning.

It wasn't till much later in the day, or rather the evening – the air already dim and chill with coming night – that Egerius had completed those tasks he could, and definitely deferred those he couldn't to a later date, and was able to pick his way down the track towards the grove. He could hear voices raised as he approached; but there were only two or three students remaining in the dark shadows, Karite herself, and Kallirhoe, and a Collatian girl he didn't recognise, but knew to be local by the yellow stripe of her dress, still vivid against the twilight.

"So the gods are not real," the girl was saying; "they are just our way of referring to things. A simile, a poetry, an image. If I carve a tree trunk into Juno, it is an image, not a god."

"But then we bring them alive," Kallirhoe said, "by behaving as if they were real. Or by devoting ourselves to them."

"How so?"

"If I devote myself to Athene, then I become the maiden; I am chaste, I am a weaver, I learn to spin the threads of discourse, and I create myself in Athene's image, and so because I become Athene, she lives in what I have made of myself."

"I see. The gods are only real when we behave as if they exist."

"No, they're real." Karite's voice was firm.

"I remember your saying that once before," Kallirhoe said. "What convinced you?"

Karite looked down, her eyes sliding away from Kallirhoe's. "It's a long story. I'm not sure..."

"Let's hear it." The girl's enthusiasm was sweet; Karite looked up, smiled, nodded. Catching sight of Egerius, she beckoned him to sit with them; "You're just in time," she said, "so you don't miss the start of the story." Once he was settled, and the quiet of the evening returned, she began, her voice low.

"I was brought up in Athens; but my mother's family had lands in Thessaly, out along the Pinios river. You have no idea, Egerius, what Greece is like; here, the landscape is on a human scale, but our plains are scoured by the wind, bleached by the sun. You feel the presence of gods, of demons.

"Our entire lives were lived within the great meanders of the river, on the vast plain of Attica. It's a slow and secret river; every year it changes its course, throwing up sandbanks in the middle of its channel, or wearing away those that were there. You can never really know the river; it is always changing, you never see it quite the same twice. But in winter, it flows in spate; it tumbles boulders across the plain, trails gravel, undermines its banks.

"The sky is huge. You always feel exposed. The huge clouds threaten lightningflash and rain so heavy it slaps your skin and blinds you. Heat rolls like a wave across the plain in summer; when the wind blows it's as if an oven has been opened.

"They used to tell stories about Pentheus and the maenads, how he denied the god, how the women ripped him apart. My father said it was just a story, but it made me shiver; sometimes, out on the plain, when I heard the thunder rolling and the rain hissing down, I'd imagine it, the figures of the women blurred by the sheeting rain, the fresh blood washing away in the deluge. Never deny the gods, the women said; give all the gods their due.

"There was a mound on a bluff by the river where the women used to take flowers and cakes, and sometimes chickens. No one knew who was buried there; some ancestor of mother's house, but his name was lost in darkness.

"They told stories from the old times, full of blood and fear. One of the old kings had slaughtered his daughter; he cut her throat, like a goat or a cow. Some said it was for faithlessness, she'd betrayed the city to an invader; some said she'd slept with one of her brothers; others said he'd sacrificed her to the vengeful gods. I wondered if he'd done it from behind, so that she never realised what was happening till her blood was already pooling in the dust, and perhaps not even then; or whether she'd seen the knife, and died in fear, her heart thudding hard, pulsing out her blood all around her.

"My brother told me great Achilas, when he knew he was dying of a gangrened wound, had taken his prisoners out to the flat lands by the river and killed them, one after another, in their chains. I shivered, imagining what it would have been like to stand there, chained to the man in front and the man behind, seeing the men in line, ahead of you, being killed. Dead bodies ahead of you; some of them would drag the chain as they fell; and yet a moment before, they'd been as alive as you were... and you'd know your turn was coming closer, would inevitably come, and you couldn't run, couldn't fight, couldn't do anything. Would I have struggled, uselessly, I wondered, or would I have stood numb and still to wait for the knife, the spear, the club?

"But my brother was a great oaf who loved to terrorise the younger children, so perhaps after all the story wasn't true."

"You were an imaginative child," Kallirhoe said, smiling.

"But I thought you were going to demonstrate that the gods were real," the Collatian girl said. "All you've done is tell us stories. And stories, as you keep telling us, might not be true."

Karite squirmed. "Oh... I got carried away. But Thessaly is a very different place... this is a sweet place, this Italy of yours, sweet and gentle. In Thessaly, the rocks thrust their heads up to the heavens, and the rivers whip and swerve in their gravelly plains below a leaden sky. In winter, the land freezes till the trees shatter with the cold; in summer, it bakes, and the dust devils scourge the earth. In Thessaly, snakes are still worshipped, and sloughed skins hung up on stakes at the edge of the road, and when the wolves come down from the mountains men dress in wolfskins and dance till the gods take them."

"Get on with it," the Collatian girl said.

"I was out with my father one day - women ride out in Thessaly, it's not like Athens or the south - tracking a stag across the rough land. It picked its way across the great river, from gravel bank to gravel bank, staying to the shallows of the ford; and then, after running along the valley for some way, it sought shelter, at the end, in a narrow gully, where we were about to follow it when my father held his hand up to stop me. What I had thought was a thin stream of water lying across the path was the body of a large black snake.

"We stood very still then; I was so close I could see its tongue flickering, and I thought if I moved it would see me, and strike. The snake never moved, except for its tongue questing delicately in the air, but I seemed to hear a voice that said "Slowly, child, slowly, take a step back, take a step back, and come to me;" and it was not my father's, nor was it audible, it was like a golden shimmer inside my head, but I did as it said, stepping slowly back and away from the serpent.

"We turned back then, realising the stag was not for us, and as we reached the wider path we saw a young man standing on the rocks above the path. He was handsome, one of the blond-haired, tall youths you occasionally see in the north, but his eyes were grey and cold; I was frightened, and I had no idea why.

"He spoke. 'Go the other way,' he said, 'and when you get home, offer a libation to Apollo.'

"Father said, 'We offer to Dionysos in my house'. But he said, 'Even so, you will offer to Apollo,' and turned, and went on his way; and though the plain is wide and open there, we never caught sight of him again.

"It was not much later when my father saw the storm clouds coming in from the east, and the waters began to rise; by the time we got back to the river crossing, the water was running fast, and even in the shallows, the water was up past my waist, and we had to hold on to each other to stay upright. Twice I nearly missed my footing, and fell into one of the holes the current had scoured in the bed of the river, or into a gap between two rocks. If we had pursued the stag further, we would have been caught by the storm.

"We were wet and cold, and the only thing we could do was go as fast as possible. We were nearly home when we heard the roaring of water behind us, and looked back to see a huge wave, white foam and muddy water, rushing down the river.

"My father made the libation to Apollo when he got home. We knew who we had seen; we knew we owed our lives to his intervention, and the snake who is his creature and his conquest.

I know that gods exist. I make my thank-offerings to Apollo. But I hope I never see a god again."

***

Karite's tale ended, and they sat in silence for a while. Egerius wasn't satisfied with it as a proof, and nor, he thought, would Kallirhoe be; but it was an undeniably powerful story.

Kallirhoe pulled the hem of her dress up, and scrambled to her feet.

"I thought we might drop in on Simonides," she said, "if he's still teaching."

Egerius followed her – odd how he seemed to be doing that more and more often these days; and Karite brought up the rear, since the Collatian girl had said she was needed at home.

Simonides seemed to have ended his work for the day, but there were still a couple of keen students chatting with him, one making an impassioned argument for the organisation of Sparta.

"You can have freedom or you can have glory; not both," he was saying. Simonides wasn't impressed by that argument, but he was – for once – getting the worst of it, till the older of the two spoke.

"I've fought in Greece and Gaul," he said; "I've commanded men, and led them to battle. And Sparta works; but not as well as freedom. Free men fight better."

That sounded as if it should have been the end of the argument; but Simonides wasted his advantage by reminding the former soldier that even if his men were free, he could hardly be fighting for liberty if he was fighting to defeat another city; so his troops were, after all, only equal to those of Sparta, despite their apparent freedom. To which the soldier had no answer but a disgusted look, and then, like shy sun after a rainstorm, a wry smile.

Again, as he so often did when Karite was talking about her ideas, he felt uneasy; he'd always reckoned himself one of the more thoughtful people he knew, but Karite and Simonides challenged him, questioned him, or worse, left him turning over those questions in his own head. What he'd believed as evident seemed to dissolve like morning mist in the sun. He'd always thought, if you fought against tyrants and injustice, that you were fighting a good fight; but it turned out that it was more complicated than that, that the very act of fighting, of turning to force rather than reasoned debate, was itself a style of unfreedom... Then he remembered Simonides' ridiculous display of the afternoon, and grinned. He might not grasp the most advanced thinking, but at least he didn't look stupid.

"Simonides..." He kept his voice level; a casual remark, nothing special. The Greek looked over.

"What were you doing this afternoon?"

"Teaching, I suppose." Simonides frowned. "Teaching this evening, anyway... Oh! Yes, I was carrying out an experiment earlier on."

"An ... experiment?"

"Well," said Simonides, drawing a large breath, "I have been interested for some while in how our bodies work, so to speak. We do things without knowing that we are doing them; for instance when you pick up a wine cup, you carry out a complex set of manoeuvres without thinking about any of them. You move your arm and hand towards the cup, you grasp the cup, and when your fingers tell you that you hold it firmly, you bring the cup towards your mouth; and you do all this while you're talking to me, or to Kallirhoe, or while you're thinking about something completely different. So I wondered what would happen if instead of doing such a movement unconsciously, I tried to think about it, to analyse it into its constituent movements, right down to the smallest single motion. You understand?"

"So you went to the river and tried to fall over."

"I was learning to walk."

"But you can walk already!" said the younger student. It took him a couple of seconds to realise his mistake; that they weren't talking about what he was talking about at all.

"I thought about how we walk. And the more I thought about it, the less I was able to do it. That's interesting; there are limits to our thought. Or perhaps not limits; eventually I was able to walk consciously, willing every movement, doing nothing without thinking. Even balancing, I was conscious of the way my weight shifted, using my arms extended to balance my body, or putting the weight on one leg rather than the other. So it's not an absolute limit; but it's difficult. Very difficult."

"Isn't it easier just to trust to instinct?" Egerius asked.

"Maybe easier. But ... what is instinct, anyway? Who here remembers learning to walk?"

Of course no one did. Impossible to think back so far, when earliest memories are either so vague as to be useless – a brooding presence, a glimpse of light – or come from so much later in childhood.

"We could watch children learning. But how do we know what they are thinking? All we can see is what they do. And we can see the fact that they are thinking, perhaps. Little squashed up faces full of concentration. But it's impossible to know what those thoughts are."

"You could ask," the student said.

Simonides snorted a laugh. "If a child that age had the right vocabulary, we could ask. But I don't think we'd get much of an answer."

"I wonder if that's why we don't remember it." That was the ex-soldier, surprisingly. Simonides looked at him, questioning, and he frowned for a moment, then continued. "We don't remember it, because we didn't have the words to explain to ourselves what we were doing. And so because we can't tell it, we don't remember it."

A small silence passed over them. It was as if they were all trying to remember; Egerius knew he was, thinking back, trying to sort out those confused impressions of his youth and determine which of them was definitively the first one, the first moment of his life that he could actually remember, as if being alive had counted for nothing till he came to a moment that he could scratch into his memory like a notch on wood.

"I can remember learning to write," Kallirhoe offered. "But then, I learned that rather late. It was strange, breaking a word into its sounds. And if you could break a word up, then you could rearrange it, backwards, or syllable by syllable, randomly."

"Did you ever have to write the same word, over and over again?" That was the soldier. "It's weird. After a while, the word seems to change, and keep changing, and it doesn't mean anything any more; it becomes an incantation, something magical or absurd."

And through all this discussion Egerius was thinking; I'm wasting my time. All my time taken up with administration, with problems, with planning building works, dealing with the bruised dignity of a settler asked to work on earth moving rather than in the government of the city, or a collapsed drain that had to be excavated again and shored up, or a quarrel between the buyer and seller of a horse that turned out to be vicious. This mounting pile of smallness. Like water seeping into a pool; it wasn't a flood, nothing so dramatic, you couldn't drown in it, you didn't see it coming, but then you realised it had filled your life silently – there was open sea all around you, you were lost, every landmark washed away. The bright vision of the new city had been swallowed up; he had been swallowed up.

"But what do you really remember? Or remember truly?" Simonides was saying. "Can you be absolutely sure about what you've remembered, or does the mere fact that you're remembering it change it?"

"Or change you, perhaps," Karite added.

He'd missed too much to make sense of the conversation. He turned to go.

***

"I didn't come all the way from Rome to shovel shit. One day, fine; I understand what it's like, getting started, and I know you've got labour shortages after the Collatian emigration. But I've been here a week and I'm getting tired of it."

Anicius wasn't happy. Nor was Gaius; despite the extra workforce, he'd been unable to get the stoa finished; all the purlins had been cut too short, and he was having to wait while new timber was found – and that wasn't easy, they'd gone through the stock they had – and purlins were sawn to order. Frustrated by his inability to get any work done, he was still obstinately trying to find out who was at fault; the only person he couldn't blame was Kallirhoe, whose calculations had been perfect. But with a workforce that continually changed, as it depended on who turned up from day to day, he couldn't pin the blame satisfactorily on any individual; it could have been one of the regular workers on the project, but it was equally likely to be someone who had only turned up for a day or two and then wandered away to work on something else. That hadn't improved his temper; one Etruscan had walked off the job huffily after Gaius had accused him outright of botching the job, and now everyone was waiting for Gaius to pick his next victim.

"Look," said Egerius. "We're in trouble here. And I know the idea was you could join me in the administration, but we need to get the roof done before the weather turns."

"I don't see you working on it."

"I have my own work to do."

"Which I should be helping with."

Egerius shrugged.

"There's no organisation."

"People are free here. Not like Rome."

"That's why it's all going wrong. Look, I was excited at the opportunity – you're trying something really new – but you have to have some way of organisating things properly, not this just-hope-someone-turns-up attitude."

"Well you've turned up, anyway."

"Yes, because you told me to. But you're taking advantage of me. You know it. I know it."

"You're free to work on something else if you want."

"Am I? Am I really?"

"But you did agree to work on this, as long as we needed you."

"So why didn't anyone else? Did you not have that little talk with them, like you did to me – that little we-ought-to-get-to-know-one-another-personally chat, when you explain how free people are to do what they want and then make them feel guilty for doing it? Come on, Egerius, don't look at me like that; you know what you're doing and how you do it."

"It always used to work."

"With a smaller colony, maybe it did. But the place is getting bigger; it doesn't work any more. Look around, Egerius. Do you see anyone you know working here?

Egerius looked. There were men on the roof; men packing the leather buckets full of tiles to be hoisted up; men sawing the small battens that held the tiles, and tying them into bundles to be sent up on the roof. There was one girl, working up there, half stripped, and he realised that not one of the men gave her a second glance. That was progress; Kallirhoe and Karite would be pleased. But he didn't know a single one.

A sudden shadow fell across the agora. He looked up; the sky was darkening. A trailing fragment of black cloud had half obscured the sun.

"It'll rain later," Anicius said. "And then we'll have to knock off, and Gaius will be pissed off."

"He is already."

"Well, he'll be worse. We'll lose half a day. At least. And you never answered me. You know any of them?"

"No."

"See, people just drift – they come, they go, you don't know whether they know what they're doing, and if they fuck it up you don't know who to blame."

"When we started here we agreed; no coercion. Everyone is free."

"Well, that works nicely for the founders. Look; you put in the hours, I know that. But Melkart? Or Simonides?"

"They're teaching. Well, Simonides is teaching; and Melkart's supposed to be ..."

"And what are they teaching? Is it useful?"

"Funny. Gaius says the same. But you know, we're not just building a city. We're building a whole culture; art, philosophy, the very construction of our society. What they're doing is just as important as your work."

"And a damn sight more pleasurable."

"I don't know. I find some of their thoughts... disconcerting. Worrying."

"Don't think them, then."

"We have to. Our thoughts shape our world. And all the thoughts I was brought up with – all the ideas of my childhood – have to be rethought, one by one, rethought and reexamined. It's not easy; I can't do it well. But Karite can."

"I haven't met him."

"Her."

Anicius' eyes widened for a moment. A sudden wind blew up, suddenly chill.

"You're rethinking what, then?"

"The basis of power. Equality of all men. Equality of men and women. The idea of money. The gods. The plan of the city. How to dance."

Anicius shrugged. "It'll all come to the same thing in the end. You'll see."

"Meaning?"

"Someone always ends up in power. And the others out of it."

"That's cynical."

Anicius shrugged again. "That's human nature."

A single raindrop hit the pavement; huge, overloaded, alone.

Egerius wondered why these Romans came to Collatia. First Gaius, then Anicius; quite out of sympathy with the ideals of the city, the bold experiment that was being made to create something new, a society built around thinking and learning and free cooperation. Yet at the same time he was uneasily aware that they had some right on their side; that if it hadn't been for Gaius' uncomplicated efficiency, the new city would never have been laid out, the agora drained, the stoa erected.

"Still," Anicius said, "you might manage to create the right checks and balances. If you're rethinking everything, there's nothing to stop you rethinking government; how to stop one man taking over, how to stop any one popular movement from forcing its views through. You might. I wouldn't mind trying to design that system."

Another raindrop hit the pavement. Then two more. The air, suddenly, became noticeably colder; and then the restless, rustling sound of rain began. Anicius' mouth was moving, but Egerius could hardly hear a word; his ears were full of noise. Grabbing Anicius, he ducked in under the stoa; the rain outside had become a shimmering curtain, the city beyond invisible now, and the noise was louder, the rain smashing on the tiles above. He was aware of other men scrambling down the scaffolding from the roof, standing aimlessly against the columns watching the rain.

A drip hit the back of his neck. He looked up. There were tiny points of light between the tiles; they hadn't been laid precisely enough. Droplets began to fall on the dusty floor; first making perfect circular depressions in the dust, then blurring together, till eventually the water began to stream downslope, carving out miniature gorges in the dust and pooling in the hollows. The floor should have been paved; how could that have been missed? Now it was too late.

***

The rain kept on for days. Every so often a break in the clouds would let the sun through, but fresh clouds came to close it, and the rain never stopped; it was impossible to believe there could be so much water in the world. The streets were clogged with mud, or ran with water that tore away the soil and exposed the bare rock underneath, slippery and sharp. Gaius was miserable; the building workers were miserable; the farmers sheltered in their houses, sharing the space with their livestock, and Karite's and Kallirhoe's students took refuge in the stoa, since it was the only place big enough to shelter the whole group together.

Only Melkart's group were happy. They sat out in the rain, soaked, their clothes clinging to them; when they danced, the sleeves flapped like bats' leathery wings. They let their hair become rat tails, and churned the mud with their feet. One of them had found the building tools abandoned by the workers on the stoa, and brought the dump hammers and a few chisels and saws, which they clashed together in time to the dance. Other impromptu instruments joined the ensemble; knives, ladles, cauldrons turned upside down. One stoner banged two clay amphorae together; he was surprised when his instrument shattered, and started to cry inconsolably, till Melkart handed him a couple of bits of wood to bash against each other. Gaius came down to try to collect the tools; the saws would be ruined, their teeth bent, though the chisels would only need resharpening. But though Melkart was willing, or at least said he was willing, to hand the tools over, one of the stoners picked up a pair of dump hammers and started swinging them at Gaius; and Gaius left, drenched and empty-handed.

Whenever the rain slackened, the noise of the stoners drumming and clashing tools could be heard all over the city; it was insidious, so that even when it couldn't be heard over the noise of the storm, it seemed to be there in the background. They never seemed to sleep; just as they never, even Melkart, seemed to be fully conscious.

They were drumming when Egerius arrived; some sitting and thumping on upturned buckets or urns, some jumping and twisting and clashing their improvised instruments. There seemed to be some sort of underlying rhythm, but as soon as Egerius tried to track it, he was distracted by the diverse rhythms of different players – slow or fast, simple or complex – and some, indeed, seemed to have no rhythm at all, as if their minds had drifted off and it was only on hearing the sound of someone else's drumming that they remembered they should be taking part. One boy, his eyes vacant, came maniacally to life at one point and started bashing the wooden box in front of him, then gradually lost interest in it and slumped, his head falling to one side, his mouth slightly open.

One dancer had fallen and was writhing in the mud, still in time to the beat, as if he hadn't noticed that he'd fallen; no, it was two people, not one, their clothes, their skins brown with dirty slime, mud oozing around them as their bodies convulsed. Egerius couldn't make out whether they were fucking or fighting, or just dancing, and watched fascinated till he felt Melkart's eyes on him, and turned his face away, embarrassed.

"We all came out of the mud, and we all return to it."

"That's your philosophy?"

"And in between ... we make what we can of life."

"Wriggling in the mud?"

"I told them, give yourselves up to the rain, experience it. Let its power flow through you."

Egerius shivered. Things were falling apart; Collatia was falling apart, undermined by the soft earth crumbling at its foundations. To mud they would return... he couldn't keep thinking like that; needed to make a stand. But what could he say to Melkart that would have any effect? Perhaps when the rain stopped... and that would be when he needed people to clean up, and help on the works that remained, that had to be done before winter. He couldn't deal with them now.

***

Egerius had expected things to be more sensible back in the heart of the city; even though the stoa was dripping, the drainage channels had held up well, the agora was largely free of rain. But when he got back to the house, he found Gaius sitting weeping in the atrium; Gaius, the solid, immovable Gaius, that great rock of a man, weeping.

He couldn't at first make out what had happened. "My grandfather," Gaius was saying, and hugging himself, and he thought perhaps Gaius' grandfather had died; but wasn't Gaius too old? Wouldn't his grandfather have died years ago? Then he realised Gaius was hugging something to himself; some pottery shard, it looked like, something broken, anyway.

"All my family. Gone, all gone."

"Your wife? You heard from Rome?"

"No, no, not my wife – my family. All gone. All smashed."

Egerius held Gaius to him, broad shoulders, close-cropped head. He couldn't hope to understand.

"Not your wife? Not your children?"

"Worse." And this, really, Egerius couldn't understand; worse than his wife and children being killed? What could be worse?

Gaius wrenched himself upright. "My ancestors. My household gods. My forefathers, all destroyed, every one."

He shoved the thing he'd been holding at Egerius. A fragment of a wax mask; one eye, the nose, a broad smooth expanse of forehead, nothing more. The eye had lost its iris; only the dark hole of the pupil bored into the wax seeemed to stare fixedly.

"You can remake them, surely? They're only wax."

Gaius flushed darkly. "Look" – he pointed at a piece of smashed wax on the dirty floor. Pieces of the masks had scattered everywhere; some sharp-edged portions of faces that could still be made out, some crumbled, half-melted pieces trodden into the dust. "My great-grandfather, who knew Romulus, who fought against the Sabines. Gone. Gone forever."

As Egerius stepped forwards to take a closer look, he felt the sole of his boot crushing something, and stopped to look down. There was wax smeared where his foot had been, pressed into the cracks between the stones. Gently he bent to pick up the one piece remaining, a half face whose forehead had been stove in by his tread.

"Who did it?"

"Your Persian boy."

"Why?"

Why indeed? Daryush had no reason to smash the masks. Was Gaius lying? But then what reason had Gaius for it?

"He was in my room. In my room, where I keep the masks in a chest; I was going to make them a shrine, when I brought my wife here, when I had my own house, but I never had the time... and now they're broken."

"They'd be broken if you'd made a shrine, too. It's not your fault... But Daryush is often in your room; he cleans the place. It's his job. Among others."

"He was holding them in his arms. Staring at them."

"And then?"

"I tried to stop him. He ran. He took them with him. He threw them..."

Gaius clenched his jaw; his throat jerked a couple of times as he fought down the emotion, like a man trying not to vomit. Egerius had seen him weep once; he wouldn't let that happen again.

"He was stamping on them, smashing them, shouting."

Egerius had Daryush called. The boy looked at him, his face impassive as it always was. Was there defiance behind those dark eyes?

"Daryush. I'm told you smashed the masks in Gaius' room."

The boy stared at him, unmoving.

"Answer me, Daryush. Did you smash them?"

"Yes."

He'd thought the boy would lie, would try to throw the blame on someone else, would refuse to answer. Or that he would snivel, look for pity, admit the crime with tears, fearfully. But he stood there, unflinching, defiant.

"You smashed them."

"Yes."

"Why on earth did you do that? I know Gaius isn't the easiest man to get on with – I know the Romans don't treat slaves as well as they might – but..."

"He worships them. They are his gods."

Gaius was about to interrupt, but Egerius held up his hand. "What has that got to do with it?"

"They are a lie. He is a servant of the Lie. They are only wax – wax that will soften and melt in the fire, the eternal fire."

"They are his gods, none the less. We have respect for each other's gods here."

"They are lies."

"Daryush, they are his gods."

"They are wax and wood and paint."

Egerius sighed. There was nothing more he could say. The boy would have to be whipped. He couldn't bear to do that himself; he'd have to hand over the responsibility to one of the other slaves. Or perhaps to Gaius? No, that wouldn't do; that would be altogether too personal. He clapped his hands to summon the servants.

***

The heavy rains that had heralded the start of autumn gradually tired themselves out. But things had changed; Collatia had lost its youth, its enthusiasm. The tilers on the stoa roof worked grim-faced, keeping one eye on the sky; two of Melkart's followers were ill, shivering and coughing, one of them, it was thought, close to death, and the others seemed limp and listless, as if the rain had washed their manic energy out of them. Some of the shacks on the outskirts of town had crumbled; Build-it-ere's, though, had survived, though there were rumours that this was only the case because he'd stolen paving from the stoa to serve as a firm footing for his hut.

The grove had been washed out. Egerius offered Simonides and Karite the use of his own rooms, if they needed them; Simonides accepted, but Karite demurred. She had something else in mind, she said; and she'd use the stoa in the meantime, or at least, that part of it that was reasonably watertight.

He found out later what she'd meant. Karite and Kallirhoe had moved in together; they'd found one of the few abandoned houses that hadn't been razed in old Collatia, and taken it over, cleaning it up and replastering the exterior walls roughly to keep out the weather. It was there that they taught, now, so that students who had earlier floated freely between the two academies, Karite's and Simonides', had to choose between the two.

Kallirhoe seemed apologetic when she told Egerius, as if she realised he'd had hopes himself; and yet at the same time she was careful to ensure he realised that his hopes were definitively ruled out by her alliance with Karite.

"Basic principles," she explained. "Like seeks for like. Fish for water. Rivers for the sea. Woman for woman."

"Yet most people would say woman for man."

"Attraction of opposites? No," she said; "that makes for war and shouting. Two women makes for peace. Women know what women want."

"And what do you want?"

"So many little things. Like turning her face in the morning, when her breath is sour. A certain tidiness in small things, like a cat. Knowing where it hurts and how to sooth it when it's my time of the month. Little things. Little things that men don't know."

"Some of us do." He knew it was a lost cause, but still he had to say it.

She shrugged. "Men tell stories about heroes, about war. Even when they tell stories about love they have to make it into a war; fucking, up the arse, had her, shafted her, made her ride me... even if a man's good, you know, I'll always be wondering – when he talks to his friends, what will he say about me? Does he really see me as a prize, a sort of grown-up slave?"

Egerius felt ashamed, though gods knew, he had no need to; he looked into his wine cup, just so that he didn't have to look into her eyes. It was nearly empty; the black Gorgon glinted through a mouthful of watered wine.

"More wine, Daryush."

"Talking of slaves," she said, once the boy had withdrawn again; "have you never thought it's odd, that we call Collatia the city of freedom, but we still keep slaves?"

"I don't force him."

"No?"

"No, I don't. I'm fond of him. Really."

"He's still a slave. And I thought you were going to have him educated? You could have sent him to us. He's underemployed in the house."

"You know what it's like," he said, uncomfortably aware he wasn't really answering her question. "There's never enough time to get everything done."

"Of course there isn't. I know that. But somehow, Daryush always comes last, doesn't he?"

Egerius spun his wine cup round, swirling the dark wine and spying the Medusa, there one moment, hidden the next, as the wine whirled.

"Maybe," he said, and stopped, realising he hadn't really thought what to say next; that 'maybe' was just temporising, pretending to be thinking, to save face in front of this woman he'd thought, once, might want to sleep with him. Realising that, he had to take a decision; had to do something. He set down the cup, clapped his hands together twice.

"Daryush."

The boy looked at him, waiting, still.

"What would you do with your freedom, Daryush?"

"Freedom?"

"I have it in mind to free you. What would you do?"

The boy stood, dumb. But for once his face was not blank. He frowned. Then he looked up at Egerius again, still frowning, as if he feared this was some kind of cruel joke. It was only three days since his whipping; he still moved gingerly, feeling the smart of it.

"Well?"

"What could I do with it?" the boy said.

"Anything! Anything!" Egerius threw his arms wide. "Anything in the whole world!"

The boy looked down again. If anything, he looked sadder than before. Egerius dismissed him.

"You see?" he said. "What can I do with him? There's no place for him anywhere else."

***

There was bad blood now between Melkart and the women; Kallirhoe had made her feelings about his drug-induced orgies quite plain, and Melkart had been vocal about her moving in with Karite. "Silly bitch," he'd said to Egerius; "a good shafting would sort her out. Cock, that's what she needs." Egerius thought back to that night he'd heard them, after dinner, in the dark passage; he wondered if Kallirhoe remembered it at all. But Melkart had let it rankle, even though he was notorious now for taking his pick of the women who joined his group.

Despite the fact that Kallirhoe had so decisively ruled out a liaison – or perhaps because, with that out of the way, they could be friends again – Egerius found himself more and more often heading for their house. He enjoyed the restfulness of the two women's company; he wondered, sometimes, if there was more of the woman than the man in his composition – at least as the Romans divided the world. It was a refuge from his cares; from the ceaseless demands of sour Gaius, from the squabbles of the newer settlers, from Daryush's flinching silence.

Old Collatia was silent in the long autumn evenings; they could see the smoke of the new city's hearths drifting, smudged into the darkening sky. Around the house the low banks where walls had once been were already being taken over by mounds of thyme and scrabbling brambles. One other house still stood, roofless; the great crack in one wall would pull it down before year's end, that was almost certain. After night came, Egerius would bed down outside, if it was warm enough, or pick his way carefully through the low hummocks where houses had once stood, the outlines of vanished streets, and back to the new city.

Sometimes they heard howls, whether of wolves or men they weren't sure. Karite thought it was Melkart's stoners, flying on drug and wine like half-completed shape-changers in the old stories. Kallirhoe said no, it was wolves for sure, Egerius had better look after himself when he went back to his house, and not sleep outside where the wolves would come for him; they could smell a man for miles. Or a woman, come to that.

The howls got closer. Egerius wondered whether to tell Gaius. If the stoners were out of control, something would have to be done. Or if it were wolves, they'd have to organise a hunt; and the livestock would need to be brought in for the winter, to keep them safe.

They were still eating the fruits of summer; Karite had roasted and pickled them in vinegar and honey, or in oil with mustard, and she had preserved cheese, too, in oil with mountain herbs. It was better than the pea or grain porridge most of the workers ate, or the mess of onions and leeks that the Etruscans were used to. Egerius admired the economy of the women's kitchen; the strings of onions and garlic already hung up, the boxes of dried herbs, the small pots for fresh herb through the winter. Even though Karite challenged the very reality of the world they lived in, she still provisioned the household competently against the coming winter; whereas Kallirhoe's sparkling mind didn't run much to practicalities of that sort, though she could plot a course or plan a structure, or calculate exactly the force needed to lever a heavy weight.

They were happy enough, in a strange way, the two women and Egerius, and however many of their students stayed for the evening – sometimes a good number, sometimes none; discussing everything from Corinthian politics or naval warfare to the lives of swallows and where they went in winter, and the difference between Greek and Etruscan proverbs.

"Find a jackdaw next to a jackdaw, we say in Greek."

"It's the same for us; well, nearly. We say; look for one pigeon next to another."

"It's true though; similar creatures seek each other."

Egerius remembered; fish for the water, rivers to the sea, woman to woman.

"And we say: teaching an eagle to fly."

"Or: an eagle does not catch flies."

There was a sudden howl, outside; outside, but close.

"It's too early in the year for wolves," Egerius said.

"Not in Thessaly."

"It is here."

They listened; they couldn't help but listen. It came again, and this time they could distinguish words, or thought they could; but when they mentioned it, they couldn't agree on what the words were. Karite thought it was a herdsman calling for a lost goat; Kallirhoe said it was one of the stoners shouting his own name - "which is quite right: they have all lost themselves," Karite said acidly – and Egerius thought he'd heard "bitch", but said nothing to the two women about it.

"Too early for wolves?"

"They stay in the mountains till the days shorten. They don't come here, not usually, not in summer."

"This is autumn."

"Not even now," he said. "They're too cunning to be caught. And they would be. They'll wait till the snow comes. If it does."

Then they heard it.

"Bitches! Bloody bitches! Come out! Out! Out!"

"Out," like a long howl of pain. A voice stretched out with hurt; was this what men dying in battle sounded like?

"Bloody Greek bitches! Unnatural bitches! Out! Or I'll come to get you!"

"That's Melkart," Karite said. "What in Hades..."

"I know." Kallirhoe scowled, and got up.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you think?" She'd taken a stick from where it leant against the wall, and was beating it into the palm of her other hand.

"No. I'll go. He has nothing against me." Egerius thought for a moment, then held out his hand. "I could do with more force than just that of argument."

Kallirhoe hesitated for a second before handing him the stick. "I don't know how strong it is. It supports my weight when I'm walking; it might not stand up to blows."

"It'll do."

Outside, night had come; the moon was low in the sky, gray clouds drifting across its face. There were few stars tonight; the clouds were low. Melkart, if it was Melkart, was invisible. Egerius listened; there was no sound. Melkart must have heard him come out. Should he shout, let the Phoenician know he was there?

He heard an impact somewhere far out and to his left, and what might have been a stifled curse, or an animal grunting. He took his decision. He knew there was a fig tree, not far away from the house, that grew bushy and thick; he'd hide himself there. If Melkart went away again, he'd never know Egerius had been there; well and good. If he came closer to the house; well, Egerius would have to deal with it.

He edged further and further towards where he thought the tree was, but a cloud hid the moon and he must have lost his direction in the sudden darkness, before his eyes got accustomed to it, or perhaps he had got the distance wrong, for just as he decided he should turn a little further to his right, he stumbled over one of the roots and felt the broad leaves slap his face. He hoped Melkart hadn't heard that, nor his gasp of surprise. Slowly, he felt his way through the foliage, wedging himself deeper into the thick shade, between two branches; branches bent and sprang, but he made as little noise as he could, still listening for Melkart's presence.

"Come on out, Greek bitches! Come and get what you need!"

He must be closer than Egerius had thought; but he was still invisible. Egerius waited; his breathing, his heartbeat, the rustle of the leaves around him when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, all seemed ridiculously loud – how could Melkart not have heard him?

Then the skeins of cloud parted, and the moon shone again thinly. Melkart was almost directly in front of Egerius, so close he could have reached out and touched him. He must have moved since he'd yelled at the women; must be moving towards the house. If Egerius did nothing now, Melkart would get to the door before Egerius could get back there; unless he wandered away again, but that was a bet Egerius didn't feel safe making. There was nothing for it; he'd have to reveal his presence.

"Melkart," he said, firmly, but he stayed within the cover of the leaves.

Melkart stood still; only his head moved as he turned it slowly to search for the source of the sound. Egerius heard him grunt softly at the back of his throat. Then:

"Egerius?"

He stepped out of the shelter of the fig tree.

"Melkart."

"Ah."

"You can't do this, you know."

"Can't do what?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Do I? I wonder."

"You can't go yelling at the women. Stop persecuting them."

"Persecuting? I tell things the way they are. That's what philosophy is all about."

He said the word, phil-o-so-phy, as if it were incredibly difficult, very important to get it accurate; as if it were a word in a foreign language. Which, Egerius thought, in fact it was.

"You have to stop it. You're hurting their feelings."

"Well what about my feelings? Kallirhoe led me on. She made me think... "

"She never did. Never, Melkart, and you know it."

"She tempts me. The way she looks at me."

"Melkart, I've seen the way she looks at you. With disgust, man, disgust. Don't you understand?"

"They want me. Both of them."

"You don't understand."

"I understand well enough. Leave them alone, Melkart."

"Are you fucking them? Both of them?" Melkart began to laugh. "Both of them? You filthy bastard. You won't even share. Two women, and none to spare..."

"Leave them."

"Or what? I can do what I like. It's not your business. You don't own me."

"True. But you'll see what I'll do. Leave them, Melkart. I won't tell you again."

Was it entirely bluff? He wasn't sure; he could ask Gaius to scare Melkart off. Or perhaps better, he could starve the stoners out. Just let it be understood no one had to feed them, to let any of them beg a meal from the common stock; they didn't keep themselves, they had no reserves, and now the orchards were bare and even the wild berries were thinning out, picked by the Collatians or pecked by the birds, they'd go hungry. He wouldn't command; he'd just let it be understood that anyone who wanted could refuse to give, and leave it to the greed or grudge of each individual...

"I'm fed up with this," Melkart said. "I'm going to bed."

Egerius took a half step forwards.

"Yes, my own bed. Since you asked."

"I didn't."

"You implied. My own bloody bed."

"Good."

"Lavinia's keeping it warm. I hope. Silly bitch."

***

There was no trouble for the rest of that week; not from Melkart, not from Daryush (though he still sulked, like a beaten dog), not from Gaius, who seemed to have found four or five stalwarts to get the roofing finished, and happily worked every daylight hour. Not from the new settlers or the old; not from Anicius, now free of the roofing work and drafting a plan, or project, or suggestion, for the new government – his terminology changed depending on who he was talking to; not from the weather, either, which had turned warm and dry, as if summer had taken advantage of a momentary inattention to tiptoe back into the procession of the seasons. No trouble; no trouble at all. It couldn't last.

The days grew shorter, but they were still golden; grass glittered with scattered dewdrops in the early sun, evenings flamed with imperial sunsets. Egerius found the time to write a short poem; though when he looked at it the next day, it seemed lacking, the words less splendid than the skies outside or the feeling of melancholy in the misty morning air. He read it over again, wondered why it had lost its savour overnight, like wine left out.

Simonides, Karite and Kallirhoe came over one evening; the founders, now, were much reduced – he rarely saw Melkart or Gaius, other than in passing, and even Karite and Kallirhoe had distanced themselves; only Simonides was a regular visitor these days, and Egerius wondered whether he really came to see Anicius, with whom he could discuss his ideas on the ethics of government. (Could a city make its citizens good? he'd asked.) Even when he consoled himself with Daryush, he found the boy cold, his obedience sullen. How had he come to this; his friends dispersed, his days so solitary? Even this dinner, so carefully planned, seemed hollow, the conversation faltering, like a reunion of former colleagues who had drifted apart, who no longer knew each other intimately.

"A city is only the sum of its citizens." That was Kallirhoe. She knew she was stirring; she wanted to provoke, Egerius thought, and that was something she never used to do before, strident though her views were.

"Well, we can choose our citizens," Anicius countered.

"Really?" Egerius was doubtful. "How do we stop them coming? You've seen the shanties – Build-it-ere was only the first. They come from all over. Just as they used to come to Rome."

"We own the land. We don't have to give it them."

"And when they have children?"

"Ah," said Simonides, "you're right; those we don't get to choose. Just as no father chooses his children."

"It's a wise father who knows his children," Karite said, with a sly look. Simonides glanced at her, and seemed as if about to speak, but then shrugged, leaving it unsaid.

"So we can choose our citizens now, but never again?" That was Anicius, still trying to push his idea of an elective citizenry.

"There's always ostracism," Kallirhoe said.

"It doesn't work." Simonides was adamant. "Look, it's been tried. And what happens? You push people out, they go into exile, they plot to come back; you end up with a see-saw, one lot in, another lot out. Continual reversals of policy. Nothing ever done, because before it's done, the government changes and it has to be undone."

"But that's when you use ostracism as a political tool," Egerius said. He'd learned enough about Greek cities to know that , at least. "We'd use it more constructively. We'd only exile criminals. Rapists, murderers."

"And where would they go?" Simonides asked.

"That's not our problem."

The wine went round again; watered, for the Greeks; straight, for Anicius. Egerius usually took his wine watered; but now, he waved Daryush away. No water tonight.

"And the nuisances?" Simonides pressed on. "The stoners, the drunks, the rabble-rousers, the unproductive?"

"Work-shy," Anicius muttered.

"The philosophers whose conclusions you don't agree with?"

"Don't worry, Simonides. I'm not likely to push you out."

"Maybe, Egerius. Maybe."

"No, we're safe," Karite said.

"But are we?" Kallirhoe asked. "We may be safe from ostracism; but are we safe from the other citizens?"

No one answered. A month, two months ago, no one would have needed to; now, everyone was afraid to.

"Daryush, could we have some more wine?" Egerius asked; that third cup had gone rather quickly. As the boy came round again, his hand trembled; wine dribbled on to the floor.

"For Tinia's sake, what are you thinking of?"

The boy flinched away, as if Egerius had struck him; wine slopped out of the jug, before he managed to still his fear, and moved across to serve Simonides and the women.

"Maybe," Karite said slowly, "it is not the banishment of the bad that will make our city virtuous, but the encouragement of the good."

"You mean a system of rewards?"

"Yes. But we could also send to chosen people; ask them to come. Alkibiades of Mitilene..."

Simonides made a sour face.

"I know you don't like his philosophy; but he's a good man. And some of the Syracusans, too. If you know Romans, or Etruscans..."

"We've been hand-picking Romans," Egerius said, glancing at Anicius.

"Well, we could do with more. Craftspeople, thinkers, writers, judges."

"And who will do the work?" Anicius said, sullen. "Helots? Like in Sparta?"

As always, there were questions, no answers; or questions and too many answers, all contradictory. When they'd started to ask questions, Egerius thought, it stimulated them, they had felt free, daring even, exploring a new land that lay open to them; and now, instead, they felt constrained by the impossibility of an answer. He shifted the conversation away from philosophy – talked about poetry, sacrificed the verse he'd written to public scrutiny, even, though he hated to do it. (He wasn't sure what was worse, Simonides' kind but uncritical commendation, or Kallirhoe's knife taken to it; probably the former.) Yet throughout the rest of the evening, though they didn't return to the subject of politics, he felt its presence looming there; felt he'd been a coward, he'd shirked something, should be ashamed.

Evening fell, flaring first orange, then a dim purple like a bruise. Egerius had the lamps lit before the colour left the sky; the room seemed to close in, the air still and smothering with the heat of many lamps. Simonides left early, too sober to enjoy himself; Anicius excused himself not long after, and Egerius saw Karite looking restless. Kallirhoe, holding forth on the rights of the free subject, seemed not to notice; women didn't always, it seemed, have quite the attentiveness to each other's desires that she'd claimed.

"I'll see you back," he said, in a gap in her speechifying; and though she bridled, a quick glance at Karite stopped the anger he thought he'd seen in her eyes.

"We don't need it," Karite said.

"It'd be best," said Kallirhoe.

They made their way across the moonlit agora; the arcade of the stoa seemed full of moving shadows, and clouds shifting in the sky cast strange twisting darknesses on to the ground. Egerius thought he heard a distant rumble of thunder, but he might have been mistaken; there was no lightning flicker.

"Bitches!"

It was Melkart again, pissed and stumbling, shouting at them. He must have been waiting in the stoa; waiting, or perhaps just sleeping off a drunk, and woken by their voices. He stumbled towards them, unsteady, but with the speed of the vastly intoxicated, not caring whether he tripped or fell, almost running as his momentum carried him forward.

Kallirhoe cursed. They moved faster. Then Karite fell, suddenly, tumbling over an ankle that had twisted sideways and folding up on herself limply. One of the stones of the pavement had tipped up, its edge catching her foot; another was missing, the space gaping like a deep hole, though Egerius knew it could only be an inch deep.

"You shit!" Kallirhoe yelled, turning round to face Melkart; but he was still running towards them, shouting, less and less coherently. Then she bent; was she tying her shoelace? Egerius couldn't work out what she was doing; he braced himself for the inevitable confrontation with Melkart.

Then Melkart was falling backwards, and Kallirhoe's raised arm was following through her shot. Egerius realised she must have picked up a stone and thrown it at Melkart, but by the time he realised what she'd done he'd already turned and was running towards the falling body. He got there just in time to see Melkart hit the ground, his eyes staring up blankly at the starless sky, his forehead bloody.

"Is he...?"

Not breathing. Not moving.

"A lucky shot," Karite said, and Egerius thought no; unlucky, not just for Melkart, unlucky for them all. He'd thought they could found a city of freedom, unlike Rome, the city founded on fratricide, the city of violence; and now New Collatia had claimed its first victim, its first sacrifice that sanctified its walls with blood. An unlucky night.

"What do we do?" Kallirhoe was as direct as ever. No thought for fault or culpability, just the need for action.

"Did anyone see us leave?" he asked her. That was the first consideration; everything else came after.

"I don't know."

"Anyone in the stoa?"

"We can find out."

"You go; I'll stay here with Karite."

She hesitated a second; then like a fox, she was gone into the dark, whisking silently towards the arcade. A few moments later she was back.

"No-one."

"You're sure?"

She nodded. Few words and quick were best, while they were in the open.

"We leave him then."

"We leave him?" Karite asked. Her voice seemed to tremble; that might be pain, or fear, or the chill that was beginning to creep up from the stones.

"We leave him."

"But what will people say?"

"That he got too drunk, too often. Too noisy."

"They'll blame it on one of his students."

"The city's not safe at night. He was out too late."

"Most of them were frightened of him, anyway."

They were whispering urgently, trying to convince each other it was right to do this, to leave him lying there.

"And now?"

"Back home," Egerius said. "We never left; we've been there all the time. It got too late; you stayed."

Kallirhoe nodded. Karite looked up, looked down.

"That's decided, then," he said. "That's our story." As they made their way back to his house, he seemed to feel eyes on his back; the agora had never seemed so wide, so exposed.

They said very little when they got back to the house; he found the women a spare room where they could bed down, found a spare coverlet in one of the chests in his own room, left them. Stripping, he felt the air chill on his clammy skin; his bed was lumpy, the rug he pulled over himself scratchy, making him itch. It was surprising how a man could go from noisy, rough life to the blankness of death in a moment, in less time than it took to catch the sound of your own heartbeat. He couldn't even remember if he'd heard the sound of the rock hitting Melkart's temple, or did he only think he should have heard it? Death was unseen, unheard, waiting in the darkness, everywhere present.

He couldn't sleep. His body seemed tense; his legs numb and cramped, as if he'd run a long race. A dull ache twisted in his shoulders.

He might have dozed off; he had the same sense of momentary disorientation as on waking. When he moved his fingers he realised he had cramp; he must have been lying on his hand. Then he realised what he was hearing; a woman's moans, muffled, low. One way of consoling yourself against the presence of death, he thought.

He turned over, throwing himself down on the couch as if it was an enemy – some nights it was; he pulled the cover up over his ears. It was horrible hearing them making love, like a violation; he cringed from such intimate knowledge of them, and at the same time he couldn't help but feel aroused, suddenly, violently.

He should have told Daryush to stay, after dinner, as he often did; or he could have clapped for lights, and a servant, and sent for him; but his need was too urgent, and at the same time he felt ashamed to show his desire in front of the women. If they knew he had heard, it would be twice as bad as just having heard them; the knowledge knifed his guts already. Shrugging his tebenna over his nakedness, not pausing to put on sandals, he fled to Daryush.

The boy was asleep; he woke as Egerius sat down next to him, pulling the tebenna off his shoulders. He let out a small cry, and Egerius never could decide whether that was in the moment of waking, still half asleep, or whether it was a conscious protest. He felt for a moment the sharpness of Daryush's stubble against his face; the boy hadn't shaved, then, as he usually did; he couldn't have expected Egerius to come to his bed. Then Egerius was on him, kissing, stroking, squeezing, holding, and at the last turning Daryush's face to the bed and sinking into him, trying to lose himself in the inevitable, atavistic urge towards release.

Afterwards he lay there, allowing himself to feel comfort in the warmth of the Persian's body, ignoring (or trying to ignore) the knowledge he was deluding himself with the dream of affection; that he'd used Daryush just as he might use a pillow, or his own hand. Yet still he wanted to reach out to the boy, as to a lover.

"Don't you ever think of death?"

"All the time. And what comes after death."

"What?"

"The fire, the fire."

***

Morning dawned chilly and grey; autumn was reasserting itself against the unseasonal sun. Egerius woke in his own bed, couldn't remember for a moment how he had got there; reached out, felt for another body, realised he was alone. He remembered Daryush, how he'd kept crying out and turning over in his sleep; stumbling back to his room when he couldn't stand it any longer, falling into sleep as into a sudden vertigo.

As every day, his mind ran ahead to list the things that had to be done; a visit to Gaius, checking on the girls – that should be done first; some trouble with herdsmen to the west of the city, some traders from Poseidonia to meet, orders to the household. The sun was still low, he thought, though the overcast made it difficult to tell; the household was still quiet. He wondered whether he might visit Daryush again; then shrugged, half amused at his own laziness and self-indulgence. No, there was work to do...

Though it was early, one of the household slaves had already set a fire in the kitchen and was warming up some spelt porridge. He found the honey – he'd never been able to eat porridge without sweetening, something he'd always been teased for – and watched it dribble on to the thick gruel. The honey stood proud for a moment, then slumped and fused into a vague shimmer of dark brown on the surface of the greyish porridge. He stirred it in, his movements slow and deliberate as a drunk's.

The girls would be up late, he thought. He couldn't go till they were breakfasted; it would be ungracious. He was glad of the solitude; for once he could let his mind wander, no one was asking him to make decisions, to judge, to act. He didn't even want to write poetry with his precious spare time; he just wanted to sit, to think of nothing, to daydream. He stirred the porridge again, watching the half-liquid mass swirl, a trough opening up behind the spoon and then slowly but inevitably closing up again.

Apart from the regular whisper of the slave's broom on the cobbles of the atrium, the house was still quiet. A dog somewhere barked, far past the agora, perhaps in the country beyond, and went unanswered.

Egerius scratched an eyebrow lazily with one fingernail. He breathed deeply, leaning back, feeling heavy, sleepy, relaxed. He felt his procrastination as physically as if he were swimming in it, thick around him. He dreamed of sunlight, of fullness; wondered if he'd ever again have a day when he could just lie on his back on a warm boulder and watch the clouds sail across blue sky, or clouds of linnets on thistles gone to seed.

He had time. For once, he had time. Stretching himself, he thought; it's not so self-indulgent to visit Daryush again. He felt the blood warm in him, his body at ease, strong. How strange; he'd expected the death of Melkart would have unnerved him, or at the least made him feel melancholy, but instead he was well rested, happier than he had been in a long time. How had that happened?

Yes, he'd go... he pushed his bowl away from him, put his palms on the table, got up. He walked across the atrium, his strides long and easy, his body loose, relaxed. Today would be a good day; a fresh start. Collatia would regain its optimism. All things were possible. Look, the clouds were withdrawing, uncovering a sliver, no, a whole quarter of sun, and the overcast sky was torn by shreds of blue. He'd get something done about educating Daryush, too; the boy could go to Simonides, or to Karite perhaps, and he'd take on himself the job of teaching him poetry...

Daryush's room was dark. Shadows twisted, ran into one another. Let the light in, Egerius thought; he crossed the room, opened the shutters, stood for a moment looking out into the newborn day. He turned, his eyes dazzled for a second and unseeing in the interior dimness; only something moved, swung, confused his sight.

"Daryush?"

No answer. He took a step forward; squinted into the room. The shadows congealed, converged, took on form; it still took him a moment till he understood what he was seeing, the shape that was swinging, slowly, and spinning, Daryush's body, hanging from the roof beam.

# Superbus & Servius

It was a double marriage; the two women standing next to each other, in their flame coloured veils, one taller, more erect, the other shy, looking down – her head slightly inclined, that much could be seen through the veil – one for Arruns and one for Tarquinius, both daughters of Servius Tullius. Two families to be neatly joined, raising the arriviste Servius to royalty. (Still, at least Servius, even if some said he was a manumitted slave, was Etruscan by blood. That counted for something with Tarquinius; but the daughters, they said, were half-Gaulish, offspring of a Celtic concubine who had been left in the country – at least, she was nowhere in evidence at this wedding.)

Tarquinius and Arruns stood at the gate of the small atrium. Servius had bought the house, they said, specifically for the wedding, but the courtyard was tall and narrow, hardly enough space in it for the families, not enough for the crowds who pressed in at the street gate.

Tarquinius had not met either of the girls; he wasn't even sure which was for him. Well, it wasn't that important, he supposed; there were enough women in Rome, he knew that already. And at least he was to married off at the same time as Arruns; they weren't fobbing him off, as he usually was fobbed off, with something inferior, with the excuse that his brother was the elder, the more serious, the one who didn't get into trouble.

He couldn't see the brides' faces under the wreaths they were wearing; there were too many people in the way, and the flowers were too big – huge floppy poppies, their petals already wilting and blowzy. They had turned away from him, too, so that when he did catch a sight of the tall girl's face it was only a sliver, just a hint of nose and eyebrow, like seeing the slender crescent of a new moon.

He was getting impatient now; the gold braid of his cloak made his neck itch where it scratched, though he was damned if he'd let anyone see his discomfort. He needed a piss, too; too much wine for breakfast. So when he was pushed forwards, he went gladly – at least it would be over quickly, the repetition of the formal words, the handclasping, the step round the fire – before he realised his servants were pushing him towards the shorter of the two girls.

He could look down on the top of her head, she was so much shorter than him; and since she wouldn't look up, he saw almost nothing of her face, only the floppy wreath that was already beginning to slip. He put his hand out as he was bid; said the words, could hardly hear her voice saying them – she whispered as if afraid. Her hand, when he reached out to hold it, was limp and cold.

And then it was time for the rape – to grab her, to pull her screaming away from the house, away from her father, into the street; they liked this, the Romans, the imitation of the rape of the Sabines' women. Etruscan rites were more restrained; but there was something in this that heated the blood – the feeling of her tiny wrists struggling in his hands, her body twisting in his hold. He wished she'd resisted more, like her sister, who was screaming, kicking Arruns' shins, fighting like a fury; it was too soon over, and then his friends were helping him , pushing her out of the gate, making sure she couldn't escape Tarquinius, helping him get her mounted behind him on his white horse. He let the stallion go, in a mad dash through the darkening streets, horseshoes sliding and grating on the stone paving.

She was grabbing him round the waist, clinging to him; he could feel her body rigid with fear against his. He laughed; his blood was up. The horse plunged to its left; he felt the girl grabbing at him, felt her fear. Instantly, he pulled the horse to the right; it kicked the air for a moment, rearing, and he felt her sudden gasp of fear tighten her body against his. Behind him, his brother Arruns made a more stately progress; more a procession than a rape, and on this one day when rape was licensed, where was the fun in that?

He outran his companions' torches in the darkened streets, then doubled back to meet them, almost running headlong into them before pulling his horse up, so that its back legs slipped, and the girl behind him screamed out. They were yelling, the torchbearers; "cunt!" one shouted, and another answered him – "Tanaquil's cunt! The way to happiness!" The way to the throne, Tarquinius thought; it was so obvious she was screwing Servius, he'd have to watch himself or his father-in-law would take his place and Arruns'...

The Palatine blazed with torches; in the palace, the masks of the ancestors shone ghastly in the lamplight, as they would at a funeral. Only the high couch in the atrium showed this was a marriage, not a death; four dolls were propped on it, strange lumpy things with bundles of twigs for hands, and wax heads with sightless eyes. They could at least have put two couches out, Tarquinius thought, angered as he so often was where his brother was concerned; as if he had to deflower his bride in his brother's presence, in the same bed. It wasn't as if the King of Rome was short of money; why the single couch?

It was here in the forecourt of the palace that he saw the other Tullia clearly for the first time; Arruns' bride, the tall girl, the one who had screamed and fought and (he was told later) scratched and bitten Arruns when he tried to take her from her father's house. Arruns had halted his horse at the threshold, and dismounted, and made as if to help her off the horse, reaching up to her; but she struck at him and leapt, lithe and quick, to the ground. She looked round the court, her head turning fast, arrogant; her eyes flashed in the lamplight. Then she seemed to look straight at Tarquinius; in a single instant he saw her, the high nose, the dark angry eyes, her hair blazing red with a slight tinge of blond in it, and then she'd turned again to face her husband.

In that moment Tarquinius knew. Some would say it was love; some, fate. He believed in neither. He simply knew that he wanted her; first, because she was Arruns'; and secondly, he knew with a pain as slight and sharp as a razor nick, because there never had been and never would be another such woman for him – one who could fight, could leap from a horse, who could reduce the palace of the Kings of Rome to rubble with one look. He knew and he was lost. Tullia the Red. His fire.

"The pig," Arruns was saying.

"What?"

"We have to kill the pig. For the gods' sake, Tarquinius, get a grip."

It was a huge boar; their father hadn't stinted on this, anyway, and it took three men to hold it back. Its tiny eyes shone with pure wickedness above its long, spit-flecked snout as it threw itself from side to side trying to shake them off. He felt fear for a moment, and just as suddenly, excitement, the same excitement he'd felt on his wild ride through the streets.

He stood one side, Arruns the other. He noticed Tanaquil and his father in the crowd, looking at him, talking. He looked again for the red-haired Tullia, but couldn't see her, nor her sister; and now Tanaquil was striding towards them, a long knife in each hand, which she held out to them, handle end first.

"My present to you," she said; "use them well."

Oh, I will, he thought, feeling the leather of the grip soft in his hand. Soft grip, hard steel, just like his mother; was there a message in this? He heard Arruns suck in his breath; he'd taken the knife clumsily, nicked himself on the sharp blade. Tarquinius grinned; he spun his knife round in his hand, a trick he'd picked up from a young athlete in Cisra, one hot afternoon when they'd both bunked off from training. The metal glittered, he felt the hilt secure in his palm, saw Arruns' sidelong look of hatred. He shrugged, held the knife still again. It was nicely weighted; a good one. But coming from Tanaquil, it should be. He looked over at Arruns.

"Shall we?"

"Do it."

Together they plunged their knives into the boar's throat, pulled them back. The pig roared; they said pigs squealed, but this was a darker sound, a grating, creaky roar. He could hear each pulse of blood spattering on the ground, each pulse weaker as the beast began to die. The body thrashed; they held the boar's shoulders, pushing it into the ground, till it was safe to let go. It twitched a few times, one leg scrabbling for a foothold. Strange, he thought, how long they can keep going, and still not be dead.

He hardly remembered the rest of the ceremony. Both brides touched the sacred fire that burned behind the ancestors' masks; the red-haired girl determined, flinching only momentarily as she felt the heat, the other hesitant and afraid. He knew now he'd got the wrong one; Arruns had his bride, Arruns who wouldn't know what to do with her. Tanaquil took the girls with her, to undress them and invoke the gods; at least he wouldn't have to share a bed as his simulacrum had, he thought angrily. It was a bad thought, as it brought with it the image of Arruns deflowering the red Tullia; the thought that he might have to hear her crying out, to hear their couch creaking, to hear Arruns' grunting and thrusting. By the time he was called, he was thoroughly angry.

He took his Tullia rough and quick. She cried afterwards, and he thought; I should have had the other one.

# ***

It was a month of marriages, for now the two girls had been married off, Servius himself was to take Tarquinia as a wife. So Tarquinius' father-in-law became his brother-in-law; and some said that the slave who fucked the mother got the daughter, though no one dared say it to his face.

But this wedding would be private; there would be no great procession, no feast, no rites other than the simple saying of the words. There would be no ancestors to greet Tarquinia; only Servius himself.

Tanaquil ordered him to her rooms, two weeks before the wedding. Tarquinia still knew nothing about the arrangements; it wasn't necessary for her to know, Tanaquil had said. She'll do as she's told.

"Like a Roman girl?" Servius hadn't been able to resist asking. Tanaquil glared at him, then sighed.

"She's too much like a Roman, in some ways."

Tarquinia was weaving, under the peristyle at the back of the house. She seemed a blurred copy of her mother, as if all Tanaquil's sharp edges had been smeared blunt by a potter's finger; and she was sullen, too. Looking back at Tanaquil, he could see she was no threat to her mother, and yet something in that sullen mouth made him want to stop it with his own.

"I know what you're here for," Tarquinia said, as soon as her mother was gone.

"You do?" He was amused. He hadn't expected this forthrightness; it seemed she did take after her mother in more than just her looks.

"You're old." That was forthright. He shrugged.

"Not that I hold that against you. Better old than a brute."

"Who's the brute?"

"Who isn't?... well, Robur, anyway. He's a brute. I think they'd meant to marry me to him, before..."

Before his exile, she must have meant; before Robur had fled south, and declared his opposition to the new regime.

"And they say you'll be king," she said, flatly. He wondered for a moment if Tanaquil had set her daughter to spy on him; it wouldn't do to admit his ambition, even if Tanaquil seemed to assent to it, and he demurred – young Tarquinius and Arruns would share the rule...

"Why does everyone put them in that order?"

"What?"

"Tarquinius and Arruns. No one ever says Arruns and Tarquinius."

"Fair point. I don't know."

"But you're not from Rome, are you?"

Let her report back. He'd give her nothing to report.

"You had a wife before?"

"A concubine, yes."

"Oh." Her pout was rather sweet, he thought; in her mother, it turned to temper, and in her, to cuteness. "What happened to her?"

"Happened? Nothing."

"Then..."

"She's still my concubine. In Velx. Where I haven't been... for a long while now."

"Oh."

She sat still then, like her mother unafraid of the long silence that draws confidences out. But he'd had that treatment before. He shrugged, and stretched his legs out, yawning a little.

"You'll be my wife. First wife I've had."

"Not the first woman, though."

"No," he said carefully, unwilling to go into precise detail. "Not the first woman."

"Good." She smiled quickly, the kind of reassuring smile you give a small child afraid of the dark. "You know what you're doing, then. I'd hate to have to lose it to another virgin. The fumbling, the clumsiness. What a humiliation that would be."

# Tanaquil

The visions had left Tanaquil alone. No more eagles, no more auguries, no more ghosts or trailing mists of oracle; no dreams to disturb her sleep, or at least, nothing more than the ordinary drunken thoughts of something forgotten or left undone, which woke her worried and tense. Those were common dreams, nothing portentous about them; they could be forgotten as soon as sunlight and fresh air had dispelled their miasma, didn't need the patient attempt to recollect and untangle that god-sent dreams always did.

People who didn't know often thought you became more likely to experience the gods as you grew older. Well, that was partly true; she still remembered old Thanchvil, for whom she'd been named, a woman worn paper-thin by time till her skin was transparent, fine, her hair spun like gossamer, her voice a thread of whisper. They said old Thanchvil had lived past her lustrum, the allotted time of any human; she was ageless, no longer part of the world, a sort of living ghost. And old Thanchvil had seen things; packs of wolves ravaging the Etruscan cities; the ghosts of past Spurinnas walking the moonlit streets; Tanaquil crowned and resplendent; Tanaquil with her hands bloody. She could still feel old Thanchvil's talons clamped around her forearm, the old woman's hissing breath on her wrist.

But few ever got to be that old. For most, as they aged, the visions dispersed like mist. It was the withdrawal of a privilege; but it was also a relief. So it seemed to be for Tanaquil.

She bloomed, as roses do in a late summer. Servius might have had something to do with that; he was always around, now he was married to young Tarquinia. The girl had been a disappointment – insipid, truculent, with not the slightest touch of the augur's knowledge in her blood – but she'd been useful, at least, in securing Servius' loyalty. Tanaquil found herself less annoyed by the girl, now she'd been useful; even loved her, a little, though nothing like the way she loved her dutiful Arruns or wild Tarquinius.

She loved Servius as a son. At least, she told herself so. He was, what, fifteen years younger than she was? (Looked like ten, but then, he'd lived the hard soldier's life. He was wiry, rough, hardened, where most Etruscan nobles were slender, fluid. So, she thought, he wasn't as old as he looked. Or as old as he sometimes sounded.) At last Tarquinius had accepted him into the family, now he had married their daughter; and, of course, now both the sons were married to Servius' daughters.

She'd never have let her father marry her off, the way these girls had been married off. But then, she was Tanaquil; none of those three girls had her character, though she'd noticed the red-haired Tullia had the occasional flash of fire. You couldn't defend their rights if they wouldn't defend them, after all. And it was convenient to bring the families together. Now it only remained to get Tarquinius to adopt Servius as his son and successor, on the understanding that the crown would revert to Arruns or Tarquinius later.

She remembered, sometimes, the men she'd known in Tarchna. She was proud she'd picked Tarquinius; he'd justified her faith in him, he was a king now, and a good one. Rome was growing, by conquest and by trade; she dreamt of the day it would join the Etruscan League, though that might not be in her lifetime. People would look back, under the rule of her son Tarquinius perhaps, or of Arruns, and know it was Tarquinius the Elder and Tanaquil who had laid the foundations of this new, great, Etruscan city. Already, it had grown, and as it grew, took on form and poise; from a rough scattering of settlements to a city dominated by the fine temples of the Capitol, whose streets ran straight in accordance with the cardinal points, whose buildings were fine, whose gardens fertile and abundant. And under the surface, all the Etruscan water-channels and drainage and wells and cisterns, all the subterranean web of infrastructure that regulated and distributed its life.

Tarquinius. Not her first, not surely her last, but her greatest love. Now, with the serenity of middle age, she could look back; remembering, for a moment, Arnth, with his thin face and thin fingers. Arnth who had known just how to use those elegant fingers. Arnth the lyre player. Arnth the tweaker of nipples. Arnth whose voice was breathy and low; after all these years she could still hear the way his voice would suddenly lose all depth, all projection, dipping to a hushed murmur that was really only a sigh in disguise, and it still made her flesh prickle. She wondered sometimes what life would haver been like with Arnth, if she'd given in to him, if she'd married him and lived with him in Tarchna, which she must now call Tarquinia in thin, whining Latin language. Arnth had never had Tanaquil's ambition; but he was noble through and through, bright with his heritage like a golden statue, everything he did fine and elegant and right. He'd not have run to fat like Tarquinius.

She did hear of him from time to time; his marriage, his children, his lover (another nobleman made from the same mould, a connoisseur of wines and the dance), his general absence from and occasional attendance at council. Nothing she couldn't have predicted when she was sixteen and he was two years older; nothing at all out of the ordinary. He'd married a cousin of hers; well, everyone was a cousin, pretty much, in Tarchna. She wasn't jealous; she wasn't sad, really; she just liked to look back on it all with the gentle melancholy of late summer afternoons, and a wistful smile. And the thought that Tarquinius had never really wooed her as Arnth had; that the touch of Arnth's hand on hers, the simple yearning of his voice, had thrilled her as nothing Tarquinius did ever had. Ah well; she'd deprived herself of that pleasure. It was one of the sacrifices she'd made. And she did not regret it.

***

Whenever Elissa visited, Tanaquil somehow managed to find herself alone; not in a way anyone was ever going to notice, but all the other members of her household had small tasks that took them out of the house, or marooned them in the kitchen. It was the same with several of her other regular visitors; discreetly, she isolated herself, so that they could talk without danger of being overheard.

Today she was in her room, shuttered against the hot afternoon. A slight breeze blew through the dark, cool chamber, making the parchment on the table rattle drily as it flapped.

"Tanaquil?"

"I'm here."

Elissa looked round the side of the door, her eyes wide and seeming sightless as she struggled to see in the dimness. Tanaquil started to rise from her chair, but Elissa shook her head quickly, strode forward, bent to kiss Tanaquil.

"Ugh. It's dark in here."

"It keeps me cool."

"Oh, this isn't hot; you should try Carthage in mid summer. That's really unbearable."

"No doubt."

She reached up to kiss Elissa in return. The girl was tall, as tall as Tanaquil and then some more, her body so spare it seemed weightless, empty. Tanaquil felt the side of one breast swing against her; she wondered why she'd never slept with a woman. Never been one to tempt her, she supposed; and now... she pressed Elissa to her for a moment, then released her gently.

"Well, little eyes and ears, what do you have to tell me today?"

"They don't like your son Tarquinius."

"That's not news."

It never had been. Tarquinius had always been wild; he took sweets and toys from other children, later he took women from other men. He was proud. He was Etruscan in Rome; wore his hair in the long braids of a noble, not cropped close like a Roman. His eyes were dangerous. Even in the way he drove his chariot pair, even in the slight slant to his eyebrows and his heavy-lidded, languid eyes, you could see arrogance and disdain. It was easy to see why the Romans hated him.

"He has a daughter."

That was news.

"A Greek woman in one of the brothels. Not sure she's a whore though."

"What else could she be?"

"I think she's a madam. There doesn't seem to be any doubt the child is his."

Damn him. Why couldn't he fuck the whey-faced Tullia, get lawful children?

"Greek, you say. Think there's anything political in that?"

"No. I don't think so." Elissa's eyes flickered down for a moment. "I think he finds her position useful."

"What position is that? On her back with her legs in the air?"

Elissa's mouth twitched as if she wasn't quite sure whether she should laugh or not. "She runs the brothel, she matches each girl to the clients, and the girls tell her everything that happens. This man's violent, that man likes buggery, this one's incapable. And pillow talk, too. All kinds of rumours. Little confidences."

"Ah."

She should have seen that coming. Tarquinius was her son in everything; even setting up his own intelligence network. A network of one at the moment... Then she realised; she'd not heard of this before. He could have had twenty spies working for him already and she'd not have known about it; she couldn't rule out the possibility there were more.

"What were you doing in a brothel, anyway?"

"Oh, I can go anywhere. It's being black. They expect to see a black girl in a brothel."

"But your father's a prince of Carthage."

"All they see is a black. Not me, not Elissa, not the daughter of Himilco son of Adonibaal son of Baalhanno. Just a black, one with good teeth and small tits."

"You don't..."

Elissa grinned. "Only if I feel like it." Then her face suddenly tightened, her eyes hard. "I didn't think that would shock you. I don't often feel like it. Anyway; Tarquinius. I don't think the fact that she's Greek is important. But his selection of Etruscan friends might be."

"Still making trouble?"

"Brawls, rapes, lots of rumours, nothing proven. No, it's where they come from that should worry you."

"Etruscans, anyway. That's good. I don't want him talking to the Faustus lot. Or even Manius."

Elissa shook her head, making her earrings sound with the whisper of filigree. "They're all from a few towns. Clevsin, Veii, Surna. Capeva. And above all, Velx."

"None from Rome?"

"A few. But he seems to have left quite a few of his Roman friends behind."

"And not from Tarchna? Not even his cousins?"

"No. not one."

"All the cities around Rome. Not further north. Not in Rome itself."

"I thought you'd find it interesting."

As if Tarquinius was aiming to encircle Rome with his allies. Or was she reading too much into his choice of friends? Tarquinius liked a certain type – horse-tamers, athletes, epicures. She'd asked him once what he was going to do with his life, and he'd told her: drink and fuck all night, race horses and drink all day. Which seemed innocent enough, though perhaps not to a Roman; after all, Servius did much the same, and he'd made a career out of it. (Not the fucking, perhaps. He seemed quite abstemious in that regard, though there were stories about just how far the Vipienas' sponsorship of Servius had gone...)

No. She wasn't reading too much into it. Not if he'd let his Roman friends – well, Roman-Etruscan friends, of course – not if he'd let his Roman friends go.

"You still sleeping with Manius?"

Elissa was startled for a moment, then composed her face again.

"Oh, he drifted away... I don't think it was really me he wanted."

***

It wasn't till the question of increasing the size of the army came up that Tarquinius started to see Servius' true worth. Tarquinius' wars had stirred up the neighbouring countries; but all-conquering Rome was bankrupt. Every man who was eligible for military service had been called up; there was no more resource. It would only take a concerted push by three or four of the Etruscan cities to push Rome off balance, or destroy her completely.

Manius, for once, had asked for the meeting; he was usually compliant, doing whatever Tarquinius asked, but this time he was clearly worried. He'd heard – well, Tanaquil had heard, but she'd gently dripped that information into his consciousness till he couldn't quite remember where it came from – that Tarchna and Velzna were talking; not openly, by sending delegations or meeting at the great shrine, but secretly, through traders' messages and private hunting-parties that seemed, quite unexpectedly, to meet up in the great plains or the fringes of the forest near Amiata. (Tanaquil had even made sure that one of Manius' servants got the rumour, from a Sabine butcher on the back lanes, and another from an Etruscan friend who'd been visiting family in Pyrgi for a wedding.)

There was Manius; Faustus; Tarquinius and Tanaquil, seated next to each other, an image of perfection like figures on a tomb; Servius, of course – he was always at the council, now; a couple of Tarquinius' young men in service. He was practically running a school; almost all Etruscan youths, though one or two Sabines had managed to insert themselves in it – no Latins. Yet. No women. Yet, she thought; she'd have to do something about that.

"The smaller cities are feeling their way, like beetles in the night," Tarquinius said. "Sooner or later they'll bump against each other; start forming up."

"They're all wondering who will be the next to fall," Tanaquil said.

"Does it matter?" Faustus was impatient (when wasn't he impatient? A man whose life was one long series of lusts and rapes, always conquering, taking, like an insistent child grabbing at the tit.) "We have Collatia. We have Apiolae. Ficulea. Nomentum. Medullia."

"Past victories don't make new ones." That was Servius; he'd not spoken up till now.

"They're a warning to the Etruscans. And a border defence. They want us, they have to come through the outliers first."

"Even so," said Tarquinius, and his level, slow speech was a warning of sorts; "Even so, Manius is right. Our resources are too small, as things stand."

"Oh, I disagree," said Tanaquil, turning to her husband and her voice was as light and seemingly without care as his was deliberate and low. "We have immense resources. Though not perhaps of the kind you meant."

She let that sink in a minute. She didn't turn her head for a moment, but she could see the others in that dim zone at the periphery of her vision, that blurred, submarine sight that was, in a way, so like augury, that could be depended on not for recognition but for warnings. Faustus was stirring uneasily; if Tarquinius hadn't already warned him, he would have been shouting at her. Manius was still, a frown on his face; only Servius, from what she could read of the smear that stood in for him in her oblique gaze, was relaxed. Was he smiling? She wondered.

She waited, toying with silence, teasing it out, till she heard Faustus draw breath, felt he was about to speak; and then she said, very quietly, "Spies, not soldiers, will win this war."

Rome already knew what the Etruscan cities were planning. There would be no surprises. But information was a blade with two edges. Her instruments could conciliate, manage, inform and misinform; sowing the seeds of distrust between the cities, keeping them all off balance. She'd prise open cracks in the polished surface of Etruscan diplomacy; lever cities apart, force them together.

"You still won't stop them." Faustus cracked the knuckles of one hand.

"Faustus is right, to some extent," Servius said, quietly. That surprised her; she'd always thought he sided with her on the council. Despite his military background, he rarely argued for action, other than as a last resort; like her, he had a great capacity for patience.

"To some extent," he said again. "Our knowledge buys us time. Setting the federated cities against each other buys us time. It might win us Etruria without a war, though the chances of that are slim. But our army is too small."

"So?" Faustus was blunt as usual. "I know the bloody army's too small. What do we do about it, that's the question."

Servius smiled. "It's not simple."

"Statement of the blinding bleeding obvious."

"You won't like my advice."

"I'll know whether I like it when I hear it. Out with it."

Servius looked at Tarquinius inquiringly. Tarquinius nodded.

"We draw our military from the noble class. War costs money. Every man buys his armour, his weapons, his horses."

"Always been like that," Faustus said.

"Yes, it always has. But how many nobles do we have in Rome? And nobles – in Rome; well, the very concept... in a city with so many immigrants, so many self-made men. Romulus was a bastard. Half our kings have been foreigners. So why don't we open the army up to anyone?"

Faustus was fuming; but it was Manius who articulated the objections; first, and most important, the fact that no one other than the nobles could afford to buy their own equipment. Or at least, only the wealthy could afford it; still a small enough class.

"Right," said Servius. "And this is the bit you really won't like. They don't have to buy their kit. We buy it for them."

It was a good plan. Put the wealth of Tarquinius' treasury to use; make an army that was genuinely Roman, because every inhabitant, of whatever means or lineage, could join it. Suddenly the size of the city's reserves was quadrupled, at a conservative estimate. But it was guaranteed to upset everyone; Faustus, because it wasn't Roman enough – it let the Etruscans, the Faliscans, the Greek immigrants, every sheepshagger from Apulia or cut-throat from Syracuse, march on equal terms with the Roman ascendancy. (Give him his due, that wasn't just self-interest; he really did believe pure Romans were an improvement on the basic human stock.) It would upset Tarquinius, because he'd have to pay for it; Manius, because he hadn't thought of it first. And Tanaquil, while she might wonder, as a political problem, how it had come to this – in five generations, from an outcast bastard wild child and fratricide, and a settlement of runaways and outlaws, to an entrenched oligarchy - hardly wanted to set up new rivals to the rule of the Etruscan aristocracy she'd begun to establish.

"Yes," Tarquinius said; "But."

Servius sucked his lips in at that, waiting, in case there was more. There wasn't. A nasty moment. Tarquinius shuffled the notes in front of him.

"Don't alienate the nobles," he said at last. "We need them."

Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. "That's it," he said, and rose from his couch.

Later, when they were alone, drinking a last cup of warm wine in the small garden where Tanaquil grew her herbs, and bees drifted lazily through the lavender, he looked up at her, and said; "He'll do."

***

There was still work to do with Manius. Tarquinius knew most of what was going on, but Tanaquil held other threads in her hands, plying the fate of Etruria and Rome like warp and weft, hoping to weave the two together inextricably; pulling on one thread, snapping short another, twisting and knotting them as she went. Manius was Tarquinius' man, but she was making him hers, an envoy who could conciliate, inform, disinform. Sometimes she toyed with the idea of making Manius a prince; he understood her project and her aims. One month he was in Velzna, dropping hints that Tarchna was ready to betray an alliance still not sealed; he left doubts behind him like mouse droppings in flour. Another time he'd be in Clevsin, sounding out the Porsennas, trying to get to the truth of reports he'd heard that Arruns had become close to them, assessing the size of their armies. Wherever he went, his concern was to prevent the sons of Ancus Marcius from finding a refuge; sometimes he'd put out the message that support for them was an act hostile to Rome, which could have consequences; sometimes he'd spread another story, about Robur's temper, his rape of an Etruscan girl – the truth of that was unproven, and Manius would admit as much, and sigh, and then someone could always be depended on to say 'There's no smoke without fire,' and so, in the end, it never really mattered whether it was true or not. It was likely enough.

She had him followed, of course; spying on your own spies ensured you knew any slant on the information you were getting. She knew Manius' habits; his routes through the forum, the back doubles he took through the city, where he bought his wine from. Sometimes, after she'd been given her daily report, she amused herself looking out from the Palatine and tracing the track of his movements with her eyes. (If you looked down on the city too long you would feel dangerously like a god; dangerous not because it was blasphemy, but because you'd forget how vulnerable you were.) She knew his tastes in lovemaking, from Elissa, and thought once or twice she might be able to make use of his desire for abasement; she knew his precise level of skill as a horseman and archer, his usual exercise routine. (Running five times a week, wrestling twice, a surprisingly Hellenic interest for a Sabine.) She knew where he drank, who he visited, sometimes what he said.

She knew he was jealous of Servius.

He'd nearly knocked her over, a few days back, rushing out of the atrium, and she couldn't, at the time, work out what had upset him. Only later, talking to Tarquinius in that half hour of half-awake chat they sometimes shared before sleeping, she found out that Manius hadn't showed up for an appointment to discuss developments in Velzna.

"But he was here," she started to say; and then thought better of it, and all that came out was the single word, "But..."

"But what did I do?" Tarquinius rolled over towards her. "Took the decision with Servius, of course."

"He turned up, then."

"An hour early. Keen, that one."

Ah, she thought; so when Manius arrived, he'd have heard Servius and Tarquinius already deep in their plans. He must have thought he'd been sidelined; which he had, of course, but not by Tarquinius.

"He's good, Servius. Very smart."

"And loyal?"

"Oh, absolutely."

She kept her own counsel on that, too.

"He reminds me of myself, when we first came to Rome." Tarquinius' voice was dreamy; he was half asleep already. "When I started working for the old man."

He's nothing like you, Tanaquil thought; more patient, tougher, less diplomatic. You're a lion; he's a wolf.

"I like his hunger. But he's reliable, too. A nice boy."

"He's not a boy."

"Twenty years younger than me, and you know I'm beginning to feel my age a bit. I can hardly drink three cups of wine these days without a hangover, and hangovers take all day to get over. I used to just swallow a spoonful of honey mixed with vinegar and it would be gone; I can't do that any more."

He was beginning to show his age, too; his braids grey at the temple, the skin of his arms beginning to slacken.

"Don't fall in love with him," she said. And of course, as she knew he would, Tarquinius scowled. The more she warned him, the more Tarquinius would take to Servius; and he probably didn't even realise he was doing it, doing the exact opposite of what she told him, but he did it anyway. Yes, he was getting old.

She wondered if she was getting stale, too; she used to be able to manage three, four, five men all jostling for position, to make all of them grateful and obedient, and now she could hardly introduce a new man to her circle without Manius becoming jealous. She wondered how much of it was pure political calculation, how much was the natural jealousy of a man superseded in a woman's favour. It was strange how men who were perfectly happily engaged elsewhere (she had to remind herself that Elissa had told her Manius had drifted away), and who had no intention of making any move on her, would still treat a woman as a personal possession, and resent the introduction of a rival.

She would have gone to see Manius the next day, but found he'd already gone to Spina, a day early; she could only hope his feelings didn't hamper his diplomacy, or his commitment to her project.

Meanwhile there was always weaving, and she had a new hunting dog she was training, a young bitch with a stiff-legged jolting run who was still too enthusiastic to be properly obedient – if you had her on a leash she'd whine to be let off, if you set her to stalk game she'd rush at it, flushing it before you were ready. Most wouldn't have had Tanaquil's patience; but she'd realised quickly that the ugly bitch was smart, one of the best she'd ever known on a scent, if only she could restrain that puppyish energy.

"She'll calm down once she's had her first litter," Tarquinius said; "they always do."

"You don't know dogs, do you?"

"As well as you."

"You don't know bitches, anyway. I ruined one by breeding her too young; I'm not making that mistake again."

Tarquinius had coughed, in the supercilious way men did when they thought they were right (and weren't), and changed the subject. But Tanaquil thought the bitch was slowly becoming more tractable, after a couple of weeks slowly walking her, holding her back, gentling her with caresses and low murmurs. There were times she came close to yelling at the animal; once or twice she'd dug her nails into the palms of her hands, hard enough to draw blood and leave tiny crescent scars, but to control the dog's temper she first had to rule her own.

So when Tarquinius decided to spend a day hunting, Tanaquil decided to take the little bitch, Vanth, as well as her old dog Charun – both hounds named for the deities of death, something Tarquinius had always told her was unlucky. (But then, what did men know about augury? The names were accurate; her hounds were death-bringers, efficient and pitiless.) Servius came too, with his own horse, a ragged looking beast with no name, a wide blaze of white on its forehead and one white leg. ("Thought you could afford better," Tarquinius said, looking at it; but Servius just smiled briefly and said, "It's got stamina," which, it turned out, was an understatement.)

They rode out of Rome towards the Alban hills; on the outskirts of the city, men were already tracking their way into town from the hastily thrown up huts and tents that marked the most recent arrivals. They might find work building, or portering, or they might be hoping for handouts, if there was a wedding feast, or a funeral; they didn't care whether they heard the epithalamy or wails of mourning, it was all a chance to grab something for free. A woman with a squint stared at them malevolently, and Tarquinius made the sign of the lightning bolt with one hand, to warn away the evil eye – though the woman may have meant nothing by her stare; it might only have been the squint that gave that impression.

One family hadn't even had time to build; a woman was breastfeeding two infants under a blanket tied to the side of a wagon, and pegged down in the earth to make a rough shelter, while a naked child only slightly older staggered into the mud, bawling. Vanth growled; Tanaquil had to dismount and walk, holding the leash tightly to keep the bitch from chasing into the huts. The place stank, a mixture of woodsmoke, cooking smells and shit; but as their path climbed, they left it behind, for the scent of pine and gorse and bracken and the heath herbs, and Tanaquil could let the little bitch run free again.

She flirted a little with Servius on the way. It was only a game, and she told herself that he surely understood the game, and wasn't fooled; it was a way to pass the time.

"Which hunts better, a wolf or a lion?" she'd asked him.

"A wolf," he said. "They're a tough lot, the wolves up in the Umbrian mountains."

"A lone wolf? Who do we know like that? Are you biased?"

"Don't be stupid; they hunt in packs."

"Or in pairs, isn't that right?"

He didn't answer. Perhaps he wasn't playing; she could never tell what mood he'd be in. He could be gloomy. There was something wild about him, something of the back country.

"The lion of Tarchna, the wolf of Rome..." she said; "you'll get on well in Rome with your affiliation."

"Theirs is a she-wolf, I seem to remember." He smiled; game on.

"Not quite appropriate to you, then."

"I can't help thinking I know a she-wolf or two."

Up on the steeper slopes the rocks hissed with the heat of late summer; a waiting thunderstorm hung on the heavy damp air. The weather kept shifting; the sun was strong, but passing clouds cast dark shadows on distant slopes, and once or twice the shadow passed over them, suddenly sucking the light out of the day. On the far horizon, dense white cloud was boiling up into a thunderhead. Vanth was questing in the undergrowth ahead of them; Charun, older and steadier, snuffled the ground, but kept close to his mistress.

"You don't hunt with servants?" Servius asked. "In Velx, we never went out without five or six followers – at the very least."

Tanaquil smiled wanly. "Privacy is hard to find for kings."

"It's not dangerous? To be alone out here?"

"Maybe it is." Her smile this time was warmer. "Who wants to live without danger?"

It was well after midday when Tarquinius decided they had reached the right place; open country bordering a forest side, sloping down to a meandering valley stream. Sometimes it rushed over rocks, bright and noisy; sometimes it ran dark and still under an earthen overhang, or opened out into muddy shallows. As they came across the heath birds flew up, panicked; but they weren't after birds today, and Tanaquil called back Vanth, who had set off to flush more out of the scrub.

Tarquinius was the first to see the sign; where a tree hung low over the path, and the earth was moist, the dirt had been grubbed up, tree roots ripped and scattered.

"Hogs," he said.

They looked about for any sign of tracks. There was none. They rode on.

"Check the river," Servius said. "There'll be a wallow somewhere."

But before they got down into the valley, the heathland gave way to tall wheat, and they saw the telltale trampling of wild pigs in the wheatfield, the stalks crushed down. They slowed; Servius jumped down from his horse to look more closely. He bent; sniffed a couple of times, straightened up.

"Found any spoor?"

Servius nodded.

"Fresh," he said; "it won't have got far."

He swung himself back up onto his horse; his speed and ease bore witness to his long training. He'd stay on horseback, to pursue the boar if it broke; Tarquinius and Tanaquil would go in on foot. That was the more dangerous job; Tarquinius had wanted Tanaquil to remain mounted, but she'd insisted on accompanying him. (You never knew what might happen, he'd said, trying to dissuade her. Exactly, she said; you never did. But as it turned out she did, now, know how much he trusted Servius; not quite as much as he trusted her.)

Tanaquil looked at Servius, looked at her husband, nodded, and whistled once to the dogs. Vanth shot forward on the right; Charun, nose to the ground, lurched more slowly to the left, crashing into the tall wheat. Within seconds the dogs were lost to sight; they could be tracked only by the rattling of the dry cornstalks.

They walked forwards, slowly, Tarquinius and Tanaquil at the front, Servius bringing up the rear on his horse. Tarquinius was careful not to get ahead of the dogs; this was the dangerous time, when the hunter was blind, exposed. Behind them, they left a trampled path; that corn would never come to harvest, though on either side the intact stalks sprang back. There was no talking; they were listening for the sound of baying, once the hounds found their quarry. From time to time they could see a whirl of corn ears where one of the dogs was pushing through.

They never saw the boar. It burst up from under their feet – it must have been lying in the scrape it had excavated, half-covered by the wheat.

Tanaquil was first with her spear, throwing almost as soon as she saw the boar; but Tarquinius had frozen, his face tight. The boar was rushing towards them. Servius dashed in, then he was, steadying his horse, tightening the rein, pulling the horse's head in, and then following up Tanaquil's shot with his lance, sticking it in the animal's throat, - he had his spear wedged into his armpit now and was pushing it, pushing the boar back. Its mouth was frothing; then the froth turned pink, but it was several minutes before the animal finally sagged to its feet, and toppled.

And still Tarquinius had not thrown his spear.

They butchered the boar quickly, down by the stream, throwing the heart and liver to the dogs, who had come rushing back. The intestines they left coiled iridescent and bloated like a drowned snake, heavy in the dirt, and wrapped the meat in the ripped-off skin. There was time, after that, for a mouthful or two of wine, tannic and earthy and warm from the leather flask, and a handful of dried fruit.

They retraced their path as best they could in this broken land. At times Tanaquil thought they'd gone wrong; a tree looked different from how she remembered it, or the worse of two forking paths seemed the right one. There were flashes of reminiscence too; a rock like a sleeping lion, a copse on a hilltop, a pine tree with one huge branch torn down by its own weight. Servius seemed confident in his way-reading, though, and she said nothing; if they had wandered from the way they'd taken, they ended up on the same ridge overlooking Rome, the track running down to the main road and the shanty town.

They were making their way down carefully on the scree covered track when a rabbit ran out of the bracken in front of them. Tanaquil called her dogs back; Charun came, grumbling with his low rumbling growl, but Vanth had already run free, so fast that her back paws went way past her ears as if she were trying to roll herself up into a hoop. The rabbit, scared, ran faster, straight towards the road, Vanth in pursuit.

It was late; there was only one horseman on the road. Seeing the horse, the rabbit doubled back; Vanth surged forward; the rabbit saw her, doubled again, and in panic shot almost between the horse's front hooves. Vanth followed, baying; the horse shied, nearly throwing its rider. But though he must have been half dozing when the accident happened – he otherwise would have seen the hunting party making its way down the track – he was a good horseman; he sat deep, let the horse rear, balanced it as it pawed the air, taking three steps on its back legs; and then took its reins in, as it landed, bringing its head round, letting it dance in a tight circle till it stopped fighting him.

"Marvellous," Servius breathed. But the rider was yelling at them; how could they have let that dog out of control? Were they stupid? Dumb hicks from the Alban hills. Had they got no idea of decent behaviour? It was the kind of rage that comes from fear only just mastered.

Vanth was barking madly now, excited by the rider's shouting, and trying to get at the horse's feet; Tanaquil whipped her horse quickly forwards, meaning to get at Vanth with her whip, or if necessary dismount and grab the dog by the collar. Suddenly she pulled up short; she realised who the rider was.

At the same moment the rider realised who he was shouting at. He stopped, his face red, whether with anger or embarrassment Tanaquil couldn't tell; he looked utterly miserable.

But Tarquinius was there at once, exerting all his considerable charm.

"Manius! What a surprise. Are you on the way home? How was Spina? Did you get lots of crab?"

It was still early, and rather than take the main road into the city, they decided to contour the city on the south and ride back up the Tiber valley. About two hours before sunset, they stopped for some wine and a small collation; dried fruit, spelt cakes, cheese that Manius had brought back from the hills, goaty and sour.

Servius drifted off; when he came back, he was shaking his hands – he must have washed them in a streamlet – but when Tanaquil held out a cloth for him, he ignored it. Pointedly? She wondered. Perhaps she was getting too sensitive; a hazard for all politicians. Once you started manipulating others you imagined they were all busy with the same game; sometimes things just happened. Perhaps, after all, he simply hadn't seen.

After the wine, Servius and Manius looked to the horses; Tanaquil and Tarquinius lay for a few minutes in the sun. She turned towards him, propping herself on one elbow. Servius was out of earshot.

"I'm a bit worried about Servius," she said.

"Hm?"

"He's been rather too attentive."

"You want him?"

"Well, no, as it happens."

Tarquinius smiled slightly. "I could get him to ride with me on the way back. There are a few things I wanted to discuss with him, anyway. And Manius can keep you company. If that's what you want."

She nodded.

When they started off again, Tarquinius called Servius to ride with him; he wanted to talk about the army reorganisation. Servius glowered; he must have realised something was up. As he trotted past Manius, his horse barged into the other, and its hooves skidded on the polished rock of the downhill track. He leant back, almost lying on the horse's crupper as its forefeet slid down into the ditch, before it recovered. Manius, his hands relaxed on his horse's neck, his reins loose, was smiling slyly.

Now Tanaquil could take advantage of the situation she'd set up; she was getting a debrief from Manius before anyone else (she'd quickly ascertained that as yet he'd met no-one from the city, nor sent any messages back). She was amazed Tarquinius had fallen for it; he didn't generally mind her flirtations, nor had he seemed to mind this time. She might have been happier if he had; she'd tried to get him to think of Servius almost as an adopted son, and that hint of incest might have worked like a splinter under his skin... But he'd still fallen for her ruse, and now she'd get the news first, cutting Tarquinius out neatly.

Manius' three weeks in Spina had been more productive than she'd hoped; the northern cities had cut loose from the Federation. They'd trade with Rome; hell, they'd support Rome with arms if it came to a fight.

"Against Tarchna?"

"Against any of the cities."

"But why?"

Manius shrugged. "I never did find that out. Not really. But I think they're worried about attacks from the north. And they think Etruria's gone soft. If it comes to fighting off the Celts, they'd rather have us on their side. Or maybe they just think we're on the up, the cities are in decline."

"They're serious? It's not a bluff?"

"I don't think so. I asked around. There'd been an envoy from Velzna a couple of months ago. It seems he didn't get much of a welcome."

That was worth knowing. Some diplomats spent all their time at court; more fool them. They bought the story they were told. Whispers in corners, jokes bellowed out in drinking dens, old women's gossip over looms, cross-checked the official line, like a surveyor triangulating a position; you couldn't draw a line on the ground before you knew exactly where you were.

Manius brought his horse closer to hers, leant towards her. He hadn't shaved, she noticed; must have been on the road early.

"Servius," he said. "You're sweet on him."

"Not at all."

"You were riding next to him. Doesn't Tarquinius see?"

"Tarquinius sees what he wants to."

"And smiling at him."

"So? He's nothing. A bit of rough! That's all."

"You admit it!"

"Admit what?"

"You're sleeping with him."

"Herkle, no! He amuses me."

"I suppose I amuse you."

She put her head on one side, and pretended to be thinking. "Amuse me?" She paused. Let him suffer. "No."

"What then?"

"Manius, I depend on you."

His face relaxed into a smile. It was so easy to manipulate men. Men always thought women manipulated them through sex, but fact it was the appeal to their sense of importance that always got them where you wanted them. Tarquinius knew that, too, and used it; but somehow he'd never worked out when she used exactly the same tactic on him.

"You've proved your worth," she said. "This time, you've really made a difference." Lay it on thick, he'd never suspect...

"He's done what?" Tarquinius said. She hadn't realised he was listening.

"Proved his worth, this time. You'll hear, when we get back. He's done a lot for us."

"For you," Tarquinius said, humourless.

"For us," she said.

***

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.

***

The storm had broken later that evening, and since then the weather had changed; sheeting rain, so hard it made your eyes sting, or sleet, or freezing fogs that seemed innocuous, but seeped through your clothes and stung the skin. It was unseasonable, far too early in the year; half the harvests would have been flattened, and Tarquinius was busy buying in wheat, against the possibility of a shortage. His decision, a few years before, to erect public granaries on the Palatine had turned out to be far-sighted, though people had laughed at it at the time; "cake-maker extraordinary," they'd called him, and "Tarquin the baker," but he'd have the last laugh.

The atrium was sodden. It was crowded; there were the people who arrived early, shuffling round the braziers to get warm and dried out before they met whoever they had come to meet, or waiting out a shower before they left. The door always seemed to be sheltering some furtive loiterer, who would put his head or an upturned palm out into the rain before pulling back again like a frightened tortoise. The smell of damp clothes pervaded the house. Everyone was in a filthy temper; Tarquinius restless, Manius despondent, Faustus even more acerbic than usual. And the rain continued. Two, three weeks of rain and sleet, of streets running with mud. It was impossible to get anything properly dry.

The braziers blazed; the room was full of smoke. Tarquinius blinked; Tanaquil's eyes stung. Faustus was there, Manius, and Servius, and two messengers Tarquinius had hauled in; there was news from Velx. The storm had broken there with a vengeance; blood in the streets, some said, though no one knew quite what had happened. That was what Tarquinius hoped to find out.

"They say everyone's equal in Velx now." The messenger was diffident. Too young for his job perhaps; overawed by the sheer power in the room, as if the massed rank of his interlocutors was weighing on him, about to shove him out.

"Even the slaves?" Servius was eager.

"They still keep slaves," the other messenger said – a man with a old scar on his temple and a slight back-country accent. "That's not changed."

"But only foreign slaves. They've freed all the debt-slaves," the younger man added.

"So Vibenna has fallen?" Tarquinius; thoughtful, his voice pitched low, with the kind of quiet resonance that can silence a crowd.

"No," the young messenger answered, and Tarquinius frowned.

"That's the surprising thing," the older one said quickly. "Vibenna seems to have led the revolution himself."

Faustus snorted; Tarquinius frowned. That was strange news indeed. There were more questions; Velx's military strength, alliances, any auguries or prophecies that might have pushed Vipienas into action. Only Tarquinius asked the right question; what of the harvest? It had been bad; worse than at Rome, whole fields flattened by hail. There were shortages already; the traders had been hoarding, and were pushing prices up; there were days that two or three bodies were found in the temple, people who had starved too long before claiming the exiguous charity of Turan.

The hush that had met the messengers' first announcment had decayed into dispersed mutterings. Tanaquil took careful note of who was talking to whom; useful to know, even though she couldn't tell what they were saying. The name of Robur was mentioned; she heard that clearly, just as she'd hear her own name even in a room full of conversation, her ears attuned to it.

Tarquinius stood. "Servius," he called, and the room was quiet again. "You know Velx. What do you think?"

Servius looked down for a moment. He picked dirt out from under one of his fingernails. The silence was awkward.

"It's a while since I've been there," he said. "I didn't leave under the best... well..."

He finished seeing to his fingernails, brushed his palms together to rid them of the dirt. He still didn't look at Tarquinius.

"I think, first, he has taken his choice before he was forced into it. He doesn't want the mob breaking down the warehouses, lynching the cornmerchants and the rich farmers. Secondly; he's freed the debt slaves; not the others. It's the smallest action he could take, and still get them to believe that everything has changed."

Then Servius turned to the messengers. "Have you reported everything?"

They looked surprised; the older man flushed darkly, and a muscle in his cheek twitched.

"I do remember, once, Avle was talking to me about Rome. I think he admired it."

No one could see where this was going.

"He admired the city's openness. 'The dregs of Italy,' he said."

There was a rumble of insulted pride at that, but Servius went on.

"The dregs of Italy. All and any welcome. Rapists, thieves, murderers, the useless and the mad. Yet, he said, Rome was the future. The open city. Anyone could come, and it changed them. Made princes of shepherd boys, and kings of half-castes. You're born in Etruria, he said, but you become in Rome."

Tarquinius broke in: "What's your point?"

"Simply this; has Vipienas opened the gates of Velx?"

"He has," said the older messenger, frowning; "but I didn't see what it meant."

Tarquinius sent the messengers and most of his retainers out not long after; the news was disturbing. For once, Rome had been outflanked.

"We've always had enemies," he said; "we've never had competition. I don't like this. I don't like it at all."

"If Ancus Marcius' boys have any sense, they'll be heading to Velx right now," Faustus put in.

"It'll scare the other Etruscan cities," Tanaquil said. "That might play for us, or against us. For us, if they get scared that Velx will make a power play within the League. Velzna has been trying to pull them together, but this will make it more difficult; we might pick off a few alliances."

"I don't like all this equality stuff, either. It's dangerous."

"You used to like it well enough," Tanaquil reminded him.

"I didn't say it's not right; but it's dangerous. Vipienas is more secure as a king with only five noble families to dipute the post; let the peasants and footsoldiers think they could wear the laurels and he's looking far less secure."

Servius frowned; he hadn't that long ago been one of the footsoldiers. "I think you're making a mistake," he said.

"In what way?"

"You don't want piecemeal alliances with other Etruscan cities. You want an alliance with Velx. Look: the Vipienas brothers share your values. I believe they're trying to make Velx like Rome. Work with them. I could bring you together. It could be like Collatia; another free city in the Roman league."

"A free city? Our equal?"

"Like Collatia."

But Collatia had been conquered; it was only free because it had been re-founded, the old city and its institutions completely erased. It was part of the family; which Velx wasn't, and never would be, as long as the Vipienas stayed in charge. It was a daring suggestion, but unlikely to be taken up; certainly not by Tanaquil, though Manius and Tarquinius could see the advantages of it, particularly if the northern cities also joined in league with Rome and Vlex. The most that was agreed, eventually, was that Tarquinius would send envoys to Velx as well as to the other cities, inviting delegations to Rome to discuss trade, and under cover of which, other discussions might also be held; but Servius had a suspicion that Velx was still likely to be sidelined, or even to become an enemy.

# Master

Ramtha was still as elegant as she had ever been; her braids hung down her back, and two, precisely straight, hanging in front of her ears and framing her face, each hair oiled into place; the sound of her gold hair bindings tinkling against each other followed her as closely as the scent of incense with which her clothes were perfumed. (And that slight taste in the air that prickled at the nose like an incipient sneeze was more expensive than the beaten gold, Master thought; brought from the phoenix-guarded trees of southern Arabia, the tiny hard pearls that were, you might say, the congealed tears of tree-nymphs - he'd heard that from Egerius - or, more cynically, dead sap. Whatever you called it, it cost.)

He knew there would be a delegation from Velx, and it didn't surprise him that Vipienas was keen to deal; Tarchna and Clevsin were making common cause against him, and their diplomacy was likely to split the whole Etruscan confederation down the middle. The new power of Rome might hold the balance. But he was surprised Vipienas had sent his wife, and not come himself. Didn't he know how Romans thought about women? Or did he think if he was dealing with a half- Etruscan king, he could get away with it? Then again, perhaps he had decided to send her to show that Etruria would hold fast to its own customs, as a deliberate affront; or was there a secret double game that Tanaquil was playing, a conspiracy between the Etruscan women that, perhaps, Tarquinius knew nothing about?

But all this speculation went out of his head when he saw Ramtha in the Palatine audience room, her chin arrogantly raised as she bent one knee before the king of Rome. His blood raged for a moment; he grabbed the hilt of his sword, not for defence but to feel its roughness against his palm, to steady himself. His eyes met hers across the room, and he flinched at the intimacy of it; but her eyes slid away, her face studiedly distant.

It wasn't till the third day after that she finally sent for him, by way of a sweet Greek lad who lisped out the invitation (and who might or might not have been intended for his enjoyment; you could never quite tell, with Ramtha). He'd thought she'd trust him, after he'd rescued her husband; but perhaps after all he was too much identified with Rome. She'd wanted to negotiate on her own terms, or those the Volscians had given her. And now, he thought, it was getting sticky, and she needed his help. The thought was flattering. Not so much the thought that he held the power, or at least the influence that dictated how power would move, in Rome; that he'd known for some time, now, and he prided himself that he'd surpassed his teacher. (The general could analyse a position acutely, showing where the power lay, what influences were at work, what personal factors might interfere; but for himself he eschewed its exercise, preferring to limit his life to that of the mere soldier, the executant of other men's policies.) What flattered him was that even in Velx, they knew that he was the power in Rome; that even proud Ramtha would come to him for assistance when her plans met an impasse.

He didn't go at once. She'd made him wait; so let her wait. He restrained his natural desire to put on the ceremonial tebenna, to plait his hair and oil himself sleek; she'd have to take him as he came, fresh from the exercise field, his feet dusty and his hair damp. He had his pride; that was something she might forget.

She'd made her headquarters on the Aventine, among the Etruscan settlers in the high air of the southernmost hill; it seemed to grow cooler as he climbed the stepped alleyway that led from the Tiber up its flank. At the top he turned, looking across the valley; the white flash of marble on the Capitol caught his eye. Rome spread like a stain in the river plain below. Typical of Ramtha to establish her superiority in this quite literal way; he felt one corner of his mouth twitch upwards, tried to repress the smile, couldn't quite. A servant passed him, five dead chickens hanging limply from one hand; he must have wondered what that lopsided grin was about. Or perhaps not; Master knew he was sometimes too self-conscious. Perhaps all the servant had seen was a rather grimy soldier catching his breath after the climb.

He felt tired suddenly, but squared his shoulders and went on, the route levelling out as it reached the shoulder of the hill. He'd not retained the Greek boy to show him the way, but there was no missing the house; a huge gorgon had been painted on the wall in violent red and black, and two terracotta chimeras flanked the entrance under the grinning Gorgon heads of the acroteria. A young man in finely pleated linen greeted Master - his nostrils very slightly flared in distaste, though you might not have noticed that unless you'd been looking for it - and showed him through to the atrium where Ramtha lay on a red-covered couch.

In all the time he'd known her, he'd never seen her without her cosmetics; without clothes, certainly, but never without her face painted and her hair neatly braided and secured with golden clips. But today she was bare-faced, her hair caught up in a single leather tie. Oh, she was playing the same game that he was, pretending not to care.

She extended a lazy hand towards him, and as he came to take it, turned her palm over and waved him to a chair beside the couch. The insult rankled. He moved the chair a pace closer to Ramtha before he sat, redressing the balance. Two can play at that game.

"You managed to get one of the best houses in Rome, up here."

"Servants have their uses."

"A fine view of Rome. I was admiring it on my way up."

"As if I really wanted to see Rome."

"And a good neighbourhood." Still buttering her up, even if she wanted to play hard to get.

"Ah, yes. Civilised neighbours."

They both knew what they meant, and both were too polite to say it; an Etruscan neighbourhood. No Romans.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come earlier. I had a troop exercise."

"That would account for the smell of sweat. And horse."

"I seem to remember you liked it that way."

She smiled for the first time. "Sometimes."

"It's good to see you again." (Advance.)

"I'm glad you think so." (Retreat.)

"So how are things in Velx? The general?"

"Well. But he seems to have retired from public life, this last year."

"He's an old man."

"And your husband?"

"At work. As always."

"Sending you to negotiate his treaties here."

"Not quite. I told him I would come."

"Rome holds bad memories for him."

"Perhaps. And this treaty needs deft handling."

He nodded, anticipating her request for assistance. Let her ask, though. Best not to be too forward, with this or with anything else.

"It's not easy. Tarquinius has always been our enemy and I have to make him our friend."

"It's not as simple as that."

"No. He sees too clearly."

"He used to see clearly. Less so these days."

"Even so. He knows that backing us puts his alliances with the other cities into question. And he's not certain Rome can afford to do that."

"Not yet."

She seemed surprised by his assessment. "My assessment was that you could have done it a year ago. But then, you'd know the cavalry numbers more accurately than I would."

That was as close as she'd come to an appeal for help, he thought. Time to advance.

"I might..."

"No."

"I could help."

She smiled. He would have thought it a merciless smile, if he hadn't seen that sly creasing of her eyes that always meant she was hiding amusement.

"I don't think so."

"I could, at least, as you point out, give you information. Accurate, up to date, information."

"No." She lay back, yawning; as she put her head back, and stretched, her breasts pushed up through the thin dress she was wearing. He caught his breath. Had she meant to do that? Of course she had; the yawn might be real, but the choreography was intended.

"So you're not interested in our troop dispositions?"

"Maybe... later," she said, and whipped herself upright, reaching over to grab his grimy tunic and pull him to her.

It was enjoyable, of course; it always was, with her. But a distraction from serious business, none the less. And even so, he couldn't help feeling a certain pride at his attraction for her; a pride he needed to put away, to keep a clear head in dealing with her. He lay for a minute or two feeling the sweat dry on his skin, feeling her skin cooling against his, before pulling away and sitting up on the edge of the couch.

"So. Troop dispositions and numbers," he said, thinking; what do I bargain this information for? What does Velx have that I need?

"You can tell me, of course." She seemed off-hand, half asleep almost, but he thought to himself; it's a pose, she's playing games again.

"There might be a recompense involved."

"I think not."

"You don't want to know?"

"Not enough."

That stumped him. He had no bargaining counters left; he couldn't, after all, claim to be able to force Tarquinius' hand, he could only give her information. If she didn't want the information, he had nothing to offer. But he still couldn't help feeling that she needed it, she wanted it, she was only saying 'no' to play hard to get; that he needed to find the way to offer it without her asking. He was about to rephrase his offer when she reached for his hand, covering it with hers.

"It's not necessary."

"What isn't?"

"I don't need the information. Not any more, though it might have been nice to have it."

"You have it from someone else, then."

"No."

"So you don't have it."

"No."

"And you don't need it."

"No."

He tried to smooth the frown out of his features, but she must have noticed it.

"Oh come on," she said, and she sounded impatient; as if she were speaking to a small child who wasn't trying hard enough, or a rather clumsy servant. "It's unlike you to be so slow."

But his thoughts were going nowhere; every thread of thought he followed seemed to end short of an explanation, or wound back into the inchoate coils of his brain. He shook his head. She had him beaten, and she knew it already.

"It's all resolved." He looked at her uncomprehending. "He's agreed the treaty, already. It was done yesterday."

"Yesterday evening."

"No; in the morning. We poured the libations together at midday to seal it."

So she'd known about the pact before she'd sent for him. That was a blow. He wasn't the trusted adviser he'd wanted to be, but a sexual plaything; he wasn't the main business, but the relaxation afterwards. And he'd thought Tarquinius would play with them, and in the end maintain his links with Tarchna; so Tarquinius, too, had caught him off balance. Tarquinius was getting rather fond of doing that, these days; if he hadn't known better he might have thought the old king was getting senile, forgetting from day to day which alliances he meant to make, which to cancel, but he was as wily as a cat. Something was up; and then the cat would pounce... He managed to control himself, but he still wondered if she'd noticed that twitch of his mouth.

***

Ramtha and her entourage stayed in Rome another three weeks after the treaty was signed. Though while it was being negotiated they'd been kept out of the public eye - apart from that first reception on the Palatine - suddenly they were being feted; Rome's new allies, a new source of wealth, of gold, of oil, of good taste. Ramtha was everywhere, always flanked by one of the tall young men who made up her household, and whom Master found supercilious in the extreme. He noticed gorgons appearing on the walls of Roman houses, though the workmanship varied in quality - some were no more than coarse daubs of red paint in congealed spirals surrounding a circle with a slash for a mouth, others were clearly the work of a highly trained artist whose gorgons all had the same goggling eyes and stuck-out tongue. Every night there was a feast, on the Palatine or in the Aventine house,

He slept with Ramtha a few times in those mad weeks. All those tall young men on her staff, but he still had something she wanted; the smell of horse, he thought, that will never wash off; the stink of work.

But he was just rough trade. He realised that now. It turned her on, that smell of the stables, but she didn't understand what it meant to have nothing, to have to earn even the right to serve. She'd been born into the purple and her life was burnished like gold, and the light shone where she walked; nothing was ever refused her, and perhaps, he thought, she had the sense never to ask for the few things that might be refused. (That twisted the knife; he realised her seduction of him was never any risk at all, she never even risked polite disinterest; as the General's servant he could never have refused her, no more than her languid young servants could, if she asked, and he thought she probably did.)For him, his sweat was the currency he paid in for everything he had ever bought - a chariot, good opinion, influence; for her, it was an exotic counterpoint to the rich smell of incense and spiced wine and power.

That realisation gave him a new coolness, an icy confidence he'd never had with her before; it was as if he remained distant, mentally uninvolved while his body went through its paces. She sensed it, somehow, and found it intriguing. He became cruel, which he'd never been before, and she found that interesting, too. But it hardly satisfied him, and he felt glad when the Etruscans left, leaving behind them only hangovers and ended affairs and the painted Gorgons.

# Tarquinius

The owl had shat on the vine again.

Gods knew why the unlucky bird had decided to roost here, under the roof of the atrium. It was too high to be dislodged easily; he'd shouted at it, but it just turned its head sleepily, and blinked once at him with its uncannily cat-like eyes. He threw a stone, but it just stuck its head down between its wings, as if it had no neck at all, and sulked. He threw another stone, which bounced off the wall and came back and hit him.

None of the Roman servants would have anything to do with it. They said it was a witch, and if they chased it away it would take its revenge.

"They suck your blood, you know," one old man confided.

And the Etruscan servants wouldn't do anything, because they didn't want to upset the Romans.

He might be a king, Tarquinius thought sourly, but he still couldn't get what he wanted in his own house.

At least he'd got his children married off. Servius' loyalty had been secured, and he'd kept his options open with regard to alliances. Tanaquil would be happy, too, not to have had to marry the girl to a Roman. He'd have hated to think Servius might go back to the service of the Vipienas. That couldn't be allowed; Servius knew far too much about Rome and her plans, and about Rome's resources, too. If he had practically made Servius his heir, putting him on an equal footing with Arruns and Tarquin, well – that would sharpen the boys up. Both of his sons were spoiled; Arruns leaden, humourless – he thought, sourly, a fit heir for the mud of Rome – while Tarquin was... Tarquin was Tarquin. The heir to Etruscan lightness and elegance, clever but ill-advised and worse disciplined. Perhaps he should have beaten him, as the Romans beat their sons.

He'd not been quite sure about marrying Tarquinia to Servius, all the same. He'd talked to Tanaquil; as always, she infuriated him by her obscurity, her willingness to consider that a course of action might be both right and wrong at the same time, or at least (as she was prone to equivocate) have aspects of both rightness and wrongness about it.

("Why the hell don't you give me a straight answer?" he'd asked her once.

"When did the gods ever give a straight answer?" she'd replied.)

He'd thought she'd argue on Servius' behalf; Servius was her find, after all, even if Tarquinius had come increasingly to depend on his services. She'd agreed with Tarquinius that neither Tarquin nor Arruns was ready to take power; her partiality to her younger son hadn't blinded her to his faults. She thought Servius was a good choice; an Etruscan, but a soldier, not a noble but a man who had carved his own way out, like Rome itself. A man with the roughness that Rome demanded from its leaders.

"Even from me?" Tarquinius asked.

"But you have me on your side."

"Doesn't Servius?"

Yet she had also pointed out that making Servius an heir apparent gave him a reason to plot against Tarquinius' sons, or even have them killed. Of course, Servius was an honest man; Servius subscribed to the same code of honour that they did... (That in itself, of course, was an admission from her that Servius was as dishonest as she was; they both knew how much honour remained in them after their years of struggle and of rule, and it came down to this, that either of them would fight on the other's behalf, that the two of them would face down the world together. Most of the time.)

He heard the owls at night, answering each other across the Palatine; who, who-who, always a question and never an answer. He wondered when they'd arrived; he never remembered having heard them before. He never slept well, these days; perhaps it was just part of growing old. The poets had a lot to say about love and war, but nothing about age. (He wished he'd asked his father; what was it like to grow old? As so often, he had to find out everything for himself.) His sleep grew every night more fractured and shallower; he'd wake in the early hours just as dawn was announcing itself, or sometimes in the dark middle of the night, and not be able to sleep again till he had tired himself out with trying. Perhaps he'd simply slept through the owls' colloquy, once, when he still slept soundly; perhaps they had always been there. Perhaps not.

Some nights he never got to sleep at all. Once the first owl started, he would lie there, listening for the next call, and even if it didn't come, he would still be tense, imagining that it would come as soon as he relaxed his attention. He felt as if they were converging on the palace from their haunts all over Rome. What then? When he did sleep, in nightmares they hunted him down and tore his flesh.

He had stopped looking at himself in mirrors, but he knew his eyes were dark and puffy with lack of sleep. He was so tired his body felt numb, as if the links between it and his volition had been stretched so thin they had frayed and broken. He found himself missing what was said to him; his mind would just close down, as if he was asleep with his eyes closed.

He mentioned the owls to Tanaquil. "Birds of bad omen," she said. He didn't like the look in her eyes.

There was the one sitting under the eaves, that no one would get rid of. She'd seen it, of course.

"Can't we get rid of it?"

She shrugged. "Yes, I suppose. They're nasty when they're cornered, though. You could poke it with a stick, but that would upset the servants. Probably best to leave it where it is."

She asked where he heard them. Everywhere, he said.

"No," she said, as if to a child she was trying to teach something eminently simple, and yet which the child found too difficult; "that can't be right. Which quarter of the sky?"

He thought hard, and said; "West. And north."

"That is bad."

He knew. The west; the place of bad luck. The north; place of death.

"Bad luck," he said. "Bad sleep."

She shivered; was she cold?

"It's not the bad fortune that worries me," she said. "It's the ones you hear in the north. The souls of the dead calling for you to join them. You are marked for death, Tarquinius."

"How do I avoid it?"

She smiled thinly. "In the end, you don't. None of us do."

Was that meant as condolence? How far away was "in the end"?

"I'll order a sacrifice," she said; "that may avert the bad luck. With any luck."

***

The whole army had been drawn up in the Field of Mars for Tarquinius to review. There would be another war this season; but Tarquinius wouldn't lead it. He had ridden out to the Field of Mars to see the troops; ridden not just because of his status, but because he was no longer fit enough to exercise on foot with them. For many years he'd joined them, stripped like a Greek for the foot-races; now he didn't want them to see how his long body had become puffy, how it flapped and wobbled. Some mornings he was short of breath. When he was doin his braid he'd seen one flash of grey, and pulled the offending hair out; the sting was not as sharp as the pain of knowing he was old, the days ahead shorter than those he'd left behind. He looked at the youths this year and knew he'd lost the shine, the plump smoothness of their flesh; he'd lost their hope.

But then he looked at the high sun, at the army drawn up before him; he breathed in its sheer size and let himself wonder at what he'd wrought. He remembered the armies that had fought Rome's battles under Ancus Marcius; mere raiding parties, rough men armed for fast movement and quick skirmish. You knew each man in one of those bands; knew instantly, when you saw them return, who had remained, who had fallen, and mourned the fallen as comrades, as friends. When was the last time he'd felt the sharpness of an absence, the pain of death coming so close?

You couldn't see this army whole; division hid division, one rank hid another. As Tarquinius approached, the men shifted once, put their hands on their weapons, brought their feet together with a great noise; and then everything was still, except the waving of feathers and horse-tails in the helmets of their leaders. His horse's hoofbeats on the ground were loud as the beat of a drum leading Rome to war.

Servius led him; Servius stocky on his horse, Tarquinius taller and lanky, his legs sticking pale and thin out of his red tebenna. Manius followed; not a general, as Servius was, nor a king, and looking slightly out of place here, his horse an even-natured mare who kept her head down, as if looking for stray greenery she could snatch. As they rode in front of each division, the troops cheered; but the cheer stopped as soon as they had passed.

They passed Arruns' men, drawn up in order; exactly the same space between each man, at the right side, the left side, before him and behind. Their square bristled with spears; infantrymen, the solid barrier to any enemy. The men hit their shields with their spears, and shouted, but the eyes Tarquinius glimpsed through the slits in their helmets were cold.

His knees were aching. He complained to Servius.

"Keep it short. No long chats. Just a salute."

Servius nodded. "It's the damp weather," he said. "My mother used to get it, too. Her joints crunched when she moved. She never worked out why I could always hear her coming."

"You're right," Tarquinius said, though he knew it was age, not the moisture in the air, that cramped his muscles and loaded his joints; and he trotted out the old joke that when it came to weather, his knees were better augurs than his wife. It never failed to amuse most people, but Servius looked as dour as Tanaquil herself did when she heard it.

Other units; light skirmishers, spearmen, charioteers. Some of the old-style fighters, almost unarmed. They relied on their light shields for defence; shields that would deflect a glancing blow, but not stop a thrust. It was no surprise they had a higher casualty rate than most; it was a surprise, though, that some of the wealthiest Old Romans, who could easily have afforded metal helmets and breastplates, chose to fight this way. Romans might have their vices, but they had courage, you had to grant them that.

Young Tarquin's men, all with purple cloaks and gilded breastplates. All mounted on splendid horses, matching horses, every one a chestnut, every one tall, taller than usual stocky chariot horses, every one with gold shining on its harness. And Tarquin, on foot, holding his horse, standing three paces in front of his men; armour bright, eyes bright; standing not square like a veteran, but negligently leaning on his spear, looking up at his father with a mocking smile just like his mother's. Yet there was something sullen about him despite the brightness. He lacked, or chose to lack, Tanaquil's charm.

Had he neglected him in favour of Arruns? Tarquinius wondered. Why hadn't he loved Tarquin the way everyone else always loved him? The boy must have felt it, somehow; grown up grudging his father. Or hating him, perhaps.

Tarquin saluted, with a slight hesitation that perhaps only Tarquinius noticed. The men cheered; and they didn't stop cheering as Servius and Tarquinius passed on.

"They love him," Tarquinius said.

Servius shrugged; love didn't matter in his world. Only survival did. But Manius drew closer.

"Of course they love him," he said. "If it moves, he'll fight it, or fuck it."

Tarquinius looked sharply at him.

Manius shrugged. "That's what they say. You might as well know it."

Another division of foot. Every man with a round shield and a round bronze cap, gleaming leather on arms and breasts and legs. Not much in the way of armour, but efficient; every man's equipment identical, down to the great leaf-shaped sabres they carried. The uniformity of posture, too, that showed good leadership.

Back in the third row, he saw a face he knew; a tall Etruscan with hollow cheeks and dark hair streaked with blond, and a little tuft of hair right at the back of his head that stuck up. Braids, oil, grease, Lars had tried everything; he'd even stuck it down once with boiled honey. The wasps had swarmed round him all that afternoon...

But Lars had been killed at Collatia in the first assault.

Tarquinius felt a cold trickle of sweat down his back. This must be Arnth, Lars' brother; yes, he could see now the little white scar on the temple that had always let their comrades tell the twins apart.

He jumped off his horse.

"Arnth?"

No response. The pale eyes gazed fixedly forwards.

"Fall out," the commander said.

Gaius. He should have known. It had to be a Roman; that level of discipline.

Then Arnth stepped forwards, smiling, his eyes wet; "Lauchme," he said, a name Tarquinius hadn't heard for years. His embrace wasn't rough as Tarquinius might have expected, but gentle, almost like a parent embracing a child; then he stood back, still holding Tarquinius' shoulders in his long hands.

"It's been a long time since Collatia," he said.

"It was Medullia, sir."

"So it was." He coughed. "A long time, anyway."

"That's enough," Servius said, and Arnth dropped back into the ranks.

"You didn't get off your horse for Tarquin. That'll rankle."

"Gaius is back."

"Yes."

"Collatia didn't work out?"

"You could say that."

Gaius. He realised, suddenly, just how much he'd missed his old colleague. All the young men, all the new men; he hadn't shared a campaign with them, didn't know the smell of their sweat, or recognise the way they hefted a weight. And now his age and health kept him at home, he'd never campaign with the new commanders; there would never be any new comrades, only the ones he'd worked with in his youth, and every year there would be fewer of them.

"Arruns is a good commander," Servius was saying. "He's not impulsive like Tarquin; he thinks before he rushes in. A bit slow to take action, sometimes."

It sounded faint, as praise. (How had they got on to Arruns? He'd lost the thread of this conversation.)

"How is he at keeping secrets, I wonder?" Tarquinius asked.

"He doesn't waste time with small talk."

"Manius?"

"Trustworthy."

Which was what Manius had said about Servius, as it happened.

***

Tarquinius' heart lurched. He blinked; he was suddenly awake, though he hadn't known he was asleep.

"That will set the whole of the league against us," Manius said.

Tarquinius couldn't ask what would. He searched his blurred mind for a clue. What had they been talking about? His plans for Velx. No; he'd told no one those; they had to be kept secret.

"Tarquinius?"

Damn. Servius must have noticed his lapse. Still, you weren't a diplomat if you couldn't make content-free pronouncements.

"It might," he said, and tried to look as if he was thinking of anything except what he was thinking, trying to dredge the exact subject up from his cluttered mind; "and then again, it might not."

"Look," said Servius. "It might or it might not. What we have to decide is: do we care? Can we cope?"

"All things have a price," Tarquinius said. "Can we afford the cost?"

"Velzna's become increasingly ambitious. We need to prune it back. But a full scale invasion..."

"There's another way of looking at it," Manius said. "Rome can ride Velzna's ambitions. Let Velzna decimate the League cities. Let them hate it. Wait, get rich, wait for Velzna to come crashing down. That leaves Italy without a centre, the cities weakened, the League without a heart, ready for us to take."

"Without risking our army in the meantime," Tarquinius said, twisting a braid in one finger. "But ... no, it would be more certain to move in now."

"Burn the bloody shrine," Servius said. "That'll bring them all down on us. Let it happen. We have an army. They have a few charioteers."

"Is that why Tanaquil's not here?" Manius asked.

Of course it was. Tarquinius remembered the whole plot now. It was vital Tanaquil should not hear directly of his plans.

"She had some business with the Chief Vestal. Just as well, really; where Tarchna's concerned, I 'm not sure I can trust her."

"Women," Manius said. "Their hearts rule their heads."

(Which just went to show that Manius didn't really know Tanaquil. Or perhaps he was an idealist; couldn't see the plain truth for the proverbs and truisms that were stuck in his eye.)

"You think she's trustworthy, Servius?" (That would put him on the spot.)

"Am I?" Servius answered. "Is Manius?"

***

An owl hooted, a sound as soft as its silent feathers in flight.

"There. That owl again."

"Never heard it," Tanaquil said quickly. "Owls? What owls?"

Tarquinius scowled. "You know what owls."

She shook her head gently; her filigree earrings swayed, with a tiny thin bright sound of metal jostling metal. She looked at Servius, raised her eyebrows, as if to say; "Tarquinius, you know Tarquinius..." She picked an olive out of the dish before her, holding it in two fingers as she gnawed the flesh off it gently, throwing the stone effortlessly into the pool at the centre of the atrium.

"I'd better go," Servius said, rising from his couch. "Tarquinia will be waiting."

"She's always waiting," Tanaquil said. "Let her wait some more."

"Oh, Servius is getting quite uxorious in his old age." Tarquinius reached for an olive, thought better of it, and drew his hand back. "Comes to us all."

"I hadn't noticed," Tanaquil said.

"The uxoriousness or the old age?"

She threw an olive at him.

She waited till Servius had gone before she asked him why he was invading Velzna.

"Is that what you've heard?"

She didn't bother to answer, just looked at him levelly.

"Well, that's one idea, I suppose... but who said we were invading? We need a defence, that's all. Just in case things get boisterous."

"Well, I was told it was an invasion."

I was told; not 'Manius said,' or 'Servius said', she was too smart for that. A pity. But at least now he knew; as he'd thought, he had a traitor in the camp. He'd have to speak to Gaius; the only man he could trust.

# Tanaquil

Tarquin stopped his horse in a skitter of loose gravel, pulling it back hard, flashy testimony to his expertise. Full gallop to a standstill, almost instantly. He'd won the race; what was the point of a lap of honour?

The frost still lay on the grass on the Aventine slopes of the valley, where the sun had not fallen. Here on the flat land between the hills, the grass was still wet, but the sun was shining on the slopes of the Palatine; the sky was that glorious blue that comes with a hard frost and makes the flesh tingle just to look at it. Tanaquil shaded her eyes to look along the level racecourse towards the Tiber end; the distant sparkle of the far turning post, the close-turfed surface of the track.

Here at the near turn a trophy had been set up on the turning post, a scarecrow warrior, bronze helmet and gorgeously gilded breastplate. Beneath it were slung the shields that were the victors' prizes, decorated with hideously grinning Gorgon's heads. (As if a Gorgon could turn away a sword thrust.)

"Did I do well?"

She squinted up at Tarquin, silhouetted against the sun. His horse was throwing its head about impatiently; he kicked it in the ribs, and pulled the reins in to keep its head low. How typical of the boy that unlike Arruns, he would not dismount to greet his mother.

"You did well," she said. But then, he knew that.

Tarquin smiled. He held his chin slightly up, so that he looked down on the world; his mouth was curved in the cruel smile he inherited from her.

"You pull too hard," Servius said. "You'll knacker your horse's mouth."

"What's it to you? There are enough horses in the world."

"Horses as good as Fulminator? Horses as good as Tonans?"

Tarquin scowled. He'd ridden Tonans in the races two years ago and foundered the horse on the hard ground. They'd put it out to pasture on the edge of the marshes near Ostia, but though its hooves had recovered, its temper had soured; it was a nasty brute now. Only Tarquin would ride it, and its temper was too unpredictable for a race; it might stop, suddenly, or savage one of the the other horses. So he rode Fulminator today; a full brother of Tonans, not as quick but not yet spoiled.

"He's as good a rider as his mother," Tarquinius said. For once there was no double meaning in his words. "You'd hardly think I was his father, would you? Sometimes I wonder..."

Tarquinius laughed, a deep rumbling laugh he seemed to have adopted with his kingship, the sort of laugh that warns everyone else to laugh along with it, on pain of some undecided penalty. He never used to laugh like that, back when he was Lauchme and she was Thanchvil and they were young as the day, every day, before they had to weigh every word and every action and see the consequences branching out like the channels of a delta from whatever they did or said. He used to laugh from sheer joy, a light, high laugh she'd not heard for too long; when last? she wondered, and realised that was another of the unanswerable questions that seemed to cluster round you with age.

They'd been good years, the last few; Arruns growing into a serious young man, Tarquin a splendid prince; Servius masterminding the conquests – small towns, sometimes Latin, sometimes Etruscan, towns no one would miss or care about until it was too late; towns that wouldn't, taken one by one, upset the great cities and set them against Rome. Good years, she thought, as a Greek history would tell the story; but years that had hardened and coarsened her husband, that had wearied her and woven grey hairs into her temples.

"Sometimes I wonder..."

Tarquinius laughed again, and Servius laughed uneasily.

"No, you don't," Tarquin said, cutting short the hilarity. His father looked at him. A cold look, dangerous, but Tarquin, all fire, ignored it. "A pity really; I might have been an Etruscan whole-blood, if it hadn't been for you."

"Fuck you," Tarquinius said. Suddenly the air prickled with danger.

"At least I have my mother's blood."

"You're the grandson of Demaratus. And he ruled Corinth."

"He was thrown out of Corinth."

"He was a ruler."

"He was a tyrant. They're two a penny in Greece."

Tanaquil thought; things have gone too far. Words will come to blows. Or worse; Tarquin exiled, outlawed, executed. She was the only one he would listen to; his only friend among this company.

"Tarquin!"

He looked down his nose at her, but he was listening.

"This is not how nobles behave."

Suddenly his face was a mask. He'd learned that diplomatic cool from her; but he used it too obviously – he'd let himself kindle, flare up, burn. Then it was too late; the falsity of the calm face was obvious. Was Tarquin fit to be a king? But he was young; he'd learn. He might fly far and loose, but he'd come back to the lure in the end, her little eagle.

The horse edged away, upset by the shouting match; it was on its toes, forcing Tarquin to pull its head closer, almost turning it in a circle.

"He'll come round," she said to her husband. "Just ignore him. He's won a race; he thinks he's a god. Let him think it for ten minutes."

"He'll still ruin that horse. Servius is right."

Servius was not to be forgiven, though. Tarquin should have listened to him; Servius was a past victor, was renowned as the best judge of a horse in Rome, had bred and trained his own winners. But Servius had spoiled Tarquin's victory, and Tarquin would never forget it.

"He's nothing better than a slave," he said later to Tanaquil. "I don't even understand why you let him hang around the palace."

"Because he's useful."

"Like a slave."

"When are you going to learn?"

"I'm not."

Tarquin sulked, like a scolded cat. It made Tanaquil wonder what she had done wrong; how had he turned out to be so wilful? Tarquin invested so much importance in his royal heritage, in the aristocracy of blood, he couldn't see the true aristocracy of the heart; couldn't even see the usefulness of those whose heads were clearer, because less full of myth. He dreamed of Tarchna as a place untroubled by politics, by the striving and struggle of ambitious men with forebears unimportant or unknown. He'd never seen it with her eyes, or his father's; the way it turned inwards, the cramping of all ambition. The smallness of small town politics, with nothing to conquer, nothing to achieve but keep the city the way it had always been. A new temple from time to time, another statue or altar; even increasing the city's wealth was only more of the same, and in the end it resulted in no more than boredom. But Tarquin dreamt of the city she'd left as a place of golden prospects and purple robes, and as long as he had those dreams, he was blind to what Rome had meant to her, and to Lauchme. They'd had dreams, too, once.

Now? Sometimes she felt the prisoner of this city she'd helped to create.

***

They sent Manius, in the end. Tanaquil would have preferred Servius, but Tarquinius was adamant; Manius would go, with Gaius. Servius, perhaps, was too identified with Velx to make a good Roman emissary; Velzna might consider his loyalties suspect. Or had Tarquinius turned against Servius? She couldn't read him, now; he'd become guarded, hard and silent as stone.

She liked his plan, as much as she'd been able to work it out; send Manius apparently to negotiate a treaty, but with instructions to temporise – to find reasons to delay, reasons why he might have to send back to Rome for advice, why he would have to draw up ever more detailed riders and conditional clauses. At the same time, Gaius would be able to find out the state of Velzna's military strength, the city's preparedness to stand a war or a siege. And while Velzna thought Rome was about to contract a treaty, the city might not be motivated to build up its military power, or to seek alliances elsewhere. Fatal complacency, if that was the case. Then, once Tarquinius was ready, he would strike.

The bluff was clever, though it was a trick that would only work once. Was this the right time to use it?

She thought of the great cliff of Velzna rising above the dusty plain; the city hanging over the precipice, the temples looking out to the huge sky and the distant hills. She'd been trained for augury there, so long ago; she'd been so young, barely thirteen. Now, she could hardly imagine what she'd been like at that age. She was no longer that Tanaquil. But she remembered the quality of the light; so much more brilliant, sparkling, than the glowering or gloomy light of Rome. She found herself longing for the life less serious, the life of sunlight, of wine and music; longing for the touch of the gods, for the visions that came when you fasted through the night, till your head was as light as your feet in the dance. Three months, only three months, but her memory of that time was jewel-sharp.

Yet it hadn't seemed like that at the time. Her mother told her she'd been miserable, and pined, and her aunt the priestess would have sent her back early if she hadn't known that Tanaquil had the makings of a great augur. Memory was a strange thing; like augury, it couldn't wholly be trusted.

So there was Manius, and there was Gaius, the one resplendent in purple and gold, as representative of the King of Rome, the other shelled in hard leather and bronze, with only the red horsetail of his helmet to blazon forth his rank.

Odd that Tarquinius had tried to hide his bluff. Did he still not trust her about Tarchna? Or was he playing games; trying to find out how efficient her network was, how quickly she'd find out? Make no mistake, whatever he did, she'd find out, one way or another. Strange, though; she had really come to the conclusion he was going to move on Velx, and he'd wrongfooted her.

Well, good luck to Manius. An honest man playing a dishonest game. She wished Tarquinius had sent Servius; a charioteer could understand the need to run a twisted course.

Oh, she was tired of twistedness, tired of strategem and subterfuge and mixed loyalties. They were talking to Velx, they were talking to Velzna, Rome was talking to everyone's face and behind everyone's back; every Etruscan city thought it was next on the list. Any one of the cities would sell the others to get Rome off its back. She couldn't trust her husband; her son didn't deserve to be trusted; even Servius she wasn't sure of, and the gods weren't talking to her any more.

That glorious summer in Velzna there had been only her, the yawning emptiness of hunger, and the god; now she'd lost that certainty, and the omens were obscure. All but one, one that was clear and unarguable. Ever since Tarquinius had started hearing the owls, he had been marked for death.

# Master

She'd made him a tebenna, in the kingly colours, red and purple.

"You can't," he said, when she gave it to him. He'd seen her weaving it; all her own work, she wouldn't let any of the household slaves touch the loom when she was working.

"Why not?"

He didn't like to say. It felt too intimate; it was something his wife would have done for him. His wife in Velx, that is, the northern woman he'd never actually got round to marrying.

"No one else has to know," she'd said; but that wasn't the point, whether or not other people knew she'd made it for him. Fact was, whenever he wore it, he felt uneasily in her debt, constrained. And whenever she saw him in it, she'd feel the pride of ownership, as if he was a horse dressed up in her liveries, or if she didn't, he'd think that she did. Having fought for his freedom of action all his life (and maybe that was one reason he'd never got round to marrying his housegirl) he found such obligations irksome; the feeling that he'd been bought irritated him, like a burr or a stone that had worked its way into his boot.

At least if he'd been bought he'd sold himself dearly. The cloth was woven in an undulating pattern that shimmered when he moved. A pattern so faint it was hardly visible, unless you were looking for it, like the shiver of a calm lake that precedes a gust of wind.

"Did you ever weave a tebenna for Tarquinius?" he'd asked. She wouldn't say.

She'd started teaching him something about prophecy, too, despite his reluctance. It was a woman's thing, he thought. At least, the way Tanaquil did it, it was a woman's thing. How in Charun's name could the Romans think augury was for men? It was something hidden, inside, like a woman's sex; the thought of that vacancy inside them had always disturbed him. Men were straightforward, solid; women carried a wound with them, bleeding or not.

That first day; a horror.

***

It wasn't a day for prophecy, he thought; clear sunlight on the Palatine, the noise of the city, even the hammer blows of stonecarvers at work on the great temple heard clearly across the Forum. A donkey brayed somewhere. Woodsmoke drifted up from below, the smell harsh, yet whenever he smelt it, he thought of homecoming. The brush crackled as they began to descend the southern slopes; a charm of goldfinches flew up, the bright yellow flashes of their wings flickering. Tanaquil still hadn't told him where they were going.

Pine roots snaked across the path, raw yellow where feet had rubbed them. The path twisted around a spur, down into a tiny gorge. He'd raced the track in the valley below enough times, but he'd never seen it; a crack in the hill, narrowing,half-hidden by pines and the lie of the land. On one side, a stream ran, coldly clear, from a spring, a mere seeping of water from a split in the rock.

He'd only realised at the last moment why she'd brought him here, where they were headed; the wolf-cave, the secret heart of the city. It was hidden in plain sight. Tanaquil was there one moment, gone the next. A wall of hanging foliage closed the end of the gorge; she'd simply stepped through it. He followed.

This was the cave where the she-wolf had brought the twins. He'd heard that story, of course; he'd seen the wolf-runners, boys dressed in the raw skins of the sacrificial victims. Everyone knew that the cave existed, that it lay under the Palatine; no one he knew had ever seen it, or if they had, their mouths had been closed.

It smelt of earth; he could feel the damp on his skin. He'd never liked caves; certainly not since that night when he'd captured Cacus, or perhaps Cacus had captured him. The light in the cave was tinged with green from the leaves that filtered it; Tanaquil's face was discoloured by it, corpse-like.

"Get the fire lit," she said brusquely.

He didn't obey commands. He was the Master, he was the one who commanded; only three men had ever given him an order he would obey – the old general, Vipienas, and now Tarquinius. But he felt for the flint and steel.

The wood was ready piled on a stone hearth; when he'd got the curls of dry bark tinder to light, and the flames had touched the first smaller twigs, he sat back on his heels, and saw the cave whole for the first time. It was not large; it held him, and Tanaquil, and the fire, like an inverted cup, and while in the centre the roof was high, further out there was barely room to stand as the walls sloped down to the dusty floor. It was dry, though,

"Sit," she said. She'd never commanded him before – always flirted, cajoled, laughed; now this was the second time since they'd come to the cave. Her eyes glinted flint-like in the firelight, and he thought it wasn't just the fire that made them shine; there was something in her he'd not seen before, a demon or a god. He sat.

He sat, and waited, and sat till his arse was aching and his left leg, that he'd folded under him, was numb. He sat.

"Don't move," she said.

An itch troubled him. He tried not to think about it. This at least he could do, he'd done before, sneaking through no-man's-land or waiting in ambush. It still troubled him. Eventually it went away. He started to hear his heartbeat, the sound of rushing blood in his ears. The fire crackled. Tanaquil, sitting opposite him, her eyes never flickering, but the flames were always shifting on her face.

"Tell me," she said.

What was to tell? His eyes were getting prickly and dry. Both his legs were numb. He'd lost sense of time. It had been late morning when they came into the cave, but here it was always dark time, blood time, the time of the womb or the grave. The world was spinning, the fire was dancing, he felt the pull of tides, of tenses. Was this prophecy, was it tiredness, was it just staring at the fire that had stupefied him and muddled his senses?

"It's inside you," she said, guiding his thoughts. "The real Etruscan heritage. Not bronze or gold, but dreams and thoughts."

"That's a heritage?"

"Vecu put those thoughts and dreams in Arruns' mind."

"But that was Arruns. And how long ago was that?"

"Long, long ago," she said, her voice caressing, like a mother starting a fairy tale; long, long ago, and very far away... "Since Arruns, every child is born with the seeds of those thoughts."

Seeds. Another woman's thing. The idea of something growing inside him; he resisted it. It was like a cancer. And the way she had him think; it was like probing a wound, hard metal in the softness of raw flesh. Or like sticking your tongue into the hole where a tooth had been knocked out. (A sudden flash of memory; holding the stub of a milk tooth in his hand, looking at the pink inside of it, raw, and feeling the gap in his jaw, huge as things always are bigger when felt than seen, and knowing that again, he'd been betrayed by life. What had he been then; six or seven?)

Look into the fire, she was saying. He was looking into it anyway but that hadn't stopped her telling him. She'd put a handful of herbs on it; a resinous scent with something rotten and sweet under it.

"Did you never look in a fire and see things in it?" she asked him.

"When I was a child?"

"Perhaps."

"I saw cities, forests, lasas dancing."

"Let your eyes half-close."

That was easy; he was beginning to drowse with the heat of the fire.

"Half closed," she said; "but keep looking. Look through your lashes at the blur. At the movement. Let your eyes lose focus. See what's between the flames."

Nothing. Nothing more than the purplish gold of light through half closed eyelids, like a bruise. This was trickery, cozenage, cheating.

"Wake up!"

He felt fuddled. Drunk. The fire seemed to be burning inside his mind, a fever behind his eyes. He was prickling with sweat.

"Ask the question."

"What question?"

"You will know the question. The question to which you need to know the answer."

He sat for another unguessable length of time, wondering what that question would be. There were many questions he might want to know the answer to; too many. Would Rome invade Tarchna, would Rome invade Velzna, why did Tarquin hate him, what was going on in Velx, why wouldn't Tarquinius answer a straight question any more, why was Tanaquil trying to teach him prophecy, why couldn't he seem to desire Tarquinia? But that there was one question, one great question, he couldn't believe. Someone told him once that the hedgehog knew one thing, the fox many; he was a fox, for sure, wily when he needed to be, and fast, and knowing many things. You could never know too much. And yet Tanaquil had told him there was only one question. Some piece of mystical obfuscation he'd bet, what was a man, or whether ghosts could dance, or where the gods came from.

The fire crackled. A spark spat into the dust next to him.

"Ask the question," she said.

"What bloody question?" he shouted, or rather heard himself shout, as if he'd been asleep and the scream had been drawn out of him by force of nightmare.

"Only you know," she said.

No help. A great teacher she'd turned out to be. So many questions, so many he couldn't count; and he was so bored with the game, the confusions, meandering, hints, intimations, subterfuges, misdirections; the trying to keep everyone off balance, the bluffs, double bluffs, triple bluffs. Everything precarious; the danger of saying the wrong thing, of acting on the word and not the covert significance; he should have loved the danger, but instead he felt bogged down, slowed and fatigued by the effort of exerting all his strength to go absolutely nowhere. Never knowing clearly where Rome was going, what Tarquinius had decided, what he had to do.

He felt her eyes on him as an aggression, as if she'd struck him. She was waiting. And he still had no idea.

He wanted clarity, wanted a clear objective, wanted to be on the move, not these games of whisper-and-run.

"You must bring the question to birth," she said. Her voice was patient and measured, but her eyes burned.

Birth. Another woman thing. Raw flesh and blood slopping, like butchery but worse. The thought made his guts lurch as if he were going to vomit, like that time he'd got drunk after his first daughter was born, and the bile surged up through his nose, through the fingers he'd clamped over his mouth. He felt as if his innards were dropping out of him, as if he were falling from a height. Breathless, about to pass out, he felt his body sway.

"Will I be king?"

He heard his voice and realised he had spoken. The question made words.

"Will I be king?"

The fire blazed up around him. He felt it burning through his veins; his skin flamed with it. It crowned him, whirling round his head; he breathed it in, drank it down, it consumed him.

He was the power of thunder. He held the lightning in his hands, and wondered at it.

***

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."

***

It was only when young Fabia had left that she gave way to her temper. She hit her fists against the wall – knew she'd regret the bruise and the tenderness once her rage had cooled, but didn't care. She snatched up a bucchero cup and threw it at the wall. She'd regret that later too but right now she had to let out her rage or choke on it. She gulped air as if she were trying to drown herself with it, felt the heat of her anger burning the skin of her face and neck. The dregs of wine splashed a sprawling star on the wall. She took another cup and crushed it in her hands, and felt it slash her skin, wine dregs stinging. So thin, the bucchero, so delicate, so vulnerable when it looked so hard.

She couldn't do anything. Couldn't think, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Couldn't even cry, though breath racked her like sobs; her eyes were dry, burning. She was clenching her fists so tightly she felt a nerve in her knuckles jump. Fuck Tarquinius. Fuck him and his games and his fucking betrayal.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Rage in her head was as red as the wine stain. She was drunk on it, clumsy with it. She ripped a piece of bread again and again, into smaller and smaller pieces. The crust scratched and cut at her fingertips but still she kept tearing it till there were only crumbs. She shoved a handful into her mouth as though she wanted to choke herself, chewed them angrily, spat them out; she couldn't swallow. It was stale, anyway.

The worst of it was she'd known he wanted to move on Velx. She'd been sure of it, absolutely sure. And then he'd wrongfooted her, talking about a move on Velzna till she started believing it, and only when she was expecting him to move on Velzna did he pounce. Like a cat that wants to be sure you're looking the wrong way before it leaps up on the table and starts dragging the fish by the tail...

She kept picking away, repeating in her mind each council meeting, every word he'd said, every moment of the last two months; trying to work out just when it was she'd got it so badly wrong. But things blurred; or she'd remember one thing that he'd said, quite clearly, and repeat it aloud to herself, again and again, but she was unable to pin down just when it was that he'd said it, and whether, at the time, she'd believed it, or not. This was just picking at scabs; it would make things no better, but she kept doing it, till her mind was tired, her rage cooled.

She felt sick, the kind of empty nausea she got when she fasted too long; sick and dull. That was what came after anger; she scowled at herself. She should know better. Anger never helped. Everyone she'd known all her life had told her that, but that never helped, either.

She sat at the loom; she'd started weaving a new pattern, lozenges in blue and red and white, that when you looked at them made boxes, but boxes that shifted, depending on which colour you decided was the top, or the bottom. It was a fine illusion; not as fine as the gold threads that seemed to dance in Servius' tebenna, but she knew that was a pattern that belonged only to him, and she'd never weave it again.

She shot the shuttle through. White. White. Then blue. But her fingers were clumsy with the aftermath of rage; she couldn't get the tension right. She wove the first few threads too tight, and the fabric began to crinkle up, pulling out of true; and when she tried to correct it, she overcompensated and the weave went baggy, too loose to hold. No point persevering; she knew she'd only make it worse.

She sat, shuttle in hand, not weaving but thinking. Once or twice she tapped the shuttle on the beam of the loom, and her mouth twitched. The room began to darken; not quite evening yet, but the sun had started to decline, and the ray that had slanted across the floor had gone.

At last she heard footsteps; the councillors were leaving. One quick scurrying step; someone wanted to take the news out to the streets, or to their allies, to twist it or make use of it. She suspected those footsteps; too mouse-like, too confidential, too anxious not to make noise. Another set of footsteps, strolling, confident, relaxed. Someone wanted to convey a total lack of excitement or surprise; their steps said they had known everything that was being discussed, and they weren't surprised. Two went out together, talking; Manius was one, she thought, but she didn't recognise the other voice. Come to think of it, she wasn't certain that was Manius.

It was nearly dark by the time Tarquinius came in. She'd really thought her rage had cooled; the sight of him set it flaming again. That face she'd always thought too transparent, closed against her. She found what was nearest to hand, and threw it at him; missing him, it dug a chunk of plaster out of the wall and fell, the bronze gleaming dully in the red sunset glow.

"I thought that was your favourite mirror," he said.

"Bastard!"

His face was carefully blank. When had he learned to do that? she wondered. (Give him his due, he'd always been able to do it with anyone else; but not with her. Not with her.)

"You lied to me," she said. Only four words. Wanting to say more, afraid to.

"I lied?"

"You let me believe you were invading Velzna."

"What you believe, Tanaquil, is your own affair."

"You led me to believe it."

"I never had that intention. You have to stop thinking that everything done in the palace is done for your benefit. If you believed it... well, it was a bluff to keep Velx from arming against us. It was never directed at you."

"And you didn't see fit to inform me of your real plans?"

"I was sure you would inform yourself. You're usually well informed."

Which was true; but it didn't excuse him.

"But you signed a pact with Velx. And broke it."

"Only so they wouldn't suspect my plans."

"A broken oath."

"That's politics."

"It's an oath broken, whatever clever Greek words you use to disguise it."

"And oaths are sacred. I know, I know."

He never used to be so dismissive. Boundaries, oaths, the Hidden Ones and the Consenting; you couldn't have called him pious, but he'd always paid due respect. No more. She looked at his face and saw not the half-Greek, not the half-blood Etruscan, but only Roman; solid, unimaginative, running to fat, where she was sharp as ever, so sharp she'd cut herself as her mother had always said. Yet he held power, and power was what she'd always been interested in; only now, he seemed to be wandering further and further from her. Was that the nature of Tarquinius, or the nature of power, or was it simply, which she felt increasingly often, that Rome spoiled everything it touched? She'd loved him once; it seemed so long ago, he'd changed so much. All gone...

"Did Manius know?"

That would have hurt. Her trusted Manius, her pet sparrow on a string, sweet boy. (At his age, but she still thought; sweet boy.)

"Manius? No. he really did believe we were stalling for time."

"So did I."

Tarquinius smiled, but thinly, his face tight. "I thought you would have been better informed."

"Who by? Manius? Gaius wouldn't have told me anything. He was always your man."

At which Tarquinius grinned, like a dog before it attacks.

"That's why I like him."

"Now I see why you couldn't have sent Servius."

"I couldn't trust him. If he knew we were going to move against the Vipienas... he's been too much in their confidence. In their pocket."

"He would have told me."

"If he knew... he fucked Avle's wife, did you know?"

She stared him down, hoped he hadn't seen her eyes flicker upwards, a habit she'd never been able to break. "And Gaius?"

"Gaius did what he was told."

"Typical Roman."

"That's what will make Rome great. Or had you not noticed?"

She'd noticed. It didn't mean she had to approve.

"So tell me" – she was holding her temper back now. She wanted to learn how he'd done it. "You sent Gaius to Velzna with all his men. How did they get to Velx?"

"Simple bluff. I sent him to Velzna with Manius' detachment. His own men I sent up the coast road, through Tarchna. They holed up in a bend of the Fiore above Velx; with cliffs on both sides, well hidden, easy to defend. When we were ready, he rode fast with two men, rejoined them, marched on the city."

She thought of Velx; the high cliffs, the river gorge, cold sparkle of water below, the city above.

"You don't just march on a city like that. How did they get in?"

"The enemy were slack, Gaius said. You know Velx?"

She nodded.

"River one side, land the other. They only guarded the land side. The river side, where the cliffs plunge down to the Fiore, they thought they didn't need to bother."

Slack. That was true. "They climbed?"

"The first twenty. Up the cliffs and in."

"No one heard?"

"Foxes. Chickens. Wolves. No one raised an alarm."

"And once they were in, they opened the gates?"

"No. Only one."

Sensible, she thought. Bring all your men through one gate, and leave the enemy nowhere to run. Push them back against their own gates, then let the slaughter begin.

"Manius will never trust you now," she said.

"It was the other way around. I can't trust him. I know he told you about the attack on Tarchna."

"Which never happened."

Tarquinius laughed. "Quite. But he told you, none the less."

"It might have been Servius."

"I don't think so."

"But it might have been. You trust him a damn sight too much."

Tarquinius' eyes were cold. She didn't push the issue. In fact, it had been Manius who told her; but she wouldn't give Tarquinius the benefit of knowing for sure. If he'd managed to keep her off balance, she'd return the favour; and anyway, it was to her advantage to let him think she wasn't backing Servius, just in case (typical man, typical Tarquinius, damn fool) he took her support of Servius as a motive for sidelining him. She was out of favour, she knew that. So was Servius, for the moment; but there was no point making that worse.

Servius was ambitious, of course. There was nothing wrong with that; it was what made him interesting. She wondered how many people knew he wanted the kingship. Tarquinius? Probably not. Manius: certainly not. Faustus; yes, he'd guessed it, she thought. But what Faustus couldn't know, and she did, was that Servius was marked by the gods and by the sacred fire; he would be king. She was sure of that, and she would make sure of that.

"I'm sending Arruns to deal with things," Tarquinius said.

There'd be a good number of things to deal with; plunder to send to Rome, to pay the army – always in arrears, so there always needed to be another conquest to pay for the last, borrowing against future bloodshed. A new government in Velx. Deciding which of Velx's rulers to proscribe, to execute, to pardon. Settling Romans there; taking over the local gods. And he was sending Arruns to do it. Once, he might have sent her.

"Anyway," he said, "that's that done." And left.

Leaving her still with the question; why had he stopped trusting her? Because she would have told Servius? Because of her links to Tarchna? Did he think she hadn't left it behind as completely as he had? And that other question; how was it she'd picked up nothing from her informers? How had he hidden his duplicity? Never, in all the time they'd been married, had he outsmarted her.

She sat there for a while, rocking gently, hugging herself for comfort, clinging to her silent misery.

Marriage broken. And history broken, too; the only other city that might have proved a true partner to Rome, another city that had embraced freedom, made away with caste and class and the pure blood. It might have been what she'd always hoped Rome would be, and what Rome had never become. A stillborn future. She'd never even dared to think what it could have become, and now, it was over before it had begun.

It was dark now. Someone had lit lamps in the atrium; the masks of the ancestors on their funeral urns glowed waxy pale like the faces of the dead. One had slipped where the excessive heat of some long past summer had partly melted the wax, so that one eye drooped and the mouth seemed slack. These were not her ancestors, buried under the floor of the house in Tarchna, but the ancestors of the kings of Rome – Ancus Marcius, Numa. One was so eroded, blackened with the dust of two centuries, that the features could hardly be made out; they said that was Numitor, Romulus' grandfather, the king of Alba Longa.

Now at last, suddenly missing Tarchna – the clean air, the light, the elegance, her hand on a warm stone, her grandmother's voice, her first cat nursing its kittens – she broke down, and wept, for all the futures never born, and all the yesterdays she would never see again.

***

Servius' anger was colder than Tanaquil's, but would last as long. He'd heard the news before Tarquinius told him, but too late to do much good; from Rasce, who'd heard from one of the few soldiers to have escaped the city. On the way to the palace, early, too late to do anything about the situation, or send messages to anyone who mattered. But at least Tarquinius wouldn't have the change to surprise him; and he had enough time to marshal his thoughts, to start thinking about what line he should take.

"Velx fallen?"

"Without a fight. They got in the hard way, up the cliffs."

Damn. He'd always thought that was a weak spot, but Avle would never listen; or not enough – he'd posted a few sentries at the top of the cliff, but they'd have been easy to pick off, too far apart to defend the ground effectively. If you had climbers, good and quiet climbers, you could take the city with a few men; he knew how he'd do it, if he'd been asked, sending up an advance party and waiting till the city was quiet, then taking one of the gates from the inside. No one ever expect an attack to start behind their own lines, however well prepared they thought they were. Even so, he thought he'd left the city better defended, and said so.

"The army's fallen apart since the Change," Rasce said. "And Velzna helped. The old enemy. They had men waiting."

Men who weren't, officially, enemies. God, how slack had Velx become since he'd left?

They were already half way across the Forum; the limb to the Palatine would soon start. There was little time left. What did he need to know? Two things. Rasce could only tell him one.

"The Vipienas?"

"Prisoners."

Damn, fuck, Vanth and hell.

"Where?"

"Velzna."

"Where in Velzna?"

"In the shafts below the city."

That was bad. That was very bad. He'd hoped they'd be held at the shrine, as honoured enemies usually were, while ransom negotiations played out; but if they were in the wormholes of tufa, ransom wasn't Tarquinius' game. He wanted them dead.

He felt cold air on the back of his neck, and twitched. Drainage shafts, air shafts, cellars, where the air shifted oddly, and strange echoes confused the ear. He remembered the cave of Cacus, and Tanaquil's oracular cave; though he didn't believe that things came in threes, as the superstitious did, he couldn't help wondering why the underground spaces that made him so uneasy kept recurring in his life.

He had one more question, to which Rasce couldn't tell him the answer. He knew why he'd been kept in the dark, but Tanaquil clearly had been, too; she'd supported the truce with Velx, believed the partnership might work. Besides, he'd always thought she shared Tarquinius' policies; he'd even wondered if she made them. There could only be one reason for Tarquinius cutting her out, he realised, in a sudden insight; because Tarquinius didn't trust her not to tell him. Because for Tarquinius, Servius was Tanaquil's man.

He'd gone from son-in-law and heir apparent to outsider and suspect, dragging Tanaquil with him. He still couldn't work out when that had changed. Was it just the result of the move on Velx, making Servius an outsider again? Had Tarquinius seen Tanaquil's growing closeness, her attempts to teach him augury; was he jealous? Or was Tarquinius, as old men did, growing more suspicious as he aged? Watch out for purges, Servius thought. He ran his fingers round the neck of his tunic, feeling his skin, warm now, thinking: I'd like to keep this neck uncut.

Now he had the clarity he'd been asking for, he wasn't sure he liked it. And there would be more such moves, he was sure of it. Was Tarchna next? Or Cisra? Even Curtun?

"The old man's got conquest in his teeth. He won't let it go," he said, more to himself than to Rasce, but the older man heard, and answered.

"Like a rabid fox. Only one way to deal with them. Kill'em."

They were starting up the slope now, talking fast and low, short of breath.

"Who's on who's side?"

"Rome with Velzna. Sveama."

"Tarchna with Velzna?"

"Don't think so. I reckon Tarchna's next."

That would put Tanaquil at war with her husband. As this move had tested Servius' loyalties...

"Is this a test?"

"Test of what?"

"Is he testing me? Waiting to see if I'm loyal to Rome?"

Rasce sucked his teeth. "He left Tarchna and never went back. Expects you to be the same, I should think."

But Servius wasn't the man Tarquinius was. Tarquinius took his name from a city he'd left forever; Servius was Mcstrna, Master, still the general's boy and Avle's and Caile's. He'd stick to the Vipienas and their city the way a man always remembers his first wife. (The way he remembered the Gaulish woman he'd never married.)

Or was it a double bluff? Another of Tarquinius' tricks? Suddenly the clarity fell away, and Servius was back lost in those mazes of illusion where every move reflected another, and nothing was certain; and though he couldn't think of any reason why Tarquinius would want him to make a move, still he was suspicious, like a man suddenly blinded by strong light feeling his way along a dark road, fearing he'd stumble and fall.

***

Tanaquil woke badly, one eye gritty and crusted, the other wet, as if the tears that didn't come with rage had come with sleep. Her right arm was numb where she'd slept on it. Her stomach felt flat and hollow, her mouth full of evil tasting saliva.

She always woke badly after a rage.

At least her mind was clear, not fogged with anger.

She got up, chewed a stick, gargled with water from a jug, spat. She took a few leaves of mint to chew on, to freshen her breath and her head. Forget Tarquinius, she told herself. It's over. Think about the way forward.

She realised, now, she'd worked so much on instinct and reaction, she'd never consciously thought about her objectives; power she had had, and would have again, but what did she want to make with it? Like a potter sitting down in front of the clay; would a form suggest itself? Stone or wood were hard, they might suggest a theme; but clay was soft, you needed an idea or it would slump, unformed.

What did she want? She'd dreamed of a new and greater Etruscan confederacy; an Etruscan state open to talent, to the nations, but preserving the knowledge of the gods. A state governed by the augurs, not the kings. She'd always thought she wanted an aristocracy, but it was an aristocracy of spirit she desired, not of birth; a state where the best ruled, where grace and elegance and wiry strength triumphed over mindless warfare and brute force. A new Etruria – perhaps it was the old one, the country that her mother's tales had woven for her, or perhaps the old great Etruria had never existed, was only a dream, even for the rulers of its greatest city and their daughter. It was a dream she wanted to bring to birth.

She'd never believe the gods had set a limit to the Etruscan lands, or to Etruscan rule; Cacus said Etruria's time was ending, but she'd replace it with the rule of Etruscan Rome. The Vipienas' great Change had shown her how a city could change and evolve, doing away with the limits of caste and race; and here in Rome, where all races mingled, she still hadn't despaired of achieving her ends. And it was true the gods had never set a limit on her ambition or her power, or her knowledge; not till now.

She'd have to work with Servius; her only way forward. From now on, Tarquinius was her enemy; the old alliance broken, irreparably now.

And how strange. She'd always thought she had a clearer idea of what she wanted than Tarquinius; but now she saw it was her husband who had always known what he wanted Rome to be – a nation that conquered, whether through arms or wealth – while she'd been merely playing out the tactical forms of politics, had never thought clearly before. So many contradictions; to make young Tarquin a king in waiting, and yet she still wanted a free, an open rule, like Rome had been when they arrived...

The mint was bitter on her tongue; she'd chewed it too long. She spat it out, felt the chill of fresh air in her mouth, and shivered.

***

"I can't give you the password."

"I hadn't expected you to," Servius said.

"All I know is that Gaius took his Roman squad with him, and Arruns was sent to administer the conquest."

Anybody could have told him that. Interesting, that Tarquinius has sent Arruns and not young Tarquin; a definite hint that Arruns was the preferred heir. And if Tarquinius thought Arruns was old enough to run a conquered city, he must think Arruns was old enough for power; which meant, again, that Servius was on his way out, no longer heir-apparent or possible regent. He'd done enough here; in the normal course of things, he'd have been paid off and returned to Velx, only now there was no Velx to return to.

Ramtha had already appealed to him. Now Tanaquil was begging for his help.

"But you can't give me the password."

"Tarquinius tells me nothing these days."

A surprisingly honest admission. Cynically, he thought; honesty is the price she thinks she has to pay for my help. He wouldn't return the favour; he'd been on the edge ever since Tarquinius' council, almost ready to go over to Velx again, but he wouldn't let her know that. He would have gone already, but he couldn't think of a way to reach the Vipienas; Velzna was impregnable. (But then, Velx had thought it was impregnable, and how easily it had been taken.)

"Without the password, there's no way in. I can't break the Vipienas if I can't get to them. And without the Vipienas, there's no one to lead a revolt against Rome."

"Wasn't everyone supposed to be equal in Velx? Can't you find a new leader?"

"Given time. "

"Time and the right man. But time we don't have."

He saw her jaws tighten as she bit down on her tongue. This was difficult for her, he realised that.

"Well."

"Yes?"

"There might be a way." She was terse; she wasn't liking this. "But I'd want to know...

"What?"

"Whose side are you on?"

"We're talking sides? Rome or Velx?"

"Me or Tarquinius."

So that was how the land lay. He stared unblinking at her.

"I'm on my own side."

He didn't expect her to smile at that. A smile that started open and honest, and ended cruel and chilling.

"Well," she said again. "I swore an oath, once. An oath I'm about to break. But Tarquinius swore a pact with Velx, and broke it."

He nodded. Couldn't see where this was leading.

"You know I was trained in Velzna."

He nodded again.

"The priests and augurs have their secrets. Things the lucumos and magistrates don't know."

This was what she thought would win him over? Omens, fluttering birds, fidde-faddle?

"There's a way out of Velzna that only the priests know. If ever it came to a battle between the lucumos and the augurs, the augurs would simply disappear."

Like Cacus, he thought. An emptiness at the heart of things.

"A secret way out," he said, savouring the idea.

"A secret way in."

She told him all he needed to know. She'd sworn to the gods never to give up the secret; now she'd broken her word, but she didn't try to justify herself – he respected that, anyway, no wriggling, though she could have said, gods knew, that Tarquinius threatened the gods, that Rome imperilled the continuance of the Etruscan polity. She broke her word, and took all the responsibility for doing so on herself, no caveats or justifications or extenuating circumstances. For him, who didn't believe in gods, or not much, that was easy; for Tanaquil, who lived every day in her gods' presence, spoke to them and heard their voices in the fire or the wind, it was bravery of a high order.

There was one place he'd have to find; a tomb in a field below the cliff, with a solitary poplar standing guard over it. A shaft led down to the tomb chamber itself; and there, among the corpses of the illustrious dead, he'd find an empty chair, behind which a shield hung on the wall. Below the shield was a flagstone he'd have to wrench up, and jump down, trusting her word that he'd find a sandy floor a man's height below. Then there was the maze of passages; if he kept his hand on the right wall, he would find the right path, to a light shaft, and then a long tunnel bearing upwards into the core of the rock on which Velzna was built.

"Keep going," she said, "till the tunnel ends. Then there's a small hole in the left hand wall; wriggle through it. Jump straight down. You'll be in the open shafts then, below the temple. Remember the place; there's a handhold, a small step in the wall for your feet – you'll recognise it once you've seen it, though anyone else would pass by."

Of course, using that exit depended on the Vipienas still being in a condition to do so – if they were, indeed, still alive, a slender hope that diminished with every hour that passed. He'd more likely have to fight his way out, with a few men to carry the Vipienas, Servius thought; but at least he wouldn't have to fight his way in.

"And do you know where they're holding the Vipienas?"

"No. He hasn't even told me that."

"An educated guess?"

"The treasury. It's under the main temple; from the entry hole, straight on, and right into the main passage."

"What are the chances?"

She scowled. "They could be anywhere. It's your best chance."

"Still not a good one."

"No."

He knew he was going, however slim the chance; but he sat there for a minute, frowning, rubbing the back of his neck absently with one hand.

"Not a good chance. And the end of my hopes in Rome."

"Only as long as Tarquinius rules."

That was another boundary crossed, he thought.

"I'll do it."

"I know you will."

Sudden certainty in her voice. So even if Tarquinius told her nothing, the gods still did? He wondered. Usually with Tanaquil he could feel her mind working, balancing the probabilities, always calculating; but this was an irrevocable step for both of them; to go against Tarquinius, against Rome even. He was committing his life to her, and she knew it; and though she might deny involvement once the news broke, she'd told him far too much. She'd thrown her lot in with him, he realised, as Ramtha never had.

# Master

He thought about the damage. Arruns dead, that was the worst. A mistake. Arruns wasn't supposed to be down here in the darkness; he should have been in the temple, in the glitter and glory of his conquest. Arruns dead. The heir to Rome.

That suited him, of course. One contender for the throne gone; Tarquinius' preferred choice, even better. But it hadn't been meant. A stray thrust in the darkness. How easily that could have been one of the Vipienas. He shivered. How easily it could have been him.

Venthical of Velzna dead. He'd fallen asleep on his watch. That had made things easier. Avle had cut his throat by the time the fight got properly started.

("They let you keep a knife?"

"A sharpened brooch pin."

Typical of Avle to spend his imprisonment patiently sharpening one side of a pin on the stone wall, as silently as he could. That accounted for the man Servius had thought must have caught a blow from himself or Camitlnas, and wheeled into Avle's embrace only to collapse and die.)

Both the Vipienas alive and unharmed. Laris Papathnas Velznach killed by Larth Ulthes, noisily and messily. None of his own men dead. Out of the maze safely. That was better than he'd expected from a fight so confused, the kind of fight he always hated, rash, blind, too fast for thought, too close and crowded. You couldn't swing a sword without the risk of slashing your own men; it was all dagger thrust and wrestling and grappling, and half the time you'd win if you could make your enemy stumble or trip; not honest fighting. But then, honest or not, the point was to win.

They'd use the rest of the night to put space between themselves and the opposing cities; best, he thought, to head towards Clevsin, still neutral and likely to stay neutral despite the tightening coils of alliance that were gradually swallowing the other cities ("Clevsin's always different," people used to say when he was a boy; how long since he'd heard that?). Further plans could wait till then, when they were safe (at least he hoped they were). Retaking Velx, restoring the Vipienas, thinking out his own future now he'd broken with Tarquinius; all that could wait. Now for cold, hard riding, through drizzle on muddy tracks, till they had put all chance of pursuit behind. (How often did it rain in Velzna? And he'd had the bad luck to choose the only rainy night for weeks. Not even honest rain, but incessant drizzle that almost seemed like a haze or a mist, but he'd been soaked through almost as soon as they started.)

No talk; the road was too hard to follow, the horses often strung out along narrow tracks. ("Good horses," said Avle. "But they would be," said Caile. "With Master in charge." It shocked him a little, hearing his Etruscan name; he hadn't heard it for so long, in Rome, where he was not master but slave.) Little to eat; Larth Ulthes shared out a few handfuls of grain fried in butter; it had been hot and crisp once, but now it was cold and claggy.

"Eat it or don't, it's up to you," Larth said, seeing Camitlnas' face. Camitlnas took what he was given, but he didn't look happy with it. No one else ventured a comment.

They rode till the east was greying, the velvet dark of night sky fading to a dirty overcast. He'd be glad to see sunlight; he still hadn't quite shrugged off his fear of underground. Through the night, stray tendrils of nightmare threaded their way into his brain; he was suffocating, buried alive in damp smothering earth; he was fighting in the dark, hearing voices, feeling bodies, not knowing where to turn or who was his enemy; he was in the cave of the oracle with Tanaquil, but she turned into a huge snake with a woman's face, coiling around him, crushing him; he was squeezing through a tiny crevice, knowing there was something or someone behind him that he needed to escape, but he was stuck, couldn't get through, knew his fate was approaching; he was in the dark, and his mother had left him.

The sunlight never came, only mist. They stopped while the shapes of trees and men were still distinct; as they sat there, the fog closed in, erasing even the trees around the clearing, so they were isolated, the only beings in an empty world. Servius brewed up; a few handfuls of grain which Larth Ulthes doled out grudgingly, boiled in a pot with milk, slightly sour from long storage, and honey to sweeten it. It was poor stuff, but better than the butter-soaked grain they'd had earlier. The others crowded round the fire; but the Vipienas sat together further away, as if they felt their imprisonment had set them apart, barred them in some way from the easy companionship of their rescuers.

"Velzna's gone to the bad," Avle was saying.

"Well, they joined Rome," said Caile.

"No. That's not what I mean. They've lost touch with what they're meant to be."

"With the gods?"

"Gods be buggered."

"What then?" Servius asked.

"They're meant to have some... feeling for what Etruria is. To guide the cities of the federation."

"That sounds pretty vague."

"It has to be. If you made it more specific, it wouldn't work. It's a kind of mysticism, I suppose; not a mystery of religion but a mystery of politics. Sensing the way history is running. The way it should run."

Crap, he would have said, if anyone else had come out with this kind of stuff – vague, mystical, and self-serving; a claim to power that could be rejected, but hardly discussed or qualified. But Avle didn't spout crap. He'd always been given not to blunt speaking, no one could accuse him of that, but to very precise, reasoned statement;

"They see which way the power is running?" he asked.

"No. Not power," Caile replied, but at the same moment Avle spoke, and Caile stopped, as if embarrassed, bowing his head slightly to his brother.

"Power is a need, a lust, a desire, a means to an end." Avle stopped for a moment, as if taking care over the formulation of a rite or calculation. "Power flows, it's true. But this s deeper. Power is like a river flowing in open fields; what I'm talking about is the hidden springs of our culture, the living water flowing beneath the rock. The way we live. From the melody of a flute to keep the gymnasts' exercises in time to the clicking shuttle of a woman's weaving."

Larth Ulthes laughed humourlessly at that. "I know what comes next. You're going to say the young people don't worship the gods any more, they don't dance the Great Ring properly..."

"Shut up, Larth." Servius was out of patience, but Avle was more patient. He shook his head slowly.

"Larth, look at a Roman. Then look at an Etruscan. Can't you tell the difference? Without asking where they're from?"

"Sure. Romans talk loud. Always talking about winning. Women, war. They walk square. They've got no rhythm, they can't sing."

"That's what I'm talking about," Avle said, and smiled gently. "We sing, we have our own rhythm, we walk and live to music. We speak softly, we know lie is to be lived, that winning is less than not important. That's what we are. Fragments of divine melody. That's the treasure the priests of Velzna should be guarding. And instead..."

Caile's mouth was tight. "Yes. Instead. This." He held out his hands; round his wrists the chafe of ropes, half scabbed over.

"Winning may not be important," Servius said shortly. "But I'd like to live. Two hours' sleep, and then we'll be going. Marce Camitlnas on watch, please."

"No second?" Larth asked in surprise. You always had two men on watch; that was basic. One to watch the other; if he slept, if he was a traitor. One to watch the other's back.

"You think I can sleep?" Servius stood up. He'd stand his watch; he wouldn't sleep till they made Clevsin.

***

The real problem of course wasn't the Velzna priesthood. It was Tarquinius.

Caile put it most trenchantly. "If Velzna and Tarchna were lovers in one bed, Tarquinius would be the flea that comes between them."

Etruria had always been a loose confederacy; cities drew closer, diverged, and had diplomatic hissy fits or small and inconclusive wars; they kept different festivals and buried their dead in different ways; but behind it all, as Avle had said, there was a common Etruscan life. The wars never got out of hand; the risk of expulsion kept the cities in order. But now Tarquinius, with his Greek trained intellect and Roman tendency to brute force, had shoved a wedge into the cracks, and was slowly levering the Etruscan homeland apart. He was forcing cities to choose, Caile said: a new Etruria, more tightly linked, less loose and free, or the gradual dismantling of the confederacy by Rome. Things couldn't stay as they were; every city had to choose.

"But they don't see the choice clearly," Avle said.

"That's my point. That's what Tarquinius is exploiting. Everyone looks at his latest move and judges what advantage they can get from it; how will it change their ranking in the confederacy, their competition in trade, their chances of greater affluence or less insecurity. Little personal grudges, dormant for years, break out in rancour. And while they're looking at all these distractions, Tarquinius like a magician drawing eyes away from the real workings of his trick is slowly killing us all."

Caile, eyes and ears for his brother. Caile the spider, Servius thought, weaving and weaving with his spies and his stories, and his ability to sit in the corner unobserved, watching, listening. (Odd, because spiders in the stories were always female; and there was nothing feminine about Caile, except his eyes that never missed a twitch of the mouth or a flicker of the eyelid when someone was telling a half-truth.) Master wondered why he'd never got to know Caile; then he realised, Caile hadn't wanted to be known. It was only under circumstances as extreme as this that Caile had been able to trust him; circumstances that had pushed Master to make his choice of allegiance. And now he'd been bound to the brothers by blood, a third brother, slashing his skin to mix his blood with theirs; their red handprints on a tree's stripped bark stood witness to their oaths. Caile, his clever brother.

"Egerius," Caile said. "Egerius interests me."

"You've met him?"

"Once. He talked about poetry. And he said something interesting. 'Of course', he said, 'Rome won't get its own poet till it gets a history.' A past, I said, and he said no; a history, and that meant it had to understand itself."

"That's interesting?"

"For what it says about the way he thinks. He sees Rome as in the process of working out what its destiny is to be; a city that still doesn't know what it wants to be."

"The gods dictate our destiny. Our choice is immaterial."

"You don't believe that, Avle. What we tried to do in Velx..."

"Is part of that destiny."

Caile looked down. The shame of a chided schoolboy. "None the less. I think Egerius' plans are interesting. Collatia is his crucible; Etruscan, Roman, Greek, all melted in the fire. A new pouring, a new mould."

"It won't work," Master said. "He's too idealistic. And his army is Roman."

"And he's sponsored by Rome," Avle said. "Rome will pull him back, if he goes too far."

"He already has."

"And Tanaquil?"

"She's on our side." Master hadn't told them the whole truth about his mission; he'd let them think it was his idea, and his only. No point letting everyone know her involvement; she might be his way back to Rome, eventually. And besides, her betrayal of the Velzna priests was a secret he'd keep till he needed it.

"A true Etruscan," Avle said.

"Even if she is from Tarchna," Caile added.

"We all have our burdens to bear."

"Of course," Avle had said, "if the Etruscan cities had clearer sight, Rome might unite them rather than dividing them."

"I'd always thought so," Master said; "if a real Etruscan ruled Rome, it could replace Velzna as the heart of the League."

"You're proposing yourself?" Caile, sharp as a cat.

There was no sense in replying to that; a denial was as good (or as bad) as an affirmation. But Avle made propitiatory noises about Velzna's having lost its right to guide the Rasna, and how much progress Rome had made towards becoming truly civilised under an Etruscan (or at least half-Etruscan) ruler, and the difficult moment was passed, though Master would sometimes find himself thinking of it, later, when he was supposed to be thinking of something else, and wonder whether he was as transparent to others as he was to Caile, and how the general's training had never managed to smooth off the roughness he'd been born with.

"No," Larth Ulthes was saying to Camitlnas; "I don't care how hungry you are, you're not getting it. I'm keeping it back for tomorrow; and the day after, if we don't reach Clevsin tomorrow."

"But we will."

"Perhaps. But we might not."

"I'm still hungry."

"Well then, you're still hungry. Shut the fuck up about it."

That reminded Master; what did Caile and Avle not do, that impressed him? They didn't ask how long it would take to get to Clevsin, how much of the road was left; unlike Camitlnas (who should know better) they didn't complain about the shortness of rations, complain of thirst or hunger or tiredness. They didn't argue with his decisions, except that Avle, once, warned them off the better track Master had wanted to take; a good decision, since they heard the dull thump of hoofbeats heading down that trail a little later, and though it couldn't be the Romans – the horses were heading in the wrong direction, towards Velzna, anyway – secrecy was better, till they were secure. This, in men who'd been kept on short rations in the underworld of Velzna, whose wrists and ankles still showed the burns of rope, was admirable, and he admired it.

"Will we be safe in Clevsin?" Avle wondered.

"What is safe?" Caile raised that eyebrow again, a silent comment, subtle, deniable.

"No such thing as safety, anyway," Master said.

"True," said Avle; "you remember the story of the goldsmith from Spina?"

"The one who heard death was waiting for him, and ran away to Tarchna to escape?"

"And was killed by robbers on the way there."

"No such thing as safety," Master said again; "only different risks."

"I bet you eat it when you think we're not looking."

"I do not."

"What's the alternative plan?" Avle asked.

Master lifted his shoulders, let them fall; it would have been comic in another situation. "None."

"There's always an alternative plan," Avle said, but it was clear from his voice that even he was struggling to believe it. "You always told me that. Remember?"

"He learned that from the General," Caile said. And that was true. Days of working on strategy problems, in the dim quiet of the General's room, pushing counters across a table or simply talking through past battles, making plan on plan, alternate contingencies for every separate forking of the fates, so that random as battle often was, there was always something to fall back on. Days of "if... then", of "what if," of second and third guessing, and every time he thought he'd won, the General would introduce a further complication, and somewhere far on in the wearying chain of consequences, he'd find he had lost the battle for good.

"For once," Master said, "there's no alternative plan. For once. We get to Clevsin and we just have to hope they're on our side."

Avle's mouth tightened momentarily. He said nothing. And Caile raised his left eyebrow.

"It's a better chance than no chance," he said. "A bit better."

***

They didn't get to Clevsin the next day. Ridiculous, Master thought; such a short distance a day of forced march would have got them there, without horses, but the Vipienas were tired and weak, and he daren't push them; and they'd wasted time taking smaller tracks, and once or twice getting lost among stunted trees. They'd got into rough country where every valley turned into a ravine, where ravines led them up to nearly impassable walls of rock, where Velzna's immense rock seemed to have been swallowed up in the wallowing humps of the landscape, and haze obscured the distance, and at times only the sun kept them heading northwards.

It wasn't hard country – the hills were low, the woods scanty – but the valleys twisted and turned and betrayed your sense of orientation, and streambeds cut sharply into the earth and had to be climbed down into and scrambled up from. While if you looked down from a hill you'd have thought it a fine and easy land, green and good to look on, when you were actually down there in the middle of it, tree roots tripped you, sudden rocky spurs cut you off from the next valley, marshy bottoms proved impassable (though you didn't find out till you'd already nearly gone too far, and got wet up to the waist by falling in one of the mud wallows or hidden sinkholes).

Camitlnas was still whingeing about the food. A handful of fried grain, again – and now it was soggier than ever, almost disintegrating into rancid mush.

"It keeps," Larth Ulthes said. "Raw grain doesn't. Shut up and eat it, or go hungry; I don't care which, but just shut up."

If they'd had more time they might have got pemmican, or fruit leathers full of honey; bu as it was, Larth had grabbed whatever he could in short order, and this was it.

Towards noon they heard horses coming towards them. A dozen or so, from the sound.

"That'll be a border patrol from Clevsin," Larth said, and was all for spurring on to meet them; but Caile frowned.

"How do we know?" he said; and Master ordered the men away from the track, down a ravine that twisted as it descended, so that they were hidden from view.

"Unsaddle the horses," he said, "and let them loose."

Avle and Camitlnas glared at him, but no one disputed the order; they couldn't afford a horse's restless whinny to attract attention, and bring the riders down upon them.

"Camitlnas: you go and talk to them. You have the local accent."

"Bit rusty."

"Any of us, they'll know exactly where we're from. You might get away with it. Find out what you can. Call us out if it's safe; if not, keep going down the track. Don't come back to us."

Camitlnas nodded. For all his complaints he knew how to obey orders when he had to.

"What about the horses?"

"We must be close to Clevsin. We don't need them. The worst that can happen is we lose the horses. Keep them, we might lose our lives. Easy choice."

Camitlnas took a roundabout route to the track, climbing to the top of the ravine and skirting it through woods, to come out on the track a little further down. That was the good thing about working with soldiers who'd known you for decades, Master thought; you didn't have to tell them things like that. They knew their fieldcraft; not to leave tracks, not to lead a possible enemy to theircomrades. It was one reason he put up with Camitlnas' griping. (The pity was that over the years, so many of those trustworthy soldiers died – sometimes in action, sometimes from the blind malignancy of fate or malaria; and then you had to train new ones, so you were always behind, always trying to replace the irreplaceable.)

They waited. Once the rustle and crackle of Camitlnas' progress through the brush had died away, there was no sound but the wind in the trees and, from time to time, the groan of a great tree's trunk bending under its own weight. No birdsong, which Master realised was a sure sign of their presence; he hoped the riders on the road would not be acute enough to notice that absence. No call from Camitlnas.

"Fuck this," Master muttered after a while. "He's been gone too long."

"You think they've got him?"

"We'd have heard something. I want to know what's going on."

Then they did hear something; the track was closer than they'd thought – the turn in the ravine was a sharp one. Or perhaps it was a trick of the land, an echo of the rock face, like the strange property of some caves, where you could whisper in one corner and someone at the other end of the cave would hear you as clearly as if you were declaiming to a packed theatre. (And if it was a trick of the land, would their own voices echo as clearly to the riders on the track?)

"Clevsin's over the next rise," a voice was saying. "It's an easy track. How could you get lost?"

"Horses ran away." That was Camitlnas, his diction thickened just a little, so that he sounded both local, and a bit slow. It was a clever lie – if any of the horses made their way back to the track, he could claim them as his own.

"You didn't hobble them?"

"Must have tied it wrong, I reckon," said one of the others. "He looks stupid enough to."

"I know that accent," Caile whispered.

"Fuck," said Larth. "I'm going to sneeze."

"You're not," muttered Servius, covering Larth's nose and mouth with the palm of one hand. "I'll kill you if I have to."

"Don't you hear that nasal note?"

Servius felt Larth's jaws moving as if to bite him; he clamped his hand down hard, crushing Larth's lips into his teeth.

"Latin. Definitely a latin."

"Shit."

Larth was going limp; he hadn't sneezed, hadn't breathed, either. Master relaxed his grip a little; felt Larth's shoulders twitch, as if a sneeze was coming, and clamped down again, and as he did so, heard the sudden clatter of hooves on the track. They were riding off, whoever they were, making enough noise that they'd hear nothing else. Master unclamped his hand; and Larth finally, noisily, violently, sneezed.

And the horsemen were riding south, away from Clevsin; towards Rome.

"That's a fly in the winecup," Caile said. "You think they got to Clevsin before us? Or just a coincidence?"

There was no way to tell.

***

After they'd caught the horses and harnessed them again; after they'd caught up with Camitlnas, and he'd confirmed one of the riders, at least, was a Latin speaker ("though that doesn't mean he was from Rome," he added, which was true, though not much comfort), they struck out over the rise, still keeping to the goat paths and villagers' trails. Master wondered if he'd made the right decision, hiding in the rough country rather than choosing the high road and greater speed; if the Romans had overtaken them, as the lost day would have enabled them to do, Clevsin might not be safe. But those Latins might not, after all, have heard the news from Velzna; they might be travelling south from trading in Felsina or Spina, or the horse fairs of the northern plain. Risks and chances, risks and chances, that was everything in war; Master wondered for a moment if he was over-committed to this plan of heading for Clevsin. Couldn't he change it? Wasn't it sheer foolishness to head into Clevsin now? These were the worst odds he'd ever faced.

"Wondering if we stick to the plan?"

Caile was too sharp, sometimes. Master's face tightened. He nodded briefly.

"I don't see any alternative. Unless we bypass Clevsin and head up north, to Felsina, even into Gaul. We'd be safe, but that would put an end to our dreams. No return to power, no new Etruria, no challenge to Velzna."

"Life in the shallows," Avle said. "Stagnant water. Drifting."

"But it's too much of a risk. After what we heard."

"What did we hear?" Caile asked. "A Latin accent. A bit of laughter at Camitlnas' expense."

"And they rode south."

"And if they'd been pursuing us, they would have ridden north."

That was a fair point.

"If you want to save yourself," Avle said, "you can keep heading north. You had a Gaulish woman once, I remember. Head for Gaul. Be safe. We'll wait a day, then give ourselves up to whatever Clevsin and the hidden gods have in store for us. You've done your job. Go. Take your men with you. Go safely."

But when they breasted the rise, and saw the city ahead of them, and the gates open, Master and his men were still with them, and they entered the city together.

# Tarquinius

Grief bit at him, clawed the softness of his organs. He felt himself almost fainting from pain, from weakness, from the emptiness left when tears have dissolved and ripped away the whole of what you used to think was your self, and there is nothing left inside. Arruns was gone. Arruns my son, Arruns my prince, Arruns the king of Rome that would never be. Arruns the good boy, who had always done what his father wanted; not like the recalcitrant, the obstinate, the wilful Tarquinius – named for his father, but so unlike him, except for that wildfire intelligence which came as much from Tanaquil as from him. Arruns who, sometimes, seemed to have had no life but what was given him by rank, by title, by duty; who was conscientious to a fault, who conformed to what was demanded of him, who had the solidity you needed to command Romans, which Tarquin would never understand. Arruns, dark handsome Arruns with his hair cut short the Roman way, quarter greek, three-quarters Rasna, all Roman.

He wished he'd spoken to Arruns more. Wished he'd known him better, without the distance that always came between a commander and his man, the distance Romans kept between omnipotent father and subservient son. Wished he'd made him co-ruler last year, when he first thought of it, or at least mentioned that thought to his son. Wished he'd not let Master come between them. Words unsaid could never now be said. There was always time, he'd thought, but now time had run out and there was only death, and emptiness, and a new mask in the atrium in whose waxy lineaments he could not recognise any likeness. Arruns, best of them all.

Tarquinius felt Arruns had been ripped out of his body, like a woman birthing a child to death. He felt himself diminished in his son's death; his blood ran more thinly in his veins. And the whole operation in Velzna had gone wrong. Manius had betrayed him; Servius had disappeared; Tanaquil had gone into a sulk, and barred her doors, and sent the message that she was weaving a funeral sheet, though for whom she didn't say.

And Gaius was dead, dead at no man's hands but through a sudden chill, a quick fever that had eaten him in three days. The one man he'd known he could depend on had let him down; died without sending word from Velzna, died without finishing the job. The Vipienas were free, and all the men he trusted were either traitors or dead, and Tarquin had gone off to Capua, in a sulk. Sulking like his mother.

"You always loved Arruns," Tarquin had said. (Not "loved Arruns more," the usual whinge of second sons. Was that Tanaquil's doing, turning the boy against his father?)

"Arruns did what he was asked to do," Tarquinius said, and as he said it realised what a paltry epitaph it made.

"So did I. And more. You never even came to give me the cup when I won the chariot race that first time."

"We were at war. Have you forgotten?"

"We were at war when Arruns drilled his first command, but you made time to take his salute."

"That was different."

"That was Arruns."

"It was the army."

Tarquin had just scowled, and turned his back on his father.

So. Sulking. Sod it. He'd never liked Tarquin's moods. Even the infant Tarquin had bitten his mother's breast for spite when her milk failed; he had screaming fits that lasted for hours, and unlike most children he wouldn't cry himself to sleep, but relapse into a sullen silence, turning his back on everyone in the house, refusing any comfort. This was just another of Tarquin's tantrums, Tarquinius reassured himself, despite an uneasy feeling that he'd done something wrong, that this time there was no going back to the hostile silence that passed for peace between him and his son.

Under the sharpness of his grief he perceived a dull ache, a sense of wrongness like a rotten tooth that you realise too late was there in the first small tight headache. It had been growing for some time. Tarquin's friends; Etruscan wasters, the kind of aristocrats with pretensions who judged you on your earrings or your bloodline and were incapable of calculating the return on a merchant voyage or leading a line of hoplites into battle, but still felt the world belonged to them like a ripe apple ready to be bitten into. They'd core you and throw you away if you didn't belong to their clique; the kind Tanaquil and he had hated, had fled Tarchna to escape, and now here they were in Rome and his son was best friends with them. No, was in bed with them, if he knew Tarquin, in bed with the whole fucking lot, the women and the men and the smooth ones and the hairy ones.

(He did Tarquin an injustice. There were no hairy ones. They were all smooth, smooth as yoghurt beaten with oil. Which Tanaquil had always said was inedible without a dose of salt.)

He tried knocking again on Tanaquil's door. She must have known it was him. He listened for a minute; no sound inside, but he was sure she was there. Not even the sound of breathing or the odd scuffle of an uncomfortable body shifting position.

"Tanaquil?"

Silence again. But he was certain she was inside.

"Tanaquil. Please."

"That's an improvement on 'Tanaquil you bitch'."

She was behind him; he'd been wrong. He was too often wrong these days.

"I never saw you go out."

"You weren't watching."

He thought he had been. He must have dozed, or been sitting head in hands weeping when she crept out; and she could creep, like a cat on its belly.

"Tanaquil, how do we put back together..."

"We don't."

"I had to do what I did."

"No. You didn't." She put her hand on the door, not so much, he felt, to open it, as to prevent him from doing so. She laid claim to her own space; a step forward would be invasion, a battle deadlier though less bloody than the events in Velx.

"You didn't even shed blood for Arruns."

"How would you know?"

She looked at his forearms, slashed where the knife had spilt his blood in mourning. His scabs itched; one had cracked, blood seeping through again, smearing when he moved. Her long sleeves might hide her scars; then again, they might not. She'd never loved Arruns the way he had. She'd mourned the invasion of Velx as if it had been a death and not a necessary deception; she'd cut herself then.

There was no speaking to her now; nothing he could say would placate her, anything he could say would humiliate him. She looked at him as if he were already dead. He turned, and went, half stumbling, his eyes misty with age and hurt.

There were enemies everywhere; he'd known that for so long and now they were coming out of hiding, declaring themselves. And he was still sleeping badly, owls or no owls. Just age, Gaius would have said; but where was Gaius now with his practical good sense? He drank too much, in an attempt to drink himself into sleep or stupor, but then he'd wake suddenly, needing a piss, and be unable to sleep again. He stank of stale wine, when he smelt himself, and he couldn't sleep with the stink. Or he dreamt of his days in the marshes, digging the Cloaca Maxima, days that had been bright and full of joy, but in his nightmares he was caught fast in the mud, sinking helplessly into it, or lost in an interminable tunnel with no light at either end and the walls closing in on him.

One night he heard scratching against the wall. He spent that whole night sitting up, his sword resting between his knees, in case they burst in on him. The darkness was full of fear and enemies. Full daylight woke him from a light slumber; he'd cut his finger, not on the sword but on a fastening of the scabbard that had come loose. In the light, it was easy to see it had only been the crooked fig tree's branches twisting against the rock. He had the tree cut down. (Later, he remembered the pleasure he used to take leaning out of his window to pick the ripe figs in summer, a pleasure he would never have again.)

From then on he slept with a guard lying outside his door in the atrium, and another posted under the window. He would have slept with a guard in his chamber, but he no longer knew who to trust.

***

"Velx won't deal with us," Manius said.

A lesser man, or a Roman perhaps, would have thumped the table, but Tarquinius merely tightened his grip on the winecup he held till the colour bleached out of his knuckles.

"That was treachery," he said.

"Even so. They won't deal with us. And nor will Tarchna."

"What's it got to do with them?"

"Perhaps they see what you're doing."

"What am I doing?"

"Splitting the federation," Manius said. "It's amazing you've got away with it this long."

"Velzna will gather the League," young Tarquin said.

"Velzna is ours."

"The territory, maybe. But the Vipienas will gather the League."

"We can't let that happen," Tarquinius said. "They should be dead."

"It was a clumsy move to let them go."

"We didn't let them go. They were taken."

"By your friend Servius."

Of course Tarquin had never liked Servius, or Servius' closeness to Tanaquil; but now Servius was Tarquinius' friend, Tarquinius' problem. Tanaquil, naturally, smiled like a cat at the news the Vipienas had escaped; but like a cat that had carefully licked its paws free of the cream, there was no way to prove her guilt, and she knew it.

Tarquinius had known Tarquin would be a problem, but he'd had little choice. With Gaius dead, Egerius not yet recalled, Arruns dead, Servius a traitor, he'd had to bring Tarquin into the council. Tarquin's mind was bright as his mother's, the hard brightness of polished stone, but he'd attacked his father twice already today.

"Clumsy and dishonest."

Leaving Tarquinius naked in front of the world; his policies ripped away, he was bare and shamed.

"We have a strong enough army now to face them all," Manius said, with the slight whine of a man pleading for peace in a drunken brawl.

"It's too soon," Tarquinius said. And Tarquin smiled.

"Why did you start it, then?"

***

Round the hills of Rome, the Salii danced the boundary, sang the city's bounds. This year as every year, marking out the city's space, as every Etruscan city would; as the wolf-men already had, running around the hill in the February fogs, baying and shouting. It was important to commemorate the boundaries, the divisions between places and times and nations; each thing had its place, and if you didn't know what that place was, how would you know when you'd ended up somewhere else, somewhere completely different? Though Tarquinius kept having the feeling that he had ended up somewhere else, a place that only looked like Rome but that he didn't quite recognise, peopled by hinthials that looked like the people he knew, but weren't; he had a dream one night that he'd caught a struggling Tanaquil in his arms, and tore off the haughty mask she was wearing, but under that mask her face was just another mask, and beneath that another, so that he wondered if she had a real face at all, or was hollow all the way through till there was nothing left but air and whispers.

The Salii were leaping, all young men, all tall young men, all leaping, their feet together, into the sun. There was no music for this dance, only the rhythm of swords beating on shields, and the sound of their feet on the ground, and shouting. It was a dance of power, aggressive, wild; but it was also graceful as a cat's sudden spring. It stirred Tarquinius in a sway he'd almost forgotten. As he grew older, he was often moved to easy tears – by a view in the sunset, by a glimpse of a woman's shoulder, by a small act of kindness – but rarely did anything move him this way, so that his guts leapt and his heart missed a beat.

And there was Tarquin among the young men leaping his own length in the air, tucking his legs up under him, turning as he leapt, the golden stitching on his cloak flashing in the cold March sun. He clashed his sword on his shield, dull iron on polished bronze, and leapt again, his stomach tight, eyes gleaming.

"We might have to defend the bounds in earnest," Tanaquil had said to him when they spoke. She hadn't added "thanks to you," but long marriage left Tarquinius able to read her silences; silences that could be more potent than words. Peace held, for the time being, though every day brought further reports of negotiations and alliances between the Etruscan cities.

Tarquin's muscles shone polished bronze, slick with sweat and sweet oil. Tanaquil was admiring him, Tarquinius saw, and for once he wasn't jealous; she'd told her son to join the Salii, and though he'd ignored his father's wishes in the matter, one word from his mother was enough. She'd told him not, for once, to leap higher than everyone else; and for once, he'd seen the point of her advice. But he still shone; the magnificent prince.

"The prince Rome was meant to have," Tanaquil breathed, her pupils huge with drunken joy; for once not cool, not controlling her diplomatic mask.

She didn't say "and not Arruns". She didn't need to. Tarquinius felt diminished in his love for his first-born; dour, dumpy, diligent, all the things Tarquin wasn't. All the things Rome was, and would be, unless they leavened it with Etruscan lightness – quickened it with Etruscan seed. (And that last, of course, was something young Tarquin had chosen as a personal mission.)

"The prince to defend our borders?"

She didn't let that rile her. "If we have to."

However much some of the old Romans liked to dismiss the Salii as acrobats and entertainers, leaping for five hours, resting only during the walk from one dancing place to the next, deserved respect. These youths would fight as well as they danced, their shields and swords were heavy steel and bronze, not wood and leather fakes. But the banquet afterwards was pure Etruscan luxury; Tarquin came resplendent, having washed, and gulped seven large cups of water, and put on the purple tebenna of royalty, and a garland of laurel leaves modelled in pure gold, shining with the authentic dull gleam of the real, soft metal. The aulos, strident, animated the air with the rhythmic bleating of its drone against a lively melody with a chromatic twist that caught the ear, that you knew would somehow infect every musician in Rome within a month or two, that you'd hear again and again till you were sick of it; but now, the first time, it was still startlingly original, like a touch of vinegar in a sweet cake.

Now there was more dancing, though not for the Salii, who held court on their couches; and not for Tarquinius, at least not after the first circle dance.

"Do I have to?" he'd asked Tanaquil.

"You do."

"But it's a completely archaic ritual. Gods know, we never even bothered with it in Tarchna."

"We didn't need to. Real Etruscans" – Tarquinius was no longer sure whether she counted him as one or not - "don't need perfection in the rites. But Rome is still learning. If we don't make sure that the Etruscan rites are performed, they'll be doing something else; and whatever that something else is, it's not likely to be civilised."

"It's still archaic," he grumbled, but he allowed himself to be led into the dance with only as much protest as a man growing older, who'd already drunk a little too much, could be excused for making; and after two rounds of the circle, he excused himself, linking the hands of those on either side of him and taking to his couch.

Tanaquil sat on one side; Tarquin lay on a couch below his father's.

"I'm glad to see you using a chair, mother," said Tarquin; "that's a return to the old ways of Etruria. A pity father prefers to laze."

Tanaquil smiled sourly, and shifted her weight in the chair.

"That's not the point," she said, "and you know it isn't. It's another of these little Roman ways of making women uncomfortable."

Tarquin's smile was as false as hers; all teeth and knowingness. "Of course father should have a chair," he said.

"And so should you, come to that."

But Tarquinius was talking now, about his election. Why should he remember that today? His mind seemed to wander more, recently; strange things would pop into his mind, or he'd find himself reliving some experience from years before. Or did he just feel the need to remind Tarquin that kings were made by gods, not human impatience?

He wasn't even sure he remembered it that well any more... He'd retold the story so many times, and every time felt it growing more distant. The words he used to tell it were closer in his memory than the reality; as if the words had replaced the thing, and the story had become the man. And now he was telling the story of how the bird had stolen his cap, and laughing at the superstition – it was a bird, nothing more, but even as he said it he knew that no one would believe that disingenuous modesty, that the Romans would claim him as that divinely elected king; but he got the laugh, anyway. "And Tanaquil says it's all because I got a kick in the head from some overgrown pigeon." Part of the privileges of being a king was that people laughed at your jokes, once they realised they were jokes; or to be cynical, that people laughed a couple of seconds after you laughed. There had been a time when he knew his jokes were funny; now, he could never be sure. But this time, at least, the roar went up before he began to guffaw himself, so the joke must be a good one; or else they'd been well trained to recognise that particular joke by now.

Only Tanaquil didn't laugh, and he saw her eyes narrow.

# Tanaquil

So he'd become a Roman now. A Roman and a clown, courting the favour of the wolf-descended sheep-shaggers by jeering at the gods he'd deserted. The fool, the utter fool. As if the gods wouldn't punish him for it. And if they wouldn't, she would...

She hardly recognised the man she'd pursued, the man she'd married. Age wrought changes in them both; but it wasn't time that had made him lazy, that had made him value the approbation and applause of commoners and outlaws above his race, his city and his gods. He'd been chosen by those gods; his youth had been golden. He had transformed Rome, from a muddle of outcasts' earth-walled huts to a well-ordered, fine city; but Rome had transformed him, from a golden child to a poison-skinned toad, coarsening and dulling him, bringing him down to the level of the lowest of his subjects. Would that have happened if they'd stayed in Tarchna? Couldn't he have become lauchme after all? Things did change, sometimes; one of her cousins had married a Gaul – not taken her as concubine, a real marriage – and the rest of the family had taken the flame-haired, slight woman to their hearts. Perhaps in Tarchna he'd have been happier; Arruns would have grown up less dour, Tarquinia less sullen, he himself would have retained that interesting moodiness she'd always rather liked, as well as his looks.

No. No, that was all behind them, and that had been the way it had to have been. She'd managed to cling to her Etruscan way of life and the old gods, and to the prophecy that had been shown to her; and Tarquinius had failed. Now he was hearing owls; that decided it. She knew, now, that the gods had marked him for death, as they'd once done for kingship.

She'd listened, when he first mentioned the owls. She'd heard nothing. There was nothing to hear. They called only for him.

Where did the time go? She wondered sometimes, keeping vigil through a long night. Sleep came so rarely now, her hours of unconsciousness so exiguous, condemning her to wakefulness and thought. Long bleached hours, melancholy like the smell of dried roses. She wished she could sleep; she never felt tired, but it would have stelled the restlessness of her mind. Time went so slowly in the night, without the sun to tell it, only the wick of the lamp burning down slowly, needing to be trimmed, a solitary landmark in the wastes of the dark. Yet time had gone so quickly; how had so many years gone? When had she seen that first white hair in her braids, detected that faint crepiness to her skin?

Life was like a badly told story. It seemed long at the time, but when you thought back, there were only disconnected episodes, flashes of vision, loose ends. It was the things that were lost that she remembered best; one of Demaratos' kraters with a glossy black squid in the bowl, that she'd dropped one day. Or a lion-headed bracelet she had seen in Tarchna once, and not bought, and dreamt all night about; then when she went back, late the next day, after her father had her translating Greek all morning, it was gone, and she never saw another one like it. Earliest of the memories that broke her heart; the bright crimson blanket she'd sucked as a child, that was taken away from her when she was four. Time for her to grow up, her father had said.

One night she'd been woken by a commotion in the palace; a scuffle, shouting, the shifting glare of a torch in the dark. Tarquinius was struggling with two armed men, yelling "Murder! Murder!" as they tried to smother his screams. One seemed to be trying to put a cloth over his face, while the other held his arms behind his back, but such was Tarquinius' desperate energy that he was dragging the two men across the floor, like a bull attacked by small dogs.

She'd squinted against the glare, hidden behind the curtain that hung across her door. It had looked bad, very bad; she calculated how far it was to the window, whether she could get there and climb out before the assassins reached her. How had they got into the palace? Where were the guards? And why were these assassins so incompetent at their trade? If she'd been one, Tarquinius would already have been dead, and quietly, too. There was something wrong about the whole thing...

Then the torchlight fell on one man's face and she understood exactly what was wrong.

She marched out, angry, clouting one of the two men across the head, not caring that her hastily caught up tebenna was falling from one shoulder, exposing her naked breast.

"What the hell are you doing? Idiot!"

"Lady Tanaquil..."

Useless. She turned to the other guard. "Explain! Or are you tongueless as well as gormless?"

"He was breaking out of the king's rooms."

"Well?"

The second guard, with his hand still clamping a gag across Tarquinius' mouth (which might have been a good thing), decided to be helpful.

"We thought... someone's been up to no good, maybe it's an assassin, maybe a thief, anyway, we'd better grab him."

"You'd ascertained his identity?"

Silence. Gods, they were stupid. Words of one syllable, then.

"You found out who he was? You know who he is?"

"Well..."

Stupid-but-talks could see Tanaquil's foot tapping dangerously with barely suppressed temper; he helped his once more speechless colleague out.

"Whoever this guy is, he shouldn't have been in the king's rooms."

"The king shouldn't have been in his own room?"

The man looked stupidly at her. A single word came out of his mouth: "But..."

She found out later that the two men had never done guard duty before; they'd been in Rome for two weeks. Not their fault really that they were so stupid; but who in Vanth's darkest hell had assigned them to this duty? Things were falling to pieces, and whose fault was that? Tarquinius didn't seem to care any more. He'd got used to Servius taking all the decisions from day to day, and now Servius was gone, couldn't get things back under his own control, or perhaps had got too used to the ease of having someone else do everything; so a series of commanders of varying degrees of competence and effectiveness came and went, with varying tenures depending on their competence or lack of it, or in one case on a decided lack of diplomacy when dealing with Tarquinius, who – despite his lack of interest in running things – tinkered and interfered, once too often for that commander. (And that one, of course, had been the best; the one real professional, the one left from Servius' high command. The one you really didn't want to lose.)

Tarquinius was livid about the incident, but once the men had been punished (which she wouldn't have done, or only by assigning them to a task commensurate with their abilities, which only a clever man would have regarded as punishment, and they weren't smart), he lost interest in tracking down who had ballsed up on the rostering; Manius, prompted by Tanaquil, did find out, and asked for the officers who had let the two Stupids into the Palatine to be reassigned, but his orders were countermanded by Tarquinius, whose friend the father of one of the officers had been.

So nothing was done. And Tarquinius kept hearing the owls; and she heard nothing, only the wakeful silence of the Forum, and a vixen screamed, once, in the distance.

Rome was sliding into chaos; worse than chaos, into farce. She'd not have believed the two Stupids if she'd seen them in the mime, faces chalked and half-masked.

She remembered teaching Servius augury. He'd so nearly understood what she had offered him; she felt he must have, once, been close to the gods, however sceptical he liked to seem now.

She'd told him augury was always difficult. She knew he found it so; he was afraid of it, as perhaps men always were, afraid of losing themselves, the precious selves they invested so much of their lives into constructing, instead of simply being, as women knew how to do. For her, it was a difficult in another way; so vague, inchoate, unformed, imprecise, that it was hard to pin down, hard to mould it into the meanings that everyone wanted.

But not this time. As if the early morning mists over the Tiber had cleared, first in tiny steam-like tendrils lifting, then dispersing more generally, till the hard lines of reality could be seen, the branches and the twigs and the smallest buds on the trees etched in black with glittering highlights of dew; so now she knew the meaning of those owls, and she knew what the hidden gods needed her to do.

# Tarquinius

It was a couple of days after that banquet that Tanaquil told him she was leaving Rome.

"There's a place in the country," she said.

"One of your temples?"

"No, actually. A small villa. Up near Veii."

He didn't ask how she'd acquired it.

"You don't have to go. Stay and be queen of Rome."

"I don't trust you. More to the point, you don't trust me."

Which he didn't, of course. What could he say? While he was thinking of something to say that wasn't a cliché, or a lie, or beside the point, she had turned to go.

"I thought you'd at least stay to look after Tarquin," he said, but that moment of hesitation had lost him whatever was left in their marriage.

"Tarquin is his own man now," she said, without looking back.

She really had given up, then. Not even to defend her son, her so much loved Tarquin; that was the clearest sign he could have wanted. He didn't need to look at her face; he knew her eyes would be blank, like men wounded in battle who know they're dying. Her country retreat posed no threat to him; the villa would never become the centre of a clique of exiles, the focus of plots. There were no plots left in her. And even so, he thought he ought to stop her, even just for form's sake. A last desperate attempt.

"But who will take the omens?"

She shrugged, as if she couldn't hear the rawness he was sure was in his voice. "That's all you care about? You have plenty of augurs. Plenty of people who can look at pigeons' guts."

She left. The air in the room seemed to whirl for a moment, and then was still.

# Master

Velx had changed. If Master went out at sunrise it looked the same as it always had, before the city began to stir; only some of the houses were streaked with red paint thrown at their whitewash, where whole families had been proscribed, and the gates of others stood open, torn from their hinges in the riots. But as the day progressed the changes became more visible; the tents and shelters set up in the courts of the great mansions, the kitchens at the corner of streets where cooks splashed ladles of spelt porridge into chipped earthenware, and soldiers and the indigent sat in the street to consume it. Velx had wanted to be a city where all were equal, but now it was a city where all were equally poor.

Well, it was convenient for him, in one way; he was just another veteran, as far as anyone knew; another soldier without an army, whose possessions ran to a sword and a bedroll and for whom even a razor represented impossible luxury. That was convenient too, in its way; his old acquaintances wouldn't know him now, wild bearded and with his hair cropped close, so close the scar of an old wound showed, raised and pale, through the stubble.

Ramtha had walked past him in the street yesterday, so close he'd felt the air stir as she passed, and she'd showed no sign of recognition. Once or twice, on the faces of men he'd known, he saw a vague querying expression, as if they'd recognised something in his features, but couldn't remember what it was. Or it might have been that they were simply trying to remember something else, where they were due to meet someone or whether their wages would last the month, and when they did remember, their faces relaxed, and one of them shrugged and smiled to himself, and they passed on.

The rich were no longer rich, in Velx. But the poor were poor. But there were no children in the gutter, shouting for money or food, as there were in Rome; everyone was fed, the same utilitarian slop, but they all got it, and all waited patiently for their turn. And another thing; there were no slaves.

The Romans had left Velx alone, pretty much. The Roman detachment hadn't taken over the Vipienas' mansion, but camped outside the city, defended by walls of earth and wood; they rarely came into Velx, and when they did, it was armed, in numbers, as if they were afraid.

One day he'd seen ten Roman soldiers smashing a shrine. Hadn't realised what it was about till they'd gone, and he read what was left of the words "father of the city"; Avle Vipienas had become a god, then. Gods weren't worth much if they could be smashed so easily. Then again, gods, like words, might be made of nothing, but they could break men and empires. 'AVLE' scrawled on a wall, a splash of wine dried dark on the road below; that would have meant nothing to the Romans, but it was another sign of resistance.

He'd been here for two weeks now, leaving the Vipienas brothers in the north to collect more forces. They'd had some luck; Felsina had joined, and Spina – "though what the hell do we need ships for?" Avle had asked – and Arretium was getting closer to making a full commitment, and had sent a few volunteers, good experienced men, well armed, which was a good omen for their future support, if you believed in omens. Velathri too was coming over to the Vipienas' way of thinking, though that was a hard slog; and if they got Velathri, they'd have access to the mines, and that meant better weapons and more of them. But in the south, Velzna stood with Rome, and Cisra and Tarchna were looking the other way, like bystanders pretending not to see a rape for fear they'd be the next targets. That left only two possibilities; first and best, the chance that the Southern League could be brought into play. Then they'd have forces both north and south of Rome, and they could smash it like a crab shell between two rocks. But the Romans had never posed a threat in the south; and ***Capua's*** lauchme was a hard negotiator, and wanted too much out of a deal, so that might not happen. Second possibility, and a long shot as well, was that Velx and some of the other Roman held cities might rebel, if they knew an Etruscan army was approaching from the north; but Servius was running a fearful risk sneaking back into Roman territory.

He was still unsure whether Velx would serve the purpose. Should he have started elsewhere? The Avle-cult, and he was sure now it was a cult, was a good sign; the will was there. But the city was so desperate, so poor; many veterans, few weapons. They'd have to be supplied with arms from the north, and unless Velathri came in, that wasn't going to be easy. But at least with Velx, he knew where to start; with Ramtha.

***

She was still living in the palace, though the palace had changed since he was last here; bare dirt paths crossed the unwatered lawns, and half the trees had been broken down, and the stillness that had once reigned here had been broken too – dirty children chased each other through the corridors, and scrawny old men squatted under the colonnades, each with his few possessions, canteen and water pot and in one case a grubby, half-unwound scroll, set out neatly on his bedroll. The slaves had taken over the palace, and sent grandeur and taste packing. (He thought at first that was the Romans' doing, rubbing privileged Etruscan noses in the dirt; but it was Ramtha's idea, people told him, opening the palace to the families of the war dead, to the veterans and the needy.)

Getting to see Ramtha would be easy. Meeting her secretly would be more difficult; she was surrounded by gatekeepers. Her own guards, her own women; he knew them all, had trusted them all, back then. But these were new times. Any of them could be taking Roman money. Or one might by pure enthusiasm lead the watchers, and no doubt there were watchers, to him.

At least she'd not been imprisoned or executed. Probably just typical Roman blindness; Roman women being what they were, the Romans didn't think any woman could be a political power. (Strange, that, when you considered; couldn't they even work out what Tanaquil was doing?) And there were no Romans in the palace; no new faces among her bodyguard, among the servants. He thought, though, she had a new lover; well, it wasn't the first time she'd taken the commander of her bodyguard to bed. That ruled out what had been his first thought, that he might wait in her rooms till the household retired. Everything she did, she did publicly; never alone, always surrounded by a whirling, glittering flock of servants, or by petitioners, dependents, the grateful and the adoring. If Avle had become a god, she was on her way to managing her own deification. (How could the Romans be so blind?He waited. He observed. He wished there was anyone he could trust.

He kept looking for that tiny gap in the household's timetable, an interstice in the routine where Ramtha would be on her own. There was none; she might be alone at some points, but there was never a certainty that she would be. And he needed certainty, on this one point, since he could be certain of nothing else.

Days passed with their gods' dedications, that luckiness or unluckiness, though each day was alike to him a waste, the shrivelling of hope. Each day gone saw the Romans consolidate their power, the Vipienas look less and less likely to challenge. The worst of it was that there was no deadline, no certain day on which he'd know his mission had failed; just the inevitable erosion of time, the continual expectation that further delay would discourage the Vipienas' allies and see them defect to Rome. He had to keep trying yet he knew his chances were withering away.

Then one day when he was in the kitchen court, listening to the cooks' conversation as the flute played and they pounded and kneaded and mixed, things changed.

"Full moon tomorrow," one of the servants said, and he thought; nearly a full month I've been here, and I've achieved nothing, nothing but eat, sleep, shit. Are the Vipienas waiting for news? Or have they given up hope? Do they even, really, expect me to come through with anything, or have they sent me here out of kindness, to give me something to do even though they know we Etruscans are a forlorn hope?

Then suddenly, he realised he had his chance. Full moon. The full moon that governed women; the moon that Tanaquil watched all night on this one night of the month, alone in the temple. Alone.

"You do the same as in Tarchna?"

"What's that then?" The servant kept pounding the meal in her mortar.

"Oh, you know.... women...." he said, deliberately vague.

"And men? Huh!"

"I didn't mean..."

"I bet you didn't." He watched the muscles in her big arms as she pounded, in time to the flute's relentless music.

"Well, maybe a bit. But don't you go to the temple?"

"Ramtha does."

"You don't."

"Don't have to," she said, looking up for a moment. "One for all. She does it. I've got better things to do than watch the moon all night."

"One for all?"

"Just her, yes."

"Turan's left tit," he said. "Easy life. In Tarchna they all do it."

"That so?" she said incuriously, and tipped the pounded spelt out of her mortar. He shrugged.

***

It took him rather longer to ascertain that Ramtha would certainly be alone; unguarded, unwatched. He was methodical, knowing exactly what pieces of information he needed; the timings of her arrival and departure, the route she would take, the layout of the temple (though that, of course, he knew from long before; but it was necessary to check these things, otherwise unwelcome surprises had a habit of happening). Each single item of knowledge he took from a different source, slipping it easily into a conversation, so that none of his informants would be likely to remember anyone asking questions about the vigil. And the temple he checked himself, taking a flask of wine to pour a libation and a pottery phallus to dedicate to the god, so anyone looking on would think here is a man who wants children, or perhaps a man whose middle age has brought a wavering and uncertain erection with it, and in both cases they'd be wrong, but that wasn't the point.

As he'd hoped, nothing had been moved since he'd last been in the temple, a couple of years ago now; nothing, practically, since his childhood. The massive black wood Tinia still scowled down at visitors, not a thunderbolt-hurling, angry god like the Greeks', but a darkly brooding god of stillness and great age. The deity was hewn from a single tree and as big as one, like the immemorial oaks in the forest under Amiata; a great crack opened black on one side. Only its two stark staring silver eyes pierced the dimness with the question; are you worthy to live? And few would have dared to answer 'yes'.

They'd search the temple, of course; he'd found out when. And then it would be closed, and sealed, till Ramtha arrived, and sealed again behind her. Anyone not raised on the General's lessons in strategy would have devoted themselves to finding a way into the temple after the search, or after Ramtha's entrance; but he knew the quality of the guards he was dealing with, and he knew the terrain; there was only one entrance, those huge wooden doors studded with nails driven in every year. In hundreds of years, hundreds of bright-headed bronze nails had stained the dark wood green with verdigris, but the doors were strong as they'd ever been, reinforced with thick bars on the reverse side. There'd be no getting through by force, and fraud he could rule out; even a diversion wouldn't work on the guards he'd trained himself, not unless he burned the whole city down, and even then he thought they'd leave two competent officers (one to guard, one to guard the guard). Besides, if he was right about Ramtha's new lover, there was no way the head of the bodyguard was going to break security.

That meant only one thing; he was going to have to be hidden in the temple before the searchers came. In all the histories, of course, there'd be a hiding place known only to the initiates, of which he would have secret knowledge and in which he could conceal himself; but no such thing existed in Tinia's shrine, or if it did, he had never heard of it. Hiding behind the statue might work, but only if the searchers were incompetent the same went for hiding behind the tapestries and bright hangings that covered the walls.

He stood in a dark corner of the temple and looked. A single great door, two leaves that folded back against the wall. He thought of hiding behind one of those, but quickly discarded the thought; even if that wasn't one of the first places the bodyguards would search, it would mean Ramtha discovered his presence too quickly, as she shut herself in the temple, while the guards were still within earshot, before the door was bolted. She might not even recognise him, only an assassin in the dark; the would be a disaster.

Three great rooms under a single roof. Huge walls dividing them. Nowhere to hide.

Then he looked again at the roof. Huge beams laid across, massive triangular trusses. Beams wider than a man.

Beams wider than a man. If he could get up there, he could lie on top of the beam, or better, along the wall dividing the cellae, where the shadows clustered thickest. It was a risk; someone might glance there, though the light would be dimming when they came to search the temple.

How to get there? The tapestries could be climbed; but he'd leave traces. He couldn't trust them; old cloth ripped too easily. He shrugged. He'd used grapple and rope in sieges; he could do that here. He'd bring a cock and a hen as offerings; he could hide the grapple under the straw in the basket. He'd still need luck; he needed five minutes when one of the side cellae wasn't occupied. If he'd had men with him, he'd have set up a diversion, or posted one near the door – just idling, occuping himself with a libation or tying his sandal thongs, but ready to intercept anyone who came too close. As things were, he had to take the risk; guess the right time, and climb quickly.

That was yesterday, and luck had been with him, and now he was lying chest and cheek pressed against the huge oak wallplate, lying close as he could to the wood in the hope he'd not be seen. He heard the guards' sandals slap the floor, the slight jingle of sword belts or of sword hilts against metal breastplates. He saw nothing but dust motes in front of his eyes, and a hint of flaming sunset through a cracked tile. A single barked command, quicker sandal-slapping, the low, almost imperceptible sound of great doors turning slowly on their greased pivots, and the echoing sound of their closing softly, tightly. The windowless space darkened; but it was surprising how much light there was, after he'd closed his eyes for a minute or so, and then reopened them. Small cracks between tiles, the gap between the wallplate and the roof, even a thin line between the tops of the doors and the doorway, where the wood must have shrunk or warped after it had been fitted, let in light – not enough to see colour, but enough to see outlines, to see the rope looped loosely under his right hand.

No point going down yet. He'd have to go soon, couldn't risk dozing, the long fall that would only take a moment; he'd seen a man fall from the cliff at Velathri once – couldn't remember his name now (eventually the survivors always forgot the dead), but he could remember that scream, and then the silence after the echoes died; echoes that outlasted the soldier's life by a precious few seconds. But he'd wait, wait a bit longer, while the air grew grayer with dusk...

There was just enough light to see by when he climbed back down. Every sound seemed magnified; the scuff of his feet on the floor, even his breathing. He made his way to the great shrine; there stood the deity, Tinia of the Thunder, a rough god carved from a single tree, and as big as one. Dark wood, darker in the dying light. There were no gods, Master thought furiously; there were no gods. He felt his skin shiver between his shoulderblades even so, as he moved almost silently to the dark corner behind the statue.

Dark darkened further. It solidified, first in corners, till the whole temple was a block of darkness, and he felt if he'd reached out his hand, it would have repelled his touch. Every old soldier acquires a good sense of time, can tell how much of a night has passed fairly accurately – accurately enough to time an attack or guess how far his century has marched; but such a complete darkness, such a deep silence challenged his ability to guess how long he'd waited. And still Ramtha didn't come.

After an hour, a week, centuries, he realised the temple was becoming lighter; almost imperceptibly, the solid dark had become fuzzy, bluish. Moonrise, then; it had come more quickly than he'd expected. He listened; could he hear steps? But there was only silence. Still no Ramtha.

She would have delayed for greater effect, he thought; not approaching the shrine in the half-light of early evening, but waiting till full night, to impress the populace with a torchlit procession. She'd come with the full guard, he thought; never lose a chance to impress the crowds – and that not just for vanity, but to demonstrate the superiority of Etruscan culture, to encourage disaffection with Rome. Perhaps, too, to send a message to the Romans; see, we're not becoming Roman. But with Ramtha, politics and vanity were always intermingled; just as politics and her marriage to Vipiena were always linked, and you never knew quite how she felt about her husband.

Time passed. He was counting heartbeats now, trying not to lose himself in the stillness of the night, but after a few thousand he lost count, and how long was a heartbeat anyway? (Six were long enough to drain a man's blood, one was long enough to realise you were dying, if you wanted to be philosophical about it; so that a whole long life could be gone in six heartbeats, and no way back.)

And then there was the slightest whisper of a breeze, and the faintest further lightening of the darkness, and he realised the great doors, or perhaps just one of them, must be swinging open; and against his expectations of ceremony, Ramtha had come alone, in darkness.

She left the door open, a rectangle of dark blue against the blacker tones of the temple. No sound of sandals even, or the brush of leather against the paving; she must be barefoot, and treading gently. Had she suspected something? He drew back into the shadow of great Tinia.

She might have left the guards outside. And if she screamed...

He heard her sigh. An exasperated sigh. So like Ramtha; no time for superstition, no veneration for the gods. This was just another political necessity to be gone through, to be done with. So unlike Tanaquil. But that meant she had no suspicions, at least; she didn't care who heard her.

She was still too far away. The door was still open. Too many chances for her to scream, or run, or simply walk out leaving him still there. He waited. She had to come closer. Time, he thought, was on his side. For the moment.

His eyes strained to make out her figure in the light. He could only see the rough outline, not distinguish arms or hands, or see what she was doing; he could only assume this was Ramtha, because it should be Ramtha, and even that sigh could have been someone else, he couldn't recognise the woman from a single exhaled breath. Never make assumptions; that was one of the first things he'd learned from the General. And yet in a situation like this you had to make assumptions, or you'd never move, stuck like a fly in honey at time congealed around you. It must be Ramtha. He'd do better to think of what he was going to say, how to present his case, rather than dwelling on uncertainties, but his mind was not obedient tonight. What could go wrong? Too much could go wrong.

He waited. She waited. She seemed to turn a couple of times; her outline shimmered, changed. He could hardly be sure. He waited for her, and she was waiting for what; for dawn to come? For nothing. If it had been Tanaquil, she would have been waiting for revelation, she would have been looking at the temple with the eyes of spirit and of fire; but this was Ramtha, and she had nothing to do but wait the night out, and if he knew her at all, she was bored already with hours left to wait.

He heard another sigh. Exasperated, angry, more a hiss between the teeth than a sigh. That seemed like Ramtha. Wait, he said to himself; keep your mind alert, don't snatch at confirmations. Wait for her to come. She will.

She did, in the end. She came towards Tinia, her feet still almost silent, though now he could hear the tiny slap and suck of naked flesh on marble. She was slow, stopping from time to time as if she wanted to look at something, or look back, or around, and he wondered whether it was out of boredom or suspicion. She was inside the cella now; a few steps more and he could get between her and the doorway. But he waited longer; waited till she was within arm's length; and then he stepped forward, bringing one arm up, stepping behind her, closing her mouth with his hand, encircling both her arms with his and holding hard with the other hand to her right forearm, hard enough, he thought, to leave a bruise. He felt her body tense against his, but she did not try to scream or kick.

"Ramtha. I've been sent by Vipienas."

She relaxed a little in his hold. So it was Ramtha, thank the gods for that.

"You'll agree not to call the guards?"

She nodded. He unclamped his hand from her mouth, but kept it close; he didn't let her go. Not yet.

"He's in the north, trying to get an army together. We've got Felsina and Spina, Arretium, Velathri; but we still haven't got Rome outmatched. If we knew, though, that we could draw the Roman armies out, and we knew Velx was with us, and could hit them from behind... well, things would be different."

"You haven't got Arretium, though."

"Near as makes no difference," he said, and hoped it wasn't a lie.

"You know I'm proscribed by Rome."

She probably didn't, but she came straight back at him: "So is my husband."

"He's in the north. I'm here. You call your guards, I'm a dead man."

"Why would I call them?"

"You're in charge here, now."

"More or less. Less, to be honest."

"The Romans?"

"The Romans."

"And you wouldn't call the guards?"

A hiss of breath escaped her. Obviously he was being stupid. "Proving that I'm a traitor?"

"Not if you call them."

"I wouldn't be too sure. Everything I do has to be careful. No processions. No speeches. Nothing to provoke the Romans, and they're easy to provoke, if you're a woman."

"So you come alone and barefoot to the temple?"

"Are you going to let me go?"

"If you promise..."

"You're beginning to hurt."

"You used to like that," he was about to say; then thought better of it, and loosed his grip. She turned, but he could still hardly make out her face; in the dimness, it was the sound of her voice that told him her emotions – the degree of breathiness, the rise and fall of its pitch, the speed of her breathing. Difficult to negotiate when darkness masked your opponent's face and thoughts.

"You're with the Romans."

"No!"

"But you were. In Rome. With Tarquin."

"Not now. He's betrayed too many people too often."

"And Tanaquil."

"And her, too."

"What's she up to now?"

"Gone. Retired. Quit."

"No."

"She says she's weaving death. She's old."

"Not that old."

"Old enough. Spends her time weaving. Sleeping. Dreaming, maybe."

"All day weaving. She's become a real Roman woman at last, then."

"Her time is past, and she knows it."

"So I should trust you?"

"I never lied to you. I went to Rome. I've changed my mind. What they're doing; I thought they were making something new. They're not. It's just power games."

"I never thought you were an idealist."

"Nor did I."

"So you're with my husband."

"Yes."

She was silent a long time. He couldn't be sure whether she'd trust him or not. But then, that wasn't the question, really. The question was whether he could trust her. He broke the silence.

"No procession? Barefoot?"

"They would have let me have four torches."

"This is better?"

"Pity is potent. Let them see my bleeding feet; it does more good than men on horses, or torches lit in the night."

"You're with us, then."

"I'm not with the Romans."

He was silent then; not sure of her.

"I've tried to keep the city from harm. If that's meant working with the Romans, I've done it."

There was a note of defensiveness in her voice that had never been there before. When you ruled, you never needed to defend your actions. Well, the world was changing.

"So everyone's happy with Roman rule, then? No one's suffered. No proscriptions, no executions."

"I'm smarter than that. You know it. Every little chafe and pinch and rub of the shoe, I've chafed and pinched and rubbed it in some more. People notice. They're not ruined, but they're uncomfortable. They won't rebel uselessly. But when the time comes, if the time comes, that they see we have a decent chance..."

"Ah."

"Till when, we wait."

"Not much longer."

He told her then what he needed her to do; told her the signals, passwords, all she needed to know, and only what she needed to know. The northerners, with or without Arretium (and with or without Velathri, he made the mental reservation), would march on Rome, draw the Romans away from their city, aiming to meet them somewhere north of Velx; and then Velx would hit them from behind, with whatever allies Velx had.

"It won't be easy drawing them so far from their base," she said. "You're not the only man in Rome who understands strategy."

"Leave that to us," he said. She sniffed, but said nothing more.

"Well. Till then," he said. There was no more to say.

Dawn was a long time coming. She sat, after a while, and he suspected she was dozing, not keeping vigil at all, though her breathing never became heavy, as sleepers' breath usually did. After a while, the moon sank, and the temple darkened again, and the two of them were left each in their own smothering darkness.

He'd expected her to leave as soon as the darkness began to waver and pale, but she stayed till dawn was nearly complete, the sun not yet visible, but a thin line of liquid, burning gold on the horizon testifying to the imminence of its rising. She'd never asked how her husband was. And she'd never said goodbye.

***

They'd marched with Felsina, with Spina, with Arretium, with Velathri. Curtun and Camars too, or at least, such of the nobility of those cities as cared to come. The whole Etruscan North against Rome. And it had worked; Rome had come to meet them, marching out towards Velzna, in the great narrow plain.

No help from Tarchna, of course. Even Tanaquil couldn't have swung that decision; the Tarquinians were pig-headed, and too rich for their own good, and thought they didn't need anybody. Traders, not soldiers; they thought everyone had a price, and gold was mightier than swords.

"This is exactly what Tarquinius didn't want," Avle said.

Master looked back at him, away from the swirling men and dust across the plain. "What is?"

"A great war. He never wanted this."

"I suppose not."

"He wanted Etruria dead before it knew it was dying. "

"What you want and what you get..."

"Are two different things. I know," Caile interrupted.

It was easy to distinguish the two armies; Rome, tight ranks, squares drawn up in regular order, as the level plain allowed the general to do; and Etruria, dispersed gatherings, cavalry wheeling, hoplite lines, charioteers drawn up at the back. Rome was playing the war as if it was a game of chequers, methodical, unimaginative; Etruria was an army of heroes, of chancers, of mavericks. Rome wouldn't know how to meet it, where to turn; that was Master's plan, keep the Romans off balance. He'd made the Roman army, damn it, he knew how to destroy it.

And what of Tanaquil, he thought? Would her spies tell her that battle was joined? Would she listen? Did she even care, any more?

And Tarquinia... He hadn't thought of Tarquinia for a long time. He couldn't afford to.

A ragged wave of chariots had hit the Roman front lines, and like a wave, receded, leaving behind it a tideline of dead, wounded, broken things. Tight turning, Master thought; that took skill. And as he thought it, the chariots turned again, back to hit the Roman breakwater of shields.

"Frontal attack," Caile said. "Stupid."

"So it is," Master said, and smiled. "Stupid as Romans."

He knew what he was waiting for. Out on the edge of the plain, little bands of footsoldiers were assembling, drifting together like wind-blown leaves clumping, or twigs caught in a mill-race. Where scattered horsemen had been riding, suddenly that paths were coming together, and small cavalry formations, perhaps a dozen men each, were gradually forming. Still the Romans were facing front, bracing for another chariot attack.

"Whose are the footsoldiers?" Avle was asking him.

"Everyone's."

"Oh, smart."

"Caile's idea."

"Men of Felsina stand next to men of Spina, or Velx, or the Cisran emigres," Caile said. "They won't run. No one will be the first to run, not in front of their rivals."

And maybe, just maybe, that elusive idea of an Etruria that was something more than a common music to which their cities danced might start to twist itself into men's minds like a tendril of smoke.

"What are they fighting for?" asked Avle. "Honour? Their honour? The honour of their cities?"

"Better ask what they're fighting against," Master said.

Caile shrugged. "A new Etruria might yet be born. Our ideas are no secret to our allies. And after all, everything is born from blood."

Everything. And nothing, Master thought.

The figures on the plain were changing again. Troops like black spiders were making for the very edges of the Roman line, where it was thin, where the last man had no overlap from a neighbour's shield to protect him. Still the Romans hadn't seen the threat; still the chariots were keeping them busy. And behind the Romans, he hoped, somewhere on the roads or in the heathland and approaching every moment, would be whatever Velx had been able to send. It was too far to see yet; he had to trust. Or hope. Trust and hope were words he didn't like, but they were all he had.

It would all look very different down there; irregularities in the ground closed down the view, a man might see no more than the four or five men around him. He might never even see the enemy who killed him, only a spear point poking through the gap between his shield and his neighbour's. Dust swirled, isolating each troop in its own cloud. He'd been there; he knew how it was. He had to hope that his instructions would be carried out; that they could be carried out.

Avle coughed. "Your chariot line is getting ragged."

"So it is."

"You're not worried?"

Master sniffed; Caile jumped in.

"I've got a blind brother today."

Avle raised an eyebrow. "I'm supposed to have seen what?"

There was a commotion a little way off, where they'd posted their sentries. A scout perhaps, or a messenger from the field; Master turned. It was Rasce, arguing with Caile's bodyguard.

"I knew Master before he could harness a horse. Don't you 'I'm sorry sir' me,"

"I'm sorry..."

"I don't care what battle he has to fight, you..."

"Rasce," Master shouted, jerking his head at the sentry, who stepped out of the way. "I have got a battle to fight, you know. It's true."

"You think I don't know? How do you think I got here? I nearly fell over the bloody Romans. And what the fuck do you think you're doing, throwing your chariots at a dug-in line of infantry like that? Didn't the General teach you anything?"

Master sighed. That was the problem with strategy; the ones that worked were the ones people hadn't seen before, which meant no one understood what you were trying to do.

"So: why are you here? It must be something important."

Rasce looked at him for a moment; one side of his mouth twitched. He held out a hand.

"He wanted you to have it," he said. Metal glinted in his palm.

Master frowned. He couldn't see what it was; twisted, rounded, clinking.

"Master," Caile said; "it's started."

This couldn't take long. He reached his hand out to Rasce, felt the bronze pieces fall into his hand. As soon as he felt it, he knew what it was, so familiar to the touch; the linked pieces of a horse bit, the cheek pieces and the chains and the flatter, longer mouthpiece. Then he saw the leaping horse decoration of the cheek pieces, and knew it at once.

"He wanted you to have it."

The General's triumph. The General's luck. Luck that the General had lent him for one day, and however good a general you were, you knew luck had a lot to do with triumph.

"For the battle?"

Rasce's face suddenly crumpled. He said again, more quietly: "He wanted you to have it."

"He's..."

Rasce nodded.

"He always asked what was happening in Rome. Always wanted to know what horses you were running this season. I think he hoped you'd come home."

And I did come home, Master thought, but in disguise, and secretly, and never saw the old man before he died.

He hadn't cried for years.

"It's starting to work," Caile shouted; and Master turned, and went to watch as his feral infantry started to worry at the ends of the Roman lines, swirling black around them, swallowing them up.

Now it begins, he thought; the Romans have to fight the chariots in front and the footsoldiers to the side, and if Velx comes up in good order, we'll hit them from behind as well.

On the horizon a cloud of dust darkened the sky. If that was Velx, he thought. If it was. They'd be late, but not too late. It wasn't crucial; but he'd lose fewer men if Velx hit the Romans hard and fast. Please gods, let the bastards put on some speed. Please gods (the gods he didn't believe in) let them get there while they could make a difference.

"That Velx?" Avle was asking, and Master grunted and nodded curtly, and felt his throat thick with tears like a winter cold.

"Looks like there's enough of them, from the dust."

Master nodded again. Caile was right; a few hundred men at the very least, he'd guess. The battle was as good as won.

***

Bedraggled feathers. Mud and blood on gilt and leather. Stubbled chins and raw eyes. These were Rome's heroes. To be more precise, they were the highest ranking Romans left alive. Surprised to be alive, surprised to be negotiating terms of surrender, clearly not competent to negotiate. Four of them, none he'd ever seen before, and he thought he knew most of the Roman army by sight. Perhaps Tarquinius had thought it would be smarter to keep the men Master knew at home, and send men whose loyalties weren't in question. Four of them, two in the centre with slightly better armour and higher plumes on their helmets, flanked by one man with a limp and the other with a bleeding slash across one cheek, and eyes that seemed to focus everywhere but on Master's face.

The Romans were crushed. Rome wasn't. That made things difficult. Avle had wanted to march on Rome; Master knew that would be a mistake. He knew Rome's defences; he'd helped build them. And he knew Tarquinius was safe in Rome; that Tarquinius had sent only half his army here; that his best commanders had been kept at home, so that the force that had met the assembled Etruscan forces today had been led by also-rans. (He wished he'd known that before the battle.) So now, Etruria having crushed one Roman army, but without hope of defeating a second, he needed to get as great a concession as possible, quickly. And he needed it to stick. Rome only had to sit still in order to win; Tarquinius probably knew that. But these men didn't. He had to hope they didn't.

"You're authorised to commit to a truce?"

The two men in the centre looked at each other. One twitched his mouth.

"We're all that's left. I suppose we have to be."

"Well," said Avle.

"You are or you aren't." That was Caile, his voice as sharp as green apples.

"We are," said the second Roman.

"They should be. That's the way Rome works," Master said. "Chain of command. Everything nice and regular."

"Don't you believe it. Tarquinius won't recognise any treaty they make. He'd be a fool to."

"We have to try, Caile."

"That's true."

One of the lower ranked Romans coughed. A meaningful cough. The two seniors looked at him; seemed to remember something.

"Ah, yes. If we're going to talk... this is... nothing personal, you'll understand..."

"We need a safe place, four of us, four of you. Can't talk to a whole army."

Caile nodded. This was usual; it made for security. And secrecy. Gave the Romans some assurance they weren't going to have their throats slit just because they said something someone didn't like, or because they weren't quick enough giving concessions. Gave the Vipienas the confidence their allies weren't going to confuse the issue by running their own separate agendas. Four Romans; four Etruscans. Caile, Avle, Master; they'd pick someone else, someone from their northern allies, just to make up the numbers, and keep their allies on side. Four Romans: Septimus, Decimus, Quintus, Postumus; seven, ten, five, and a dead man's son. Postumus with the shifty eyes.

There was a shrine not far from where they were; a small shrine, with a priest's house by the pool, a solitary poplar shading it, set in a shallow valley; Caile sent ahead to have the priest sent away, and the house made ready for them, and at the same time ordered his men to stand off, leaving the hollow empty but for a few sentries on the overlooking high ground. The Etruscan armies, meanwhile, were encamped in the plain below; and the Romans were under guard, split up among the Etruscan camps, deprived of their weapons. Smoke from the funeral pyres would be drifting across the plains, but here the air was clear, the sun fitful between torn trails of cloud lighting the waters of the pool.

Here they'd have to negotiate. Careful not to ask for too much, equally careful not to ask for too little; careful, above all, not to get too much, which would force Tarquinius to repudiate the treaty. Withdrawal from Velx; the freeing of Collatia, perhaps. Better start low; it would be too easy for these beaten junior officers to give in to every demand made, if they didn't think any agreement would be made to stick.

It was always odd how ceremonious people got on an occasion like this. Excruciating politnesses; after you, no, after you. A feeling that none of them quite wanted to enter the house; delaying over the libations poured at the shrine, passing the winecup from hand to hand, no one looking the others in the eye. Quintus whistling not quite noiselessly between his teeth; Postumus looking round the landscape, eyes on the skyline. Watch that one, Master thought.

He was, of course, the last one into the room. Took his time, saw the lie of the land, tipped his head gently, so that no one but the spy who waited behind that rocky outcrop to the south would have known it for deliberate; wondered whether Postumus had seen his scout, thought not.

And now, he thought, we have the preparatory introductory skirmishing. Half an hour of posturing, positioning, posing, like wrestlers who will not come to grips till they have checked out each other's bodies, movement, habits. Half an hour of faking and circling. He looked over at Lars, the general from Felsina, the Etruscan make-weight; Lars looked as disgusted as Master felt. Not a man who could diplomatically conceal his emotions, then.

He hadn't got to know Lars yet. Not one of the Etruscan aristocrats you sometimes met, but a hard-bitten, solid man who rarely smiled; he could almost be Roman, but Master sensed the lacking smile wasn't an ingrained habit but the result of some pain, whether merely physical or social, too, the kind of pain only those born outside the charmed and charming circles of oligarchy ever felt. How many scars were there on that sturdy body? How many in Lars' soul? - Keep your mind on the job, he scolded himself.

The Vipienas were already sitting; opposite them, Decimus sat, Septimus still standing, holding his helmet in the crook of one arm. Why hadn't he put it down? The room stank already of wine fumes and sweat, and a thin hint of perfume from Caile, that the Romans might or might not have noticed; pine and citron, sharp and insinuating.

Decimus and Septimus. A sudden strange thought; did more syllables in a Roman name confer more seniority? As he thought it, Master grimaced; that was stupid, he knew it wasn't so, how odd that your mind ran away with you that way, at the worst moments, when he needed to be on his guard. Not listening to what anyone said, not yet, anyway, but watching the way they moved, listening for the tone of voice that meant yes, easy, and the thickening or harshening that might say tricky, unacceptable, or even begin the building to a flash of temper or an outright refusal. He looked across to Lars; they flanked the seated Vipienas brothers, two soldiers standing beside, slightly behind, the two aristocrats. As things were meant to be in Etruria; formal, stately; against which display the Romans seemed provisional, scruffy, as if they hadn't quite decided who should speak for them or how to handle the meeting.

"Let's have a drink, shall we?" said Decimus, and when none of the Romans reached for it, Master realised they were waiting for their hosts, and went himself across the small room, to find the wine that had been put there ready for them, and the neatly stacked winecups. Though the wine hadn't been warmed, it had already been mingled with water, pouring a faded rose rather than the purplish dark of the unmixed drink.

He never forgot where he was then, reaching his hand out to the jug. He'd turned his body as he made to pick it up, but his hand never grasped the handle; he saw in the corner of his eye something that made him turn, or perhaps it had been the tiny hiss or click of steel on steel that he'd heard, and he'd stopped in mid-movement and turned back towards the Vipienas. For ever after in his life he'd be able to see what happened next, to see it again but happening slowly, time slowed down and viscous, in the same way that drunks experience time, seeing a cup take almost infinite time to drop to the floor and still being helplessly unable to catch it. For ever after, he would see how Postumus and Quintus started moving in from the sides of the room, passing behind the Vipienas, how at first it seemed they were coming towards him to help with the wine, and then he realised where they were headed, and he was too far away to do anything; how in a single movement their hands went down to their belts, and up again with steel flashing, and across, and down, and they stepped away as they sheathed their knives.

Blood. Blood thrown out through the air, sheets of it, that he could still, years after, see frozen in its flight, frozen before its fall and the next great vomiting out of blood. The brothers' throats open like strange clams; Caile falling first, his hands raised as if in prayer, a prayer already useless, and Avle standing, eyes and mouth wide, for a few moments longer. For a moment his eyes seemed to meet Master's, but they were already losing their focus. (Sometimes, later, Master thought; what was the last thing Avle saw? Did he see Quintus' blade? Did he see Master looking at him as he fell? In those frozen moments, while Master saw everything, from the Postumus' tight lips to the splash of wine on the floor as the cup dropped, was Avle aware of how his death came upon him? A question that always worried him with its intimations of his own death, and he shivered, as if a cold wind had grazed the back of his neck suddenly.) Then Avle's body swayed from the hips, and the knees folded gently, and he fell softly, curling in on himself into the long shadow of his own blood.

"We're next, I suppose?" To his surprise, Lars laughed. One of those, Master thought; the men who don't go to death screaming or sobbing, or implacably calm (and the experienced soldier sees all of those), but one of those rare companions in whom the threat of extinction calls up a sardonic smile, amusement at the way it is presented, the indignity or unexpectedness of it. He felt his own mouth tighten halfway to a smile.

"Not you," Postumus said to Master. "She wants you. The other one..."

Lars looked back, unmoving.

"In there." Postumus jerked his head at the door to an inner room, dark and windowless.

A cock-up, he thought. We took their swords. We let them keep their knives. They'd seen the battle played out from the ridge like a strategy game with wooden regiments on a table covered with sand; that had given them an illusion of omniscience, of control, as if war was ever rational, logical, foreseeable. "They know it would be suicide," Caile had said, Caile so intelligent he couldn't dream of them being so stupid. He'd thought at the time that was over-confident, but said nothing. A mistake. His own knife still sheathed, and no point drawing it so heavily outnumbered he was, against four, and Lars gone and the bolt slammed down to hold him in the dark.

"You're dead as soon as you try to walk out of here," he told them.

"There's no one in the valley."

"There's a scout on the ridge," he said, and was rewarded by a flicker of Postumus' eyes towards Decimus, a little flicker that said "See, I told you," or at least, he thought it did. "There's a scout on the ridge, and men posted all round the heights. You won't make it back to Rome alive. We might send you, dead."

"Who is we?" Decimus asked. Master looked down at the bodies. Without the brothers, the massed Etruscan army would melt away – first one city would leave, then another would march homewards; the word would go round the troops, and in the morning the roll call would find gaps in the troops where the men of Felsina, or Arretium, or Curtun had been, and each morning the gaps would get bigger, the men fewer, till there was only a ghost of an army left. We was Velx, maybe; Velx that had won the battle, and lost it here.

"She wants you."

Again that she. He'd been fighting on the wrong side all along. Daring, he thought; if Ramtha really thought she could keep those armies together. But she was doomed. She wasn't here; it wouldn't work from a distance. And why kill her husband? Besides, how could she have put two of her men into the Roman army, and been sure they would be here?

"You're thinking," Postumus said. "Thinking what?"

And that was odd; the other Romans seemed to have deferred to him, yet he was the junior ranker.

"How did you know you were going to be here?"

A snort. A twitch of the mouth. "You've worked that out, then?" He blinked, and his eyes flickered to one side.

"You must have been sure you'd be here. So how was that planned?"

Postumus' shoulders heaved as he was laughing, but he made no sound.

"You're coming back to Rome," he said.

"You're joking. That's certain death."

"Is it?"

"You know I'm proscribed. Tinia's tits, I've been fighting on the wrong side."

"Not as smart as you think you are. Look. What do you see?"

"Two dead men."

"Two dead Vipienas. The end of the Etruscan revolt. Don't you think Rome would be pretty grateful for that?"

"Yes, but..." he was saying, and was about to dig his hole further, when things began to come together in his brain like a key turning in a lock; he was being given the chance to claim credit. A chance to turn double traitor; a second chance. He'd been wrong; it wasn't Ramtha's doing. He nodded, slowly, sucking his bottom lip under his teeth, feeling the possibilities of his new situation.

"It gives you a second chance."

Yes, he nearly said, I got there ahead of you this time.

"And it gives her a second chance, too."

Wasn't that the truth; Tanaquil who was in exile, Tanaquil who was in retirement, Tanaquil who had given up politics, so she said. Tanaquil who had made him, Tanaquil who had saved him, Tanaquil who had killed the two best friends he had in the world.

***

She was magnificent again, her black hair braided with gold, and no one could tell where the still sparse silver hairs had been blackened with dye. Her ears were heavy with golden growling lions and the tinkling of filigree bells, and a triumph was vermilion painted on her smile.

"I told Tarquinius you'd always been working for us. Told him you'd been waiting till you could strike a decisive blow."

"He believed it?"

She tossed her head, and the bells tinkled. "I suppose so."

He looked out from the villa across the lawns, to the far side of the valley; lush, closely cropped grass, and trimmed low herb hedges, betrayed the luxury of her establishment. She must have four, five gardeners; and gardeners who were invisible, inaudible, when she wanted them to be, as she did now. Two hounds curled at her feet; lean, nervous creatures, which shivered as they looked up at him. Two chairs, a table with a krater, a jug and two wine cups, and a bowl with olives macerated in herbs and oil; nothing out of the ordinary for an Etruscan villa, but when he looked more closely, he saw the krater was by Sophilos, or one of his followers – the freedom with which the figures leapt, ran, ducked, black against the light ochre of the clay, witnessed its quality, and its price.

"In retirement, they said. You'd given up politics."

"So I had."

"What were you going to do with your life? Make blackberry jam in autumn, and weave all winter?"

She smiled bleakly. Looked down at the dogs. "I enjoy hunting."

Master rotated his wine cup in his hand, watching the wine swirl, wondering if he'd been too harsh, where this conversation was going, where it ought to go; wondering if Tanaquil was wondering the same thing. Embarrassment filled the short silence.

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I missed you, I suppose."

"It's unlike you to be sentimental."

"I'm not. I missed your advice. It's good, most of the time. Though they tell me you slipped up badly after your last battle."

"Given up politics, and still want my advice?"

"I might have tried to give up politics, but politics doesn't want to give up me."

"Meaning?"

"Too many Romans want me dead."

"Tarquinius?"

"I don't think so. No, it's the tale-bearers; she's done this, she's done that, did you know she was involved with so-and-so, with this or that. They want me out of the way."

"You are out of the way."

"Not far enough."

"Come to Velx."

"You think Velx is far enough?"

She hadn't really answered his question. He didn't need to answer hers.

Anyway, Velx was dead and gone now. He couldn't imagine even Ramtha could make anything of the situation; the city was like a rotten tree stump, dead inside, and all Rome had to do was push the crumbling wet wood and watch it collapse.

"You planned it all?"

She nodded.

"Just to get me back?"

She shrugged.

"And other things."

"What other things?"

"Look," she said; "Let me be honest with you."

That was a warning sign, in his experience, that there were lies coming up.

"I tried to talk to the Vipienas. I could have delivered them Rome. I could have given them Tarchna. But they wanted clean hands. They wanted some kind of purity I couldn't give them. And as things stood, they were just another centrifugal force."

"Centrifugal?"

"Pulling Etruria apart. Just the way Tarquinius wanted. Dividing so he could rule. That's why they had to go."

"But now Rome gets Velx."

"And Etruria gets Rome."

He looked at her sharply.

"You think Tarquinius wants to take over Etruria. Well, so he does. But what you've forgotten is that Rome is an Etruscan city."

"Full of Romans."

She shrugged. "Look at the city. Tinia, Uni, Mnrva guarding it from the Capitol; the deep dark pit of the mundus in the centre of the forum. Our gods, our city."

"It's changing."

"We can change it back."

"We?"

"Someone has to lead the Etruscans. The Vipienas had the right idea about that, anyway."

One of the dogs stood up and stretched, the fur on its back standing rigid. Tanaquil put a hand down to pat its head; it yawned. The soft skin round its mouth was mottled pink and black, and wet.

There was something wrong with all this, something that had worried him ever since Postumus had said "She wants you"; something that had been working away at the back of his mind, corroding any trust that remained between him and Tanaquil.

"Can I ask a question?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You just did."

He scowled.

"If it wasn't ... delicate, you'd never have asked if you could ask it. So I see there's something on your mind that's not Roman politics, or the war in Etruria, or how I occupy my time here, though you can be sure that the answer to the latter is not picking blackberries."

That was as close to a rebuke as she ever came, he thought; if you crossed her more seriously, you'd feel the knife in your back before she'd say anything. He'd upset her already; he had to be careful. More careful than he'd been after the battle...

"Postumus was your man, of course."

"Of course," she said, and there was the hint of a further criticism in her voice; how could he be so stupid, she seemed to be saying; wasn't that sufficiently obvious to be left unsaid?

"He was there to kill the Vipienas. And to rescue me."

Tanaquil had started tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. "So?"

"The top command were all killed. That's the only reason he was there. I would have thought you'd want to have been certain he was in a position to act. Unlike you, leaving things to chance."

"But I didn't."

She wasn't smiling, but the tapping had stopped.

"Postumus had his instructions. Of course, if Rome had ever looked like winning, or if he'd heard definitely that the Vipienas had been killed, they would have been superseded. But if Rome was losing, he had to get himself into the Etruscan camp. One way or another."

"One way..."

He thought of the commanders leading out their army, condemned to certain death. Enemies in front, enemies behind, and if they escaped that death, a fatal secret enemy in their own ranks. He shuddered, feeling a blade at his own neck. He wondered just how Postumus had come by that fresh scar on his face; whether that had been an Etruscan blade, or a Roman.

"You know it would never have worked," she said, and the kindness in her voice set his teeth on edge like bad cider. "You didn't have Velathri, you didn't have the south, you didn't have Tarchna. You were too weak."

"Even so..."

"You came close. True."

She reached forward and poured herself another cup of honeyed wine. (That was typically direct; Ramtha would have looked at her empty cup and sidelong at him, waiting till he understood that he needed to replenish it.) He looked at the krater again and wondered how many good men had had to die for Tanaquil. He'd never get to know Lars now, leader of Felsina's second wing; and his grief for that unfulfilled desire cut him more deeply than the loss of the Vipienas.

"Anyway, I need you here. Tarquinius..."

"He's forgiven me?"

"He's seen your uses. No, what I was going to say; he's unreliable. And young Tarquin's worse."

"I thought he was doing quite well."

"He's too young. Too full of himself. I'm trying to teach him; but the question is, does he want to learn?"

"Does he?"

Her face twisted. "Sometimes."

Master managed not to smile. So she needs me, he thought; not as an adviser, but as a new king. Given up politics, my arse.

"So I need you. And the only way to bring you back is to give you credit for the Vipienas' deaths."

"But I broke them out of Velzna in the first place."

"Because you thought Velzna would betray us."

"I did? ... That story has too many loose ends. And Velzna never came over. Though Caile had started talking to them..."

"I'm trying to help you, Servius."

Oh yes, he thought; I'm Servius again, a slave and not a master. But we'll see who is the master now, Tanaquil; because you've actually said the words, you need me, and it's necessity that makes slaves.

"Do you know what owls mean?"

"Sorry?" She's gone barking mad now, he thought. That was the trouble with prophecy; you got round to believing it, if you weren't careful. What owls mean? Had she started talking to them, as she did sometimes to her dogs?

"Owls?" she was impatient again. Retirement didn't suit her, he thought. How her servants put up with her he didn't know; then again, he hadn't seen any since he'd been brought in by a timid serving girl, so perhaps they coped with Tanaquil simply by keeping out of her way. "Well?"

"Well... the general always thought they were a bad omen before a battle."

"Have I taught you nothing?"

That was one of those questions that only women and general asked, and that he knew better than to answer.

"The owls of Vanth. The owls of Charun. Death. Slow or fast, death. Silent, unblinking eyes of doom."

"Why are you thinking of owls?"

"I'm not. Tarquinius is. He keeps hearing them."

"Easy enough."

"There are no owls on the Palatine. And no one else hears them."

He understood. He was afraid he understood.

# A change of regime

That damned hooting again. Tarquinius sat up, hissed between his teeth, rubbed his eyes. He felt as if he'd been wakened from deep sleep, his body lethargic and unresponsive, but he wondered if he'd slept at all; he remembered lying restless, every whisper and scratch and dog bark in the dark rousing him again to wakefulness. Hours of wakefulness. Now this, and nothing between. Not sleep; nothing. That was how it felt.

He cracked his knuckles; his fingers felt clumsy and numb. He heard the joints click, and gritted his teeth against the pain of reawakening. He had cramp in one leg.

Suddenly a cold wind brushed his face; he ducked as something immense, soft, nearly silent passed over his head, and felt what he thought was the touch of the edge of a feather. He remembered an eagle swooping at his head long ago, cold blue air and fear and a sense of awe. Not in here, gods, not in here; how had they let the owls get into the palace? And where were his guards?

Things were quiet; too quiet. So many nights he'd lay nearly but not quite dozing, and one of the guards outside his door would cough, or shuffle his feet, or (sometimes, and he needed to do something about that) snore, and the noise would startle him back to wakefulness; and tonight, when he needed someone within reach, someone to bring a lamp and look in the room and tell him there was only some damned pigeon that had got in here, when he needed wine and needed it badly, and now, everything was silent.

He got up. His left leg was still numb, and he nearly fell as he overestimated the distance to the ground, and rammed his foot painfully on to the floor; he was sure he'd cried out, but there was no answering call, no sound of anyone coming to the door as he'd normally expect.

Somewhere in the darkness, he heard an owl asking who, who, who.

He felt for the door. It was somewhere in front of him, he was sure, and he slowed his pace, not wanting to hit it; feeling out into emptiness, feeling vulnerable and stupid. Had the servant left the tripod in here? He couldn't see; the warmed wine would be cold anyway, if there was any left. Call for more, he thought. The side of the room was much further away than he'd expected, and when his fingers touched something it was the rough plaster of the wall, and not the door; he'd gone wrong somewhere, set off in the wrong direction.

He worked his way along the wall; past the corner (that was unexpected; he'd gone further astray than he thought), finally feeling the crack at the door's edge under his fingertips. Still there was no sound. When he opened the door, he could see; not light, exactly, but a lesser dark. And there was no one there. No guard; no serving boy or girl sleeping on the floor in front of the door, in case he called for wine or medicine. No one.

Maybe they've just gone for a piss, he thought.

But wouldn't he have heard something? However quiet servants tried to be, you could always hear them. He always heard them, anyway.

Nothing to do but wait. It was cold out here; his mind was clearing, the chill chasing the clouds and fugginess out of his mind. The nightmare bird receded, shrank, no longer disturbed him; he'd dreamt it, or there had been a draught, and in the confusion of waking he'd panicked, imposing his own fears on the moment.

He'd walked back into the room and closed the door behind him when he heard a breath, a single breath.

Someone there? He didn't dare say the words aloud.

Nothing.

That was bad. That was worse than something. If he'd heard the breathing continue, he would have known there was someone there. To hear nothing meant one of two things; either he'd imagined the noise in the first place, and was sliding ever closer to insanity, driven mad by lack of sleep and the loneliness of kingship; or there was someone there, and it was someone who wanted not to be detected.

This is the way it ends, he thought. Maybe he had heard the owl after all. If Vanth had sent it for him, as Tinia had sent the eagle. This is the end.

A cough. Almost respectful.

"Well?" This he could handle. The guard, perhaps, fearful of punishment. (But then why had he crept into the room? And how was it Tarquinius hadn't heard him, hadn't felt him pass by?)

"It's Manius."

"Ah, good. You're back from Tarchna, then?"

"Yes."

"Seen the guard?"

Manius didn't answer.

"Any luck with the trade talks? Are we going to be using Graviscae or Pyrgi for our imports next year? I suppose you got a discount from them in the end. They were sticking out for far too much. Must have relied on the fact Tanaquil's one of theirs. Not that that would help them..."

He realised he was talking too much. Oh Tarquinius, what have you come to, gabbling to fill the silence, wanting to be important, to be loved.

"You didn't see the guard?"

"No."

"I sent them away," a voice said, lightly. He caught the scent of musk and citrus, heavy and acid at the same time; Tanaquil, on silent feet.

"You..."

"I sent them away. You won't be needing them."

Suddenly something hit the back of his knees, and he fell backwards on to the bed; and before he could say anything – before he even realised he needed to shout, to bring someone running – he could feel hands holding down his shoulders, and a soft, warm weight over his face, like drowning in feathers.

***

First came the wish. Out of the wish, a plan was made. Out of the plan came the violence and the death; but that was the easy part. That was always the easy part, and Tanaquil should have known that; she did know it, and she had planned, in detail, each step to be taken – letting his body be found in the morning; steering her son Tarquin to apparent power (never had the words 'heir apparent' been more apposite), using Servius to keep control, and then the alliances with Etruscan cities, gradually creating the Etruria she'd dreamed of. The Etruria Tarquinius had imagined once, before he'd grown old and cynical, before the brutal realities of Rome had dimmed the golden dream.

And now here was Servius, casting light both metaphorical and literal on the scene; unexpected, unwelcome, asking why she hadn't kept him in her confidence, what the hell was she doing, no one would believe her story, she was mad.

"Don't ever say that. I know exactly what I'm doing."

"Then you really are mad. Look at his face." Servius pulled the body up by the shoulders; the head dangled, lolled. The face was white, except for an almost black gash where Tarquinius had bitten through the inside of his lower lip.

"A fit," she said.

"He had fits?"

"He used to hide it."

"He hid it too well, then. And look..."

He pulled up the right hand of the ghastly puppet. In Tarquinius' fist was a tangle of torn hair, and caught in the hair, a golden ornament, a tiny filigree-frosted lion.

Tanaquil prised the gripless fingers apart.

"No one saw that."

"Still. Too easy. A woman's way to kill. And you've missed an opportunity. Unlike you, Tanaquil."

"I'm intrigued."

Servius laughed, without much mirth. "There are two sons of Ancus Marcius out there, do you remember? They've been waiting for Tarquinius to die."

"And?"

"They have their supporters."

"So?"

"You could get rid of them now."

Manius looked puzzled, but Tanaquil's frown suddenly cleared, and her face tightened in a cruelly satisfied smile. "A pity, really, we made such a neat job of it."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

Manius spoke from the dark behind the bed. "You were too close to Tarquinius."

"She never asked."

"You wouldn't have done it."

"That's irrelevant," Tanaquil said. "It's what we do now that's important. Servius; quick. Tell me."

"We make the death unequivocally a murder. Then we blame it on the princes."

"And we are where?"

"Gone. We let the servants discover the body."

"Yes," said Manius, shortly. "It works."

Servius was still supporting Tarquinius' body, but now he let it go suddenly, and it flopped, the torso falling half off the bed, one arm flung out and down. The arm swung to and fro for a few moments, a little less each time, till it was motionless. Tanaquil and Manius stared at it in morbid fascination.

"Here," Servius said. A bowl fell to the floor, and rang briefly as it rolled to a corner.

"Quiet!" Manius hissed, but Tanaquil shook her head.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "No one will hear. I made sure of that."

Servius held up the tripod from which he'd dislodged the bowl. "This will do," he said, moving it in his hands, trying to find the right purchase. "Hold him up, will you?"

Tanaquil bent down, and took her husband for the last time in her arms. She sat the body up; the useless arm swung loosely, and the head sagged to one side, braided hair falling across her arm.

Servius heaved the tripod above his head and brought it down once, twice, a third time. He swung it by one of its outflung legs; the solid bronze of the centre smacked into Tarquinius' head. Tanaquil never flinched.

Servius let the tripod go; it rolled, rocked a couple of times, and was still. Tanaquil pushed the body half off the bed; the head hit the floor, face first, and one arm came up like a swimmer's, then slumped back.

"Let's go," Tanaquil said.

She was already nearly out of the door when Servius called her back. In his hand he held a twist of dark hair and a glint of gold.

"You might want this," he said.

***

She was screaming, her clawed fingers tearing at her hair, pulling out twisted flimsy handfuls where she'd managed to pull the braids apart; tiny droplets of blood encrusted a livid line where she'd clawed her face, which was wet, as if with tears. She kept screaming, a yell that ripped the silence and brought guards and servants running, and Gaius, and young Tarquin, and Servius, and last of them all, Manius, knuckling his eyes and stumbling a little. Torches' hellish flickering light burned their eyes; the hall was cramped, hot, full of screaming. At first all that could be heard was the scream, long, uninterrupted, as if she never needed to stop for breath, a natural force like whistling wind or crashing storm; and then slowly they began to distinguish the words, such as there were; Tarquinius, death, death, Lauchme, vengeance, death.

Servius had run into the dark corridor ahead of them all; he came back out, and stood barring the way, forcing back Manius and struggling with young Tarquin, who was trying to rush him. Tarquin was taller, but Servius held him easily, weight against height, solid, unmoving. And still the screaming.

It was always strange how the mood of a crowd could change in a few moments; suddenly the running stopped, the shouting stopped, Tarquin stopped struggling, and Tanaquil caught her breath raggedly, and began to sob, the scream changed into a thin, tight wail like a splinter under a fingernail.

Servius was talking earnestly now to Tarquin and Manius. It was strange how everyone was looking at them while trying to look as if they were looking somewhere else; a room full of looks. Stray, furtive glances.

"We have to..."

"Can't keep it quiet..."

And around the hall, others were making their own judgements. Tarquinius ill. Tarquinius dead. Tanaquil only just back from exile, and how convenient for her despite her protestations of grief. Tanaquil and Tarquinius reconciled, and now this, how tragic, poor grieving widow. And the questions. What was Servius doing here? Where was the guard who should have been at the door? Who's giving the orders?

Servius was shouting; even though every individual voice was hushed, not quite whispering but with a temple-visiting lack of projection, still the noise of all those voices together made it difficult to hear what he was shouting, but the fact that he, alone of all those in the room, was raising his voice meant something on its own. It was, in a way, an answer to that last question of who was giving the orders now. The man who gave the orders now would probably continue to do so; and it wasn't Tarquin. (As for Tanaquil, normally commanding; she wasn't in any state to lay down the law, and anyway, she'd been banished till a few weeks ago, her loyalty to Rome and her place in it still in doubt.)

Still Tanaquil was keening, but Servius' words could be heard. Tarquinius, dead. And a price on the heads of Ancus Marcius' sons, who had murdered him. But it might be best, he added, if they kept this to themselves, if no one outside the palace got to know about it until they had ensured their safety. At this point, a few people looked at the doors. Silently, the lictors had arrived, one standing foursquare in front of each door, holding his bundle of sticks and axe across his chest; merely a symbol perhaps, but in those set square jaws and grim stares the message was clear to read; just you try.

"But he's due to inspect the parade." Tarquin's voice was quiet but insistent. "They'll realise something is up."

"No one ever changed a plan before?"

"He never did, Manius."

"A parade. A parade. Hm. What would he do if he was ill?" Servius asked.

"He'd still go."

"He might have taken a litter," Manius said.

"He might."

"Tricky," Servius said. "They'd expect him to say a few words. At least."

Servius was doing something complicated with his hands, steepling them with the fingers interwoven and then reversing them, cracking the joints, stretching the fingers back again and again, betraying the way his mind was working tensely and fast, though his face was still.

"I don't understand. Why not just tell them?"

"Think, Tarquin. How many would love to have the Marcians back?"

"Half the bloody army. That won't change."

"It'll change. Things always do. We just need a couple of days. A couple of days to start some rumours, get people thinking."

"Win their support," Manius put in, obviously intending to be helpful.

"Make them afraid. What the Marcians might do. There are a lot of people out there who supported Tarquinius, or at least who didn't protest much when he took over. A lot of people who might lose their houses, their slaves, their lives. A lot to be afraid of."

"A couple of days?"

Servius was still twisting his hands. Looking down at them now, almost as if he hadn't realised what he was doing till he saw he was doing it. He looked up, met their eyes; stopped twisting his hands.

"Yes. But how do we get that time, that's the question."

"We have to do something about that parade," Tarquin said.

"A litter. An empty litter."

"No good, Manius. They'll know. They have to see Tarquinius."

"Impossible."

"I know... no, hang on, no, it isn't."

"It isn't?"

"We have a body."

"You think you'll fool anybody with that?"

***

It was hot in the litter, and cramped; more cramped than it should have been, but then the litter was only meant for one. (The men carrying it had complained about that, too.) A closed litter in the oriental style, unlike the usual mere carried couch, and that in itself was an odd choice for a Roman to make, but then Tarquinius always liked luxury.

Tanaquil's legs cramped, shivered with prickly pain, tucked awkwardly underneath her. She clasped her burden to her, feeling her clothes gathered and sticky with sweat rubbing in the hollow between her breasts; she couldn't spare a hand to pull at the clammy fabric. The litter lurched and swayed; she could hardly hold herself upright, both her hands occupied, desperately trying to right the sagging luggage she held, not to let it fall out through the dark heavy curtains.

The Romans, someone had told her, only used litters for funerals. Well, that was hideously appropriate.

Her lip was bleeding where Tarquinius' head had swung against her with the full and unrestrained momenutm of the inanimate as the men lifted the litter. The cut stung if she licked it.

"Just hold it upright," Servius had said, as if it was easy.

They'd covered the gashes in Tarquinius' scalp with an artfully placed laurel crown made of gold, the triumphator's reward. It wouldn't stay on, even though she stitched it on to his braids, and in the end she'd had to stitch through the skin of his scalp to attach it. A never-ending triumph for the dead man; what a crushing irony that was. She caught herself scowling; that would bring wrinkles, she thought, and with an ageing woman's vanity recomposed her face into a smile even though no one could see it, except Tarquinius' hinthial, perhaps – though she thought she'd have felt something, if it were here.

It was hard to breathe, darkly curtained from the air outside, in the thick sweat scented heat. She felt panic rising; fought it off, barely.

She remembered Servius saying to her in the hall; "You're making a meal of it," and the judgment in his voice, as if she were something distasteful to him.

She'd been the one the girl came running to when she found Tarquinius' body, the girl who'd been taking in the thin spelt porridge with which he started every day, before dawn, unless (and this was only too often the case these days) he'd been drinking too much the night before. The girl was one of those sweet, nice girls, the kind to whom nothing ever happens, the kind who imagine an unkind criticism is the greatest tragedy that could ever befall them, the kind with no salt in them, no spice, like the food you give invalids that isn't meant to taste of anything, and shock had shaken her wits loose; she burst out "He, he, he..." and couldn't get as far as a verb, and scrabbled at Tanaquil's hand till Tanaquil, impatient, pushed past her and into the bedchamber, and found the body sprawled, ungainly. The girl must have turned it over, for the open eyes stared blindly at the rafters, and the mouth had fallen open.

It was that, really, she couldn't stand; Tarquinius dead was one thing, but she'd imagined him dignified, like one of the ancestor masks, stern or elegant, composed. He looked stupid in death, his jaw not only open but slackly hanging to one side, and that, as soon as she saw it, spoiled every memory she had of him, that she'd foolishly thought she could keep inviolate; she'd thought, even, that by killing him, in some way, she'd preserve the memory of that earlier, that better Tarquinius, her own Lauchme, when their marriage was freshly minted, before the shine had dulled. Now she'd for ever remember this obscenity, the pale, flaccid, gaping face of a dead idiot. (Which, come to think of it, wasn't far off the mark. That was the tragedy.)

She'd been weeping silently when the girl came back; the girl stood at the door, clearly afraid to come back in. Tanaquil looked at her, opening her eyes wide; her eyes felt sore, as if she'd poked them hard. Then she knew silent weeping wasn't enough, and she began to scream, and to her surprise the screaming came naturally, as if somewhere inside her was a vast emptiness and hurt, that like a nine-months-carried child had to be born, or rip her apart trying. Or perhaps, above that real pain and grief, there was only a brittle, frangible puppet Tanaquil pretending to be in control, acting out the role of ironic observer, acting the tears that were, in fact, real. By the time she'd pulled out a first handful of hair (a new, good, clean pain compared to the throbbing tenderness of that part of her scalp from which Tarquinius had yanked out a hank) she almost believed in her own grief.

Afterwards, Servius had said that she'd overdone it. Too much yelling, and everyone knew, anyway, that she'd walked out on her marriage; it didn't ring true.

"Just because I left him, you think I didn't love him once?"

"You killed him. Do I have to remind you?"

"I still loved him. Once."

Servius' face was closed. She couldn't guess what he was thinking. "You thought your squalling would convince them that you're innocent?"

She blinked. Treacherous tears. Tears she didn't need, now.

"It was excessive."

"Well, the Romans will think it's just the Etruscan temperament. Or a ritual."

"The bloodletting comes later, if you've forgotten... There are enough Etruscans here to see through that."

"Are there, though?"

It turned out that there weren't, and Servius, though he'd planned everything else so well, hadn't realised it; they were in the minority even within the palace, so far wrong had things gone in Tarquinius' declining days. So few friends, and so much danger.

That excessive display, though, had turned to her advantage, whether or not Servius liked it; she'd taken to her room, barring the door. There she could grieve in darkness and in silence, or so she'd said; in the stark, stone-like silence that followed when grief was all wept out. So no one would expect her to be here, clutching her husband's cadaver to her as they rode to meet the Roman army.

Tarquinius was ill, that was the official line, but his love for his nation and his army was so great that he would be carried out to take the salute. (The army was, almost, the nation bearing arms, and the nation was, you could say, only the army in a state of peace, since it had been built by rape and conquest, and when it ceased to conquer, it would cease to exist.) What kind of sickness no one had specified, but Manius had hinted that it might be a bad idea to approach the litter too closely; whether that was because the disease might be communicated to the soldiers, or because Tarquinius' enfeebled state rendered him too sensitive to bear the contact, he'd left unstated.

And now the problem of dealing with the baggage had worsened, as the body started to stiffen. Tanaquil heard the clash of spears against shields, a shout going up: Tarquinius! Tarquinius!

Servius' voice outside.

"Sir, sir, you should speak to them, sir, are you feeling well enough?"

She grunted. If anyone was close enough to hear, they'd think Tarquinius was too ill to speak.

The curtain twitched. Servius' face appeared.

"Do it," he said.

She stuck one arm through under Tarquinius' armpit, clutched the body under its cloak with the other. Had she made sure Tarquinius' right arm was pulled back, invisible? She had. She burrowed her head into the back of Tarquinius' braids; it was a long time since she'd nuzzled into his neck, but she recognised the smell of him, the mix of oiled hair and something less easily identifiable, slightly herbal and dry. She was ready; she pulled the curtain open with her left arm, put her right arm out, index finger slightly protruding from a loose fist, slowly describing a rough circle with the finger. There was a cheer; the litter moved forwards, along the line. She realised that with one hand on the curtain and the other waving she no longer held the body securely; she tensed her elbows inwards, but while this gave her purchase on the waist, the head was still lolling forwards. She couldn't let the curtain drop, not yet, not till she'd passed the lines; she couldn't yell to Servius for help, in case someone heard; the arm she was waving was in plain view; but if Tarquinius' body slewed to one side, or the head fell forwards, the game would be up.

There was only one way to keep that head steady; there was nothing else she could do. She opened her mouth and bit down on the braids, pulling them with her teeth to pull the head back and straight. She could feel her mouth moistening, saliva starting to slip from the corners of her mouth; no way to wipe it, and the mixture of spit and hair was beginning to choke her. She squeezed her eyes shut; she concentrated on keeping the motion of her right arm regular and slow.

Then at last the litter was turning, and she heard the thump of spear butts on the ground, and knew she was safe. She let the curtain fall, and at the same time spat out her mouthful of hair. There was one hair left in her mouth, almost making her retch, and she tried to pull it out, but it evaded her probing fingers; she could feel it with her tongue, and gradually pushed it towards the back of her front teeth, but it was some while till she could grab it with a finger hooked over her upper teeth. It was slight and thinner than it had felt to the tongue, and beaded with saliva that made her skin cold where it touched, and she shuddered, and rubbed it off on the cushions of the litter.

# Superbus

Fuck him. Fuck her.

They'd played him. Keep your mouth shut about what you saw. Keep the people, keep the army thinking Tarquinius is alive. Let's blame it on the Marcians. Let's set things up.

He thought she meant him to be king. "Another Etruscan king," she'd said; "we'll take Rome into the Etruscan League. We'll be a truly Etruscan city." He thought she'd meant him.

There was that charade with the army. You had to admire Tanaquil; invisible, immobile, holding her husband's corpse. It had been Servius' idea, of course, but she'd carried it out impeccably despite her grief. She'd drifted apart from his father over the years - how could you avoid it? Lust cooled, and love congealed – but even so, it was a loss to her, he could see that, and he admired the determination with which she'd set her feelings aside. Romans, though. Stupid, not to suspect something; an invalid king behind heavy curtains, without a voice, they'd have to be stupid not to have sniffed out that something was going on.

He'd seen the body. It had shocked him; the pale wounds, their edges swollen and grey like slugs, the lip Tarquinius had bitten through in his last agony. You imagined all kinds of wonderful things about war - he'd been jealous of Arruns, leading the troops out; but was this the end of it all? One of the servants had vomited, but it didn't take him that way; just the thought kept recurring, was this all there was, after all the bravery and pomp, expectation and pleasure, just this... nothing? He'd be drinking wine, and suddenly it would be tasteless. He couldn't settle to anything. Hunting might have shaken the ghosts out of his brain, but he was confined to the silent palace. He'd kept thinking; those dead eyes.

Fuck it, Tarquinius had died at the wrong time. There was never a right time for your father to die, he supposed; did every man go through this dark brooding, suddenly realising that if his father was mortal, he too would not be spared mortality? But this was the wrong time; with Rome under threat, the succession not determined, Tarquin still only in the junior ranks. The wrong time for him to go and fucking die.

Through it all, Tanaquil had worked unceasingly. Two days they'd had; Tarchna was more than half a day's ride – half a day out, half a day back, however long their council needed to decide. She was calling in her favours all over Etruria, all over Rome, while they waited to find out whether Tarchna would come to save them.

"Tarquin," she'd called; "your army friends."

He resented her wording; his men, he thought. He'd have to show her he wasn't a boy any more.

"What about them?"

"Are they... reliable?"

Reliable as he needed, he thought. But that wasn't really the question. "The Etruscans I'll vouch for; one or two of the pure Romans, none of the Faliscans. And Demetrios. He's good."

"Can you get a message to them?"

He shrugged.

"Get them here. We need them."

"If you've forgotten, Servius wants me here. I can't leave."

"I'll send someone."

"Send me," he said, and thought he could stare her out; but his eyelids flickered before hers.

"Why not send me?"

"Servius wants you here. And I need you here. Tarquinius' son. You give us legitimacy. I can't risk you in the city. Send someone you trust."

There's no one, he'd thought, no one I trust. Not even you, mother. Especially not you. But he'd agreed to send a message through one of the servants, technically Tanaquil's, but who'd worked for him a couple of times; someone his friends would recognise, anyway, and he'd briefed him exactly what to say, and made him repeat it back three times, to make sure he had it by heart. Tarquin sends his regards, and would you remember the snails in vinegar we had at Tertia's, and bring the recipe, as he'll be cooking this evening and wants you all here.

"Snails in vinegar?" Tanaquil had asked.

"You don't want to know."

He couldn't remember who the comment had actually been made about; it wasn't him, but it might have been Strephon, or Larth, whose penis had been compared to a snail in vinegar. There'd been a bit of a scrap; he just hoped they worked out what "bring the recipe" meant, and brought their weapons, not just themselves. If anyone tried to get the message out of its purveyor, they'd be none the wiser; and if the messenger himself wasn't completely to be trusted, he was hardly going to convey such a uselessly frivolous message to whatever paymasters he might have. Now, if Tanaquil or Manius had sent a message like that, everyone would expect it to be a ruse, and be trying to work out what it meant; but the advantage of having a reputation as a waster was that he could get away with it, send a message about Tertia's tits or Falernian wine or snails in vinegar, and everyone would think that it meant exactly what it said. Who was the clever one now?

And they'd arrived. Strephon and Larth and Sethre and Thesanthei and the rest of them, slapping him on the back and joking about the snails. (It had been Sethre whose prick had been insulted, apparently, and Larth who'd landed the first punch, for what that was worth.) Joking about the snails, but each one of them with as many knives as he could carry and a decently sized sword, and breastplates on under their tebennas.

Servius wasn't impressed. "Marzipan soldiers. What use they'll be..."

"Shut up." Tanaquil's temper was short. She'd looked at Tarquin with adoring eyes; he'd wondered whether she ever looked at his father like that. "They're young, but they'll be brave if it comes to it." She'd looked at him again; perhaps he'd been wrong about the adoration. Her eyes probed, searched, judged.

"You know," she said - ostensibly to Servius, but her voice was small and thoughtful – "he might surpass his father, given time..."

But Servius got his way about sending them off to wait in the servants' hall.

A dozen men arrived from Tarchna in the middle of the night; and they said there were more coming, encamped overnight about two miles from the city, ready to march in the morning. Their footsteps rang loud in the portico, but when they spoke with Servius their voices were hushed.

Tanaquil was pulling strings. She'd sent for Fabia, and the senior Vestal had come, with a basket of parchments.

"You can't fight a war with parchment," he'd said, but Tanaquil looked sharply at him.

"Can't I, though? Listen to Fabia. It might be educational."

"Here's one," Fabia said, pulling a scroll out of the bundle. "Marcus Aemilius. One of Faustus' old supporters, I think. Well connected. House on the Esquiline, a couple of farms, all of which came to him from his uncle, Titus Aemilius."

"So?"

"Titus left the farms to Marcus despite the fact he had two sons still living. I'm sure Marcus Aemilius wouldn't want this will to go missing, or for rumours to spread that it was improperly witnessed. And..." - she rummaged in the basket, pulled out another scroll and spread it crackling on her lap – "nor would Gaius Junius be pleased that his father's disinherited him. We might do something about that, in return for a favour."

"Junius?" he'd said. "He's got the best chariot team in Rome, apart from mine. And he sponsors a dozen fighters."

"We know." Fabia's voice was light, but her eyes were hard; he had a sudden impression of huge reserves of painfully acquired patience.

Two days. Two days of learning the art of manipulation. Two days of feeling stupid, of being made to feel stupid. Two days of wondering how his father had coped with Tanaquil. Two days of lessons. Two days for them to make Rome their own, before they announced his father's death.

They brought one Greek trader over by offering to take two of his daughters into the Vestals, and with him came his debtors, debts forgiven if they complied with his requests, or a threat of foreclosure if they didn't support the Tarquinian line. Tanaquil's properties, held by Fabia, were potent bribes, too.

It would have been less galling if they'd let him do anything. He could only watch and listen. Watch, listen, and drink.

"Watch what you're drinking," Tanaquil said; "I need you sober."

Yes, of course, he thought; you need me sober to speak to the people. I have to tell them I'll be a good king, whatever the truth of it. I have to win them over with my charm. They may not love me, but they can admire me. But in truth, he knew, he was drinking because he felt stupid - a stupid puppet of his mother's, a damn fool who'd never really understood the way things worked – and he couldn't stand it, couldn't stand the way Tanaquil and Fabia looked at him, talked past him.

Now here he was, watching his father's funeral. The body carried on the litter above the soldiers' shoulders, lying turned and supported on one elbow as if at a feast, golden laurel leaves on its head, the hair shining with gold dust. The nose was sharp, the cheeks fallen and thin; strangely, dead, Tarquinius seemed younger, as Tarquin remembered him before age and fat had blurred and coarsened him.

Here he was, dressed as a prince, watching the funerals of a king. He smoothed down the front of his tebenna, feeling the gold embroidery of its hem rough against his palms. The body was lurching as the men passed the litter up to the top tier of the high pyre. His hands were sweating, though the day was cool. A priest he'd never seen before came, eyes hidden under the shadow of his conical hat, and handed him a flaming torch.

"Go on," Tanaquil said. He stepped forwards. There was a gap between two logs at the base of the pyre; he touched the torch to it. Immediately, flames shot up as the straw packing inside caught light; he stepped back, fast enough that some one in the crowd thought it was funny, and laughed briefly, the nervous laugh of a man on the edge, as everyone was, today.

It was surprising how quickly the flames caught; the pyre became a grid, a cage of black timber and roaring brightness. An incandescent fringe crept across the crumbling hangings; a sudden gust of wind blew shreds of blackened fabric, which, when the wind dropped, floated down like dark snow. The crowd encircling the pyre began to draw away as the heat intensified, but Tarquin remained there, now isolated, feeling the skin on his face drying out, becoming thin and taut, and his eyes smarting with the drifting smoke. For a minute he'd been able to see his father's form against white smoke and pale fire, but now the flames had leapt high, hiding the body from view, except that every so often he'd see the dim outline of a head, on which the skin was beginning to blacken and shrivel.

Across the Forum, a flight of crows skittered up, black wings ragged against the sky.

He remembered the sudden noise that had broken out the morning after Tarquinius' death. He'd run out with Servius to see what was happening; someone had found two men lurking in the kitchens. By the time Servius got there, one was dead, and the other had been beaten unconscious; he had no face any more, just blood and bruise. It might have been kinder to kill him. Voices shouted their justifications for bloodlust.

"Those are your murderers."

"We got 'em."

"They hadn't got no business here."

"They were hiding."

That didn't impress Servius.

"Hiding? No wonder, looking at you lot. Anyone sensible would."

There'd be no getting anything sensible out of the survivor, even if he did come round. Nothing sensible coming out of the crowd, either; everyone had joined in after the fight had already started, had heard someone else shouting that the men were the killers, had come to see what was happening. Someone must have started it, but nobody had. Eventually Servius managed to find out from a frightened child who worked in the kitchen that the two men had been delivering quail for a feast that no one had bothered to cancel. When he looked, there were four wicker cages under one of the tables; the birds were piping feebly, a crush of soft feather and tiny glittering eyes.

The pyre was burning fiercely now. On the top tier, a log crumbled and fell inwards; sparks flew up in the whirling smoke, dying as they rose. He squinted at the light, morbidly looking at black shards sticking up in the heart of the fire and wondering whether they were his father's ribs, or just timbers half charred. He felt the scorching heat; of all the mourners, only Tanaquil still stood her ground, like him. Damned if he'd step back before she did. Damned if he did.

He stepped back, anyway.

She'd woken him early on the third day. Morning wasn't his time; he took a while to understand what she was saying. When he got out of his bed, the air was cold on his bare legs. Wash? In cold water? But he did, and curled his dark hair neatly into place, and put on the red tebenna with the gilded border, while she stared at him, as if he could never be fast enough, never clean enough.

Once he'd been her golden child, her young prince, hope and glory of the house. When had that changed? Then he'd thought to himself; of course, now I'm not just a young officer, now that I'm a king in waiting, she has to demand more of me. That sudden understanding filled him with a sense of his own importance, a full, ripe pleasure that made him smile flirtatiously at his face in the mirror, angling his head a little to look coyly, sidelong at himself.

Everyone except him seemed to have known there would be something going on. Servants lined the corridors; there were people waiting in the courtyard, and Servius in the upstairs room where Tarquinius had used to call meetings, from time to time. Below, in front of the palace, small groups of bystanders were beginning to coalesce into a crowd; two lictors were already pacing the perimeter slowly, with their little knots of lightly armed men. He would have given anything for a glass of hot spiced wine to take the edge off the morning and put an edge on his brain.

"You're ready?" Servius asked.

"Yes," Tarquin answered; but he realised as soon as he said it that it hadn't been him Servius had been asking.

Tanaquil looked at Servius; Servius looked at Tanaquil.

"Better do it, then," she said.

"Tell them they've lost a king."

"Tell them they have a new one."

This is it, Tarquin had thought. A minute away from a crown. A minute away from power.

Tanaquil stepped up to the window. A servant pulled the curtains back fully; light struck the back wall of the room, had made Tarquin squint against the low sun.

And still the pyre was burning; Tarquin and his mother stood alone watching the fires. The crowd had receded; some of the bystanders had drifted away now the initial conflagration had died down. The hangings had all burned, flaring up spectacularly, in the first proud uproar; now the wood burned steadily, the flames reduced to their blue hearts except in the very centre of the fire, which shifted red to yellow to almost white in the heat.

Suddenly, the top timbers started to move against each other, the whole structure beginning to sway. A crack opened down the side; through its darkening sides the eye of the fire could be seen, glaring molten white. For a moment Tarquinius feared the fire would burst out and claim him; then the pyre collapsed inwards, and the fire burst upwards in a great searing flame and a flurry of sparks, before the thump of falling timber and the outwards burst of ash and grit.

There was dust in his eye. He blinked hard, feeling the friction of eyelid on eyeball, his eyes had become so dry from the heat of the fire; he squeezed his eyes closed, yet still the cleansing tears refused to come. Was it a bit of his father's ashes stuck in his eye? he wondered. The wind stirred up the embers, which glowed for a few moments till the wind dropped, and died back to black furred with soft grey; only in deep crevices in the charred wood was the heart of fire still visible.

"Not long now," Tanaquil said, startling him. She must have stepped back at the moment that the pyre fell; charred fragments of wood had been scattered where she had been standing. No doubt she'd be able to take an oracle from their positions, from the length and degree of charring of each one. She could take an oracle from the sound of you pissing in the morning for all he cared.

Not long till the fire died down. Not long till all that was left was a sifting of ashes and a few shards of bone, which Tanaquil would have to gather. Bone still warm from the fire, thin and friable. A fragment of shoulder-blade, branching and porous like some strange fungus, or the round hollow smoothness of a piece of skull; his father transmuted into strangeness, and yet this, when you thought about it, was more truly his father than the changing face he'd known, which had accumulated fat, and wrinkles, and care. He looked away from Tanaquil, wondering whether she'd ever lain in the same bed with his father and seen the skull under his sleeping face.

He remembered how she'd stepped up to the window. How the crowd had fallen silent for her. How she'd paused, silent, letting the silence become potent, expectant; and then, only then, when even the wind seemed to have stilled, spoke.

"Rome needs a king; Tarquinius' true successor," she'd said.

Him, obviously; true son of his father. Even though, in some things, he thought his father hadn't gone far enough, wasn't quite the example he'd want to follow; even so, Tarquinius' true successor.

"A true son of Etruria and a true son of Rome."

She had to say that, he supposed, but he didn't plan to be Roman. Tarquinius might have gone native, but he'd take the city into the bright new Etruscan age. True son of Etruria. That had a good ring. He'd use that. He smiled; turned his face slightly to the right side, his better profile, thinking of how graciously he'd accept the crown.

"Recognised as the son of Tarquinius."

She was laying that on a bit thick. Recognised, when there had never been any doubt. Or at least, not more than the normal doubt in any Etruscan family, though no Roman would understand that...

"Recognised as worthy through his deeds. Recognised through marriage to Tarquinia."

Then he'd realised. Then he'd seen where Tanaquil had been leading, all the way through those two days; for whose benefit he'd brought his own men into the Palatine, for whose benefit he'd come to witness a coronation.

"Servius Tullius," Tanaquil said, and Servius stepped forward. The applause had already started.

And now, now the bitter wind blew up grey grit in his eyes, and he stood and watched his mother raking in the ashes of his hopes.

# Servius

Always before he'd known his own feelings, he'd known his direction and his loyalties; things had been clear, promotions had come as reward for his work, earned and rightful. Now after years of serving Rome and Tarquinius not faithfully perhaps, but well, he was king; and he felt not guilty exactly, but somehow unequal to it, as if he hadn't deserved it. He argued with himself; he hadn't killed the Vipienas, he hadn't killed Tarquinius; it would have been a disaster for Rome if Tanaquil's involvement in her husband's murder had been found out; Tarquin was in no way ready to rule – that would have been a disaster too. But however rational his arguments, they remained mere rationalisations; ways of palliating an unpalatable truth, that the one distinction of which he should have been proudest was that of which he was most ashamed.

He had to feel his way. Was Tanaquil protecting Manius? Was Manius protecting Tanaquil? He wondered how far she'd taken Manius into her confidence while he was out of Rome; not far enough to try to make him king, though perhaps she was simply too astute to back a man so far from both Marcian and Tarquinian families. He'd have to beware of Manius.

Tarquinia had had nothing to say about his promotion to king. She rarely did have anything to say, or at least not to him. He'd seen her perhaps three or four times since he came back to Rome; he couldn't say that she treated him with disdain, but she seemed to accept his presence sullenly, as one of those indignities like monthly bleeding that women were subject to. She slept with him if he demanded it, and turned her back to him afterwards, and slept as easily as a tired out child.

He hadn't much time to himself; Tanaquil had arranged meetings with the Etruscan cities, with the priesthoods of Velzna, with the odd prophet or augur who might influence the future by foretelling it; the days were not long enough. Then there were logistics; the armies to provision, kept in readiness for any attempt on Rome in these days of transition and uncertainty. There was an inner council to choose; he'd not realised till now how dangerously isolated he'd become, with only Tanaquil remaining from his old friends in Rome, and the furious set-aside Tarquin now leading opposition to his rule. It was only Tarquin's obstinate Etruscan snobbery that stopped him becoming a real threat, since his hatred for the Old Romans kept him from forming common cause with the now proscribed sons of Ancus Marcius. He chose men he trusted; and men he didn't trust, but needed to do a favour; and one woman, of course, Tanaquil, who took her seat in his first meeting of his advisers with a relaxed, graceful smile and a long gaze down the table resting on each man in turn, that suggested an easy sense of entitlement. He saw more than one of the Romans stir, but none spoke. Good. That was one less thing to worry about.

The council decided nothing. It wasn't asked to. The point of the meeting was simply to have one. Some of those present simply needed to feel they were being listened to (they weren't); others he was testing, gently, probing their advice, finding their prejudices and persuasions like feeling around a tooth with his tongue for cavities or cracks; noting who was voluble, who was not, who spoke before he thought, and the reverse; and noting, quite specifically, the small lie told by one Quintus, when he had no need to lie, about his lateness (and he had not, after all, been very late). So plausible; Quintus could so easily have been delayed by his business with the grain merchants, except that Tanaquil had already told Servius that the merchants were all closed this morning. So why lie? Was Quintus a traitor, or just the kind of man who who talked to hear his own voice, or who felt guilty for every small thing and couldn't rest till he'd exculpated himself, and at length? Time would tell... looking at Quintus' guileless, rather stupid face, he rather inclined to the latter, but he'd watch him carefully, none the less.

He dismissed them at the third hour. Tanaquil was the last to leave.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The Capitoline was in sunshine, but far behind the hills, the sky was black.

***

"Here," she said.

He picked up his crowbar. It clinked as he slipped it into the crack between two paving stones; a cold sound. The torches flickered; his shadow and hers stretched huge on the wall, outlines wavering. He levered up the slab, and held it for a moment balanced on the iron bar before slipping his foot under it, so that he could grasp the slab in both hands.

"This the right one?"

She nodded. The slab grated as he pulled it aside. Under it, the ground was rough, damp, full of rough stones.

"Dig."

He wasn't a slave, he thought grimly. He was a king. He did as he was told. He scratched the dirt away. One stone stuck in the dirt and he had to lever it out, like pulling out a decayed tooth's stump stuck fast. Slowly the depth of the hole increased, from shallow scrape to inverted dome to shaft, until it was the length of his forearm deep and he heard Tanaquil say: "Enough."

She brought a small chest and set it on the edge of the pit. There was a thin smell on the air; insinuating, sweet, but with a rank undertone, something rotten, like the sauce Ramtha had served that was made from fermented fish guts.

"We bury it?"

"Wait."

She'd brought herbs; rosemary, the broad leaves of sage rough as cats' tongues. He wished she'd get on with it; whatever she was burying, she wanted it to be secret. Women often did bury some of their wealth, he'd been told, so that if their husbands cast them off, or died, if their sons would not support them, if they were left childless – all the accidents of unknowable fate – they would have something left; though in Tanaquil's case, he thought, she'd already have put some of her assets in other hands... and he thought few women would bury a few pieces of gold in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, in front of the great image of the god which regarded them steadily and blindly from the darkness of the cella. But this was Tanaquil... Still, they needed to get their job done and get out of there; the longer they stayed, the likelier they were to be discovered.

She'd tied the sage leaves together in bunches, and lit them from a torch, and they were burning damply, smokily; the dry scent of the plants mingled with the stink of burning. She held one out to him.

"Take it."

He wanted to ask why; but he knew better. Some arcane ritual, he supposed; no doubt they'd have to walk round the box three times counterclockwise, too.

"Take it. Hold it close to your nose."

She opened the box. The rank smell that had underlain the sweet reek hit him at once; putrefaction. He'd smelt it too often before; gangrene in wounds, the smell of corpses on the battlefield. That was what the sage was for; he held it so close he singed the hair in his nostrils. It helped, a little.

Tanaquil bent to take something from the box; something that trailed dark strands that trembled in the torchlight, like a spider's legs, or some ancient and malevolent squid. Then he realised what he was seeing; a head, a human head, half rotted away, hair matted with gore hanging down in damp streamers mingling with torn remnants of windpipe.

The jaw hung to one side; the shrinking of the skin had drawn the lips back over the teeth, making the skull grin gormlessly. The eye sockets were dark and blind, the skin blackened. It took him another moment to recognise it, and his mouth breathed the name: Avle.

Tanaquil inclined her head very slightly.

"Let's get it done," she said, bending over the small pit, laying the head on its damaged neck, the face towards the doors of the temple. She laid a wreath of rosemary on its brow, and stood up. She was poised, as always, but Servius noted she kept her hands well away from her body, away from her clothing. He started filling in the hole; sifting a few handsful of crumbled dirt over the head before he began to push the excavated earth back in more quickly.

Probably he should have made some sort of farewells to Avle. He might have whispered to him, might have bowed his head for a moment, or tried to remember a particular moment. No use; no earthly use. He tamped the dirt down well, and levered the slab nearly back into position, holding it for a few moments with the crowbar under it, balanced tenuously.

"Shall I?"

Tanaquil nodded. He let the slab fall.

They cleared up cursorily; the excess earth went into the box; Tanaquil swept the area quickly. He could think of so many reasons their work would be discovered; the stink, the loose earth subsiding, a little chip on the edge of the stone where his crowbar had slipped. This was all too risky; and why?

"You think I'm mad," she said, and he said angrily, "No," though that had been, probably, where his thoughts might have led next.

"But you do," she said, quite evenly, "and perhaps I am. Or perhaps it should be Tarquinius' head buried here. - Shall we go?" She motioned to the box. "Bring it. - The head of a king. Avle was a king, after all. He'll do as well as Tarquinius, and it was easier."

"Easier?" (How the hell had she managed to get Avle's head? And without him being aware of it? He began to think he might have underestimated her.)

"I think if we'd delivered Tarquinius to the flames minus his head a few people might have noticed, no?"

"There was another head..."

"Oh, did Tarquinius tell you that? Or were you there... I don't remember you being there. Yes, this is the second. And there will be a third. - You shiver? A soldier? All empires are built on blood. You should know that."

He thought he was beginning to understand whose that third head might be. He rather hoped he wasn't. He'd thought after the Vipienas were killed that Tanaquil had begun to trust him – that she had to trust him, that she needed him; perhaps he'd been outsmarted after all. And a small and deeply nasty suspicion was beginning to form in his mind like an abscess in a soft dark mouth; that Avle could have lived, that Avle hadn't been killed to decapitate the Etruscan rebellion, to defend Rome, to punish treachery, or to leave Velx leaderless, but simply to provide Tanaquil with the head she wanted for her magics.

"You do know that, don't you?" she asked impatiently.

"Oh, yes," he said.

# Tanaquil

Another year had turned, the days swinging out again to earlier dawn and later dusk, the hours expanding; another year turned, with the year-fires burning in the valleys between Rome's seven hills, wolf-guarded, and now guarded by the wall Servius had begun to build, part turf, part tufa. Another year, her first without Tarquinius; an absence that she felt, sometimes, like a cold wind at her back, when she looked for him in the hall, despite herself.

She looked at the city, and saw peace, prosperity; the bonfires burning high, the vividly painted pediments and blazing terracotta roofs of the temples, the hillsides green with gardens. Ships were drawn up on the Tiber beaches, bringing amphorae of olive oil or wine, fine textiles dyed with bright Phoenician purple or carmine red, or pigs of metal from the mines of Aithalia; across the Tiber, past the Tiber island, the trees of the Janiculum orchards stood bare and black, but the stores were full of their fruit – cherries in spirits of wine, plum butters, apples chopped into rings and dried, or pickled in honey and mustard, lying dark and cool in the great earthenware jars; or apples packed in straw in the musty space above the rafters, slowly drying till their skins wrinkled and spotted with brown, but sweetening as they dried till, as spring came in, they burst their sugars on the palate darkly, almost dry.

She looked at the city and saw order. The orderliness of fruit trees in their regular ranks, of terraces carving the hillsides, the Sacred Way running straight as a thrown javelin towards the Capitol, the focus and axis of the city. Where there had once been scattered shepherds' huts and straggling, wandering paths, streets like sword slashes now divided the city neatly, as if writing an alphabet across the landscape. Marshes drained, rivers and streams tamed. The lakes of the Campus Martius glinted, sharp accents of silver gilded by the pale midwinter sun, till a passing cloud obscured the sunlight and turned the water to a dull pewter grey.

And yet underneath this all, the worm turned, maggots gnawed at Avle's sunken eyes; at the heart of the Forum was darkness and death, the mundus, the swallowing pit. Order and prosperity grew from the dark, and the dark was always threatening to take them back. Two months now, and they'd send the wolfmen on their yearly round of the boundaries, running the sparkling line that divided savagery from the city; but what use to guard it, when the darkness was already inside?

The passing cloud passed; the sun shone again. A girl came in with a brazier; it was still that time of year when the choice was between too cold without, and too hot with. She smiled at Tanaquil; a happy, open, guileless smile.

"The sun's come out," she said.

"So I see."

"I love it when we get a little sunshine. Everything looks so fresh and new when there's a little sun."

Tanaquil nodded, allowing a small smile to tip the corner of her mouth. (Had she ever been so innocent when she was young? Possibly not.)

"Oh! Manius is here, but I told him to wait."

"Quite right. Let me give you some advice; always make men wait, whether you need to or not."

"Oh!" The girl put one hand in front of her mouth, as if she was afraid of Tanaquil seeing her smile. "Why?"

"Because you need to get them used to it. Otherwise they just take you for granted."

Sometimes Tanaquil wondered why she bothered. The girl so clearly didn't really understand what she was being told; didn't, perhaps, even have the capability to understand it. She'd end up with fifteen children and a life of universal greyness, and no more sunshine, but you simply couldn't help some people; and that was a piece of wisdom that had taken her over forty years to learn.

Manius turned out, for once, to want nothing but the pleasure of her company. No decisions to make, no action to take, nothing but a companionable afternoon. At least, that was what he said; and she was generally inclined to take Manius' words at face value. Though she wondered, too, whether perhaps he'd heard that she'd bought some of the latest shipment of Greek wine, resinous and strong.

They talked about the latest Saturnalia; how one of his men had got so drunk he decided to jump into the water tank in the courtyard.

"That's pretty ordinary stupidity, though," Tanaquil said. "One of my boys does it every year."

"Ah, but the tank was frozen, so he lay down and pretended to swim on top of it."

"Pretty amusing, I admit."

"So he did that for just long enough for the joke to wear off, but then the ice started to crack, so he decided to get up and jump back on to dry land. Of course, that was exactly when the ice broke, so he was left with one leg out of the ice, and all the rest of him in the freezing water, and yelling like a pig with its throat cut."

She'd told him how they celebrated midwinter in Tarchna; with rather more decorum, though as much alcohol. How every year, another nail would be knocked into the great tree trunk that stood for each of the hidden gods in the sanctuary. The gods were so old that there was more copper than wood in the images now; they were running out of places to put a nail. She told him about the recipes she used to make with her mother for the feast; the dried fruit cakes, sweet but hard on the teeth, bound up with flour and honey; the honeyed meats, the meat stew in wine with puffy, herb-laden dumplings; the spiced, heated wine, for which each family guarded its own secret recipe that went back to the beginnings of the family and of Etruria itself.

He sucked in the tiny fold of lip just under his nose, and bit it, and thought for a moment, and said; "I think those recipes are perhaps the real thing that binds Etruria. Not your gods, not your prophecies, not your politics and noble houses, but your families, your secrets, the small things – a cake, the ways your workmen make gold filigree, the secret patterns in your weaving."

"How do you know about those?" she asked, but he smiled and spread his hands, and for once he had her beaten.

"You know, the Phoenicians have some very interesting midwinter traditions," he said; and that began a discussion of Greek and Gaulish customs, and another story about his servants and how odd it was that so many girls had babies due around September, and so she never did find out how he knew (and how much he knew) about Tarchna's family secrets. And all the while, she thought, he knew as well as she did what stood between them now, the one thing they weren't talking about.

But he surprised her again, a little later.

"I wonder sometimes why people want power," he said; "they seem so devoid of any idea what they want to do with it."

"Are you talking about anyone in particular?"

"Not really," he said, but he looked down at the ground as he said it.

"Power is all there is," she said.

He looked up at that, questions behind his eyes. She laughed.

"Love. That doesn't last. As you know. Luxury; well, that's one way to spend your life, look at Tarquin, you can make taste and opulence and youthful spirit go a long way, but what's it really worth?"

"I had wondered that," he said dryly.

"And wealth, what do we really want it for? Beyond the first few gold bracelets, the first couple of good chariots, what more can you do with it? No, Manius; power is all there is."

"But to do what?"

"Anything. To do anything."

"To make the city strong? Or beautiful?"

"And more. Strong, and beautiful, and ours."

"What happened to equality before the laws? When did you stop believing in justice?"

"You think without power there will be any justice?"

"You've grown cynical in your old age."

"Old?" she said. "Some women would poison you for that."

"You'd never use poison, Tanaquil. A knife in the back, maybe."

"Oho," she said; "watch out for a knife in your front. I'd hate to be predictable."

He grimaced at that, and chuckled, but then his face grew serious again.

"You know Robur is down south now?"

"I thought he was still trying to worm his way into the northern cities? Velathri, Viesul..."

"None of them would take him."

"You did your work well, then."

"Well enough. He did some of it for me, to tell the truth."

Tanaquil's eyes widened.

"A rape. Rather a nasty little episode. That was in Curtun."

"I never heard anything about that."

"They tried to keep it quiet. It never works. Wickedness seeps out somehow."

"Well for us that it did."

"He's trying to raise a force to invade Rome."

"Does he have a chance?"

"No. I don't think so. There's nothing in it for the Greeks; they trade with us, and they're well paid for it, so what would they gain by changing us for him? All Robur is to them is a cost. It's bad business; they can lose, but they can't win. And they've heard the rumours."

"Well, good," she said, but felt it was anything but good.

The girl came in again with some more wine; oh, what was her name? They all looked so much the same these days, all with the same hair, severely tied back but with a single ringlet escaping, as if accidentally; the same clothes, the same hemline, the same faience beads around their necks, even the same faces as if they'd all been moulded by the same potter, their thin noses pinched out between thumb and forefinger. Sunshine, indeed.

"And Faustus," Manius said, as soon as the girl had gone (and he'd confirmed that with a quick glance, Tanaquil noticed: he was being careful). "He... knows something. I'm sure of it."

"He knows nothing."

"He's started up that old chorus again – Tanaquil's plot to put the Romans out of Rome. People listen, you know."

"To put the Romans out of Rome? Who were the Romans?" she said acidly. "There's no such thing as Roman. Mongrels, the whole damned lot of you. There's not a Roman can recite more than five generations of family back to a rapist and a fratricide whose own father wanted to kill him, and that's the noble families."

"Whereas you..."

"...can recite my ancestors from the first lustrum of the Etruscan race, yes. I know you've heard it before. And is he saying anything else, or just having a good whinge with a new king as his excuse?"

"He's been saying power slides too easily from one place to another. From Ancus Marcius to Tarquinius. From Tarquinius to Servius. And you're always in favour, always running the show."

"Well, nothing wrong in that. He's not saying anything more specific?"

"He doesn't need to. Look, Tanaquil, you sent me to get Robur thrown out of Etruria; I know exactly how rumours work. If they're specific, at least you get a chance to deny them; it's the shadowy stories, the ones that blur and melt away – the suggestions and hints which never quite become statements or assertions – it's those which do the damage. Oh, and he says it will be Tarquin next, Servius won't last..."

"I'm tired of it," she said. "All I've ever wanted..."

"Is what, Tanaquil?"

"Oh, nothing. But I'm tired of all this. And it won't be Tarquin next, not if I have any say in the matter; he's too young, he's too frivolous, he's too headstrong."

"And you left him out of the succession."

"And he's sulking."

"And meanwhile, what do we do with Faustus?"

"Let him be," she said. But she lied.

She knew she'd have to do something. Faustus was too close to the truth. Too many people knew there was something wrong about Tarquinius' death, even if all they knew was that she'd lied about it for two days, and that the palace had been quarantined.

She wondered whether this was the way Tarquinius was feeling when he talked about the owls – how one thing led to another, one death necessitated another, and though you'd taken the first step for a good reason, or good enough, anyway, before long you found yourself tied up in knots of the logic of necessity; like treading on stepping stones into the middle of the stream, where you found, at last, only one stone you could possibly step on, and it was a long stride, a slippery rock, a footing that might tip under you, and yet you had to take the step, and hope it was secure. Security was all she wanted; it was all anyone wanted, but it became more and more difficult to find the higher you climbed. She'd killed the old king to win a kingdom; she'd killed Tarquinius not to lose it; and now she faced another death, simply to hide the others.

"I'm not sure that's wise," Manius said.

"Faustus has always been a problem, and he always will be."

"I still think you should do something."

And what does something mean, she wanted to ask; but instead she said, "I'm tired, Manius."

"I'll go, then," he said; but he looked disappointed in her, as if she'd let him down somehow.

And the truth was that she was tired. She was tired of dealing with guilt, the little crack in the world that let the hinthials in. Tired of dealing with doubt; and suddenly she reflected this is how Tarquinius must have felt, every day of his life, and wondered whether doubt was a living thing, like some insidious kraken that stuck to people with its needy suckers, and as soon as Tarquinius died, it had lassooed her in, and hung its tentacles around her neck. Tired of seeing the darkness beneath the brittle sunshine; tired of thinking through every footstep, every word, every look, before she did it, tired of reckoning the multiple, ever-branching threads of future, seeing everything she did infinitely reflected and refracted in those futures. Tired of the responsibility. Just plain tired.

# Servius

"It's growing."

"It is not."

"Look. That's a bud."

"It isn't."

"It is."

"It's dead. Dead, dead, dead, and never going to grow."

"Just wait and see."

Servius shrugged. "Okay, so it's going to grow, and next year you'd better have something better than this rotgut to serve up."

"It takes more than a year to make wine, you know. Let the poor thing grow first," said Rasce.

"If it does."

"It will."

"Anyway," said Servius, "since when have you been a gentleman farmer?"

"It's a long story. Long enough to justify another bottle of..."

"Rotgut? Why not."

Rasce had a good fire going inside, and the mud of the vineyard soon dried and started to flake off their boots, and the rotgut was a little tastier warmed in a pot and poured over honey.

"When did I last see you?" Rasce asked, and laughed when Servius nearly answered. "No, don't worry, my mind's not gone; I do remember crashing into your headquarters during the battle. And you didn't know the general had gone. And you had other things on your mind. He left you more than the horse bit, you know, but there wasn't time to tell you then, and there was no time at all afterwards, after the..."

His voice fell. Servius nodded.

"Anyway. I was with the general all my life. All his life, pretty much, too."

"You're a lot younger, though."

"My parents worked for the household; I was working as soon as I could walk. And then they discovered I had, what did they call it, an affinity for horses; and that was my life. From the day I entered the stables, I could see my life, always working for the general, always working with the horses, all the way to the end... I'd won a clean sweep of the big races for him, for seven seasons we were invincible, and I suppose he must have remembered it, for a few weeks before he died he wandered over to the stables and told me to remember he'd done something for me, and if anything ever happened to him to go to the priest of Selvans. All a bit mysterious."

"You think he knew he was dying?"

"No. But we're all growing old. And then he gave me the harness, for you. 'It's no use to me any more,' that's what he said; it was a long time since he'd driven a chariot, he said it rattled his old bones too much for him to enjoy it. And I don't know, I think while he might not have known that his own death was coming, he thought the old Velx was dying, and there was no place in it for him or his kind."

The fire crackled and spat a small rain of sparks on to the floor; they died instantly.

"I don't regret the old days," Servius said.

"I bet you don't, King Servius."

"When I think how my mother sold me..."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's all over now. She must have been dead for years..."

A little silence then, each man locked in his own thoughts, till the fire spat again (green wood, he's using green wood, Servius thought) and Rasce picked up the threads of his tale.

"He died just at the end of summer, while the days were still golden. There was a fine red sunset that last night, and we sat out drinking, and he saw a falling star streaking across the sky, or so he said, but when I looked, it had gone out like a spark from the fire. That's someone's lucky star, I said, but it's not mine. You never know, he said. The night started to get chill, and we went inside. In the morning... there was no sunrise for him.

"Then later, I remembered what he'd said to me about the priests, and I thought it might concern making arrangements for the funeral - some sacrifice he wanted, or an augury taken first – so I made sure I went to Selvans' shrine.

"The second priest was there – the junior – a rather put-upon man with a thin face and a stoop, and he didn't seem particularly pleased to see me, rather frightened in fact I thought..."

"Get on with it," Servius said.

"The general had been generous to me."

"Well, I'd guessed that."

"But he'd also charged me to sell up. The house, the horses, everything; sell it and go."

"That can't have been easy. There were five, no six, families living there."

"Only three when he died. But no, it wasn't easy. And that was why the priest had looked frightened; his mother was the general's woman."

"A bit old?"

"Growing old together; he must have found something comforting in that, I suppose. She was looked after."

"By him? By you?"

"By me. But then he must have known I'd make sure she was comfortable. She decided to live in Velzna, I think; not many of the household stayed in Velx. No one had the heart. Too many changes."

"And you came here."

"Rome is an open city. I thought, with a bit of money, I could do all right here."

"So you bought this place."

"A place on the Caelian. Fitting, really, a hill named after Caile."

"I owed him a lot. One of the perks of being king; you can rename hills."

"Rename the city, if you like."

"Maybe not that... You're well enough off, then."

"Not that well. Velx had gone to ruin; the place didn't fetch much, and after looking after the staff, and the sacrifices, and the funeral games..."

"Five days?"

"Six, and a gold prize for each event. Chariot races, horse races, footraces, the footrace in armour, boxing, wrestling and the greasy pole; a banquet each night, and a hundred dancers."

"No wonder Velx is ruined," Servius said, and snorted out a cursory laugh. Still, there had been enough left for Rasce to buy a small farm here, where Servius had set aside the land for Etruscan settlers, on the hill formerly called Oakhill, where the oaks still sheltered herds of stocky black pigs, which rooted for acorns among the roots. A reasonable sized place; enough room for a market garden and a few livestock, though perhaps surprisingly, no horses, and a tiny vineyard, not more than two rows of the vine cuttings they'd been arguing about, bare sticks poked into the dirt.

"You didn't come to me first," Servius said, with only a slight hint of question in his voice.

"I thought if it all goes wrong, he'll need a lad," Rasce said. "But this is better. To be honest, I never liked horses much. I could get them to do what I wanted, but I never liked them, really. Small minds. Stupid. And stink."

"You prefer the pigs?"

Rasce shrugged. "I prefer the vines."

"If they grow."

So Rasce, it seemed, had settled in, along with all the other Etruscans who had made the Celian their new home. This was Rome, but the lilt and lisp of Etruscan speech could be heard in the fields and lanes, and bright tebennas glittered against the bleached brown of winter plough and faded grasses; and at the field edges or in the copses, mute guardians of wood or stone kept the boundaries. An orderly part of a disorderly city, but one that was becoming increasingly ordered, as Servius settled his Etruscans here, his plebeians elsewhere, pruning away the old Roman patricians to let the newer arrivals thrive.

"You want to get yourself a woman," Rasce said.

"Got one already."

"Not doing you much good, then. You need a woman with a bit of fire in her."

He thought of Ramtha; but in his mind's eye he could only see Tanaquil, and he thought to himself; why not? It worked once, it could work again.

***

That thought was one that recurred whenever he was least expecting it. He tried to banish it; she was sleeping with Manius, he was sure. She was, too, his wife's mother, and his own adoptive mother. And she was Tanaquil... He woke in the morning with an erection; it was years since that had happened, and never with Tarquinia. He let himself daydream dangerously, of different approaches, different meetings, but never let himself get beyond a first touching of the hands, a first tentative stroking touch; it was all right, he thought, if he left it there, a wish unformed, a spell not cast.

He'd looked at himself in a mirror, considering. It was too small and too blurred to see himself whole. What had he seen? A taut face, hard eyes, tight wrinkles at the bridge of his nose where he'd frowned too often, too hard, that seemed to have been burnished by the bronze mirror to a fine tanned sheen, like a gilded statue's face, distant and unguessable. He'd grimaced, and the mask distorted. Relaxed his face, and it had flattened again. It remained a mystery to him how others saw him, what they saw; this face seemed to have nothing to do with who he was, who he felt himself to be.

There were rumours about Robur. There always were. He was never quite sure what to do about them. There were those who advised him to chase down Robur, or have him killed, or push him into making overt war; Tanaquil, and Tarquinius, and Manius, and so many others that when he thought about it, he couldn't remember any who had dissented. Yet he felt obscurely that this was the wrong course to take; that he should forget Robur and the other sons of Ancus Marcius, let them live their lives in the margins – and that this should be Rome's glory, that it could afford the luxury of forgiveness or at least forgetting. It was the more practical course, too, he thought; let the Marcians drift into irrelevance, without the glamour of sacrifice or the excitement of rebellion. Already, he'd heard for some time now, Robur was impatient with the indignity of exile, as he exhausted the welcome of one noble, one city, after another. But the new story, that Robur had finally agreed with Clevsin and was raising an army, might force him to change his mind; if it was true. He thought it wasn't; but he had no proof one way or another, and in the edgy, suspicious times that always followed the death of a king, he needed certainty.

He slept on it, and slept badly; not something he was used to. He knew Tanaquil would press him to solve the Marcian problem; as if killing one or two of the brothers – and they were dispersed now, one in the south, one in Greece, another in Felsina or Velathri or Curtun, depending on who you listened to – would solve anything. If you couldn't cut off all the hydra's heads at once, he thought, you were better off letting it alone... Solving the Marcian problem, she called it. He'd killed enough men in his time, most cleanly, some nastily, but he still found her elegant euphemism worrying; if you were going to kill someone, give your deed its right name, at least.

Waking the next morning, he ran his hand down his left side and felt the scar of a wound from a long ago battle, impressively long through it had not been dangerous. There were other scars, smaller ones; he could tell the story of each one – where he'd sliced his own arm open to dig out an arrowhead, a burned patch on one shoulder where a flaming lintel had crashed down on him in a village his men had fired. Some men were ruined by their scars, others ennobled; he fancied himself in the latter category. He hadn't run to fat. No longer scrawny, he was still lean; he could pinch the flesh around his waist and feel no more than a slight give where the skin was taut, but no flabbiness under it. He knew he'd never been good-looking, but he wasn't bad-looking, and by his age so many men were; the golden youths, the languid nobles, all ran to fat or wrinkled up or sagged, so the scrawny lads could inherit, if not the earth, at least a good number of its unattached women. (How old was Tanaquil now? Forty? Fifty? He'd never asked what age she'd borne her children. She must have been a young mother; younger when she bore Arruns than the still childless Tarquinia was now. But those were thoughts he didn't need now. He had to think about the Marcians, and the army, and trade with Tarchna...)

Some mornings he'd get up and exercise naked in his room, stretching the sleep out of his body till he felt properly alive. Each toe clawed, he felt his shins tighten; lunged, and felt the fronts of his thighs stretch and fill with weight. Drill, on a bad day, was only drill, but when it was good, he seemed to tune himself, mind to body, his body to the world, till everything rang with rightness. Today, though, it was drill; routine after routine, competently executed, repeated, working each muscle in turn. Nothing wrong with that.

He finished; he bent, reaching to grab his clothes. He felt warm, but when he touched his skin with his fingers, it was icy cold. Inside and outside didn't match; man and king, king and man.

Before he dressed, he stretched once more, and absently jiggled his prick in one hand; it was satisfyingly heavy. There was something comforting about the feel of it; maybe that was why so many soldiers reached for their cocks as a reflex action whenever they were afraid, not touching themselves in any sexual way but just to check everything was there, in its right place, the one thing they could count on. (Others, of course, had their gods.) Strange, too, how it was so heavy, yet as soon as you got into water, your prick and balls floated like strange pink jellyfish. Inside and outside, a confusion of difference.

Those too were thoughts he didn't need, and he pushed them away, pulling on his tunic. Another day begun. Another wearisome day.

***

Morning; review the strength of the army. The army was the nation's strength. He'd told his men that often enough that they echoed it back to him now. The thing Tarquin would never understand, though, it wasn't a matter of spit and polish and military parades; it was the deeply boring question of logistics, provisions, calculations of how long a smith would take to make a hundred spears, a hundred swords.

"There's a report from Velathri, sir, that the mines are running out."

"Running out?"

There was an uncomfortable moment. The speaker looked at his feet, everyone else looked anywhere but at Servius. They must have talked about it before he got there.

"Well, sir, they say the mines they are using are yielding less and less metal."

"How long has that been going on?"

No answer.

"We knew nothing about it?"

Again, no answer. He forced himself to exhale slowly; he'd been holding his breath.

"And I don't suppose any of you know whether that's true, or just something Velathri's saying to get better terms from us?"

"We're not mining experts, sir."

"Then let's send someone who is. Better, let's send two; one we send as an official envoy, the other one can scout about on his own. See to it, would you, Secundus?"

He spent hours trying to get the right information, sensing so often that the men were closing ranks against him, trying to cover their arses rather than give him the facts he needed. It took five of them to find out why the third century was spending twice as much as it should have been on provisions, and that turned out to be a simple accounting mistake. So difficult just to get the basics right, to get facts about his own army and his own city; it had never been so difficult in Velx, but then he'd been a military commander, not a king. Tanaquil was always telling him Tarquinius had let things slip badly in his last few years, and this was the proof of it; but it was taking too long to get the system working properly again. And how he was to get accurate reports on what the Marcians or the Northern League were doing, when he couldn't even find out what a century spent on bread and cheese, he had no idea...

He ate a cursory meal of dark bread, crumbled cheese and black olives, with a single cup of well watered wine, almost as if he was on a patrol; kingship demanded too many formal meals for his taste, so that this solitary, sparing repast was a sort of luxury for him now.

Another luxury was visiting the Capitoline temple, still a building site though very nearly finished. It was work, he reminded himself guiltily; finishing off the great temple that was Tarquinius' legacy to Rome. Still, it was a task he preferred to the endless jaw, jaw of limp secretaries and the interminable meetings that so rarely seemed to decide anything.

He only took two attendants. He knew he should have more. Kings always did; the pomp of state demanded it; hedged off from the people by their lictors, by their inner circle, by the appointed magistrates and priests, they moved in a shimmer of awe, inspiring the same kind of fear as the numinous grove of Diana or the ancient cave of the Wolves. Or at least, in his childhood it had always seemed so; and Tarquinius – though he'd heard the king had once worked, stripped to the waist and slipping in mud, at the great works of Ostia – had adopted more ceremony by the time Servius came to Rome. But he wasn't going to be that kind of king, he thought; things were changing – the Vipienas had been right; the day of the king-priest was gone.

The Sacred Way zigzagged up towards the Capitol, folded up on itself to traverse the steep slope; a small stone rolled under Servius' foot, and skittered down the face of the hill, trailing a spurt of dust. Across the Forum, the Palatine, which seemed so high from the Tiber plain, seemed to flatten into a low hump. He felt his heart begin to beat faster, and his throat seemed to tighten as the breath came harder, about half way up; and above, the temple loomed, its columns poised above the void. It seemed to tread the edge, daring ruin; it was the danger that made it beautiful.

Mamarke was striding easily; a young Etruscan, who looked like one of Tarquin's set with his fine clothes, and the kind of very thin braids that took hours to plait and oil, and showed conspicuously the amount of time and effort he'd spent on his appearance. But that appearance was deceptive; he was smarter and more hard-working than he looked, and when he spoke, he spoke sense. He was clever with numbers, and good at asking the right questions, and getting the right answers - perhaps because he didn't talk over everyone else as so many clever people did; or perhaps because of a certain guileless quality to his face. And the Roman – because he needed to show he wasn't just an Etruscan tyrant, he had to be careful to have a Latin for every Etruscan, to portion out the appointments – Gnaeus, a square-jawed soldier who seemed to have been born at forty and never been young, marched stiffly, slightly behind. If Servius hadn't known that Romans never sulked, he would have said Gnaeus was sulking at the refusal of his request for assignment to one of the border patrols ("Ceremonial duties" were words Gnaeus had invested with all the venom of a curse).

The wind was strong up here; raptors wheeled lazily, and torn fragments of clouds streaked the blue.

He looked up again at the temple. The sight unbalanced him; he felt he was falling into the sky, past the great pediment. The pediment still blank, the roof ridge still uncrowned; this was the day the great figures would be mounted on the roof.

The path became steeper as it made one last turn, and then they were on the steps of the temple, the great drop down to the Forum behind them; Servius could feel emptiness at his back, ready to overwhelm him if he stumbled or stopped moving forwards, and upwards, towards the great columns that supported the roof.

There was still scaffolding attached to one side of the temple; great logs jammed into holes in the masonry, and long thin peeled branches lashed up against them. Part of the area by the temple had been paved, but the dip between the temple and the second summit of the hill was pocked with pits, and overgrown where weeds had taken sudden root in the disturbed earth, leggy and rambling as shallow-rooted plants always are. The ground was littered with offcuts; a single huge amphora lay on its side, its belly split open. A cat was prowling across the waste; it stopped, opened its eyes wide at them, then crept away, its belly close to the ground, till it was out of sight behind a clump of tall grasses.

Servius grabbed the bottom of the ladder.

"Right," he said; "up we go."

Mamarke looked horrified. "We do?"

"You're not serious," Gnaeus said. "It's much too dangerous."

"As dangerous as leading a cavalry charge? As dangerous as breaking into the underground prisons of Velzna?"

"You weren't a king then."

"Well, I am now. And as I understand, a king can do what he bloody well likes."

He pulled himself up; the rungs were too far apart , and it was a stretch, and when he looked between the rungs he could imagine how, if his foot slipped for a moment, his whole body could slip through the ladder and fall, all the way to the ground, if he didn't hit one of the putlogs first. Better not slip, then, he thought, pushing the imagined fatality firmly away from his mind. Better keep going. But he could understand Mamarke's fear; he almost wished he hadn't insisted the lad accompany him.

As he approached the top, he heard people talking somewhere above; five or six of them, to judge from what he could hear, when the wind wasn't blowing the sound of their voices away. It was a nasty pull up over the edge of the roof, past the overhang and on to the unstable slope of the roof tiles, where he lay, hands grabbing at the tiles and his legs trailing limp and hurting, for a moment, before he turned over, and sat up to look out, past the smoky air of Rome to the distant hills of Latium and the shimmer of distance like glorious dreams.

Mamarke flopped on the tiles beside Servius, and Gnaeus grunted up, and stood, facing out, with the attitude of a conqueror regarding his most recently taken territory. It seemed like some strange picnic, the three of them here, in the fitful sun and chill wind.

Up at the gable end an empty plinth awaited a god. And there was the god, too; a huge terracotta figure, suspended from a wooden gallows by ropes and leather slings, twisting gently in the wind. He was gaudy with paint, his robes white and trimmed with purple, the lightning bolts in his hands shimmering with gilt; striding forwards, frowning, looking down. He was stern, but not angry; purposive, not hasty.

Yet now this impressive god was imprisoned in his harness, swinging, not striding. A man with a club-foot was rushing from one side of the empty plinth to the other, shouting, as the god was slowly lowered.

Servius made towards him, expecting, at any moment, he would stop, recognise him, welcome him, as people always did, whether cringing or with simple respect. But instead, the cripple turned, frowned at the interruption, and said tersely "Wait. This is important," before turning back to his work.

"Does he know...."

"Who I am? Who cares, Gnaeus?"

Servius looked more closely at the figure of the god; made in a single piece, he'd been told, and indeed he couldn't see a join. The arms rounded smoothly into the shoulders; there was no tell-tale crack between head and neck. Between the striding legs, folds of drapery supported the statue, but the arms were held out, unsupported. That must take incredible expertise, making a hollow form of that size, without cracking; and luck, too, in the firing, he thought.

The god was being pushed very slightly to one side. The foreman moved his head so he could sight along one side, letting the idol twist a little in its sling till he judged the position precisely right. The other men leant against the pull of the ropes, keeping the base of the sculpture still a couple of thumbs' widths above the plinth.

"Down a bit more. - No, stop. Hold this, will you? Careful!"

Surprised, even a little amused, Servius did as he was told, stepping forward to take the flat base in his hands, steadying it.

"Good." The word was dragged out in a sonorous, satisfied way; "Go-o-o-d. Keep it still. Now..."

Clubfoot hobbled to the other side of the sculpture, and further, standing almost on the edge of the roof, turning to look up at Tinia's face, then down again, his eyes flicking from side to side, intent, judging.

From here, Servius no longer saw the god entire; only the folds of the tebenna over his shoulder, loose folded zig-zags patterned like the letters of an unreadable message, and the moulded muscles of his calves, almost concentric ridges turning just below the knees into the rounded, elongated shapes of his stretch. A patterning almost formal in its geometry, and yet still the god seemed impelled, impulsive, moving forward.

"Down. Down. Right down... fuck! Stop it. Stop it now!"

Something was wrong. Clubfoot limped back to the plinth; one of Tinia's outstretched arms had nearly touched the wooden support of the crane. However well made the sculpture, it would break if it swung any further against the beam. Carefully, he pushed the statue at the shoulder, righting it, and then pushed the leather sling a little way down the chest, so that it supported the sculpture lower down, raising the other shoulder up. Now the arm easily cleared the beam, but otherwise the statue seemed hardly to have moved; just enough to stop it from swinging back. He regained his position on the very edge of the roof; it was dangerous to look at something from there, Servius thought – he was looking up, always something that imperilled the balance, and then, it would be so easy to want to see that little bit better and step back without even thinking, into clear air.

Yet his face was intent. Considering. And he stepped forwards again; a mere touch on one side to line it up.

"Down. Down. Wait; the back's not level. Straighten it! Straighten it!"

His voice was low; the instructions precise and clear. That was impressive; no temper, no fear, just concentration, cold and clear as diamond. Servius held the sculpture's base level; it took such little strength, the whole massive weight so poised, suspended. Now, at last, it was settling, with impressive slowness, the darkness between the base of the sculpture and the plinth growing thinner, till at last it was an infinitesimal crack, and at last it was not there at all.

The clubfooted man shut his eyes, and sighed, one great, long exhalation. Then, almost as if he was waking, he opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times and smiled, and said: "Thanks. Time for a drink, I think. -You'll come?"

This was to Servius, who was amused; and also, a little, grateful, to find a man not deterred by kingship, who treated him like any other man. Or, perhaps, who hadn't recognised him.

"I don't usually see workmen take such care," Servius said.

"Well, I'm rather proud of this one."

"Oh, you're..."

"Vulca, yes."

Servius hadn't recognised him; and Vulca knew it.

"You weren't expecting a cripple, I suppose."

Servius was wrongfooted. This man kept surprising him. (So few people ever surprised him these days; that was one of the problems of kingship, that you were sheltered from anything that you might not have expected, by men (it was mostly men, in Rome) who feared how you'd react if everything was not predictable and safe. That made life bloody boring. And now... Vulca. Interesting.)

"No one ever is. But if I'd not been crippled, I would have been out in the fields, not playing with clay. So I suppose it's a blessing, really. Anyway... that's Tinia settled. Come along" – he said this over his shoulder, as he made his lopsided way towards the scaffolding, on the other side of the temple from where Servius and his party had climbed up. Servius looked at Mamarke, smiling, and Gnaeus, scowling.

"Better do as he says." He led the way.

Vulca was already swinging down the scaffolding. Mamarke looked at him, shivered, and then grinned at Servius.

"I can't believe it," he said; "first balancing right on the edge, now this."

"But you don't like heights."

"If the gods had meant me to climb things, I'd have four legs and horns."

Looking at the view, Servius could understand Mamarke's fear; the hill fell away, over the Tarpeian rock's bare angles, and from here the world seemed small, distant, imminently vanquishable. He felt almost able to fly, to launch himself into air like an eagle; there was an excitement to the view that made him grin, as if he'd just won a race. But fearless as he was, as any charioteer would be, he wasn't as fast down the scaffolding as Vulca, and by the time he got to the bottom, the sculptor had disappeared.

By the bottom of the ladder a small lean-to had been set up, tall enough to accommodate a statue of Mnrva more than twice life size. The goddess' face was shadowed by the rafters; her hands gripped a golden bow. For a moment Servius caught his breath; if such a goddess should come after him... he remembered the stories; those who'd boasted of wealth, happiness, skill, and who'd been hunted down and slaughtered by the gods. Her smile was vengeful, the blank eyes threatening.

"Well?"

Vulca emerged from the shadows, holding a black jug that had lost its handle. Just for a moment, the fire he'd been lighting flared up and lit his face from below, casting his eyes into shadow like the empty holes of a skull; then as he stepped forward and the fire died down he was Vulca again, a man whose lean face was creased and tanned as if he'd been fired in his own kiln.

"What d'you reckon? Haven't finished the painting yet, of course."

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"She gives me the shivers," Servius said.

Vulca laughed. "She's meant to," he said, and waved the jug happily at Servius. "Grab a cup." He jerked his chin at a pile of winecups; like the jug, black and thick, the lowest quality of bucchero. If you looked carefully at them you'd see the thumbprints, the little unevennesses of the rim, Servius thought. Odd for a ceramicist to have such bad pots.

"They do the job," Vulca said, as if he'd guessed Servius' thought. "They get smashed all the time. The good stuff's at home... not the good wine, obviously, that's here all right. No rot-gut here. You work up a thirst in this job."

Servius pushed his cup forwards to be filled, but Vulca had moved back to the fire, settling a small pot on to the logs, pouring the wine from the jug into it. "How much honey do you take?"

"Some."

Vulca busied himself. That was one of things Servius missed, and had never thought he would; cooking up his own wine. Lighting his own fire, too. He missed the easy companionship of things, the sense of a physical world that fitted his hands.

Vulca was turning one of the rough little wine cups in his hands. There was something caressing in the way he held it, rotating it in his thick fingers, and Servius felt a sudden rage. He was jealous of this man; this man who had a talent for pots the way Servius had had for horses. (And how long since he'd taken a chariot out, or trained a colt to the bit? Too long, and and his days were getting shorter, and the work to fill them was always growing.)

There were two sawn-off remnants of the great beams of the roof left lying, useless now, unless someone took them to carve into thrones or made them into butcher's blocks; Servius dragged one a little closer to the brazier and sat himself down. His knees almost hit his chin; it was lower than he'd thought. He gestured at Mamarke and Gnaeus, hovering uncertainly near the door. They got the gist, and made themselves scarce. That was the difference between half good and really good servants, he thought; the really good ones knew when to disappear.

Vulca's absorption in the task of heating the wine gave Servius the opportunity to look around the hut. He'd seen the great Mnrva already, but not noticed the winged horses that stood under the lower part of the roof, their manes already picked out in yellow and the pinions crimson. Intrigued, he looked closely at the harness; buckles, bits, even the little leaping horse ornaments of the cheekpieces, were exact. Vulca knew his stuff.

Another surprise; the wine, when it came, really was a good one. He looked up at Vulca, thought of a compliment, then just nodded brusquely, and took another mouthful.

"Why did you come?"

"Why?" Servius repeated, bemused. People didn't ask him why any more. He did what he did, and no one asked questions.

Because I was bored with being a king, he wanted to say. The honest work of setting that sculpture in its place had given him joy, the same joy he'd had camping out, or in his first chariot races, or currying a horse. The simplicity of a task that could be perfectly executed, that was complete in itself.

Then again, he knew what he should say, what was expected; it was an important day for Rome, the dedication of the temple, the topping-out, a day for omens, a day to be recognised.

"Why not?" he said, and wished he'd been more honest.

Vulca was silent for a while, as if he'd been thrown by the answer; as if he'd hoped for something more, and been disappointed. When he spoke again, it was softly, almost as if he was talking to himself.

"I destroyed the first one," he said. "She was too severe. But it saddens me. I feel as if I'd killed someone."

"I've killed," Servius said. "It never saddened me."

But then he thought of where all the men had gone that he'd trusted; so many had died, others had gone on the run from Velx and never turned up here, whether that meant they'd found a home somewhere else, or met their ends on the road, or were still voyaging, on the back roads of Italy, or on the dark sea, or far into the misty lands of the north.

"What did you do with the pieces?" he asked, as if he cared, and found that he did.

"She was fired," Vulca said. "Nothing to be done but break her into the ground."

"You couldn't have just kept her? Made another one for here, and kept the first one?"

"Wouldn't have been honest. My idea was this." Vulca looked up at the statue. "Not whatever the other one was."

"Your Tinia," Servius said, and hesitated. Vulca raised his eyebrows, smiled, encouraging. Servius felt angry again; he shouldn't need encouragement. The King of Rome felt like a boy in front of Vulca's absolute self-possession, and hated himself for it. "I was impressed by its liveliness; the way the god seemed impelled forwards. The rhythm of the patterned robes."

Vulca looked at him. That wasn't right, he thought, stop trying to make regal conversation.

"That pattern. It catches the eye."

"Yes," said Vulca.

"It's not... when I look at you, at anyone, their clothes don't do that."

"No," Vulca said.

"But you..."

"I'm just trying to make some sense of the way things are. To make the way things are into sense, I should say. I'm not explaining myself very well."

"No. You are. It's me who..."

"Trying to get things into some kind of order."

Servius nodded.

"It's no use just putting an image of a man up there," Vulca said. "A god is more than a man. A god organises space and time; he sets bounds, divides, patterns."

"And so do you."

"In my way."

"It's a god-like attempt."

"No. It's an obsession. Have you never seen a child, about two or three, playing with pebbles, putting them in order, one, two, three, the black one, the white one, the grey one? That child-like intensity. They lose it, when they get a bit older."

But some people never did, Servius thought.

"I remember my Tullia, my little flame-haired Tullia, playing with wheat ears," he said. "I came home from a war, I can't even remember which one, now, and she wouldn't look up to see me, because she was laying out wheat ears, each one spooned inside the curve of another, the smallest inside the next smallest, and she wouldn't notice me till she'd finished. And then she swept the whole lot off the table and leapt into my arms and forgot all about it."

"How old was she?"

"About... three, maybe four. As you say, they lose it later."

There was something in those horses that was nagging him, though. It wasn't the harness; something else was itching in his mind like the irritation of a half-healed scab, and gods knew, he'd had enough of those. What was it?

"Your job must be similar," Vulca was saying. "Isn't a battle like that – trying to see some pattern in the swirl of men and horses, to mould it the way you want it to go?"

"If you can see anything at all. Dust, blood, sweat; it all gets in the way. Sometimes, I suppose. Other times it's just slash and prod and thrust. Every second another seemingly inevitable death – you feel it brush past you like a cat in the night, and then another spear comes at you. I suppose that has a pattern too, come to think of it, but it's not one a man can mould, as you put it. It's one you fit into. If you're lucky."

"If you're unlucky?"

"If I was unlucky, I wouldn't be sitting here talking philosophy with you."

Vulca's mouth lengthened in an edgy smile.

"I'm not used to talking about it. Not this way."

"Some artists don't talk about their art."

"You're not one of them... And when you're actually doing it, there's no time for thinking."

"That's true enough," Vulca said. "Thinking is before, thinking is after. Not when your hands are dirty with clay."

Or blood, Servius thought, and nodded. And then he realised what it was about the horses.

"What?"

Couldn't hide a thing from Vulca. Servius hadn't even realised he'd said, almost under his breath, the words "Of course"; that he'd nodded, an almost imperceptible nod, as something shifted in his mind and settled, like the huge wooden bolt of a temple door slotting into place.

"The horses' front legs."

"Are what?"

"Are wrong. Lifting both front legs at once. They don't do that. Not when they're running."

"Oh." Any other voice would have had an edge in it; not Vulca's, dispassionate. "You know horses?"

"I was a charioteer."

"Oh yes," said Vulca; "I'd forgotten." That was the first time he'd let slip that he knew exactly who he was talking to. "So they don't lift both legs at the same moment? I've watched them, often, and I could never see the sequence clearly."

"Not in running. They might if you stopped them suddenly, if they reared up, once they'd stopped. Then you'd be in trouble."

"Not quite what I intended."

"And they'd be standing on both back feet, then, rearing on to their haunches. Which they're not, here."

Vulca was looking at his feet. Servius couldn't see his eyes.

"But they do look... fine... the way they are." And he knew as he said it that they didn't, that he was lying; and even if he'd been telling the truth, Vulca did not make art to look fine, but to be right.

"Why don't you come to Mars Field tomorrow? I'll put a horse through its paces for you."

Vulca shrugged. "I told you; I've watched horses before."

"Where?"

"In the meadows."

"Ridden?"

"Sometimes. Mostly without a rider."

"You've probably never seen a controlled canter. Every movement slowed, almost stilled."

"Is that one of your skills?"

Servius nodded.

"Well, I think I might. But it will have to be soon."

"Tomorrow, if you like ... why?"

"My job here's nearly done. Just Mnrva and the quadriga to put in place."

"Stay in Rome."

"There's nothing here for me."

"There'll be more temples. More jobs."

"Not like this. You know, I'm not sure my horses aren't right. Even if, as you say, they're not. Look where that quadriga's going; they'll have their hooves poised above the city, in clear air. Hooves that will never fall. And Tinia holding out his thunder over a Rome; a threat, a prophecy, a warning. Everything I wanted it to be."

Servius smiled, and held out a hand to Vulca. "I remember feeling like that when I won my first race. I'll never race again, I said to myself. Nothing can ever be as good as this."

"But you did."

"Yes."

"And was it?"

"Was it what?"

"Was it ever as good as that again?"

"Yes. And no."

Vulca took Servius' hand between both of his, holding them gently, still.

"I'll come tomorrow to watch your horses," he said; "but then I'm leaving Rome."

When he thought back to that moment, Servius understood the stories of kings who'd killed their architects, or blinded them, to prevent them ever building anything as perfect again. He understood how the pain of a rejected lover could make him a murderer. But mostly, he thought of the gentle security of Vulca's hands around his.

***

The sun set gaudy over Rome, a welter of pinks and purples diffused on to the gradually darkening blue of sky. A gash of molten gold tore sky and earth apart at the horizon. Servius felt the chill begin in the air. Time for what he'd put off all day, then; time to visit Tanaquil.

She hadn't been expecting him, he thought, since she wore only a short tunic, and no jewellery, but the red on her mouth was stark and greasy against her pale skin. In the sunset light she seemed almost transparent; he could see the sharp edges of her collarbones, the bones twisting in her wrists. She'd always been lean, but now she seemed hungry, her flesh eaten up by her desire for power.

"I thought you would have come earlier."

"I had something to do," he said, but didn't say what; why was he feeling so defensive about it?

"We need to settle what you're going to do about Robur."

("What you're going to do," he noticed, as if she took no responsibility at all for the decision, though really she had everything to do with it.)

"I'm not going to do anything," he said.

"Oh for the gods' sake. Not that again."

"Why should I?"

"He's a danger to Rome. A danger to you."

"He would have been dangerous, if he'd done something back when it made a difference, in Tarquinius' early days."

"He still is."

"No, he's not. He's spent how many years drifting? From city to city, from friend to friend. Everything he has is borrowed; borrowed houses, borrowed horses, borrowed men. He's become a permanent exile; after all that time, there's no coming back."

"You'd know," she said, unsmiling. He bit back the angry reply that suggested itself.

"I'll only make enemies if I kill the Marcians."

"They're your enemies anyway. Enemies are like snakes; better dead. Better dead quickly."

"No," he said.

"What's your alternative?"

"War on Veii."

He saw he'd surprised her, by the way her eyes seemed to lengthen, and her face harden, for a moment; and then she said, very quietly, "You'd better explain."

"An early victory for a new king is never a bad thing; and there will be plunder to buy new friends. A rich Rome is a quiet Rome."

"But why Veii?"

"They're weak. Exposed. They played the wrong alliances."

"That will change if you make war on them."

"Will it?"

"Of course. Tarchna is beginning to suspect what you're up to. So is Velzna, I think."

"Velzna. With which we still have an alliance."

"Alliances change."

"It takes time to change them. Time Veii doesn't have."

"If your army's ready."

"It will be."

She seemed not to have noticed the future tense that betrayed his insecurity. Or perhaps she gave him credit for being able to shape his men up in short order; though after this morning's obfuscation and equivocation, he wondered just how far he was from having an army ready to march.

"Well. If you're sure. Yes. I can see how it works. You have a victory, Rome has the spoils, and the Marcians..."

"Have what they always had; a distant claim and a grudge, and nothing more."

She was looking at him, and then she wasn't; her eyes seemed sightless, for a moment, and vacant as a blind man's, or a dead man's (and he'd seen more of the latter, to be honest), and then she shook her head angrily, and blinked till the tears started at the corner of her eyes.

"A prophecy?"

She didn't answer, only sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit down on it, still confused.

"What did you see?"

"Nothing."

"I know you saw something. I know the signs."

"No..."

"One of your prophecies."

"Not really. Just the sunset lighting your hair. For a moment..." she paused. She looked miserable as he'd never seen her before. "For a moment, I thought you were burning up in it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning nothing. My eyes are getting bad these days. They film over if I weave too long."

"But you saw..."

"I saw nothing. Nothing."

"You saw me burn. Do I die that way?"

"No," she said.

"You've seen my death?"

"That's not what it means."

"Tell me, then."

She shook her head. The last glare of sun flared up in his eyes. He grabbed her hands, feeling the bones move as he crushed them.

"Tell me."

She was stubborn, and he didn't know why, and suddenly he felt pure rage; rage at the way his life had changed, rage at her obstinacy, rage at her secrets, rage at the secrets women always held over men. Fire in his heart, fire in his blood; she'd seen flames, now let her burn in them. He pulled her hands, pushed at her body with his, saw her flinch from him. So much mastery, so much prophecy, and at the end of it all she was just dry shreds and bare bone kept together by a slim spark of life, just a woman, like any other.

He saw how her tunic stuck to her in the heavy air. He smelt the undertone of sweat to her perfume, the sourness of fear – they said dogs could always sniff it out. Her breasts swung as she stepped back, the fabric stretched over her nipples, but when he pushed her back again it was the angles of her hip bones that he noticed, and the hardness of her ribs.

He pushed her against the wall and felt as much as heard the dull sound as her head snapped back against it. His own head was tight and heavy with lust and rage; he ripped up her tunic, grabbing at her with one hand. She was wet, damn it, that gave the lie to this game she was playing. Playing with fire, Tanaquil, he thought, you'll get burned, and drove into her.

It was only afterwards, as he turned away, that he saw the threads of dark blood on her thighs.

There was blood on him, too, smeared on his skin, clotted in his clothes. Too much blood, too dark; then he realised. He'd thought she was old enough for it to have stopped.

The light had almost gone; that surprised him. How long ... He twisted his tebenna round himself.

Tanaquil made a sound that might have been a sob or a cough. He looked back; her face was almost grey in the gathering shadows, like a ghost. For a moment he felt almost afraid; they shared too much, the two of them. She was Vanth who opened the doors to the underworld, and closed them again, and he was her hammer-wielding Phersu, who had bashed in Tarquinius' head, who had bound himself to her in secrets and in blood.

"Is that what you do with Tarquinia?" Her voice was hoarse, like a whisper of dry grass. He remembered his hands round her neck. Such a slender neck.

"With your daughter?" He laughed.

Tanaquil looked at him steadily. One hand crept up to her throat, but otherwise she was still; she made no attempt to smooth down her clothes, to pull back her torn braids. Then she spoke again, a single word.

"Why?"

He didn't even know. The blood was drying on his thighs, sticking the hairs to his skin, so that he itched. There has been blood, he thought, and there will be more. The ghosts are hungry.

***

The air blurred with stones. First there was the slushy whip of the slings being released, and the moment after, the deafening din of the slingshots hitting the bronze shields set up in front, thick as hail in an autumn storm.

It made him happy, Servius realised. Violence had always been a means to an end for him, as it had been for the General; the study of strategy, curiously dispassionate. You'd never see the General in a brawl; for him, it was thought that came first, the planning and the care, and violence was only the necessary, momentary action that came between the plan and its conclusion.

"The greatest victory," the General had said once, "would be to win a battle without ever striking a blow." Again and again he had Servius plan battle orders that put his forces in such a good strategic position, and his enemy in such a bad one, that a rational enemy would surrender without a fight.

"Has it ever happened?" Servius had asked once.

"Sometimes," the General said.

Of course, it depended on one's enemy being rational.

Killing, for instance; that was necessary. It was, regrettably often, kill or be killed, but there had always been some fastidious element in Servius' mind that shrank from it.

But hearing the stones thunder on the shields, Servius understood the attraction of violence. Destruction as an end in itself, the thrill of the little boy smashing crockery against a wall. He understood now the way some drunks enjoyed their rages, given licence by the drink to hit out and smash things, people, lives. To be Tinia, he thought, to hurl thunder!

"Impressive, isn't it?"

Tarquin had come up to stand beside him. Elegant, as always; and, as always, disconcertingly able to read Servius' thoughts.

But then Servius looked again. So many stones had fallen short, not hitting the targets; and one slinger had managed to swing wide and askew, hitting one of the officers' horses, which had kicked up and run on to the field, stopping the rest of the practice while three of the junior officers tried to catch it (and Servius could have told them running after a horse was the worst thing you could do, but let them learn it the hard way). He looked at the slingers; a single volley, and they were standing relaxed, slings dangling, and even if the horse problem meant they couldn't fire, they should at least have loaded a fresh shot into their slings and have them at the ready, so they wouldn't have to grope for the loose end of the string and reload when they were needed again.

That was the trouble with a citizen army. No one knew what to do. He'd thought having slingers would make life easier for the new plebeian drafts - farmers and their boys who used slingshot to scare the birds off the new sown corn, to drive the boars and deer out of the fields; city lads who'd used a sling to hunt pigeons for the pot. Well, they knew how to shoot – except for whoever had slung that shot wide – but they had no discipline, no idea what war was like. That would have to be drilled into them.

"I hope our enemies don't get the same idea," Tarquin was saying. "I wouldn't fancy a chariot charge against that sort of thing."

"I don't suppose they will."

"And if they do?"

"We'll think about it then."

There would be ways round it; there always were. A hoplite charge, with the men holding their shields above their heads, like a monstrous metal turtle. A distraction. In open country, setting fires to burn the grass and smoke the slingers out. But right now, he had other concerns, like getting that damn fool horse back into the lines.

"You know horses, Tarquin."

"You're thinking about that poor gelding they're yelling at out there?"

"Exactly. Just... see to it, would you?"

He could have done it himself; but that would mean leaving the plebeian slingers to Tarquin's contempt. Better to drill the slingers himself, and have Tarquin capture the horse...

"You," Tarquin yelled at the three hapless officers who were trying to chase the loose beast towards each other. "Back here."

"But we're..."

"Now!"

Tarquin picked up a bucket.

"You'll want a halter, sir," said one of the officers.

"I will, will I?"

"That's a bucket."

"Oh, I had no idea. I really thought it might be a shield," Tarquin said nastily. "Now, where's the quartermaster?"

Servius allowed himself a grim smile. Tarquin had things well in hand. The horse, freed of harrassment, quietened a little, though it still stood between the slingers and their targets.

The other trouble with a citizen army. Tarquin's horsemen were all patricians. Fighting was a hereditary career for them, a privilege of wealth, the wealth that paid for their gilded bronze armour, their sharp swords and proud horses. War wasn't a luxury, though; it was a hunger, and one that needed bodies to feed it, and so Servius had increased the centuriate again.

No one had liked his census. No one ever liked being forced to disclose facts; about themselves, even less. But he'd had accurate information, for once, and he'd brought another four centuries into being, forcing the wealthier traders to contribute in proportion to the property they owned. Each man according to his means; that was fair enough. And then for the others, men who owned nothing, or little enough – a few tools of their trade, some cracked pots and a spare tebenna for 'best' – he'd created the slingers' class. No horse to pay for, not even a roughly forged sword, just the plaited belt and a handful of stones.

He'd even used the veterans and the half crippled as his rearguard, for the defence of the city. No one got invalided out or retired in this army, just redeployed.

But in the meantime, he had to teach men to become soldiers.

That was the trouble with a citizen army. And then there was the trouble with the noble army, too, which was that everyone, and not just Tarquin – who was striding across the field now, shaking the bucket from side to side, clucking gently to himself – wanted to play hero, to indulge in single combat. But he wanted his men to fight in tight formation; war was no time for an Achilles to spend his time seeking out one splendid Hector to drag behind his chariot, it was time for the cavalry to accept orders. The horse were usable, interchangeable, and in the last resort expendable, just like any other force a general had at his disposal. But he'd had a hard time getting those flashy, individualistic aristocrats to accept it. Eleven gods in a basket, there were days he felt more Roman than Etruscan, when he had to deal with Tarquin's sort.

Tarquin was back. The field was clear. Behind the lines somewhere, he thought, a contented horse would have its nose stuck in a bucket of grain, the sharp sting of slingshot quite forgotten. If only men were so simple to lead.

"You're next," he told Tarquin.

"We're ready."

That was gratifying; no protest at being made to do double duty, catch a loose horse one moment, lead his men in a drill the next. A scowl had just begun on Tarquin's face, but it was quickly smoothed over with an ungenuine but bright smile. Tarquin was so like Tanaquil, sometimes, that ability to assume fleeting expressions like ripples on deep water; beneath, in the dark depths, Servius wondered what lurked.

Tarquin fisted a quick salute, turned, left. Precise. In fact too precise. There was a certain art to that, which only the well-born possessed; managing to be utterly insolent, as if they'd yelled "Cock, piss, cunt" at you, yet without putting a foot wrong – there was nothing you could call them out on, if anything, they were over-correct, over-polite, over-subordinate, but you knew as well as if they'd smacked you in the face that they despised you. The experience left Servius feeling soiled and oddly ashamed.

The line of horse was already drawn up by the time Tarquin got there, the slingers having been cleared out of the way by shouting and, where necessary, the swing of a whip or the flat of a sword. (He'd have to do something about that, too.) Crested helms shivered in the breeze, but the men were immobile, their horses still but for the occasional shift of weight from one foot to another, or a protesting toss of the head.

All eyes were on Tarquin. He held up his arm, waiting for the silence to become even more absolute; and just as the whole world seemed to catch his breath, brought it down, and kicked his horse on.

They charged well. They reached the line of shields almost together, though Tarquin was in front by a head. They wheeled back from the line in good order, too, easing down to a trot once they were out of bow's length. That was nicely judged, he thought; go on, hit them again. And they did, and again, wheeled back, maintaining their line.

Anyone could attack; it was maintaining an orderly retreat that was the real measure of an army. The better the retreat, the sooner and better you could hit back. Those were his orders to cavalry; disengage, don't get drawn into close combat with footmen, maintain your manoeuvrability. If it worked as well as this in real warfare, he'd be happy.

And now the hoplites were standing ready, like ranks of bronze statues; bronze helmets, bronze breastplates and greaves moulded to the form of the muscle. Their faces were hidden by the cheeks of their helmets, from which dark sightless holes instead of eyes stared out. Only their thighs, under their leather skirts, and their naked arms were human, and vulnerable.

"Forward!" a voice commanded, and forwards they went, the metal rattling and clashing. The round shields glittered where the sun hit their bronze facings. Men with red horsetails mounted on their helms and faces as red as their crests led each division of the whole, but for the most part it was young men in the front.

That morning he'd been shocked to see two old men in the front line. He'd called them out of the ranks; not their fault, he said, but didn't they know they should be further back?

"I fought at Collatia," said one. "I earned my place."

"Not in front," Servius said.

"I want to see a fight."

"No doubt you will. But I need you in the back."

And back they went. They weren't happy. Nor was Tarquin. "You want young men in war," he'd said.

"You want young men at the front. Old men in the front line – well, that shouldn't happen. But I need them at the back."

"You don't need old men at all," Tarquin said stubbornly.

"You don't know how infantry works, do you?"

"I fight with the horse."

"Well then. Infantry works like this; keen young men at the front, and old experienced ones at the back, pushing forwards."

"Keen young men don't need pushing forwards."

"They do if they get windy," Servius said. "The old ones'll keep them moving smartly."

"For what that's worth."

"And it's the old ones who'll stick their heels in and stop a rout, if the greenhorns at the front start to panic. Have you ever seen a retreat?"

"No cavalry I've commanded has ever needed to fall back."

"You'll see defeat soon enough. It comes to us all."

Tarquin shrugged.

"What matters isn't one defeat. It's what you salvage from it." Which wasn't what Homer said, but then Homer was quite often wrong about these things.

"But a retreat?"

"Is often the wisest course. The veterans have seen it all before. They'll keep the retreat steady."

"But if the young ones break and run?"

"They won't. They can't."

It was the old ones he was worried about. They were the men who got trampled in a disorderly retreat; they were the men who got left behind, when the front ranks went too fast; and still, they were the heart of the army.

In the drill, the advance started well, but as they moved up the field, the first two lines started wavering. It wasn't a question of courage, as it might be in war, but simple inexperience. At one end, the lines moved far apart as the front raced, and the men at the back couldn't keep up the pace; elsewhere along the broad front of the phalanx, the back was moving forwards too fast, men treading on the heels of the line in front of them, and the front line was being pushed out, so that the solid straight edge of the phalanx was becoming ragged.

"This is messy," Servius said, turning round to look for Gnaeus. "Get the commanders over here. Get the men to fall back to their starting position."

"It will throw the agenda out, sir."

Another of those damned functionaries who seemed to be everywhere now he was king. How had he managed to keep them out of his way in Velx? Had they all swarmed around the Vipienas, and he'd never noticed? Or was this part of Tarquinius' heritage, in which case he'd better start pruning them out, and bringing a few of his own hand-picked men into the army, even if that started a scare about Romans being replaced by Etrurians of half the quality at twice the price, and he knew that it would. Damn, why was nothing easy these days? Back in Velx he'd have simply fired the pipsqueak...

"The agenda?"

"They'll be late back to camp for their meal, sir."

"Really." His voice held a warning, which the soldier managed not to hear, or ignored.

"Yes, sir."

"They'll be here all day if they don't get it right. You can tell them I told you. And all night, come to that."

"Yes sir."

Romans were good fighters, but they had a very limited vocabulary, he thought. And where the hell was Gnaeus when he wanted him?

"Not a man of many words, that," Tarquin said.

There was a long wait while the commanders were summoned, and given Servius' message, and went back to their troops, and explained what had to be done, and the whole phalanx was drawn up in order again. The air was poisoned by hard looks and unuttered curses, and the longer things dragged on, the worse it got.

"Is it worth it?"

Servius was surprised Tarquin had to ask. "A phalanx only works if it moves as a single unit. What you saw earlier... an enemy could pull our army apart."

"But why are we using a phalanx anyway?"

"Because it's unbeatable."

"On level ground, yes."

"Which is where we'll fight."

"Given the chance. But if the enemy moves into the hills... You can't take a phalanx across broken land."

"True, the enemy will have the advantage there; they disappear into the gullies, into the forest fringes, the heathland. You can't take a phalanx there."

"You can't."

"But you can't take a chariot there either."

Tarquin scowled.

"We pick our fights," Servius said. "We draw our enemies out, where we want them. We tempt them on to the plains. We seduce them into the valleys. And then we throw the phalanx at them."

"No room for the horse at all, then," said Tarquin, as if he'd expected this all along.

"Oh yes."

"Where, then?"

"When the phalanx has broken them, you sweep them up."

"Chasing them down?"

"Exactly."

"Hardly sport, chasing men who're running away."

"Sport? What do you think we're in this for?"

"To win, I suppose."

"To win. Not just to win a battle. To do something no other city has ever done; to lead Etruria forwards under one rule."

"You've been speaking to my mother."

Servius didn't deny it. But his image of Rome triumphant was rather different from Tanaquil's.

The men were reshuffling the lines. More delay, while they worked out who went where, as if that would solve anything. Solidity came through practice, and they were running out of time.

"You have to admit it makes sense," Servius said.

"Yes." Tarquin looked down at his feet. "It does if you're a Roman. But I don't know how Tarchna feels about it. Or rather, I do."

Someone shouted. The men were ready again. There was a sudden clash as the front rankers brought their spears down ready to move, and then a moment of stillness. Waiting for command; if there was a torture set aside for soldiers in Hades, it would be living that moment of tension again and again, always at the ready, always afraid, before the battlecry and the release of action. The phalanx bristled with spears, the shields shone in the sun, and the men held steady, silent. Servius felt his flesh creep. It was a sight to inspire terror.

Again the shout went up, again the phalanx marched forwards. This time, the front held straight, though here and there Servius could see gaps in the wall of shields.

"They're drifting apart sideways," Tarquin said.

"You fix one thing, and something else goes wrong. That's the way things are."

"So?"

"So we start again. Pull them back, start again."

They went back again and again, five times in all, till the hour for the men's meal was long past, and the sun was beginning to decline. It was hot, the men were sweating, there was no shade and no water. Servius' aides muttered, and Tarquin pouted, and Servius knew the men would be cursing him; but there was no choice. The army had to be ready. And so back they went, till they got it right.

# Tarquinius

He didn't know why he had to watch the hoplites. Infantry was not his thing. He had his horsemen, his chariots, his own methods of warfare. His own hand-picked band, not this motley assortment of never-met-before farmers, traders, and immigrants.

Fighting on foot was what you did if you fell off your horse. And in the nature of it, it was scrappy, every man for himself, fighting your way out of a situation you didn't want to be in in the first place. The skill was in the skirmish, in managing your horse and dominating his cowardice and flightiness, in the great onrushing sweep of attack.

Fighting on foot was for slaves.

And now Servius was pulling men out of the front line because he thought they were too old. The first sensible thing he'd done all day.

"I fought at Collatia," the old man was protesting, though why that messy and almost lost sequence of actions had become the standard by which all battles were judged, the gods alone knew. "I was in the front line at Collatia. I've earned my place."

"Not in front," Servius said. Not at war at all, if Tarquin had his way.

The front line at Collatia. That man had been, what, forty even then? So he was fifty, or more, now, and time had eaten away at his face, leaving it creased and rough. No doubt age had eaten his courage away too, and his sinews, and his strength. But Servius let him fight at the back, with some story about the old men keeping the line when young men ran. A nice try, but you could see the old man didn't believe it; it was pure facesaving bullshit.

If only Servius wouldn't try to persuade him, too. Servius had these ideas. True, he'd won enough battles; and some people would say his military tactics were not exactly revolutionary, they were what the Greeks had done for centuries, using the massed infantry to dominate the battle. Anyone could see the old men's fire was dead; they had wives and children and chickens and goats to worry about, they'd save themselves efficiently, if it came to a rout. Only the young men had greed for glory burning a hole in their bellies.

Servius kept telling him how to manage a retreat. That verged on an insult.

"No cavalry I've commanded has ever needed to fall back."

"You'll see defeat soon enough. It comes to us all."

Not to me, Tarquinius thought. Not to me.

There was something impressive about the hoplites, he had to admit. A wall of shields, a wall of blank bronze faces. All individuality lost in the immense collective. This wasn't the kind of war where a young man made his name; it was almost a force of nature, a landslide or a flood. Mind you, if you weren't an Etruscan noble but, let's say, a Faliscan olive oil trader or a fifth son of a dirtgrubber, that might be a good thing. Your name would never have been ennobled by a poem on your great deeds, and it still wouldn't be. Oxdrivers, slaughtermen, dungspreaders; they might be anything, these men, but once they put on their bronze helms they lost such indignities, became pure spirits of war. Did it feel like that inside their ranks? Like the all-powerful, intoxicating rhythm of the dance?

But they moved so slowly, compared to the speed of a chariot or a horse. And already he could see the phalanx was falling apart, the front bulging out, the sides straggling, men falling off the pace and out of line. Because it was too big, or perhaps because he was sweating too much, one man's helmet had slipped, and another man's shield was dropping forwards, so that a gap between him and his neighbour, and exposing him from chin to belly to a spear thrust or slashing sword; and another man had taken off his helmet, and was trying to brush the sweat out of his eyes with his forearm while still holding the helmet clumsily in that hand. Suddenly the illusion of invincible bronze men was broken; they were bags of guts and blood the same as any other man, bags to be slashed or burst.

Servius called them back, of course. Again, again, again.

There was no room here for glory, no room for the dashing or the reckless or the spontaneous, electric knowledge that a good fighter possessed of exactly where to plunge into the melee, how to flow through it and feel the blades cut air around him, but never land. This was dull.

And Servius was right. If he could use his men like this, no city would stand against him. Tarquin and all his cavalry would be useless. Like this, he felt, his life would be over before it had even begun.

# Tanaquil

Tanaquil had always exercised; she couldn't remember a time when she hadn't, with chubby childlike paws, wielded a wooden javelin like her mother, or wrestled with the other children under a tutor's watchful eye. The culture of the body and the culture of the mind were inseparable; both trained, both responsive, whether for work or for war or for pleasure.

She still exercised; not as much now, perhaps, as in her youth, but enough to keep her muscles defined, her reactions fast. She loved the good tiredness that came from physical exertion, hated the bad tiredness of winter days and ageing body. But here in Rome, of course, a woman exercising was a strange thing, even a wicked thing. She could still ride out, still took her chariot openly on the roads, but to work with sword or javelin, she exercised only in her own courtyard, with one or two of her women, and only those of Etruscan birth and upbringing.

Only men exercised in public here. Rome still needed dragging into civilised ways, she thought. And even for men, there wasn't much provision; the exercise ground was just an open space between two wooden colonnades, dusty in summer, and in the winter churned up into mud. Servius was meant to have made improvements, but everything took second place to the army now; building could wait. So Rome, the great city which his army was meant to make even greater, became the city of the half-finished, the delayed, the abandoned project; a city whose public places became dingier by the day. Once the Capitoline temple had been finished, Servius snapped his purse shut. Ploughshares were beaten into swords, and the hammers you heard everywhere in Rome these days were those of the forges turning out hundreds of identical spearheads, swordblades, helmets; the stonemasons and carpenters were out of work.

Everything was justified by the army now, even exercise. No one ran the long footrace any more, or danced, as they did in Tarchna; it was all spear practice, wrestling, boxing, lifting weights. There was a new discipline, the pankration, which seemed less a discipline than a relapse into barbarism, the main rule being that there were no rules, though a few of its practitioners regarded eye-gouging as a step too far. Still, the wrestling was worth watching; even if most of the men were veterans, their flesh criss-crossed with scars, their faces set with the ugliness that descends after too many killings, there were always a few younger men, still smooth of skin and long of limb, as Tarquinius had once been, in a past that grew ever more distant. And sometimes, but rarely, one of the fighters would display real skill; the sort of wrestler who used his opponent's weight against him, who could nonchalantly turn out of the way of a haymaker and hook a negligent foot under his enemy's knee, and watch him fall, almost as if surprised by the success of the tactic, or who could somersault over an attack, roll over to come back up instantly on his feet, and then deliver a perfect kick to the jaw. Such fights never lasted long, but they were vastly more entertaining than the kind most of the men liked, endless bouts of slugging in which nothing ever happened, but each competitor's face became gradually bloodier and more shapeless, before finally, one of them gave up and fell, more from tiredness than any knock-out blow.

So she was here with Elissa, sitting on a bench watching the men train.

"They think I don't notice," Elissa said. "But I see what they're up to. See that shaven-headed one there?"

He was staring at Elissa, but as soon as he noticed the women's eyes on him he turned his face away.

"Do they always do that?" Tanaquil asked.

"Often enough. Oh, I'm used to it. It's the ones who come up to you at banquets in good houses and ask how you know when your hands are dirty, or how you learned to speak Latin, those are the ones I really hate. And the ones who always wanted to try it with a black girl. They don't realise just how easy an offer that is to refuse."

"Men never do," Tanaquil said; her mind was only partly on their conversation, since she was looking out for one man in particular. And there he was, her old opponent Faustus, now fat and fifty, though not as fat as he would have been without his rigid habit of daily training. Despite his belly, he'd resisted the flabbiness of middle age; he looked good for another twenty years of tormenting Tanaquil.

"He's visiting whores these days," Elissa said.

"Faustus?"

"I saw you looking at him. You're interested?"

"Everything he does interests me."

"I never thought he was your type."

"He's not." She'd thought Elissa understood her better than that; she was slightly annoyed at the girl's obtuseness. "Everything I try to do, Faustus opposes. Everything Tarquinius ever tried to do, he opposed. Every time I try to achieve anything, I have to get his objections out of the way first. No wonder I want to know what he's doing."

"Well, he's visiting whores. And he never used to."

"I wonder why. He's married."

"That never stops them."

"Of course not. But... well, he's one of those stiff Roman sorts. And his wife's not unattractive. And not ill. Without why the sudden change? It's odd."

"That's not all. One girl told me he falls asleep without doing it."

"And still pays?"

"Of course he pays."

"And just falls asleep?"

"Apparently."

Faustus was warming up; stretching out first one leg, then the other, swinging his arms, loosening his body in preparation. There was something stagy in his movements, as if he realised he was being watched; something he must be used to, by now, he'd been so influential for so long. He took hold of his left foot in his left hand to pull it up behind him, balancing one-legged for a moment. His balance seemed not quite sure.

"No funny turns?" Tanaquil asked.

"Now you come to ask... one of the girls said he stumbled when he got up to go, and complained he was feeling dizzy, and another said he seemed drunk, but didn't smell of wine. But there might be nothing in it at all; everyone has their bad days... why are you asking?"

"Just concerned about his health," Tanaquil said.

"Just hoping it's bad."

Tanaquil's smile was acid.

Faustus was holding out his fists to be wrapped. He'd box; not the usual exercise for an older man, even an athlete. Most gave it up in their twenties, while they were still winning.

An old man trying to spin out the fraying thread of old victories, clinging on to the illusion of youth? Or the elder statesman still fit for battle? She gave Faustus credit for not being a hypocrite; he wasn't trying to deceive his public. But she wondered whether he was deceiving himself.

Perhaps his health was beginning to fail. Perhaps he was just getting old, and he thought the whores would give him a new sense of life, would prop up his illusion of continued youth. She could have told him that wasn't how it worked; old men get young women, and then they feel even older.

He'd started boxing now with one of the younger men – not that much younger, about forty, she'd have guessed; perhaps thirty-five. That was one of the things about growing older; once, she'd have been able to tell you exactly, that one's thirty, that one's thirty-two, or twenty-eight, by the cut of his hair, his clothes, the look of his skin, and she'd have been right, but now, all those years blended into one undifferentiated mass, men too young for her to guess.

If she'd thought of a way, she would have finished him already. He knew too much. Or rather, he guessed too much; she'd been careful enough that certainty could never be come by, not by him, not by anybody. Only Manius and Servius knew the truth, and they would never incriminate themselves. She'd daydreamed of ways she could get rid of him; an unblunted sword used in practice, a momentary slip and an accidental, too well aimed thrust; a dish of mushrooms; a thistle under his horse's saddle, which might work, or might not, and could always be explained as a practical joke, or a practical joke gone wrong, depending on whether it was fatal or merely humiliating; a statue falling from a temple's pediment, a lump of stone from a building site... and yet, practically, it was too difficult to move against him. If only his health was really failing, he might relieve her of the responsibility for having him removed.

"Don't pull your punches, boy." That was Faustus, red-faced, too slow to turn that last attack.

"Boy? Who are you calling boy?" But his opponent smiled; he was used to this taunting, you could see that it amused him. He jabbed another punch at Faustus, but he was dancing, not fighting.

"An enemy wouldn't spare me. Keep pressing on, keep pressing on."

"Oh, I am, I am."

"You're not. You're pulling your punches. Fight properly, damn you."

Faustus was working hard; he had to raise one fist to his forehead every so often to stop the sweat blinding him. He must be forcing himself to move; one foot seemed heavier than the other, so that he tended to turn to the left, a tendency of which his opponent took no advantage. That was either stupid, or tactful, and more probably the latter.

The two circled for a while, sparring, till Faustus managed to land a couple of blows; and they were hard, you could hear the solid thump, and the expulsion of breath, which gave the other man all the excuse he needed to stop, though he wasn't quite winded. It hadn't been such an unequal match after all; she noticed, as Faustus towelled himself down, that his muscles were still ridged and hard. Hard as the rock Rome was built on, she might have said, only the Travertine rock was soft and workable, and that Faustus very clearly was not.

"Gods damn it, woman, can't you keep your eyes off a man? You've no business here."

"Oh, I do," she said, smiling her blandest smile.

"What is it, then?"

"I wanted to find Tarquin," she said. "I've bought him a new horse."

"Nice for him." He wheezed, then coughed hard.

Tanaquil's eyes softened; she put a hand on one of his bandaged fists.

"You need to take care of yourself," she said.

"I need to train."

"You need this." She held up a small pot. "I had it made up for Tarquin. He was coughing. But I'm sure I can get more."

"Put it down there," he said, jerking his chin at the neat pile of his clothes. "I'll take it later." She thought he was probably lying, but she put it there, anyway, and watched as one of the boys came to unwrap his knuckles.

The man he'd been sparring with had got dressed already, and was talking to a couple of youths who had been watching. One of them, it turned out, was in Tarquin's division; they'd been drilling on Mars Field, charging and counter-charging, and practising holding a formation.

"We never used to practise like that," he said; "you need such good control of your horse. Control of speed, to stay in line. To turn quickly. And Tarquin's such a good horseman."

Not as good as I used to be, she thought. But she smiled, and encouraged the boy; hero-worship was always useful. And they talked a little about infantry drill, since Faustus' opponent fought unmounted, with his men; and about the importance of exercise. They did exercise, didn't they, even though they were horsemen?

"Of course," the boy said. "Tarquin says even the best rider might be unhorsed, and then you'd need to know how to fight on foot."

"And I hope you have a good opponent? That's most important."

"We fight each other, most of the time," said the other boy, a big-eyed, shy lad who hadn't outgrown a certain adolescent gangliness.

"He doesn't win that often."

"I do sometimes."

"Yes, sometimes."

"It's sad," she said, "when you see someone can't get a good fight any more, because people go too soft on him."

"Tarquin always says he'll take on the hardest ones. He says he hates it when people try to let him win."

"He hates it when he loses."

"I'm sure he does," she said, turning to the boxer . "But you know, I watched that last fight. And Faustus was right. He was never pushed."

"You wouldn't want me to kill him."

"He's fit enough."

"He's an old man."

"He's in the army. And he's right. An enemy wouldn't let him win out of respect for age. It'd be a spear through the guts straight off, if he couldn't look after himself."

She could see the point had sunk in. It was the sort of kindness that could prove fatal; an unprepared man, an unfit man, an unpractised man, would be at the enemy's mercy, would survive on luck rather than his own merits. An unprepared Faustus could so easily be killed.

"And he notices," she said. "Don't think he doesn't."

"He's the last one left," the boxer said mournfully. "The last commander we have left from the old days."

That touched her, and she talked a little about how Rome had been when Tarquinius had moved there with her, and the changes she'd seen, and she had a little cry about Gaius gone, and old Ancus Marcius the good old man, and last (and least, to be honest) her son Arruns. And by the time she'd finished, and the boxer had talked about his time on the front line in the Collatia campaign, or Apiolae, or Crustumerium, or wherever it was, the lads could probably not remember who'd given them the idea of riding hard on Faustus, but they knew not to give him an easy time.

***

Another June came, another Vestalia; the year was almost half way through, and what had Tanaquil to show for it? There were still, sometimes, afternoons that seemed endless, moments of eternity – when she rode out, sometimes listening to a waterfall's unceasing whisper under the chatter of her women, or looking up at the still blue sky. But the year seemed to have hurried away, like the clouds of a summer shower chased away by the wind, and nothing to show for it.

Awnings had been erected in the courtyard of the Virgins' House; not much more than a length of cloth slung between poles, they swung and yawed in the breeze. The trees of the sacred grove leant over the further side of the court, shading it with their feathery leaves, but the nearer side was in sunlight. Beneath the pale yellowing fabric of the awnings, even the light seemed warmer, the air slightly dank and heavy; there was a smell of smoke from tiny hearths, just outside the tents, whose fires burned low and fitfully except where a woman fanned the flames for a moment. Women were clustered in little groups, sitting on the floor, or squatting round the little fires; some chanted prayers, uttering each syllable speedily, never changing note; one was singing a lullaby almost under her breath, so that Tanaquil never caught the melody entire, but only hints of it, odd melodic turns or fragmentary words; "father comes," "silver and gold," "princess, sleep". Another, older woman was muttering something about fire under the ground, ancestors walking, in a low voice, at the same time whispered and urgent.

But it was strangely quiet, as if the women were afraid they'd waken a child who slept. Or perhaps – despite that fragmentary lullaby which kept pulling her thoughts back to the cloying smell of milk and the clumsy nuzzling of her children at the breast – it was more like the quiet of someone tiptoeing past a dog known to be dangerous, or walking above a landslide carefully, placing each foot silently to prevent the earth shaking.

Fabia had met Tanaquil at the gate; her hair braided and piled high under her veils, she seemed to stand taller than usual. But Tanaquil thought her fires were flimsy things, compared with the fire she'd seen surrounding Servius, blazing like a pine forest fire when the resin starts to burn inside the cracking trees. That fire would bear all with it; these little fires were just about adequate to their task of toasting the wheat the women had brought.

They made their way through the tents; the grey-clad Roman women scattered like sparrows before them, heads bowed, frightened or overawed. Tanaquil and Fabia stood apart, Fabia in the pure white of her priestly dress, Tanaquil in bright scarlet and gold, even her hair sparkling with gold clasps and bells.

"Strange, isn't it?"

"What is?" Tanaquil asked.

"A whole temple given over to women. Not a man in sight."

Tanaquil laughed. "In Rome, it's strange. Not at home."

"Home?" Fabia smiled. "How long have you been in Rome, now?"

"...And Tarchna's still home? I've given up counting."

"If you went back, it wouldn't be the same."

"I know that; haven't been back for twenty years. But it's still home, and always will be... I like this, you know."

"Like what?"

"The whole temple full of women. And so quiet."

"It is rather special." Fabia spoke with pride; as a child ran past her, she put her hand for a moment on its head, and the infant stood serious-faced and still long enough for Fabia to laugh, and pat its back and send it on its way. These were her people. "The whole year is compressed into this single week, for some of them; the one week they come and make the mola salsa. - See those two there?"

There were two women, one thin, worn down with the sourness and sadness that sometimes accompanied middle age, the other, though no younger, at ease and happy within her rounded form, and yet their two faces were almost the same; the same noses, small and slightly flattened at the end; the same eyes, with lazy, drooping eyelids; the same rather weak chin.

"Livia!" - the thin one turned, and seeing Fabia broke into an unexpected smile. "Julia. Both here again this year. No babies, Livia?"

"Not this year. Maximus is old enough to leave at home now."

"She has seven," Julia explained.

"And how is Paullus treating you?"

Livia looked down.

"There'll be no more babies," Julia said, and her sister looked up at her reproachfully.

"He's looking after you?"

Livia nodded.

"And he doesn't hit her," Julia added, as if this was something that needed to be said.

Fabia smiled on them, and her smile was like a blessing, generously but intentionally bestowed, but none the less truly warm. More than mere diplomacy, Tanaquil thought; she meant it. Perhaps having never had children, Fabia had a store of unused affection to shower on these women; a side to the shrewd Vestal that she hadn't seen before.

"Give my love to little Tertia," Fabia said. A broken eye tooth showed in Livia's smile.

"I will, I will. She'll ask, you know. She always does."

"Bring her, next time."

"I will."

They passed on. On one fire, a girl who hardly looked fifteen jiggled the wheat on a griddle, and a baby on one hip. Fabia greeted her by name, found out the child was called Cloelia, squatted to kiss its sparse blond hair, passed on again.

"I remember her at that age," she said. "The same blond hair."

It hadn't lasted. It never did.

A group of women with spelt cakes and fruit and honey laid on a cloth in front of them called Fabia over, and she exchanged a few words with them, but wouldn't stay, leaving them to their meal. But at another hearth, she sat down with the women, taking the rough wheat in her hand, cracking the spiky ears and rubbing off the chaff.

Tanaquil was surprised. "They bring it unthreshed?"

"It's part of the rite."

"Hard work."

"It's meant to be."

Tanaquil looked down at Fabia, sitting in the dirt and yet quite composed, among all these women as rounded as chickens, and as distracted. She stood, alone of all the women; she would not sit upon the ground.

These were the women she never saw, the Roman women who scurried veiled across the streets, the women whose lives were lived only indoors, in dim rooms or grey courtyards. Women who always seemed bowed or stooped, and who, here, were seated, or rocked on their heels, by the firesides they never left.

Two of the women had new babies since last year; one had a new husband.

"I didn't know..."

"Publius was killed fighting the Vipienas."

"That's why you weren't here last year."

The woman nodded.

"I missed you, you know."

There would be more women with new husbands, or no husbands, next year, Tanaquil thought; if Servius had his way.

"Atia's been hunting."

"I have not." That fierce girl had to be Atia.

"You have too."

"What of it?"

"Nice girls don't hunt," the other one said with a certain amount of heat. She was pretty, with the kind of insipid, damp prettiness that doesn't last long beyond childhood.

"My brother takes me."

"Well he shouldn't. And he wouldn't if you didn't ask."

"I don't need to ask. He says I'm a good hunter."

"You say that as if you're proud of it!"

"And so she should be," Fabia said. "Anything is worth doing well. Even hunting. Even when Atia does it."

The other girl scowled.

"But make sure you're always with your brother, won't you, Atia?"

"I always am," Atia said defiantly. "Though I'm a better stalker than he is."

"I'm sure you are."

"You'd think the hares could hear her coming," the other girl said. "She's noisy enough."

"You're being unfair, Julia. A woman can be quieter than most men."

Julia scowled again.

"Well it's true. I know you can be quiet," Fabia said smoothly. "And Atia can when she wants to."

"Which isn't often," Julia said, but it was clear her temper had been smoothed.

"And you have a nice smile, when you want to use it," Fabia said. "I dare say it will bring the right young man to your father's door one day."

Tanaquil was getting restive, and her tapping foot must have drawn Fabia's attention. The Vestal looked up, and met Tanaquil's eyes.

"I suppose we should be moving on."

"Oh, not yet!" two of three of the women said, and then giggled at having said the same thing almost in chorus.

"We only see you once a year," Atia said. "It's a long time to wait till next Vestalia."

"Well... just a little while. Won't you sit down, Tanaquil?"

But Tanaquil would not.

There was more talk of husbands, but this time, the question was of marriages for the older daughters; family alliances, inheritances, bargains. Who owned which fields, who voted with which bloc, who fought in the same units. And of course Fabia, the one woman in Rome with the right to bear witness, the keeper of wills and deeds, would know.

"But not Junius."

"Why not?"

"Have you seen him flogging his horse?"

"True, he's got his father's temper."

Who traded with which cities, in what goods. Who had no other sons in their families, or too many. So many bargaining chips. Well, that was true in her own family; the way they'd married off Arruns and Tarquin to the two Tullias. Even back then she knew they'd got that the wrong way round, the way Tarquin had looked at the flame-haired girl, and see what had come of it...

"I like your tibina."

She looked down; the owner of that hesitant voice was a slight woman, dressed in what was almost the regulation homespun grey, but thinner, more finely textured fabric than usual, and a lighter colour, almost like a pigeon's downy breast feathers.

"Tebenna," she said, and saw the woman look away, as if ashamed. She hadn't meant to be so severe. "I dyed it myself," she said.

The woman looked up at her again, her eyes soft. "I didn't think you would do your own dyeing. Such a great lady."

"I use madder. The best stuff comes from the wild hills past Velzna."

"It's such an intense red. How do you..."

"Dyeing it cold."

"You don't boil it up?"

"No. I macerate the roots for two weeks. Then the yarn goes in. And it stays there, another week or so."

The woman was silent, just looking greedily at the vivid red. It was interesting that it was the red that had caught her eye; most people would have noticed the gold thread of the embroidered fringes first, not the colour of the cloth.

"You should try it."

"I might," the woman said tentatively, and Tanaquil realised she'd been stupid; even if she did dye such a red successfully, the woman would never be able to wear it in public.

"You should. Wear it as an underskirt."

"I could. I will." The woman grinned like a child caught showing off.

Fabia progressed so slowly; every woman had to be greeted, newcomers introduced, children, where they had come with their mothers, kissed or patted, and where they hadn't, enquired about. It was like a diplomatic event, where what's important is not what is said, but to ensure that no one is missed out; of course, Tanaquil realised, it is a diplomatic event, a whole network of hidden influence. It was amazing that Fabia had been able to construct it within such constraints; or had she inherited it from Vestals who went before? Fabia admired each woman's work; very nice, Cornelia... Tertia, they're meant to be salty, it's not a problem... how is your littlest? He didn't have the best start... but he'll live. And Tanaquil stood stiffly, wishing she'd ever had the common touch, and knowing she didn't, and at the same time resenting the demands of such banal, ordinary women on her time.

"Such mean lives," she complained to Fabia later. "They're all so small, so hesitant, so limited."

"You don't see what I do," Fabia said. "They live their lives through small braveries; and it's the tiniest daring that costs them the most. Every small liberty has to be fought for, over and over again."

"And they are still not free."

"Each woman fights for the single small thing she wants the most. It concentrates the mind wonderfully, you know."

"I'm sure it does."

"You can waste your life pursuing so many choices; to go to this city, that one, hunting, feasting, to pursue this lover or that one. And at the end, what have you achieved?"

"Quite a lot, as it happens. Or is Queen of Rome nothing?"

"That's not what I meant."

"So you fight all your life for the right to wear a single shred of brightness."

Fabia nodded.

"Why don't they rebel?"

"Could you, if you'd not been brought up to it?"

"You did."

"No. I simply took another path."

"No man has any power over you."

"No. But I live under other constraints."

"My freedom isn't absolute."

"Can I ask you something?"

Fabia gave her a very direct look; she wasn't fooled. To ask that meant that Tanaquil was going to ask her something that was at the same time important and confidential; that she wanted an answer, and a confidence, and no questions. "Of course."

And she knew, instantly, that she couldn't ask Fabia; that however much she lied, said it had happened to one of her servants, blamed another man, in another city at some past time, Fabia would speculate, would somehow tease out the truth of what had happened with Servius; would use it against her, or to extort some favour. Even if Fabia didn't use it, the possibility that she might would always be there, and that, Tanaquil couldn't bear.

"This day is so important to those women," Fabia said. "The one day for some of the younger mothers that they can be apart from their children. For others their only day of freedom from a jealous husband. The only day they have to themselves."

"And they spend it making cakes."

"But they make cakes for the goddess, they bake them in the temple, they have all day to do it. Their minds are clear as a deep pool. Life is relentless; the baby cries, the children grab, and men impose their desires or jealousies, there's harvest to be done, bread to be cooked, and dust that's no sooner swept away than it starts to accumulate again. And for one day, nothing."

"A rest day. Not so important."

"A day of emptiness. A day of one, single, simple task. It's then you can understand the gods."

"Women can always understand. It's men who are always looking for the next weapon, the next war, the next trade. They never step back from it."

"Do you?"

Tanaquil wondered.

"I tried to teach Servius prophecy once. But he..."

She didn't like the sound of his name in her mouth.

"Not a success?"

"He wants to take, only to take. He doesn't understand it's a dance."

Life kept serving her dishes that spoiled. First Tarquinius, who'd lost his youth, and his talent, and her love, and in the end his life; and then she'd hoped for a new beginning with Servius, and that failed, too.

"Can I ask you one thing?" Fabia said, and Tanaquil feared that the Vestal had guessed the truth.

"In all this twisting and turning, are you sure you know now what you want to do? Do you know what you want to achieve? Or are you sometimes just playing the game because you don't know how not to?"

"Sometimes," Tanaquil said, "sometimes."

"So..."

"Sometimes... you have to take a step back before you can move forwards. And sometimes..."

"Yes?"

"Sometimes the gods speak, and..."

Fabia's eyes were soft, encouraging, and for a moment Tanaquil felt close to tears, and worse, close to telling Fabia everything for which, although she knew she had no guilt, she blamed herself; she understood what the Roman women saw in their mother Vestal.

"...sometimes you wish they hadn't."

"I don't really understand," Fabia said. "The gods don't talk to me. Though I walk pretty close to them, every day; I feel them there, but they don't speak."

She reached out, taking Tanaquil's hand in both of hers.

"You're lucky to hear them," she said; then, "Shall we go?"

Under the great wooden beams of the roof the sanctuary stood dark except for a slash of faint light across the floor from the eastern doorway. In the huge stone hearth, the embers glowed darkly, and the colours changed, from black to dull red, from dull red to black,like the breathing of some huge and dreaming beast. Sporadically there was a flash of orange, as the blackened face of the log fell away to reveal the still burning heart; and then it slept again.

And there in the back of the shrine, hardly visible through dark and drifting smoke, was the huge goddess, no human figure but the ancient trunk of a tree, with thick layers of white paint crowning it, and dribbled down its deeply etched and gullied sides. How ancient, how very ancient it was; it came from Troy, how many generations ago? There had been five kings of Rome, and fifteen kings in Alba before that, four hundred years or more; and before that, how many generations of kings in distant, now abandoned Troy?

"You feel it?" Fabia asked.

A dark silence, like ripples spreading from that ancient source. Not her gods of fire and thunder, spring and river, her gods hidden and bounded, but something richer and deeper and darker, like the tree that would never leaf again, and the fire that never blazed.

***

She came to see the drill every few days. Faustus was always there, always working, with the weights, with the spear, or boxing, or wrestling; Servius exercised alone, privately, and earlier in the morning, for which she was grateful. She made a point of watching a different exercise every day, and it was rarely the one in which Faustus was involved; and a rumour went round that she was looking for bodyguards, for herself or for Tarquinius, with which she wasn't entirely displeased.

When she did see Faustus, he looked robust as ever, except that a closer look revealed that paleness round the mouth, the excessive sweat, the whitish cast to his eyes. His heart might kill him today, or tomorrow, in a week, a month; or he might last until age took him away with a whisper in the night. Nothing was certain. Except that no-one now yielded ground to him; he lost as often as he won.

It had rained the night before, after weeks of drought; the surface of the ground was slimed with mud, but underneath the baked dirt was rock hard. She saw one man slip, his front foot rushing away from him; the hard landing winded him. No athlete escaped the mud; their calves were brown with it; it splashed up in streaks over their torsos and faces. One wrestler had been taken down, rolled over, arm-locked; when he stood up to fight again, the sweat running down his face and chest carved pale tracks in the mud.

It was getting muggy already. The air blanketed her, heavy and damp; it was difficult to inhale, as if the air had thickened and become viscous.

Today, she let herself watch Faustus, for once. He'd already exercised with weights, vying with a much younger man to lift the heaviest, and winning; but now, sparring, he looked tired. Whenever he stepped back, it seemed that one leg dragged. The left, it was; favouring the right leg whenever he attacked. And on the attack, he was still as fast as he needed to be. The Roman style wasn't fast, it was solid, always pushing. She thought of the way the boys had fought in Tarchna when she was a girl, as fleet as swallows carving up the air, or trout leaping in water. Well, that dragging left foot might be simple tiredness, she supposed.

But Faustus was still ahead; he was cunning enough to lead his opponent into his reach, and turn him into the sun – that was a simple enough trick, but it was interesting how many men forgot it once the fight started heating up.

"Come on, old man," Faustus' opponent said, goading him on. That was never a good idea, she could have told him.

Faustus seemed not to have heard.

"Slow. Slow and old."

Faustus stepped back. He looked suddenly very tired.

His opponent smiled. Stupid; it was always stupid to let any rival know what you were thinking, though perhaps it was excusable in this case. He stepped in, raising both fists ready.

And suddenly, Faustus had stepped inside his reach and landed a punch. The other man stood dazed for a moment; Faustus took advantage of that to punch him again, then stepped back before his opponent had a chance to grapple with him.

"Old and slow," Faustus said. "But not stupid."

The other man spat. Spit mostly, and some blood.

"I'll fight two of you," he said.

"You think I can't take you alone?"

"Leave pride out of it. Him" – he pointed out one of the lads Tanaquil had spoken to, the one who was in Tarquin's horse – "he'll do."

The other man began to protest again, but the youngster was already stepping forward. One against two, then; really, Faustus should know better, but then men never did. As for leaving pride out of it; hypocrite. Or was he really so blind to himself? Some men were. She hadn't thought he was so stupid, though.

Voices from behind her:

"He shouldn't be doing that at his age."

"He asked for it."

"Even so. They shouldn't let him."

"His choice."

They were wary of Faustus, you could tell. Circling him, not coming to close quarters,as if they were facing an angry bull; harrying him, working together, so that he could never face one without turning his side or back to the other, exposing him to attack. Three would be better, but even with two they were closing down his options and making him work the way they wanted. Whenever he turned, they turned with him. There was no escape.

He stood still for a moment, as if puzzled, and they started to close. Then suddenly he rushed one of them, jabbing, and was past, breaking their teamwork, making them reassess how to tackle him.

That had served them notice. Faustus was still dangerous. They moved faster now, coming in further and dancing back, teasing. One made a run to try to take Faustus down, but the old Roman moved with surprising sudden speed, grabbing his opponent's arm and sinking his knees, bending, to throw him over one shoulder to hit the ground on his back, hard.

That gave him a few moments respite. The man slipped twice, getting up, in the thin mud. The youth looked across; seeing Faustus make for his still scrambling companion, he shouted to attract Faustus' attention, and when that failed, started in to grab Faustus from behind. As he came, though, Faustus sidestepped; he made to run past, but hadn't noticed Faustus reaching a foot out, and tripped, planing on the mud like an ugly duck trying to land.

Faustus reached up with one hand to wipe his forehead; a streak of mud smeared across his temple. The sweat was running into his eyes now, and he was squinting occasionally against the sun. With two opponents he couldn't use that trick of drawing them into the glare, and anyway, they'd be wise to that now. They were pushing him harder, and his left foot was dragging more noticeably.

"Give me a moment," Faustus said. Tanaquil knew then that he was beaten. He'd never asked quarter before.

He'd never been given quarter. And he wasn't now; the two attackers exchanged looks, then pressed on.

"A Gaul wouldn't give you a moment," the youth said.

Describing it afterwards, Tanaquil would sometimes say that it all fell apart from there. But it didn't, quite; that was a simplification. First she noticed the absence of strategy; Faustus was just responding to each movement, to each attack, with no sense now of an overall direction or rhythm. The tactics of desperation. You wouldn't, perhaps, have noticed the lack of strategy unless you'd been looking for it, unless you knew what you were looking for. And then his response to each stroke became slower, and as he slowed, his own attacks were more desperate, and seemed to have too much energy invested in them, so that they nearly overbalanced him more than once.

"Don't fall," she thought; that would suit her purposes at all, for him to be picked up and dusted down, and told not to over-exert himself.

Was his face reddening and darkening, or was that the lateness of the hour and the sunset colours flaming on his skin? His breath was coming hard; she saw him rub his ribs with his left hand. He was stooped a little now, as if the muscles of his flanks had tensed up and warped him, as if he'd aged suddenly in the last few minutes of fighting. His balance was gone; he lurched forward, crabbed his way reluctantly back, that foot dragging very badly now.

"Oh, let the old man alone," said the older one of his sparring partners, and stepped back. But the other kept going.

Now Faustus was weary, even his cunning couldn't keep him ahead. Twice the youngster landed a punch on him, each time springing back outside his reach before Faustus could retaliate. Whenever Faustus came near him, he sidestepped, or leapt back; he must be trying to tire the older man out. Tanaquil recognised the strategy. But Faustus kept going, kept trying, though he was grunting hoarsely, clearly in trouble.

And he was smart. Gods, but he was smart. As the youth ran for him, he stepped back, a little out of line, and as soon as he did it, Tanaquil could see exactly what Faustus had seen already, and reckoned on as a weapon, a rock lying in the mud between him and his attacker. A one in twenty chance; not more. But it worked. As the young man came on, his eyes on Faustus, he swerved sideways, and one foot came down on the rock. His ankle twisted; he staggered. Instantly, Faustus moved, grabbing his shoulders, throwing him down, winding him.

That should have been the end of it. Faustus stepped back, not needing to pin the youth down; he could claim the win, and no one there would deny it.

He stopped. He looked above the lad's head, somewhere into the distance, it seemed; what was he looking for? What did he hope for? He swayed, once or twice, as if his body so hard used had gone soft; and then he toppled forwards, and fell with his face in the mud, and did not get up.

Later, people would say he'd grabbed at his chest, that his face had contorted with pain, that he'd seen death approaching. But Tanaquil saw the truth; he fell as insensible as a felled tree or a pole-axed ox.

***

"Poison," Gnaeus was saying. "You know there's never been any love lost between her and Faustus."

Servius considered the pot. It looked innocent enough; clay, a waxed fabric stopper. Small enough to weigh in the palm of the hand.

"You say it was found in Faustus' house?"

"His wife found it."

"Many men have poultices and potions. To soothe a scratch, reduce bruising. I've used them myself."

"She'd never seen it before."

"Which proves nothing."

"She asked where it came from. One of the slaves remembers Faustus tossing it down when he came back from exercise. Said he'd got it from Tanaquil."

That was why she'd been brought here to Servius' rooms, by Gnaeus, who'd told her Servius required her presence, though in fact it seemed Servius had known nothing about it. She wondered whether it had been Faustus' wife or Gnaeus who had dreamed up the accusation.

"Do you deny giving this pot to Faustus?"

She considered Servius' question carefully, then shook her head. There would be no point denying it. Someone must have seen her give it him, anyway.

"What's in it, then?"

"Who knows?" said Gnaeus. "Could be anything."

"Could be completely innocent," Servius said, and Gnaeus scowled. Servius opened the stopper, and had a finger almost in the pot before Gnaeus could stop him.

"If it's poison..."

"I'm not going to eat it."

"You might not have to. It might work through the skin. Like Herakles' poisoned coat."

Servius obviously hadn't thought of that. He put the pot down.

"Find someone who understands medicine," he said.

"I do," said Mamarke. "A little, anyway."

"Not him," Gnaeus objected.

"Why not?"

"He's an Etruscan."

"So am I, in case you'd forgotten."

"I meant..."

"I don't care what you meant."

"He'll favour Tanaquil."

"Well, find someone else then."

"There's a Greek," Mamarke said.

"That Alkestis fellow?" Gnaeus was clearly dubious.

"Alkmaion."

"That's what I said."

"He knows about these things. Trained in Knidos."

"Yes, but where is he?" asked Servius, impatient.

"Somewhere around."

"Rome's a big place."

"Yes, but I think I know where to find him," Mamarke said, clearly not rattled by Servius' short temper.

Gnaeus interrupted. "Tell me. I'll go."

"You think I'll suborn him? Then go by all means. He works with the hoplites sometimes; bruises, sprains, cuts. They're drilling today."

"Mars Field?"

"I should think so."

The air trembled with things unsaid, suspicions, uncertainties. Tanaquil sat easily, her spine a fluid curve, her eyes half closed. Waiting was a game she could play as well as a cat could; let them think she dozed, if they wanted to. Servius' fingernails tapped a short repetitive rhythm on the arm of his chair; in the stillness the sound travelled. Marmarke looked down at his hands, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the thumb and forefinger of the other as if he'd seem some dirt that needed to be rubbed away. He had curiously long fingers, Tanaquil thought.

"You wouldn't..."

She shook her head, before she even heard what Servius was offering. His fingers began to tap again. Tik-tik-tik, tik-tiki-tik, tik-tik-tik. It was as maddening as hearing a mosquito in the bedroom at night and knowing it would keep whining till morning. She burrowed deeper into herself, listening to her own breathing, submerging into stillness, but still she could hear: tik-tik-tik. She let it run, carrying her thoughts.

Alkmaion, when he came, had grey eyes, a face like a hare – soft and chinless and yet alert. Like a hare he turned his head to look at her, and stayed quite still, simply regarding. Then he turned to Servius, and held out his hand. "You have something you want me to look at." A man of few and simple words.

He looked. He brought the pot to his nose and sniffed three times, screwing his nose up.

"You know what it is?" Servius asked.

"I think so."

"Are you sure?"

"I could be surer."

He put a finger to the surface of the ointment, and rubbed it across. "Yes," he said, "it's the right consistency. Look, this is a bit of a risk, but..."

"No," said Gnaeus, but this time he was too late; Alkmaion had already put his finger in his mouth, sucked, and was licking his top lip with his tongue, his eyes rolled up a little as he tried to identify the flavour.

"Basil. Honey. Two or three other herbs... it's a fairly standard mixture."

"Could it have killed Faustus?"

"Killed him?"

Servius described Faustus' death. Quite accurately, even if he hadn't been there.

"Saved him, more likely, if he'd taken it. For a man of his age, given to anger, that's the recipe I would usually make up." Obviously he knew Faustus' reputation, if not the man himself. "Was he often breathless?"

"Sometimes," Mamarke said. "When he exercised. More than you'd expect. More than he used to be."

"Well then. It's harmless. And he didn't take it, more's the pity."

"He didn't?" Servius was surprised, evidently.

"Look here," Alkmaion said, holding the pot out. Where his fingertip had dug it out, the paste was bright, and dull everywhere else. "It darkens in the air," he said helpfully. "And the top was completely flat and smooth when I put my finger in it."

Servius looked abashed. Kings never apologise; a few years ago he might have, but not now. That look, though, was as good as an abject apology to Tanaquil. He'd misjudged her, and now he knew it.

"So Tanaquil is innocent," Gnaeus said, clearly disappointed.

Servius nodded. "But more than that," he said. "I didn't know you had it in you, Tanaquil."

She looked at him, but said nothing.

"You hated the man, and you still tried to help him. If he'd not hated you so much he might still be alive. There's more generosity in you than I ever thought. I'm sorry."

That was surprising. Kings never apologise. Never. And it was typical, she thought, that he'd give her an apology when she no longer needed it.

But he was wrong. She'd double bluffed him, and everybody else. She'd given Faustus a medicine she knew he'd never take; he'd thought exactly what she'd meant him to think, that it was poison, that she'd thought him stupid enough to take it. He'd left it alone, and he'd gone out looking for his death on the exercise ground, though he didn't know that was what he was looking for.

And those young men had done exactly what she'd meant them to do. They'd spread the word that Faustus needed to be pushed, that even if he asked to be given an easy ride, they'd be doing the best thing for him by making him work harder. They'd believed they could defeat him; their pride wouldn't let them back down. She'd set him up for a fall. And so, given the right encouragement, Faustus had committed suicide; spectacularly, publicly, conveniently.

"I underestimated you," Servius said. "Forgive me."

"You did," she said, and kept her own counsel on the matter of forgiveness.

# Master

A world of black and bronze and furious red. Terrible heat, and the smell of metal and sweat. A world of incessant noise, the hissing of hot iron plunged in water, the roar of flames, hoarse bellows sighing out air, the sound of hammers that made Mamarke wince at each blow. The hammers never stopped; building a city, building an army, arming the men, the rhythm never changed, never faltered.

A dim world, under the wooden roof, in which Servius found it difficult to navigate till his eyes had adjusted. Spots of intense hot light flared in the dark; white and yellow glare of molten poured metal, the yellow rage of furnaces with single eyes as malevolent as cats', and slowly fading puddles of pulsing red. Mens' bodies, stripped but for their black leather aprons, shone with sweat, muscles a chiaroscuro of red and black. And the heat, the terrible heat, that dried his eyes up and made his hair drip with sweat, made his senses jangle.

There was too much movement here; he couldn't orientate himself. Everyone was moving all the time; iron put in the furnace, taken out, on the anvil, off the anvil; men bringing fuel, pumping the bellows, fetching new supplies, throwing work they'd done with on to a pile. He was lost in here, like a child whose mother let go its hand in the Forum; he didn't know where to start looking for Tullus. No point asking for him; he'd have to shout, and even then no one would hear, against the hammering and the roaring fires.

Then he saw, across the workshop, a knot of men in the far corner, and realised their eyes were looking in his direction; and that unerring instinct told him that they were, indeed, looking at him. He started to make his way towards them; but before he could get there, a thickset older man was already coming to him, confidently making his way through the hazards of fire and darkness.

"Let's get out of here," he said, leaning close to Servius to be heard.

Servius was half blinded by the light. The quiet outside was almost stunning till he got used to it again. His ears felt as if he'd got them full of water, or dived till they were vacant and deaf. He realised when he spoke to Tullus that he was shouting.

And now he got a good look at Tullus. In his sixties, Servius reckoned, but still compact with muscle, though his hair was bristled salt-and-pepper and his heavy eyebrows almost completely white. This was the man he needed to provide the weapons for his army, and he was telling him it wasn't going to happen.

"I can't do everything," Tullus said. "There's not the time."

"Time?" He'd thought getting enough metal was the problem.

"A sword takes time to make. Forging the bar. Annealing, forging, quenching. Do it too fast, you end up with a brittle sword that will snap if it's caught, if it's twisted. Or you get a sword that'll never stay sharp. It can't be hurried."

"More men?"

"Trained men? Try to find one. I can't. And if I get new men, where do I put them? Our resources are finite. What you need to decide is how to use them. Let me put it bluntly; I can't do everything. You have to decide what your priorities are."

Servius laughed. This man he could deal with. Like Vulca; no bullshit.

"A big army, fighting in formation. Giving every man something to fight with. Anything that works. Spears, for instance. Are spears quicker to make than swords?"

"Depends. But for your purposes, yes. No fancy work."

"No swords?" Mamarke asked.

"We're building a broad front. An army to smash and grind. Win the battle in the first charge, they won't even need to draw their swords."

"And if we don't win it then?"

"Enough of them have swords."

"And the others? The others die?"

"The others run," Tullus said. "Retreat is a horrible thing. Men throw away their weapons, they tear off their armour. If they're clever they chuck them at the enemy's feet to trip them up or slow them down. Some just drop them. You see soldiers stripping off their breastplates as they run. A breastplate or a shield can save your life when you're advancing; retreating, it just slows you down. Then you start thinking whether it's worth losing the time now to pull off your greaves if it means you can run faster without them. You have to watch your feet; the ground is scattered with useless metal to trip you up or slice your feet. You keep looking behind you; the odds keep changing." He shook his head, looked up at Mamarke. "You'd know that if you'd been a hoplite."

"I train my phalanxes to stick together," Servius said. "Even in retreat."

"Good luck to you," said Tullus. "But you won't do it. Human nature. Every man for himself."

"You're speaking from experience," Mamarke said. The smith nodded.

"You fought in Greece?" Servius asked. Tullus nodded again.

"Little battles," he said; "Little towns, little battles. I forget what the wars were about, if I ever knew. And anyway; spears, you say. And the bronzeworkers, I hope, you've got them making enough shields for your front line?"

"That's not your concern," Mamarke said.

"Don't you worry, I've got that sorted out," Servius answered, patting Mamarke on the arm; there was no point upsetting Tullus, and it hardly mattered whether he stuck his nose into that business or not. "It's the spears I've got a problem with."

"I'll get on to it," Tullus said. "I'll let you know if I need more raw materials. And I mean iron; I don't mean ore; there's not enough time to process it."

And with that, Tullus simply turned his back, and went back to his forge.

"How did you know?" Mamarke asked.

"What?"

"That he'd fought in Greece."

"He's a Roman. No doubt about that, with a name like Tullus, and an attitude like that. And Rome never used to fight in a phalanx. He's been retired how long? Twenty years? Thirty?"

"Ah."

They walked on, back from the forge, stuck out in a scratchy area of dirty workshops and dirtier houses, towards the Forum; past the piss stink of tanneries, past dark puddles on which dust floated, and streams whose waters were flecked with bubbles of scum. A chicken ran between them, nearly under their feet; Mamarke turned on the ball of one foot and slid past, but Servius kicked it out of the way. It left behind it a started squawk, a few curled feathers drifting in the air, a smear of white shit.

"You're taking a risk," Mamarke said.

"I am?"

"You couldn't delay?"

Servius shook his head. "If we wait, they'll be ready for us. We have to move before they know what we're doing."

"Even if half our men are unarmed?"

"It won't come to that."

"Won't it?"

Servius said nothing. But he felt his jaws so tight his teeth were grinding, so tight he bit the inside of his cheek, and felt the sudden, almost comforting pain. He was so close to shouting at Mamarke; it wasn't his job to ask questions, how did he dare doubt Servius, a king had only to speak and a thing would be done. It was such a temptation to yield to the soft omnipotence of kingship; to demand obedience, obeisance, and that particularly from the generally emollient Mamarke. Such a temptation to play the tyrant; it was men like Vulca and Tullus who would keep him straight.

"Tullus will do his job. And we're not so far behind on shields. And the cavalry is ready, has always been ready."

"With Tarquin in charge."

"Yes, and Tarquin will do his job."

Mamarke said nothing, but his tight face betrayed his disbelief.

"Mamarke, didn't I hear somewhere that your father was an augur?"

"Still is. Why?"

"Nothing... no, let me ask you. Visions of fire. Know anything about that?"

"Who's been having visions of fire? What kind of fire?"

"Some old woman. There was talk of... a man with fire blazing around his head. That's all I know."

"Well. That could be a number of things. Death by fire, obviously. But then the obvious meaning is so often not the right one. Then it's possible that it might mean illness, a fever, fire in the body."

"I see." He didn't.

"But that's not the main meaning. Or it could be, if the augur sees the man burning up. You wouldn't know..."

Servius shook his head.

"Because that makes a difference. So many things make a difference, father always says. It always made me mad when I was a child; I could never get a straight answer from him, only 'It depends', or 'maybe this, maybe that'."

"So are you going to give me a straight answer?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. It might also mean the fire of the gods."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Well again, it's difficult to say, exactly. But it means, whoever the man is, he's been chosen by the gods. As a priest, as a sacrifice, or as a king."

"Indeed," Servius said shortly, and walked on. Mamarke fell behind, after a while, realising with his usual discernment that Servius wasn't in the mood for further conversation. No doubt he'd be wondering if he'd overstepped the mark with his questions about the war, Servius thought; well, let him.

Now Servius could walk on his own, as he liked to be, though he knew solitude made him vulnerable. He was alert to the glitter of a blade in the darkness of a tavern doorway, to men who kept their arms covered by their tebennas or togas, to the hustle and jostle of the crowd, to small groups of men who seemed to be standing too close together. Rome was all risk; but he'd take his chances. He'd taken worse.

Then he saw something that made him pause; a face that shouldn't be there. A face he recognised, but couldn't put a name to immediately. It took him a moment to remember those shifty eyes, that scar – pale now, angry red when he'd last seen it. But before he remembered Postumus' name, Postumus had slipped between two older men, leaving them slightly startled.

"Hey, wait," Servius shouted. The two men Postumus had jostled turned, angry at another interruption to their conversation.

"What now?" said one of them, but Servius was already pushing between them, trying to reach Postumus.

"People nowadays," said the other. "They'll let anyone into Rome. It can't go on. Someone should tell Servius..."

He'd seen Postumus again, the other side of a cart which blocked his way for a moment; when the way was clear again, Postumus had vanished once more. He looked up and down the street; nothing. Or not nothing, precisely; plenty of things – a horse, its owner, the two old men (still grumbling about modern life), a slave tutor with a reluctant boy in tow, a couple of women whose heads were covered by bright saffron veils; his trained memory identified them, enumerated them, and then, flicking back, his eyes picked up a pair of legs under the horse's belly, legs that didn't belong to the horse, and he was off again, nearly knocking over one of the women in his haste.

Again Postumus had disappeared. There were only two ways he could have gone; into a dark doorway, or into a hardly shoulder-width alley between two walls. Was Postumus on the run? If so, he'd not have gone into a closed court or a shop; Servius rushed for the alleyway, caught a glimpse of his man rounding a corner at the end – at least, he thought it was his man – and ran after him, his left elbow dragging along the wall, leaving a smear of blood on the rough stone.

The alley turned a right angle, and as he rounded it, Servius felt despair grip his heart in cruel fingers; ahead lay another street, the end of the way down from the Celian if he wasn't wrong, and busier than the road he'd left behind him. Could he possibly be fast enough to catch Postumus in the open before he had a chance to hide, to turn off into one of the yards or hide in one of the shops behind the portico, or pick another road, perhaps turning back on himself to head back towards the shanties, the forges and tanneries, where Servius would never find him? He ran faster, forcing his legs so fast he was almost falling, so fast he skidded on the dusty road surface at the corner and nearly plunged headlong into the street; and he realised, as he struggled to regain his balance, that he'd lost Postumus completely.

Still, he thought, he might at least check on the nearest shops; Postumus might have headed into one, hoping Servius would run past, and he'd be able to double back. Even with their rough double doors wide open to the street, they were dim, the corners puddled in gloom; they stank of the only half-tanned and already rotting skins that were stacked on a counter, the putrid aromas of fish gut sauce or cakes of salted anchovies, oozing overripe cheeses or musty air-dried sausages, their skins furred with white mould; only a timber store smelt sweet with pine resin and the peppery scent of olivewood, and the slatted shadows of the leaning planks seemed to form such good hiding places, but there was no sign of anyone there. Cats slunk through the shadows; a litter of white puppies tumbled in the sawdust of the timber store. The street stunk of horse shit. Too many competing impressions; too many people, too many horses, no sign of his man. Eventually he gave up; it wasn't so much that he wanted to talk to Postumus, though as soon as he'd seen him he'd wanted to find out what he was doing, wondered if he could win him over to his own service – he was piqued by Postumus' disappearance, intrigued by what could make Postumus so keen to avoid him, slightly worried, even, by Postumus' evident alarm. He had better things to do with his time.

He worried a little, too, about his regal dignity, though it was a little late for that; the two old men hadn't recognised him, at least. Some people never did. He remembered Rasce telling him, once, "They never look at you, when they're in the stable, never look you in the eye. They take the reins and go. And then if they see you somewhere else, where you're not a servant, they have no idea who you are. No idea." People never looked at servants, and they never looked at kings, and once he'd taken off the purple and the laurel crown, for those people, he'd become invisible.

But Postumus had recognised him. Postumus whose darting eyes saw everything.

He realised he'd been gripping his left elbow in his right hand; it stung, and when he took his hand away, it was sticky with half-dried blood. He swore, and gathered up a bit of his tebenna in one hand, and spat on it, and wiped roughly at his elbow; there was grit in the wound, he could feel it. He'd have to get it seen to later, when he got back to the Palatine; wash it out with spirits of wine, or vinegar.

He turned back. Might as well take that alley, he thought, and come out where he'd started. The road had got busier; when a group of soldiers came through, at the quick march, people surged to the sides of the road. It was like a sudden flood in a culvert. One puppy hadn't made it in time; it lay still, not a mark on its body. When the bitch came and tried to nose it up, it flopped like a rag. A tiny cost of his war.

Back through the alley. A short youth was coming in the other direction, and as he angled his body to let him through in the confined space, Servius thought: you're not being careful enough. Your whole belly's open to a thrust, a stab. He could feel the boy's hips against his, shockingly intimate. Hadn't even looked him in the eye. And what to do? Stab him before he had a chance? Servius felt the handle of his dagger hard under his hand, felt the rage of fear rising in him, and then he was past, and coming out back where he'd begun, and feeling the cold creep across his shoulders and his flesh shiver and his face burning as he realised what he'd almost done, what, except for the speed of events, he would have done.

He was just rounding the corner when he nearly crashed into someone walking fast along the street. Clumsy today, he thought; maybe after all he shouldn't be on his own, without Mamarke or one of the lictors. Then he realised who he'd run into, and reached out, and grabbed Postumus' arm, and stepped past him and through, so he had the man's arm twisted behind his back.

"Why did you run?"

Postumus licked his lips. His mouth worked soundlessly. He kept looking up and down the street. What for? Help? To make a run for it if Servius let him go?

"Tell me. You ran."

"Nothing to say to you."

"Why run?"

"You're dangerous. She... "

Stupid, stupid. Shouldn't have raped her. Lost control, the way you're losing control here, the way you nearly lost it in the alleyway. Now she's after you.

"She thinks I'm in Velzna."

"And you're not."

"I had to come back, I had to. They found me too quickly. Someone tipped me off. I got out in time."

"And you came back here. But she thinks you're still there. Didn't want to tell her you'd failed? Or is there something else?"

Postumus squirmed. Defeat and fear had shrunk him, somehow.

"You know the kind of game this is. No one trusts anyone."

I used to, Servius thought. I trusted the General. I trusted Ramtha, at least a little. I trusted Avle and Caile, absolutely. And it's all gone to ruin, thanks to bastards like you. And now I don't trust anyone, either. Particularly not you.

"Well, you have a problem."

"If she thinks they got to me first..."

"She's more likely to think that the longer you skulk around trying not to be seen."

"I was succeeding, till you turned up."

"And what makes me dangerous? Explain that."

"You know her. You know me. You know too much."

"Oh, I know nothing at all, really. And anyway, I might have some use for you. Why would I tell Tanaquil anything, if you were more useful to me on the loose? You know, Postumus, I admire you. Really I do. You're ruthless. Quick. Smart. Know how to obey orders, even nasty ones. I could do with a man like you."

He still didn't really believe Postumus' story, or only half believed it. Postumus was lying, or he was running some take on the side, or perhaps Velzna had in fact got to him and sent him back to work for them in Rome. Here, between the fullers and tanners and the fish gut sauce vendors, Postumus had gone to ground.

"We're going to go and talk, Postumus. We're going to drink a cup or two of wine, and we're going to talk. And you're not going to run. If you do, I'll find you."

Postumus nodded. Servius began to walk, holding on to Postumus' arm, pushing him in front of him. There was a wineshop a few doors away, if he'd remembered right; and he had. Postumus stumbled on the step, whether that was an attempt to break out or a genuine misstep; in any case, Servius was holding on to him tightly. He pushed Postumus to a seat in the corner, and sat himself across the front of the shop.

"Wine," he said to the shopkeeper.

"We don't..."

"You do. Wine. Red. Hot. Not too much honey."

It came. As did the realisation that Postumus might have had a knife. Probably did have a knife. Could have used it. This was all getting very bad, very bad indeed.

"I have a problem," Servius said.

"Being a king is a problem?"

"I've inherited far too many men who are afraid to tell me the way things are. Too many men who won't tell me to my face I'm wrong. I have too many men, not enough weapons, too many enemies."

"You have a problem, then."

"I'm dealing with that. That's not what I want you for. There's something else worrying me. Remember how Tarquinius thought he had Velx sewn up? And Velzna?"

"I don't see what you mean."

"If we go to war..."

"Which Tanaquil said you would, and imminently."

"If," he said again, "we go to war, I want to hold on to my conquests. Not conquer a town, leave it, see it rebel. I want to move fast. I need people in all the Etruscan cities, working for me. People working for Rome, ready, in place."

"You want to put me somewhere."

"No. I want you to organise it."

This was a stupid risk to take. Postumus was Tanaquil's; probably, he had already betrayed her, too. But on the other hand, if Postumus was really afraid, the gamble would work; a drowning man clutches at anything that floats.

"But I work for Tanaquil."

"Not any more."

"I was going to tell her... when..."

"You still can. If you have to. Or stay hidden. You work out your own arrangement."

He could see the calculation going on; Postumus' eyes narrowed, and, for a moment, quite still.

"It might work," he said. "I'll think about it."

Servius left, turning his back on Postumus; one last gamble.

Across the road, a woman turned away. Her red hair reminded him of Tullia.

***

The next few days were quiet. He dreamt badly, of things with teeth that leapt from dark corners. It didn't take Tanaquil to tell him what that was about. He kept Mamarke by his side, kept the unimaginative Gnaeus around, too. There was enough to keep him busy; reports coming in from his informants on the Etruscan cities' doings, tallies of the forges' production, and now, a new problem, the logistics of feeding an army on the move, and how to get another forty wagons built that he hadn't even knew he needed.

"Damn it! Why can't they live off the land the way we used to?"

"With respect, Sir," Mamarke had said, "that works for a small raiding party, but not for an army this size."

He knew that, of course; knew also, which perhaps Mamarke didn't, the classical defence against a foraging army, which was to burn the fields, and leave them starving, and that was a risk he wasn't going to take. But the wagons had to be built, and that meant taking men off some other work that was equally necessary; it was all juggling with scant resources, trying to meet one requirement while not taking too much away from others. It would have made a pleasing mathematical problem, he thought, like those Greek theories the General had shown him once, triangles drawn in circles, how to divide the circle into its own radius – if it weren't for the fact that every decision created rancour, divided winners from losers, multiplied the ranks of the discontented. It was easy to say that an army marched together; difficult to get it to happen.

The days passed easily, hard work chasing away his demons. The reports started to get better; the spears arrived, the carts were built, and when the phalanx drilled, it had begun to look like a real army. The slingers were still a bit hit and miss, but as long as the hits outnumbered the misses, they'd do some damage, he thought, and some damage was better than none. Tarquin had buckled down to hard work at last, though he still spent his nights drinking and turned up looking sick and hungry in the morning; and Tanaquil was talking to him again. Perhaps after all his apology had been enough.

He was no longer frightened of her, now he knew what that prophecy meant. No wonder she'd not wanted to tell him; it wasn't Tanaquil who had bestowed the kingship on him, but the gods. She had no hold on him now. If the gods had chosen him, neither she nor anyone else could threaten him; he was unassailable. That confidence began to grow in him like a seed blindly seeking out the light; he could feel it working, something new to him. (He wondered; was this the way Tarquin, Tanaquil had always felt, chosen through generations, entitled to their world in a way he never had been?)

She in her turn seemed to sense something had changed between them. She was quieter than she had been, and the stiff and prideful bearing of a lioness had turned into the softer dignity of a cat.

He was beginning to appreciate what kingship meant, too. How stupid of him to have seen it as a temptation to softness, as an impediment; now he saw its uses. To say do a thing, and have it done. To have no one question his experience, his knowledge, his strategy. To put out his hand and have it close on power.

But he still hated the hangers on and the men who said yes, always yes, and called him wise and benevolent and far-seeing and so many other compliments and all of them false. So when he woke early, on a day he'd been assured was a fortunate one, and saw the sky blue and high and cloudless, and felt the immensity of the silence before the city woke to work and confusion, he decided he'd head to the Capitol to see Vulca. He had something to say to Vulca, anyway, before Vulca left, or before his army was ready, whichever was first.

He took Mamarke with him, as he had decided that he always would, after that day he chased down the deserter Postumus. (And he'd still heard nothing from Postumus, so he'd asked Manius to take on the work; another intimate of Tanaquil's, but then, in Rome, who wasn't? Except the faithful few who kept up Faustus' strident opposition, and they would hardly work for Servius.)

The scaffolding was still in place; early as it was, there was no sign of Vulca in the shack at the bottom of the ladder, so Servius pulled himself up to the roof. Up there, close to the ridge of the roof, he felt marooned in sky; blue all around him, a cool breeze lifting from the forum.

There was the statue of Mnrva, ready in place, and there was Vulca, standing on the edge of its plinth, leaning into a sling he'd tied round a great beam, reaching up to dot the pupils of the goddess's eyes. Swaying out, into empty air, light as a leaf falling or a swallow scything its way over the river meadows, and raising a trembling brush to the deity's clay face.

Then it was done; and Vulca swung himself easily back over the edge, on to the easy slant of roof, and slipped out of the rope, shaking his hair back, shrugging his shoulders a couple of times to loosen himself.

"You're here," he said. "Wouldn't miss my putting that last touch to her, would you?"

Actually Servius hadn't known the work was to be finished today, but he knew better than to speak.

"I always leave this till the last moment. Till I paint the eyes, it's just a piece of clay; and now, it's alive."

Servius smiled.

"Silly, I know, but that's the way I feel about it."

"Everyone has their own small rites. Soldiers do. I knew a man once had lucky knucklebones. He'd play with them while we were waiting for orders. Toss, catch, toss, catch - it drove the rest of us mad. Eventually someone stole them. A spear got him, that time."

"Nasty way to die."

"He didn't die. But he limped ever after. He was out of the army after that. Other men have lucky clothes; they won't change their clothes on campaign, not till they get back home."

"You have to share a tent with them?"

Servius laughed. That had been worse than the knucklebones.

"I did have another reason for coming," he said. "You're done here, aren't you?"

"I am," Vulca said.

"Vulca, don't go back to Veii."

"Why not?"

"A feeling," Servius said, knowing how weak that sounded; but he couldn't say more. "A bad feeling."

Vulca laughed.

"I've been right a few times," Servius said.

"Prophecy?"

"I wouldn't claim foresight. Tanaquil did try to teach me, once."

"You get these feelings often?"

"Once or twice," Servius said. "And they've been right, before."

Vulca stopped laughing. "True," he said, softly and slowly, "you wouldn't have got to be a king if you hadn't instincts you could trust. Well, I'll think about it."

"You'll stay here?"

"I doubt it."

"Where will you go?"

"To Felsina, perhaps. There's a few people heading north, you know. They don't like your census. They don't like to be counted."

"They don't like their wealth to be counted," Servius said. "If I can count it I can take it, they reckon."

"Or I might go south, to the Greek cities. There might not be much work for me, but I'd like to see their art."

"You'd be out of the way of trouble," Servius said. "But don't go back to Veii."

***

A pig, a sheep, a bull.

Three animals. Three sacrifices. Three lives for the life of Rome, blood to bind the army together. Three deaths at the end of an era, and the start of a new.

Every Roman – every free Roman – that is, every free male Roman – there on the Campus Martius, to be numbered, to be ranked, to be bound. File upon file, line upon line, their centuries, their thousands.

A pig, a sheep, a bull.

Let the speaking be done here. Not on the Palatine, where the palace gates stand thrown open, but here on the Field of Mars, god of battle, god of conquest.

The age of the heroes is over. Achilles is long dead, and Hektor, and the cunning Ulixes' mouth stopped by dust. They pour wine to some of them; it dries, and crusts, and stains the ground, and the next rain washes the traces away. There are no heroes now.

The age of the nobles is over, too. The Spurinnas, the Vipienas, the Tulumnes, elegant in bright robes and the gleam of gold, would yield to the bronze and iron of Rome.

Leading the sacrifices around the perimeter. The bull balks at first. One of the three always does. The sheep looking up. Its pupils are bars of black in the flecked yellowish green of its eyes. It bleats once, a thin, timid cry. The other animal walks, its snout close to the ground, sniffing. A pig, a sheep, a bull.

This is our time. Not the time of heroes, not the time of nobles, but our time. Take it, seize it; tear our future roughly from the womb of time. Our time to rise, our time to conquer.

See, I lead the sacrifices round this field, and I will lead you round the world. To the cruel white of the Alps, the dry heat of the Greek-held south. The very name of Tarchna will be forgotten; Veii's citadel will lie in ruins; and the groves of Velzna will be haunted only by owls and snakes when we have finished.

The bull stands at the altar. The man with the axe is ready.

Let the blood feed the ghosts of the heroes. But it will be our blood, our strength, our armies that conquer. And conquer we will.

This is where it all begins. This is where the slave became a king. This is where a city of refugees becomes the ruler of the world. The sons of slaves are the fathers of emperors.

Homer is long dead. It's time for us to move on.

The hammer falls. The knife flicks. Blood flows. It's time, Servius says, and the army cheers, and there is the noise of spears clashing on bronze shields like a gust of wind flattening dry reeds in the marshes.

A pig, a sheep, a bull.

***

"Homer is long dead. It's time for us to move on."

"That's what he said?"

"That's what he said."

Two of the slingers were talking. They'd called themselves Servius' Slingers, before, but now they were the Sons of the Slave, proud of their mongrel accents, their patchwork uniforms, their poverty. Their grammar was bad, their language was bad, their aim on the other hand was getting better; though that was less through the daily drill, than through their practice in knocking down crows, geese, and other people's chickens.

A youngster, his face still chubby (generic, in a way, as if he hadn't lived quite enough to become an individual), joined in. "No more heroes, eh?"

"Wait till you've seen a battle," one of the slingers told him.

"There aren't any heroes," the other said, "but the buggers who think they are, are quite bad enough."

And then there was, suddenly, shouting. A lot of shouting, and a lot of pushing; indignant noise, angry noise, self-righteous noise.

"Sod me," said the older slinger, the one who'd repeated Servius' words. "One of our lot."

The mob was pushing forwards a scrawny man, who held in one hand a limp sling, and in the other a chicken no less scrawny than himself, and which hung just as limply as the sling.

"Good aim, he's got."

"Bad luck, though."

"Bloody fool to try it around here."

The malefactor was being jostled forwards, and the mood was turning ugly; he might have his neck stretched as quickly as a chicken's, for all they could tell. Then suddenly, silence fell; and one voice spoke, a voice not angry, not self-righteous, but authoritative, demanding to know what was happening, why the noise, why the crowds. Servius had obviously expected to see his Slingers in better order than he found them. He'd expected a regular commanding officer's visit, a quick review, a couple of rounds of practice, a commendation here and a rebuke there, the visit of a soldier who, though he no longer had time to drill with his men, still tried to remember at least some of their names; what he'd found was very nearly a riot.

"So what were you doing?" he asked the slinger. And when the mob tried to answer, he shushed them, and waited for the noise to die down before he asked him again - "What were you doing?"

"Target practice, sir."

There was laughter at that, but a nasty kind of laughter with anger hiding not far beneath it.

"A hah," Servius said. "Target practice. Hm."

There was some uneasy laughter at that, as if no one was quite sure whether Servius thought this was a joke, or not.

"And while you were doing your target practice," Servius said, and paused for a moment, "what was the chicken doing?"

"Scratching for food, sir."

"I see," he said, very serious. People laughed again, the edge of anger beginning to dissipate. Well and good; at least while they were laughing they wouldn't lynch him.

"What were you aiming at, may I ask?"

"Does it matter?" the man said, and then realising he'd stepped out of line added, questioning – "Sir?"

"Oh come on. What were you using as a target?"

"A leather jug, sir. I'd propped it up on the wall."

"A leather jug. Yours?"

"Yessir."

"A leather jug. Leather jug. Chicken. Chicken. Leather jug. Hm."

The man wriggled; he was chewing, and biting on his jaw, and his face looked hot. Servius nodded his head a few times, looking at the chicken, at the man, back at the chicken. He heard one woman giggle, then a man snort with laughter, which he stifled once he realised no one else was going to join in.

"So let me get this right," Servius said, very seriously, as if he really didn't understand what was happening at all, and had to get it quite clear, and needed it all explained to him fully and in short sentences, like teaching an idiot how to milk a goat. "You were aiming at a leather jug, and somehow you shot the chicken."

"Yes," came the unwilling answer. "Sir."

"So, let me see. You were aiming at a leather jug. And then the chicken came along. And you thought, no doubt, the chicken would make a much more interesting target."

"Sir?"

"You thought you might be hungry later?"

"No, Sir!"

"You thought the chicken looked good and fat, did you?"

No answer. Servius waited a moment, and then said; "You must be blind."

That got everyone's attention; not least the slinger's.

"Scrawny bloody thing, that chicken. Once you get the feathers off there'd be nothing there, like one of Aglaia's Greek tarts." That got a laugh; everyone knew the madam kept her girls on short rations. This time the laughter was genuine, and widespread, and people seemed to have forgotten their anger about the stolen chicken, the way soldiers, given the right story or the right speech or the right rousing pat on the back before action, forgot their nerves. A lifetime of nights before battle, when a good story was worth a month's wages, and might be worth a man's life, had taught him how to lead a crowd by the nose, and he was doing it now, and enjoying it nearly as much as they were.

"Let's be serious," he said, and the laughter stopped.

"So." He looked around. All eyes were on him. Silence. Good.

"So. You were aiming at a leather jug. Good, good. I'm glad you're practising. I really am. That's what I want to see from all my slingers; diligence. Practice. Hours of practice. Even if you're only shooting a leather jug.

But well... but... a leather jug. Leather jug. Enemy soldier. Enemy soldier. Leather jug." He let his hands draw a jug, a man, in the air, looked from one to the other, as if confused. "Different. Very different. Leather jug... well, it's a smaller target, I grant you that. How far off were you?"

"A hundred paces, sir."

"Ooh," he said, raising his eyebrows. "That's quite a distance." And then he frowned as if he was thinking, and said, eyes narrowing theatrically; "You did hit the jug, did you?"

"Sometimes, sir."

"Splendid, splendid! At a hundred paces. That's really pretty good. And let me just ask you another question."

"Sir?"

"The jug wasn't moving, was it?"

The slinger looked confused.

"It wasn't moving?"

"No, sir, it wasn't."

"Well of course it wouldn't be, would it? A jug?"

"No sir."

"But an enemy soldier would be, wouldn't he?"

"Would be what, sir?"

"Would be moving."

"I suppose so, sir." Clearly he couldn't see where Servius was heading with this; his voice was hesitant, and he was frowning slightly, his eyes wide. Perhaps he even suspected the laughter was as much directed as his confusion as at Servius' faux-stupid act.

"So, jug – soldier, soldier – jug. Soldier who moves. Jug which doesn't."

"Sir?"

"Well, so a jug isn't very good practice. Too easy to hit something that doesn't move."

"Yes, sir, but it's all I'd got and ...."

"So when the chicken appeared, you thought it would be a bit more challenging to hit a moving target, didn't you? A bit more like real war. Even though the chicken is, well, a bit smaller than an enemy soldier."

The man was shaking his head at this. Fool, he couldn't see how this was going to save him, but it was, or Servius didn't know how to manage a crowd. Gods, some people were stupid. Here he was offering the man a way out, and he wouldn't take it. But he was stringing the crowd along, too; maybe that would work, on its own.

"I can see the point. Moving target. Trickier. And the same size as the jug, so it would have been a bit of a challenge, at a hundred paces. A live target. Well, it was then, anyway."

A bit of a laugh at that, but not quite enough.

"You know something? If you can hit a man right on the head, knock his block off at a hundred paces, you're the kind of man I need. I'll have all my slingers aiming at chickens if it makes them so accurate."

"But I wasn't aiming at the bloody chicken!"

Servius ignored the swearing, the interruption, the omission of "sir". He put on a sorrowful face, let his mouth slacken, shrugged – "what can you do?" the shrug said.

"Oh dear. You really weren't?" He turned to one of his men. "I'd better countermand that order."

"Sir? Which order?"

"Having everyone practice on chickens. It clearly doesn't work." He turned back to the woeful slinger, now not only confused but feeling put-upon and misunderstood. "So let's see. You were actually aiming at the leather jug. And you hit the chicken. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear."

The man looked down at the dirt between his feet. Servius waited. Always let your audience wait for the payoff. He frowned. He looked sideways. He shook his head sorrowfully. He looked back at the slinger, sling and chicken still hanging limply in his hands.

"Well, I shall have to do something about this. Really you disappoint me. Your slinging skills are really rather poor. Gnaeus! Where's Gnaeus when I want him?" He looked around, knowing quite well that Gnaeus was two paces behind him, as he always was, these days; and Gnaeus stepped forward, clearing his throat to let Servius know he was there.

"Ah, Gnaeus. There you are. Would you have someone check this man's eyesight? Maybe he really can't tell the difference between a jug and a chicken." He waited out the laugh, and as it died down, said, more seriously; "Get him practising."

"He was practising, sir. That's what all the trouble's about."

"Well, have him practise a bit more." He turned back to the slinger. "Stand straight, will you? Right. Your punishment. It has to be tough, so I'll make it tough."

He saw the slinger wince.

"Five hours practise every day with a moving target. Every day. All this month. Gnaeus will sort it out. There you are. Dismissed. Off you go."

And that, he hoped, was that, but someone yelled out of the crowd, "What about the chicken?"

"The chicken? Oh, the chicken. I'd almost forgotten. Whose is it?"

There were several shouts of 'mine' from different places in the crowd.

"Well the bloody thing can't belong to everybody. I haven't got time for this."

He marched up to the slinger and grabbed the chicken.

"I'll eat the damn thing myself."

There was a bit of grumbling at that, but a couple of the slingers started a cheer for good old Servius, and someone shouted "There'll be fried chicken for everyone when we win our first battle," and then the shout went up, "Fried chicken for everyone!"

"Well," said Gnaeus, "It beats 'no aristocrats' for immediate appeal."

# Tanaquil

"I don't know how Tarquinius ever conquered anywhere," Servius complained.

"But he did."

Tanaquil was right, of course. "I don't know how, with that army. It's a mess."

"Still a mess?"

"It'll do," he said shortly. "It'll have to do."

"It did for Tarquinius."

"He took a few cities. I want the whole of Italy. You can't take that with a couple of individualists in gilded armour."

She looked up sharply; the reference to young Tarquin was inescapable. But with Mamarke there, she was not going to take the bait.

"The whole of Italy," she repeated. "Not just Veii."

"That was your idea," he said. "A wider state. An Etruscan league with Rome at its head."

She nodded, but there was a question in her eyes.

"The whole of Italy? That's not just Etruria. You have the Faliscans, the Umbrians; Celts in the north, past the Padan dodecapolis."

He nodded.

"And then the Greeks."

"Yes. That will be difficult, I know. Well, I'll have a more experienced army by then."

If you have one at all, she thought.

"And a more disciplined cavalry."

"Tarquin said you'd had some kind of a run-in with him," Mamarke observed. Still, Tanaquil bit down on her anger. There would be time to discuss this later.

"He still won't do as he's told. Thinks it's some kind of game. Chasing down a retreating enemy – he said it's 'not fun'. Not fun. As if we go to war for fun. For fuck sake."

"It's not considered sporting," Mamarke said. "You know that."

"Not in your little not-serious play-wars, no. But I don't fight for fun. I fight to win."

"There's more to it than that. You still hope the Etruscan cities will join Rome of their own free will. If you want that to happen, you don't slaughter your opponents out of hand."

"And if you want to stop them reneging on their treaties the first chance they get, you smash their armies flat. That's what you don't understand. That's what Tarquin doesn't understand."

Mamarke frowned, but said nothing.

"Tarquin needs to learn," Tanaquil said smoothly. "I think he is learning. But it takes time."

"I haven't got time."

"I was hot-headed at his age," she said.

Not that Servius believed that. She'd always been chilly. At Tarquin's age she'd already let Tarquinius cart her off to Rome, and he thought that had more to do with the opportunities the half formed city offered than any youthful romance.

"He's proud," Marmarke said.

"He's arrogant."

"Let him have his pride. He'll do what's needed when the dice are thrown. Till then, leave him be."

"Tarquin the proud," Servius said. "Tarquin the uncontrollable. Tarquin the lecher, who turns up to drill if his whore doesn't keep him in bed that morning. He'll learn, or he'll go."

"I'll learn what?"

"Humility," Servius said. "And how long have you been listening?"

"Long enough."

"Well, are you going to learn?"

"Humility? No."

Tanaquil grabbed his hand, squeezing it, pulling him back, but he twisted out of her grip.

"You want a slave? Get one."

"You'll do as you're told."

"I'll fight on your side. That'll have to do."

"It won't do."

They started shouting then; Mamarke tried to stop them, but in the inevitable way of such things, his interventions only added to the noise, each of the men seeing Mamarke as another opponent. And Tanaquil watched, her face studiedly impassive, and her right hand slowly stroking the other, the hand Tarquin had rejected.

Who started the abuse she could never remember; it might have been Servius, exasperated, who yelled the first insult, though normally she would have expected Tarquin to be the first to break. Did Servius think this was the way to get through to Tarquin, theatrically trying to break him down and bludgeon him? She could have told him (and Mamarke had told him) that wouldn't work. Or had Servius lost his self-control? He was doing that more and more these days, trying to force through his reforms on an unwilling Rome.

"I'm not sucking your cock," Tarquin shouted.

Tanaquil stood up, and grabbed his hand again. "That's enough."

"Tell that cocksucker it's enough."

She dug her fingers into his wrist. He flexed his arm trying to break her hold, but she had him pinned.

"I don't care who started it," she said, and winced as she remembered saying the same to Arruns and Tarquin when they were still children, quarrelling over a clay horse or a dripping honey cake.

"Stupid bitch," Tarquin said.

For once she had no answer. Her boy, her darling boy, her Etruscan prince, and how it hurt... hurt far more than Servius' rape or the loss of Arruns, or the thought even of her own death.

"You're a bloody death demon," he said. "Everyone dies around you. My father. Faustus. Ancus Marcius. And you're always there at the death. Don't you tell me what to do. You're worse than him."

What everyone perhaps had thought, but no one had dared to say. Not even Faustus. How it hurt; hurt all the more for being true. She had no words, not even useless ones, and watched him turn his back and storm out. A marvellous exit; it was flashy, it was trite, but it was still impressive, like so much about Tarquin.

Yet women, she thought, were always there at the death. It's what we do, she thought. We lay out the bodies. So many, so many.

She looked at Servius. "He'll kill you, one day."

"Never. He's not so stupid."

"Really?"

Servius exhaled sharply. "Where's his support? What does he gain?"

"You've humiliated him."

"I have no sons. All he has to do is wait. He'll be king after me."

"If the comitia votes for him."

"And there are ways of fixing that. As you know."

"He's angry. I saw death in his eyes."

"Another of your prophecies?"

"No."

"Well," Servius said.

You couldn't warn a man like that. He didn't understand pride; didn't understand nobility. And he thought he did.

"You might still have children," she said. "Tarquinia..."

"No," he said. And his look of rage silenced her.

***

Rome was growing fast, and Jupiter's was not the only temple being built; there were small shrines going up all over the city, and Tanaquil had funded a temple to Diana on the Aventine with a rich gift of golden jewellery, that drew great admiration from all except the few (ladies of fashion, or goldsmiths) who understood that what she'd donated was all out of fashion, and much of it more suitable for a man, so probably Tarquinius', not her own, and only worth its scrap value. Still, it was a munificent gift. The temple benefited, too, from her sure taste; the fine proportions, elegant but not overdone decoration, the small carved figures of deer and greyhounds that chased each other along the frieze.

She should have got such great pleasure from it, and yet Rome had a way of spoiling things; the great Capitoline temple's dedication the month before, and the way Servius had taken over patronage of this temple too, claiming it as the common sanctuary of the Latin people. It was strange, how often something she'd looked forward to had turned out to be so disappointing in reality; and the best moments of her life had been stolen from necessity. Swimming naked one afternoon with Tarquinius under a cornflower-blue sky on the way from Tarchna. (What made her think of that now?)

And here she was, resplendent in white and gold and leading the procession with Servius as she so often did these days, a queen in all but name now that Tarquinia never left the Palatine (some said she was dead, others that she was mad, though the truth if Tanaquil knew her daughter was more likely that she was both stubborn, and drunk most of the time). Queen of Rome; another spoiled thing, to be a rapist's queen. The shame snuggled closely to her heart. Life spoiled as easily as milk left out.

"What's that thing there?" she asked.

"What thing?" As if he didn't know. She pointed. A garish bronze stele blocked the steps up to the temple.

"Oh, that," he said.

"Yes, that."

"It's the pact between the Latin cities."

"You mean it shows the conditions Rome exacted in exchange for not flattening them?"

"If you like."

"And it's there..."

"Because it never goes amiss to remind your allies what they've agreed to. In writing. Indelible writing."

"Bronze melts," she said. "You might have carved it on stone."

Sunlight flashed from the bronze, dazzling. How typical of Servius to put it just off centre, where it clashed with the temple's elegant symmetry.

They were at the bottom of the steps to the temple when Tanaquil saw him; a countryman with a floppy wide-brimmed hat, leading a huge white cow, soft and perfect as young things always are before the years scar and harden them. Instantly she had that sense, as if the world had slid sideways, as if it swung about the axis of her aching eyes.

"That cow," she said, but Servius's mouth twitched.

"We've got an ox ready," he said, one hand on her back pushing her forward.

When she turned to face him, he must have seen something of the power that swelled like migraine behind her eyes; she simply looked at him, and he stopped, and bowed his head silently, and then hailed the peasant.

"You've come a long way to Rome," he said, his voice kind.

"I have that." A slight edge to the vowels; Sabine, probably. "Because of the dream."

"What dream was this?"

"Steady, Tanaquil; let him tell his own story."

"This cow," he said. "I never had a cow like her in twenty years, for size, or for colour. Twenty two years, to be exact, I've been a farmer up in the hills, and never seen anything like."

He pulled his hat off, and wiped his sweaty forehead with his forearm.

"I breed them for whiteness, but every white cow I've ever had has a patch of brown somewhere on her, just a few hairs, a couple of dark flecks behind the ears or on the tail. But she was born pure white, and she's never darkened. That together with the size of her; she's special."

"And the dream?"

"I don't dream often. Farming life is hard; I sleep deeply. No energy for dreams. But seven nights ago I dreamt I was in a temple, a great temple as high as the sky, and the god spoke to me."

"Which god was this?" Tanaquil asked.

"I don't know. It was far in the darkness. But the god spoke, and told me to take the white cow to Rome, and that I'd find a temple there, and if I sacrificed her there, I would become king of the world."

"And you really believe that?"

The Sabine looked down, jamming his hat back on his head, and then said, quietly; "Even so, if it was a true dream, the god must have meant something."

"True enough," Tanaquil said, "the gods don't always say clearly what they mean." And then she looked again at the man, and said, "Well, you could sacrifice here. But gods! You're filthy."

So he was, grimy with dust from the road, and sweat, and his cheeks stippled with unshaven bristle.

"Go and wash," she said. "You can't sacrifice till you're clean. Go down to the river and wash."

"That's a way to go," he said, "for a tired man."

"You have to wash. Leave the cow here; and quickly, quickly, go and wash."

"I will," he said, and handed the lead rope to one of the attendants; but before he left, Tanaquil made sure one of Servius' retinue gave him a fresh white tebenna to put on after he'd bathed, to make him acceptable in the eyes of the goddess. Then he was off, down the narrow road to the Tiber banks.

"Get the priest," Tanaquil ordered.

Servius seemed not to understand why the haste. "Now," she said, "this very minute."

"But we need to prepare. The prayers."

"We don't have long."

She looked down. The Sabine was half way to the river. She should have told him he needed a really thorough wash; should have told him he had to dip his head nine times, or stay under water as long as he could hold his breath, or some nonsense to give them time. Whoever sacrificed this cow, she was convinced, would rule the world; the gods had not spoken wrongly in that dream. If she brought it with Servius to the altar, Rome could not fail...

"And the cow," she said.

"We have an ox."

"Shut up! Get the cow. And hurry."

The cow was docile, and allowed herself to be led up the steps, to the altar on the forecourt, where she stood, chewing.

Tanaquil lit the fires herself. She got Mamarke to take the garlands off the originally intended sacrifice, a young ox, and put them on to the cow, which, attracted by the bright flowers, attempted to chew the garlands and was only dissuaded from eating them by a tap on the nose. She threw the blanket over the cow.

Good; the priest had arrived, already veiled as the rite demanded. He moved quickly into the opening words. "Be silent!"

Someone must have impressed on him the need for haste; he was speaking as fast as he could, without gabbling.

He scattered the wheat and the water on the cow's forehead. Its huge tongue licked at the liquid that dribbled down its muzzle. Quickly, the priest tugged a lock of hair from its forelock, and threw it into the fire. There was a sizzle; Tanaquil smelt the burning hair, the sweetness of the cow's grass-fermenting breath. She pulled the blanket away, ready for the priest to pass his knife down its back, caressing the spine with steel, the last necessary action.

"Get on with it," she hissed.

"It has to be correct. You know this." He was whispering, afraid perhaps of Servius, perhaps of the goddess, perhaps simply wanting to maintain decorum in front of so many observers. He was right, of course.

"Miss out the hymn, anyway," she said. "You don't need it. It's not required."

She could tell that this departure from the rite had shocked a few of the bystanders, even more than when she had lit the fires; but they had so little time. Now the priest was addressing the goddess, enumerating her titles; lady of the moon, goddess of the hunt, mistress of the hounds, virgin, lady of the woods and the deer. Each title in order. Not a word wrong. Carefully. Too slowly, too slowly, but there was nothing she could do now. To distract him could ruin everything; if he got a word wrong he'd have to repeat the whole rite from the beginning.

She held the cow's leading rope with Servius, one standing each side. Their hands touched; she flinched at the contact, looked at him. Good. He hadn't noticed. The cow looked trustfully up at her. Tanaquil covered her head.

And now the prayer was finished, and the sacrificer had stepped forwards. Come on, come on, she muttered under her breath, but she knew the priest had to wait for the animal's consent; it must bow its head, and till it did so, the sacrifice could not proceed.

The cow looked up at her again, twisting its head round.

They waited.

Oh damn this, she thought, and yanked the halter.

"There, it's bowed," she said. "Do it. Do it now."

"Do it," the priest said, and the mallet fell.

Suddenly everything happened. The cow was on her knees, slumping like a slow landslide, stunned. The ox was panicking, bellowing, its hoofs clattering on the pavement, and there was the sound of shit splattering the marble and the stink of half-fermented grass.

Tanaquil was holding the patera as the sacrificer drew his knife across the cow's throat, catching the blood that sheeted out in five, six great pulses before its flow slackened. And the Sabine, who'd come just in time to see his cow felled, was kicking up a fuss.

"You stole her! You stole my cow!"

"Nonsense," Servius was saying. "You brought her to the temple, and she's been sacrificed. All completely in order."

"You stole her. I should have sacrificed her. That was in the dream. I had to do it myself. And now she's dead, and you stole her, you thieving..."

It took a long while and a good deal of money to pacify him, and in the meantime he'd delivered his opinion of Servius and the Chicken Incident, which as everyone knew, he said, was blatant expropriation of private property (though he didn't put it in exactly those words), but what could you expect from a thieving low class stable boy even if you did make him a king, and it was going to get worse, if he knew anything. The way he saw it, it would be chickens now, and then before the next Ides they'd be coming for the pigs and the sheep and the cows too. As for Tanaquil, she was worse, and it was no surprise a woman like her would worship a goddess like Diana, who hunted men, who turned them to animals and hunted them down.

It was a mishmash of truth and fiction and sticks grabbed at the wrong end, but Tanaquil worried ever after about The Chicken Incident. As for Servius, for weeks after he dreamt that he had horns, and was being pursued through the forest – though by what exactly, he never knew – and he woke, gasping for breath, tired as if he'd been running all night.

# Superbus

Though fingers of ice still streaked the paths outside, Aglaia's rooms were warm; braziers burned in the corners, so that the air smelt a little of charcoal and of smoke, and the floor and walls were covered with bright hangings and rugs that kept the cold out. Tarquin was leaning against the back of his couch, twisting Aglaia's hair in his fingers; his own long hair was loose for once from its braids, still crinkled and kinked.

The winter had passed, and the new year had already started, but though March had started the trees budding, hard and sticky leaf spikes at the end of every twig, it hadn't yet touched the city with green, and a late hard frost had coated the ground with rime so that the grass crunched underfoot.

This was Tarquin's coterie; Strephon, and Sethre of Velzna, and Thesanthei the northerner, and Mamarke who Tarquin didn't quite trust, yet, and the Greek Kalisthenes, older than the rest and fussily dressed, with the corners of his himation neatly pressed into ruffles, and his hair curled in the artful way that tried to look artless, and sometimes (but not today) succeeded. And Aglaia, of course; Aglaia, who alone knew how to manage Tarquin's temper and his fiery pride. Tarquin the Proud, Mamarke had called him, and the name had stuck; and proud he certainly was, even to the extent of priding himself on his own pride.

Strephon was the golden boy; a born actor, who could imitate anyone, and pretty much any thing. (Tarquin had once, nastily, told him to act the part of the statue of Tinia in the Capitoline temple, it was as wooden as him; and it was only much later, after almost everyone had gone, that Aglaia and Sethre had noticed him still standing in the darkness, immobile and scowling.) He'd already told them the new version of the Chicken Incident, in which he played first the opportunistic slinger, then a pompous and greedy Servius, dreaming of sinking his teeth into fried chicken legs, and finally, an uproariously funny chicken which came back to life, perched on the end of the couch and started to crow.

Then he started some tale about a young Etruscan noble who had crept into a woman's bedroom and fucked her while, all the time, her husband was asleep on the other side of the bed.

"Rather like someone we know," Sethre said, and Tarquin smirked, and tugged Aglaia's hair.

"But the gods punish the adulterer," Strephon said sententiously, with a hint of Kalisthenes' accent – that didn't go unnoticed, at least by its target. "So let us imagine, things having come to their usual conclusion, that the young Etruscan is basking in the warmth of the bed and the enjoyable reminiscence of his recent enjoyment. But Tinia in his heaven can see this immoral, albeit delectable, scene, and – though himself not noted for a lack of concupiscence..."

"What's that in decent Latin?" Sethre asked.

"Ability to keep his cock under control. Can I continue without you interrupting? Good. Tinia, observing this scene, fingered his thunderbolt... and you can stop smirking, Mamarke – fingered his thunderbolt lazily, but then bethought himself of a better method of retribution.

"You know of course that Tinia sends dreams that deceive, and dreams that are true. To the young Etruscan he sent drowsiness, and an insidious dream of fair women, and inexplicably rapidly renewed sexual prowess."

"Nothing inexplicable about it," Tarquin said.

"To the husband," Strephon continued, "he sent a stern dream of alarm, that the enemy was at the gate, and he should wake, wake instantly, to defend his home with whatever weapon lay ready and to hand... Mamarke, I've told you about smirking. You have a filthy mind.

"So the husband woke, and in that dreamy instant when his eyes were half open and his mind still full of mist and shadows, found the young man's back turned towards him, and his attractive backside under his hand was rounded and sleek, and without more ado, he took advantage of the opportunity thus proffered. Whether he thought, half-awake, that he was ploughing his wife's field or whether he realised he'd hit quite another furrow entirely.

"And thus," Strephon concluded, triumphantly thrusting his hips forwards in time to his peroration, "Tinia punished the adulterer by having him roundly fucked up the arse."

"And we all know how much he would have enjoyed it," said Sethre.

"True, is it?" Thesanthei muttered.

Tarquin shrugged.

"Mind you," said Sethre, "He'll only start on the men once he's had all the women in Rome."

"That should give us all a few weeks, then," Kalisthenes said, dourly.

"Though one thing amazes me," Sethre continued. "Why Roman girls? They're prettier in Tarchna. And they have proper Etruscan morals."

"Meaning a lack of them."

"Meaning they're good at it. Not like the Roman lumps."

"Oh come on," Tarquin said, and yawned, and stretched lazily, before he added: "The resistance is half the fun."

"A pity there are no girls here," said Sethre. "You never get these men-only parties in a proper Etruscan household."

Aglaia coughed meaningfully. Strephon looked at her, and almost without missing a beat picked up from Sethre. "You've always got as many women as men at an Etruscan party. And women with interesting opinions, too, and that adds something to the entertainment. Though perhaps not as much as women with – what was it you said, Sethre? - proper Etruscan morals. Poor Aglaia has to do it all on her own."

"The opinions, or the morals?" Kalisthenes put in cattily, raising a laugh from everyone except Aglaia.

"My mother is a true Etruscan, then," Tarquin said. "She has some very interesting opinions, and she makes them pretty widely known. I'm not at all sure about her morals."

"Sure enough of her morals twenty years ago that you still reckon you're a prince?"

"Strephon, one day you're going to have to learn; there's funny, and there's stupid. You're just lucky that I think your stupidity is quite amusing; but I could always change my mind."

Strephon raised one eyebrow languidly, then poked his tongue out of one side of his mouth and winked. "You couldn't live without me," he said, "and you know it."

"I might try," Tarquin said, and threw a cushion at him.

But Strephon was off already on a new impersonation, marching about delivering Servius' latest speech. "The good of Rome is the good of us all, and the good of us all is the good of the army. The army is the nation, the nation is the army, the army is the army is the nation is the army and I want your gold earrings for the good of the nation the army and Rome and my goodness, is that a chicken I see before me," and he went on until Sethre, who never minded making a fool of himself (because he did that often enough without wanting to, so he could certainly do it deliberately), launched himself at Strephon, grabbed him round the middle and pulled him down on the floor, where he continued to spout about the nation and the army and the good of us all till Sethre rammed the cushion Tarquin had thrown at him in his mouth and he was finally silenced, or at least muffled.

"He's right, you know," Tarquin said, looking thoughtful.

"About the army and the nation?" Kalisthenes asked.

"No. About my not being able to do without him."

"As for Servius?"

"He's bought his throne with gifts to the plebs. Murderers, scavengers, pimps, muckspreaders, slaughtermen. He doesn't care who he takes on, anyone's good enough for his army. He has no class himself, and he doesn't recognise it in anyone else."

Thesanthei looked for once as if he was going to say something, but he was still getting his thoughts together when Sethre butted in. "He trains his men well enough," Sethre said, "even if they're rough to start with."

"Oh yes, training. Marching up and down for hours. One two three, one two three, everything counted and regular, it's like a bloody children's dance class. That's not daring, that's not courage, that's not war."

"It works, though," Sethre said.

"Yes, it works. You don't think I'd tolerate it otherwise?"

"You might not have a choice," Kallisthenes muttered; he was lucky that Tarquin didn't hear him.

"I wish we still did things the old way. One man against another. Like Hektor and Achle. I'd have him."

"You damn well wouldn't."

"I damn well would, Sethre."

"No," said Kallisthenes, "you wouldn't. Certainly not on foot. And even on a horse, good as you are, he'd probably match you. Don't forget what a horseman he was."

"Was."

"Even so."

"And still," said Tarquin, scowling, "I'd dare to call him out. And you wouldn't. And that's the difference."

And that, they all knew, was true.

Things quietened down after that, as if Tarquin's barely contained temper had frightened them, or as if they realised they'd skirted the fringes of treason and needed to step back from it. Tarquin was kneading the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other, the tangles of Aglaia's hair forgotten. Then Mamarke spoke for the first time, softly.

"You know," he said, and paused, and sucked in his lower lip and bit it, and looked up again and continued, even more softly, "when you're around Servius you sulk, just like a boy."

"I do not."

"Happen that's true, though."

"Oh, hark!" put in Strephon. "The northerner can talk, just like anyone else. Well, not just like anyone else, obviously."

"Still true, though," Thesanthei said.

"Well, what else does he let me do but sulk?"

"He don't interfere with your horse troop. You run that."

"Toy boys on toy horses. When did you last see us in action?"

"At the Circus Maximus," Sethre said.

"I mean real action, you dolt. Not a bloodybid kid's horse race."

"Not enough real action in Rome for you?" Strephon asked archly. "Despite all those Roman girls?"

"No need to be vulgar."

"True, horse races aren't nothing much," Thesanthei said, making Kallisthenes wince at the double negative; "but he ain't got started yet, not really. Once he moves, you'll be in the thick of it all right."

"Father gave Arruns a real command."

"Yes, and look what happened to him."

"Are you implying..." Strephon started, but Thesanthei talked through him.

"You wait." He said. "You'll get your chance."

Tarquin looked hard at Thesanthei. It was hard to tell sometimes whether his apparent shrewdness was real, or just northern peasant bluff; but unlike many northerners, he so rarely ventured an opinion that when he did, Tarquin was inclined to take him seriously.

But he was still brooding when Kalisthenes changed the subject, going back to Strephon's assertion about Etruscan women's morals, and talking about how the Latins kept their women in subjection.

"Look who's talking," Strephon retorted. "Yours wear veils. You don't even let them out of the house."

Kalisthenes ignored him. "It's not as if they can have any doubts about their virtue. They're so ugly, those Roman girls – ugh; hands rough and greasy with spinning raw wool, hard skin under scratchy tunics. And they don't shave."

"How would you know?"

"Now, you come home to a Greek girl, she's all firm warm soft flesh under silk. That's a bit more like it."

"Which is why, no doubt, you spend so much time with Roman ones."

"Availability has its charms. As long as I don't have to take one as a wife. Even the king of Rome doesn't have to marry one."

Kallisthenes had expected a laugh to greet his witticism. Instead, the room went silent, as if someone had mentioned the name of a man only yesterday dead. Even Strephon had nothing to say, and seemed to have withdrawn into himself. Mamarke was looking at Tarquin, and Tarquin was glaring at Kallisthenes, and Kallisthenes was looking all around him, now, trying to work out what it was he'd said wrong.

"You know he's divorced my sister?"

Kallisthenes looked away. Clearly he'd been the one person in Rome not to have heard the news.

"What did she have to say about it?" Sethre asked.

"Not much. But then she never does have much to say about anything."

"She's being married off," Mamarke said.

"A bit fast," Tarquin muttered.

"Who to?" Strephon asked.

"Some Brutus. Apparently."

"A Roman? Well, that'll keep the Romans sweet. One of us marrying one of them."

Tarquin laughed, but it grated, and ended in a sort of throat-clearing sound that was more embarrassment than humour. "As well one man as another."

"That's a bit much, don't you think?"

Tarquin turned, at the sound of Aglaia's voice, disconcertingly girlish.

"It's a great risk for any woman," she said, "putting her life in the hands of another. I know you don't love her, but at least don't mock her, not about this."

"I wasn't mocking her."

"As well one man as another?"

"That's what she said when she married Servius."

"Poor girl. They're hard men, that family."

No one could tell whether she meant the old husband or the new.

***

The city was still emerging from night when they met on the edge of the open country. Behind them the streets lay quiet, vast washes of darkness where only the top of a wall or the side of a house could be perceived, an indistinct edge of grey, and where one was never sure whether a patch of greater darkness on the road marked a stain or a sudden hole, and it was difficult to tread with confidence. Above, the sky was almost completely clouded over; two or three stars shone high above, the moon had long set, and the sun was still pulling itself painfully back into the living world.

The world seemed to be holding its breath. The deep stillness was broken only by a distant solitary bird's melancholy song, and the sound of their feet crunching through frost and, once or twice, suddenly smashing the thin ice of a puddle. No one spoke, for they were mesmerised by the numinous silence; a sense of mystery that no one wanted to be the first to break.

Then a shout, and rapid hoofbeats, and a scatter of gravel. Tarquin had spurred out of Rome, and stopped where he'd found his companions, rearing his horse back on its haunches to paw at the air, and wheeling it round with the same motion, as he shouted a greeting at them, keeping the stallion teetering, short-reined, fighting against the empty air to keep from falling.

"You're not supposed to be here," one of the men muttered. "Your father's dead."

This was true, and no man whose father was not still living could dance with the Salii, but still Tarquin was here, and he smiled thinly.

"Yes, Quintus Brutus is taking your place," another one said.

Now Tarquin laughed. "I'll be one of the maidens, then, if you like."

"That's plain wrong. We're too many now. And anyway, we choose the maidens by throwing dice."

"Well," Tarquin said easily, "these things can change."

A cock crowed in the distance, and as if some starting signal had been given, the noises of the day began; more cocks answering the first, a cow bellowing in a dark stable, dogs yapping, the groan of a tired ox. Across the way, the slope of a hill glimmered stripy where frost lay in the furrows, and the sky was lightening faster now, from oyster grey to pinkish iridescence. Soon the sun would rise, molten bright yellow if they were lucky, and if they were not, the angry burning red that presaged storms and ill fortune.

Tarquin slipped easily from his horse, and gentled it with a hand on its neck, remembering how Arruns had always called his horsemanship flashy. "Showing off," Arruns used to say, "is the mark of a parvenu." He'd never understood Tarquin's intent, the deadly fall of two shattering forefeet in battle.

Strephon was there, and Quintus Brutus, and one of the Valerii, and a couple more youths Tarquin recognised from the cavalry, but there were a few new ones he didn't know from last year; one must have replaced Decimus, who had been found drowned, washed up on the gently sloping bank of the river below Tiber Island, and his friends still wondered if he'd died drunk, or if he'd upset one husband too many, and the Claudii boy had broken his leg in a bad fall from a horse, and had sent a cousin in his place. There were twelve of them there, and Tarquin made thirteen, and it was the thirteenth day, the Ides of March.

"These things can change," he said again, and noted which of them seemed shocked at his levity, and which laughed warily, while Strephon simply smiled slyly.

But there were only twelve shields, and only twelve spears, and only twelve Salii could dance. Tarquin looked at the shields, piled together, and the others watched him looking at them, and no one spoke, but they were all wondering who would be the unlucky one,

They were putting on the spiked headdresses now, tying the dangling cheek-strings firmly in place, and then the bronze breastplates went on, the men pairing up to fix the buckles; except Tarquin, who was odd man out.

Then Strephon laughed, a high, strained sound, and lay his breastplate down on the ground.

"Some things change," he said, "and some things don't. And one thing that never changes is that you always win, Tarquin."

He turned to go, and then turned back, shaking his hair boyishly, and said: "I'm tired of this pantomime, anyway." Then he set off down the road that led back into the city, towards the first pink intimations of the sunrise.

Tarquin didn't pick up the breastplate at once; he was wondering whether Strephon's surrender was as good-humoured as he'd made it sound. Was there petulance in that pantomime? You never knew with Strephon.

"Well," said Valerius, "get ready. If you're coming."

Tarquin grinned, and rather than stoop to take the armour, bent his knees and dipped, squatting easily. He laid one hand on the bronze.

"Need help?"

Tarquin shook his head, still smiling. Pulling up the breastplate, he used one knee to hold it against his chest, leaning slightly into it, freeing both hands to buckle it in place. He shrugged his shoulders a couple of times, testing the fit, feeling his balance; then he readied himself, and sprang to his feet, rocking back on his heels. He nodded to himself; his body was responsive, and he took savage joy in the way he could feel every sinew singing, alive with the promise of the day. He felt his mouth and eyebrows tightening into a smile, and knew it was the same as his mother's, feline, cruel.

He looked at the others. Did they feel it too? Or were their bodies dulled by the long winter, was their blood sluggish and dark? What were they waiting for?

"Let's get started, then," he shouted, and grabbed a shield and a spear.

They leapt, they howled, they crouched only to leap higher, clashing their spears against the shields, making a brazen din, whirling, the light flashing from spearpoints and shield edges, the ululation carrying far in the still air. The noise, the noise; Tarquin felt his ears raw with vibration, felt the crashing of the shields in his bones, and howled more loudly still. They danced the boundary between the city and the world; only yesterday it had been a faint path trodden hollow in the springy turf, and tomorrow it would be again, but now it was the sacred border, the shining terminus, the limit set by the gods, Rome's protection and shield. Today they danced it.

They ran the line, loping, easy, shields carried low against their bodies; whenever the desire took them they stopped and danced again, leaping and whirling, whirling and leaping, and then set off once more on the path. They seemed never to tire, though from time to time one of them would stand a little apart and watch the others dance. The air was still cool, the sun still low.

They came down at last from the higher land back into the Tiber valley, back into the fringes of the city, and into the forum, and there the lictors awaited them, twelve serious-faced men standing rigid in a solid phalanx, carrying their bundled rods and axes of office. Four at the front, four at the back; two more at each side, tightly ranked, shoulder to shoulder, guarding something between them.

"Let him loose!" the cry went up. The lictors looked at each other, eyes flickering sideways without a turn of the head, and each man stepped one step away, opening the phalanx. An old man stumbled forwards; old, dressed in animal skins – rabbits perhaps, or rats, or cats, who knew – the skins still raw as if they'd only just now been stripped from the animals and roughly basted together; old, dressed in skins, bent over, his head poking up like a tortoise's.

"What did he do?" Tarquin asked Quintus Brutus.

"Rape, I think."

"No," said one of the others; "he killed a child."

"His own?"

"His sister's."

"Might well have been his, then," Valerii said, and sniggered.

"Drowned it like a cat."

"He'll take his chances then."

"It would be odd if my sword slipped, wouldn't it?"

One of the lictors stepped forward. "You know the rules," he said. "Flats of your swords only. Only the butts of your spears. No bloodshed."

They could beat the man to death, but they must not bring blood down on the city; and the man had a chance to escape, if he could run fast enough, if he could get from here to the boundary stone, and past it, into the unbounded country.

Some years the man was half-dead before he'd even left the forum; there were years that the Salii started in all at once, a spear butt to the belly, a crashing blow to the head, and it was practically all over. Once, the man had simply died on his third step forwards, felled by his own fear, and they'd had to carry him to the boundary, pretending he was still alive, still carrying the city's evil spirits with him to the unregulated world outside. Once or twice a man escaped, though Tarquin couldn't remember the last time it had happened; more often he made it half way, or a bit further, before they caught up to him. Last year, they'd decided to let him run half way before they even started chasing; it made the ritual more exciting, giving themselves a challenge. They'd caught him almost on the line.

But this man didn't run. He just stood, hunched, moaning or perhaps muttering something to himself, but if there were words, they couldn't hear them.

"Run, you stupid fuck," one of the lictors said, and Valerius poked his shin with his spear-butt, but the man just flinched, and hugged himself tightly, and whimpered. This wasn't going to be much fun, Tarquin thought.

"You're meant to run," said one of the other lictors. "Look, the boundary's over there. You just have to make it there. Go on. Get going."

The old man seemed about to move, but all he did was scuttle sideways a little, and pull his head even further in between his shoulders.

Most of the Salii had stepped back. This wasn't how it was meant to go. No one knew quite what to do. Quintus Brutus delivered another prod, this time to the man's shoulder; he cried out once, a thin sound like a hungry child, but still he didn't move.

"This can't go on," one of the Salii said. "He's got to move."

"Do we push him, or what?"

The Lictors had stepped back. It wasn't their problem any more.

"If this carries on he'll die here."

"He'll starve to death," Tarquin said, "and so will we, if we let it carry on. Why in all the hells couldn't they have picked a criminal with a bit more fight in him?"

People who had been watching from the sides of the open space when the Salii arrived had drifted closer as the hitch had become evident. A scatter of small groups of youths, some Tarquin knew, others he didn't; a butcher still with bloodstains on his tunic, and soft, pink hands, and a couple of effete young nobles with long braids and identical sneers, and a gaggle of boys who pushed and shoved like young bullocks to see over the ones in front, and a solitary veiled woman who stood slightly apart. It was unusual to see a woman on her own; there were no laws, women weren't confined to the house as in Greece or Persia, but few women went out without a slave, or a friend, or, occasionally, their husbands.

"Well?" asked Valerius, and Tarquin realised that even though they hadn't wanted him with them, now that he was there they were deferring to him, just as they had for the last three years.

"We push."

"But you can't!" one of the newcomers said, quickly hushed by the older Salii.

"Where does it say we can't?"

"We never have," Valerius said.

"Doesn't mean we can't do it now. It's not actively forbidden. Not like drawing blood, after all. And he has to cross the bloody line."

Tarquin turned, nodding to the two closest to the victim. "Go on."

They took a moment to consider how best to comply; spear and shield were in the way, the spears unwieldily long, and when they rebalanced their spears, the shafts clashed against the swords in their scabbards. In the end they locked shields together to make a wall, and pushed against the man with that. He staggered forwards, stopped again. Again they pushed. Another of the Salii joined the crew, pushing the victim slightly sideways; he was caught on another shield, rebounded, staggered and nearly fell. The other Salii were catching on now to this game; another of the dancers caught him on his shield, and this time pushed him off, towards one of the others, opening his eyes wide and grinning at the other to let him know he was the intended recipient of this awkward package. The pace picked up, and the play became rougher; the man fell, picked himself up, was pushed at once of his feet again, caught before he hit the ground and pushed forwards again, taking a step to stay upright, then another, and finally, he was scrabbling, limping where he'd bruised himself against a shield edge; at last, he was running.

Now the Salii began to dance. Now the Salii began to whoop, to yell, to sing like hounds in pursuit. They leapt, they bounded, they played, hanging back a moment only to catch up with him easily. One slid a spear across his shin to trip him; the man stumbled, put his hands out to catch himself, pushed himself up again. The palms of his hands were covered in mud, and his tunic was smeared, wet.

Quintus Brutus shoved him. He fell again. This time he lay winded for some moments, and one of the other Salii landed a blow on his shoulders, and then another.

"Careful," Tarquin said. "He's still got a way to go. It comes to carrying, you can carry him yourself."

The man was up again, cupping one arm in the palm of the opposite hand; he must have banged his elbow going down, or broken it. His eyes were darting, looking everywhere for the best way; he saw the boundary marker, and his eyes fixed on it, and he began to run again, limping slightly and still holding his damaged arm.

"Get going!" one of the Salii cried, but Tarquin couldn't tell whether his words were addressed to the hunted or the hunters; and now they were all after him, smashing their spears on their shields and shouting out, "Run! Run!" Only Tarquin, now, kept prodding the old man with his spear, his long legs keeping up with the victim's frenetic flight without him even needing to break into a run. And though nearly falling several times, tripped by the spear or by his own cramping legs, the old man kept on his feet.

He very nearly got to the boundary stone.

But just as he was about to cross to freedom, the other Salii closed in, shields up, and surrounded him, crushing him with their shields. Tarquin kicked him once, in the ribs, and turned with the rest of them, back into the city, and left the man to crawl slowly, painfully over the border, into no man's land, towards death.

Quite satisfactory, in the end.

***

The crowd was dispersing, but the veiled woman was still watching. Tarquin wondered for a moment why she seemed so familiar; that erect bearing, that stillness. Then he realised, as he saw a curl of red hair that had fallen outside the veil, it was Tullia, Arruns' widow.

He'd hardly seen her since his brother's death. Had she shut herself away? Perhaps not; he had to admit to himself that he'd been spending less and less time in the palace, finding Servius wearisomely patronising and his mother annoyingly inquisitive about how he spent his time.

"Tullia?"

She turned, and for a moment stood very still; then she lifted her veil, and he saw her face, and for a moment was disappointed. She was ugly; that nose, too much of a nose, as if she had been born sneering, and eyes that seemed to droop at the corners. And she was too tall, really, for her thin body. And yet, as soon as she looked at him, he felt that same fascination he'd felt when he first saw her, and felt himself hot and cold all over, as if a fever had crept into his bones.

"Tarquinius," she said, her voice slightly over-projected, a little nasal. No one ever called him Tarquinius now; it was his father's name, not his. Yet her formality pleased him.

"You came to see the Mamurius?"

"I was out walking."

No, he thought; you weren't. Women never went out without a reason. Or was she like Tanaquil, a law unto herself? Perhaps she was; there was that temper he'd seen, that Arruns hadn't known what to do with, that anger in her eyes. And he realised, at that moment, that this was the woman he should have had, not the other Tullia he'd been given; that she was not like any other woman - other men's wives whose beds he'd crept into, the whores he'd had with Kalisthenes and the others (that one he'd fucked at the same time as Kalisthenes: gods, that had been a night!), not even Aglaia – that she was a fire in his blood, a splinter under his skin, in short, that he loved her.

"Oh, walking," he said. "I've been known to do that myself, when I can't find a horse."

She laughed. "Idiot," she said, but she clearly was amused.

"Walking. Anywhere in particular or just walking in general?"

For a moment he thought he'd angered her; she frowned, and looked away from him. But then the cloud passed, and she smiled in an arch way, lowered her voice a little, and said, "Meeting a lover."

"Really?"

"Meeting you, anyway."

He smiled, slowly, realising what she meant. That was fast, he thought. And now we're going to play games; parry and riposte, I-didnt-mean-it, but-you-did, skating around the edges of what was implied without ever making it explicit. It could take days. It could take weeks. But he knew, and she knew, where they were going. The joy was all in the game.

"You're thinking that the joy is all in the game, aren't you?"

That was uncanny. And with any other woman, he would have denied it. And any other woman would have believed that denial. But with Tullia he just smiled. And she answered her own thought:

"It isn't, you know. That's only the beginning. The best games come later."

***

Amazingly, Tullia got on with Aglaia. And she brought Elissa with her to Aglaia's house – a friend of Tanaquil's, which is how Tullia had got to know her, and a friend of one of Aglaia's friends. Tarquin had never thought those two worlds, the palace and the brothel, had any point of connection; but now he found these women had their own society, a complex weave of threads that ran through Rome, over and under and beside the world of men. He wondered how he had been so blind to it.

People talked, of course. Aglaia's house was no place for a decent woman, in Roman terms; but Tullia's position meant she could do as she pleased. She answered only to Tanaquil. And though Aglaia kept doing the same business, the oldest business, as they said, there was never any sign of it when Tullia was there. Aglaia's girls were called on only to serve wine, and sometimes by Kallisthenes, who tended to excuse himself half way through the evening, when the talk got more interesting, or, as he'd said more than once, more dangerous.

Strephon came less regularly, Sethre more often; Sethre seemed to have formed some kind of alliance with Elissa, despite the difference in their ages and races. Tarquin found himself wondering how they would look together, dark skin against pale; perhaps he should tell Tullia, one day, once they were lovers, or perhaps before. He wondered what she was waiting for; for all her talk, she'd still managed to avoid more than a few snatched kisses, or his lazy caress of her bare arm when she sat close.

They talked. Gossip: who was betraying whom, who had called Servius the Drumstick General, whether the Tarchna team that was currently sweeping up all the prizes could win at Velzna, too. Strephon had the most informed gossip; but Tullia kept her eyes and ears open, and sometimes surprised him with the things she'd noticed. Postumus, for instance, his mother's little rat, was talking to Servius, the little traitor; and a Greek exile who had arrived in Rome recently was claiming to have been Robur's lover while he was in Capua. Art: the new style of vase painting from Athens, Vulca's new commission for Velzna, a bronze-caster who had arrived from Arretium with a bronze wolf he'd made, the latest marvel. And they talked about the gods; when Strephon was there, he sometimes remoulded the myths into cynical stories of an Olympus where every god was cheating all the others, and all of them were caricatures of greed, or lust, or pomposity. Sometimes Thesanthei would tell tales of the spirits of wood and field and marsh from the Etruscan north, unpredictable spirits that might kill, might cure, might help, might simply lead a man astray in the marsh for their amusement. Other times, Kallisthenes or perhaps Mamarke took them in a more philosophical direction; what the world was made of, how the gods had come to be, how augury worked, and indeed, whether it did work.

Of course Kallisthenes was interested in the dance of the Salii and the hunted Mamurius; in Greece they had the pharmakos, who was royally treated for a day, and then exiled, taking the city's evil fortune with him.

"Just exiled?" Mamarke had asked, and Kallisthenes had to admit that wasn't always the case; the Greeks were civilised, but their gods were not, and sometimes they had to comply with the will of the gods. Or sometimes they used the will of the gods as their excuse, believe what you liked. He'd seen the pharmakos thrown off a cliff in one of the islands, he said; the man flailed his arms as if he was trying to fly, but he never cried out.

"And you, Tarquin," he said; "do you really believe in the blood ritual?"

"I do it."

"You believe it?"

Tarquin shrugged. "Other people do."

"Meaning?"

"If they believe it, it keeps them happy. They're happy, they're less likely to stir up trouble. So it works, whether I believe it or not."

"Just like the gods." Kallisthenes was triumphant. "The gods we made for ourselves, that justify any number of sins, as Strephon is always reminding us."

"That explains your love life?" Aglaia asked. "You're trying to keep up with Zeus?"

"I was thinking of the Iliad, actually. Sacrificing your daughter. Dragging corpses in the mud. Killing and enslaving an entire city. You're in the clear, as long as Zeus told you to. Or Hera. Or Apollo, or whoever."

"I think you'll find," Mamarke said coolly, "that the gods had a punishment in view for Agamemnon."

"It's not all bloodshed, though," said Tarquin. "Aglaia's right about Zeus. Shagging women, boys, sheep, bulls, swans."

"Actually," said Mamarke, "he was the bull."

Tarquin shrugged. "Those gods shagged anything."

"Whereas you would draw the line where, exactly?" Tullia asked.

That caused a fair amount of laughter, as she must have known it would, though her face was severe.

But Thesanthei's face was serious. "You 'aven't really thought it through," he said, obviously suggesting that thinking it through was exactly what he had been doing for the last ten minutes. "All those Greek myths about curses. Nasty deaths, blindings, blood in the bathroom."

"What does it matter, as long as it keeps people behaving themselves?"

"And paying their taxes," Tarquin added.

"On which you live."

He winced, and twisted his face up, but he didn't deny Tullia's assertion.

And he wondered: what did he really think about the gods? Thesanthei's words had struck something in him that had long been submerged, that surfaced sometimes in dreams; a Vanth waiting, her face putrescent green, in a room at night, sometimes lit by the fitful flicker of sheet lightning, and then plunged into darkness, so that his eyes seemed to retain a ghost image shining against the black. Seeing his own hands gleaming wet as the lightning flashed again, and he knew it was blood. The gods were a fiction, he was sure, tales told to children, but still he was afraid of that recurring nightmare.

And he wondered now, as he hadn't at the time, about that last panicked flight of the Mamurius. Had he really thought he could get away? Or had he just run instinctively, as cornered animals do, like a mouse that had got into Tarquin's room once and that had kept running the length of the wall, from one corner to the other, till his father hit it with the broom and broke its back?

"You know the Sabines have dancing gods?" Tullia said. Typical of her to know odd things like that. "Their gods danced the world into being, and they'll dance the world out of it. And everything in our world is part of the gods' dance."

"Oh, nice," said Sethre. "That's almost poetry."

"It's only poetry," said Tarquin.

"Even so."

"Dancing gods or shagging gods," he said. "What a choice."

Yet as he said it, he slid his right thumb between two fingers of his right hand, making the fig-sign to keep the waiting demons away. Vanth was waiting for him, waiting for them all, if only in dreams.

"Your mother is a great believer in augury," Kallisthenes said. "And yet you don't believe?"

"It works for her," Tullia said cattily.

"You mean it works for some people, and not for others?"

"She never foretells anything that doesn't serve her purpose."

"You mean she makes them up?"

"Well," Tullia said, and bit her top lip for a moment, while she thought. "Maybe she does. Or maybe the prophecies that she doesn't like, she doesn't tell."

"Maybe I should know more about prophecy," Tarquin said, and they all laughed. But he felt something deep calling to his blood. Then he looked at Tullia, and felt the same lurch in his heart, and forgot about prophecy and gods and demons.

***

His mother had grown old in the past couple of years and he had hardly recognised it, till one day he saw her with Tullia, his red-haired Tullia. It was like seeing her with her younger self. Tanaquil had faded; the gleam in her eyes, the shine of her hair, had gone, and her cheeks had hollowed, leaving her nose sharp, her bones showing. Her cheeks were still red, her hair still black, but the flat colour of her hair, and the powdery softness on her cheeks, betrayed the means she'd used. Both women looked at the world with slight disdain, both carried themselves proudly straight; both had the same smile, slightly cruel, slightly amused, slightly insincere.

"You've been giving horses away again," Tanaquil said.

"Only to the right people."

"And who are they?"

"Useful ones," he said. She frowned.

"Servius knows what you're doing."

"I'm sure he does. Does he know what you're doing?"

Tanaquil didn't show it, except for a momentary hardening of her eyes, but he knew he'd angered her.

"Why don't you give swords?" she asked.

"It wouldn't be any cheaper."

"But it would be more effective; particularly with the common people."

"If they can't afford their armour, they shouldnt be in the army," he said. And he saw that Tanaquil more than half agreed with him.

"He knows what he's doing," Tullia said, drawing on herself an angry look from Tanaquil.

"He does, does he? He never did before."

But that was before, and this was now. Before, he'd enjoyed the luxuries of nobility; now, he held up that nobility as an ideal. He'd thought his mother would be proud of him; she'd taught him to be proud of his nobility, of his Etruscan origins, of the luxury and artistry that set his race apart from the Roman mob. Yet she'd backed Servius; and Servius had thrown his lot in with the slaves and the commoners, with the rough unfinished people.

"Servius," he said, "wants to keep us poor for ever. Everything we have that's dear, he wants to take for the army. And his army grows and grows, and sucks and sucks, like a monstrous child, till Rome will all be sucked away."

His mother looked at him coldly. It was not quite the expression that had always portended punishment, when he was younger, and that he'd only rarely seen, but always remembered; it was disapproving, but in a way proud, as if he'd passed a test.

"I hope at least you will remember not to say such things openly," she said. Coming from Tanaquil, that was as good as her complete agreement with what he'd said.

He took Tullia out riding that day, braving his mother's coolness. She must have known what was going on; she couldn't have missed the fact that they were both of them more around the palace than they used to be, and anyway, he thought, she had her informers. He wouldn't have been surprised if Strephon was one of her spies, or perhaps Sethre; when he thought about, there was only one person he could really trust, and that was Tullia.

He'd expected her to be merely an adequate rider, but she seemed to have the same innate understanding of animals as his mother; pushing her horse out, matching his speed over the hard dirt, on which the horses' hooves sounded hollowly. If only he could do this every day;if only he could take this wonderful woman to the army drills with him; if only his mother wasn't insisting he should get a child on the other Tullia.

He looked across at her; hair streaming, face flushed with the exercise, just as it was flushed when they made love, and that aloof smile on her face. He felt his heart turn over, as if it had stopped and then suddenly started again, and was so faint and dizzy with it that he felt he was falling from his horse, and had to bite his lip to bring himself back to wakefulness.

Suddenly he thought of ridding himself of the other Tullia. It was strange he hadn't thought of it before. To be free of her; if only, if only she would catch a cold, or a fever. Life was so fragile. Well one day, then a cough, an ache, a pain, and then suddenly, an absence, a face missed, a voice you didn't hear any more.

He'd daydreamed before of life without her. But why wait; he could push her. Or suffocate her in bed. Or have her stabbed, when she was out of the house; Servius had been complaining about lawlessness in the streets, and every day saw men pouring into Rome who had no work, and nothing they knew how to do but kill, and the army, even Servius's army, wouldn't take everyone.

From the city they galloped into the hills, away from Servius, and the palace, and responsibility; away from his mother's expectations, away from his wife's sullenness, away from the limitations of her widowed life and his subordination. But this freedom was only temporary; he dreamed of freedoms more complete and lasting, and he would work to win them.

Now he had to think whether he should tell the Tullia he loved of his new idea. It was, after all, her sister he proposed to remove from his life. But he thought yes, she would approve; she would do it herself, if she needed to, because she was a real Etruscan woman, who would take her life in her own hands. Tanaquil would have done it, if she had had a sister, if that sister had stood in her way, he was sure.

She still hadn't slept with him. She had a way of standing very close to him, nearly but not quite touching; she let the hem of her skirt brush his naked shins, she brushed his cheek with hers when she left him, she had even, once, let him see her almost naked as she rose from her bed, having sent her slave out of the room for some wine. They were still playing that little game of maybe, maybe not, he thought, despite her having said that the best games came later.

There was a pool in a wood, he remembered, a distance from the road, where a flat rock caught the sun, and the water was clear and still. His mother had taken him there once, hunting, and he'd swum in the water to cool off, and watched the wet dogs rush in, and shake a shower from their sodden fur afterwards. He'd found it again some time ago, and recognised it instantly. (It was strange how the past blurred and became grey, so that if someone had asked him what he'd done on this day just two years ago he would have forgotten it, but there were some moments, some places and people that seen just once, remained, and recalled, still shone bright in the mind; this was one of those places, though some days it seemed duller, flatter than the sun-bright, overwhelming memory of it had been.) He'd never brought any of his friends here. The memory was so bright he feared to share it, as if that would flatten it out and thin it down; he hugged it to himself, unshared and sacred.

As they neared the place where a narrow track ran off to the north of the road, he slowed his horse, and heard Tullia's horse slowing its pace; in a few moments she came level with him.

"What's up? We're not going on?"

He told her about the pool; left it to her to choose which way they went now, into the woods of desire, or along the broad and open road. His horse trampled nervously next to hers, now they were stopped, pulling against the bit while he held it on a short rein.

Without saying a word, she brought her horse round, and dug her heels into its sides, so that it leapt forwards. That was it, then, he thought; he'd offended her. Or perhaps she was going to pretend that he had, just in order to torment him. But then he realised her horse had started up the path towards the woods, and smiled triumphantly, and let the reins loose.

***

There were no dogs to disturb the still surface of the pool today, but the sun was as warm as it had been all those years ago. Today, he watched the droplets of water slowly shrinking on Tullia's skin as the sun dried them both. Later they lay on their backs on the rock, looking up at the infinite depth of sky, and felt the warmth of the sun and the slight chill of a passing breeze that ruffled the pond.

"A pity I can't divorce my wife," he said. "Servius would never let me."

"You're right," she said. "He won't." Her frankness surprised him. Most women would have whined, or sulked, or found reasons for hope.

"I'd do it, I'd have done it already, if I could."

Tullia laid a finger on his lips, pressing his bottom lip, trailing it down to the cleft of his chin, to the soft hollows of his neck. He looked up; she'd turned towards him, but her eyes were distant, full of sky.

"You could do anything," she said softly. "Whatever you want."

I have already, he thought; I've done exactly what I wanted with you... but then he realised exactly what she was saying, and a whisper of wind lifted the hair at the back of his neck.

The future was as infinite as the sky, in that moment, his life full of possibility. With his Tullia, the Tullia who had always been meant to be his, what could he not do? He felt, then, Servius, and dough-faced Tullia he'd married, like a quicksand sucking him down, and vowed he'd be free of them.

"The first rule," she said, stroking the inward curve of his collarbone, "is to achieve everything that you have in you. And you have so much, Tarquin, so much."

"If only I could."

"But you can," she said, suddenly tightening her fingers on his shoulder, till it almost hurt.

Then she laughed, sudden and high, and rolled to her feet, and jumped back into the water, clumsily enough to splash him. The water was shockingly cold.

This is the first rule, he thought, that I live my life, not just suffer it to happen. And laughing, he jumped after her.

***

He had forgotten the need to eat, he had forgotten the time, the sun which bucketed crazily fast across the sky, or so it seemed to him, he had forgotten everything except Tullia, Tullia, Tullia and the insanity of his love. When they rode back towards the city the land was already greyed over with the coming of night, and the air chilled them as they rode. He felt his stomach tight and empty, and recognised the slight nausea that comes with too much fasting.

Tullia, Tullia. Her name in his mind like the sound of the thundering hooves in a chariot race. The smell of her, the feel of her, the taste of Tullia; she filled his senses, so that the landscape passed without his noticing. He wrapped himself in the thought of her, in the thought of what they could do together, so that it was almost a shock when she spoke.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Only you," he said.

"Well, I'm here." She jerked her chin up. Her voice was a little hard. "You might look at me. You won't get the chance when we're back in the city."

He reached across and pulled her towards him, so that she nearly fell between the two horses.

"It's not looking I want to do," he said, and wondered at the thickness of his voice and the difficulty of speaking, and kissed her hard to avoid having to say any more.

It was full dark by the time they reached the city; at least, in the blackness, no one would see them, or guess how they'd passed the day. Her lateness might be noticed; he let her ride back to the Palatine alone, and went on to Aglaia's. He'd be able to get something to eat there, and if Aglaia guessed that his relationship with Tullia had changed, at least he could trust her not to report to his mother, or to Servius.

He left his horse to graze in the orchard beside the house. If Servius was here, he'd be telling him to rub it down, walk it gently till it was cool. Servius wasn't here. The horse would do well enough for one night; he needed his food. Still, slightly guilty, he made sure the trough was full of water before he went over to the house.

He heard the noise before he got to the door; not shouting, but loud and angry talking, and Aglaia's voice high and strained above it. Strephon was there, and Thesanthei, and Sethre, and it was Sethre who was making the most noise.

"It's wrong," he was saying, "I don't care what he says, it's just..."

He fell silent when he saw Tarquin. He seemed ashamed; it was the same kind of silence that falls when a visitor innocently mentions a relative who, unknown to him, died a week ago.

"Well?" Tarquin asked. "What is it?" He looked round the room, but no one would meet his eyes, and in the end it was Aglaia who spoke.

"Servius," she said. "Servius has broken up the horse."

"He has what?"

"He's broken up the entire army," Sethe said. "Everything's changed. All the old centuries disbanded, and new ones formed. Mix it all up, he said; like a good stew, the more you mix it, the better it gets."

"So that's the end of your horse," Strephon said. "Too exclusive. Can't have that, can we, nobles fighting a noble war? No, put some farmer on a horse, slap it on the arse and send him into battle."

That's what the census had been all about, he thought; not a way of counting the forces, or levying new ones, but a mechanism for spreading the nobility thinly across a commoner army. Strephon, charming, superficial Strephon, could only see the insult; but what Tarquin could see, very clearly, was that if Servius continued with this plan, his friends, his supporters, his trained horsemen, would all be separated, and he'd be left on his own, facing all the power of Servius's machine state.

He'd been dreaming the wrong dream. He'd been daydreaming of life without his wife; but what he really needed was to get rid of his father-in-law. He wondered what Tullia would make of that.

# Tanaquil

She stood on the edge every day. Here on the Tarpeian Rock she stood, watching for eagles in the gulf below, or silhouetted against the wide sky; watching for eagles, watching for lightning, watching for omens.

She liked the high places, the ridges and the edges. Down in the thick of things, where the sky was walled off by the tall stone houses that had transformed the city since she first came here, her mind was swamped by the press of things and people. The longer she lived, the more she felt the oppression of life; it wore her down. Things demanded to be looked at, to be thought about; there were so many things, a welter of things, standing between her and the bright simplicities she craved. From here, Rome was simplified; the white glare of plastered houses, the shimmer of the Forum pavement, the further hills like long fingers reaching into the plain, and the great snaking curves of the Tiber shining silver against the dull land.

Rome was always changing. The Phoenician trader she'd used when she first came here with Tarquin had moved back to Carthage long ago; she'd forgotten his name, even, all except the clicking, clipped sound of it, Melkart or Melek or Malik, or something like that, and his small house near the Sacra Via had been demolished to make way for an expansion of the forum, so there was nothing left of the past at all. There was a garden she used to pass on her way out of the city, an orchard once, and later, a lush shaded garden between two houses; last time she'd ridden out on the Salt Road, the trees had been cut down, and the ground levelled. There would be walls going up, and in a month's time, or two, there would be no sign that a garden had ever been there. There were new houses, and new temples – not just the great temples sponsored by Servius; the Greek merchants had put up a shrine to Herkle a while back, and tiny shrines sprung up in the streets, and sometimes disappeared – and new roads, and sometimes a road would disappear, blocked by a new building or diverted to make it straighter and iron out a kink or a bend in the road. Nothing stayed the same, everything changed, and now, whether it was age or just her attachment to the city of possibilities that Rome had been when she first saw it, she regretted every change as if she were mourning a dead friend, as if something had been taken away from her life that could never be replaced.

But when she looked down from this height, she no longer saw the vanished pasts of the city; they receded into the bright gleam of distance. If she half-closed her eyes, rays of sun caught in her eyelashes, and the whole world seemed encrusted in gold, warm and bright. It was a magic that always worked from the high places, like looking down from a pass to the plains ahead, the new country that spread out in front like a promise, even though no country ever had lived up to, or could live up to, the promise of that moment.

Here she was open, as she never was in the city these days, to the sudden spark that could light her mind and kindle prophecy. She could see, if she turned, the statue of Menrva on the Capitol, staring out, ruthless as all gods were, down the Tiber to the unknowable sea; her goddess, goddess of the weaver and the hunter and the seer. That was something Servius would never understand now, the splendidness of certainty that came from the gods; she'd had her own certainty, once, absolute conviction and confidence, but now that she doubted herself, second-guessed her own strategems, the only certitude she could hang on to was that of prophecy, so seldom vouchsafed, so tenuous, so rare.

"What is it that keeps you coming here?"

She turned. Tarquin stood just behind her shoulder; she hadn't heard him come up. If he'd raised a hand he could have pushed her off the cliff, to twist in air till her body broke on the rocks below.

"Just thinking," she said.

"You can't do that at home?"

"What do you want, anyway?" He'd deny it of course, but he always wanted something; that was the price of motherhood, always to be loved by your children for what you could do for them, or what you could give them.

"Nothing," he said, and kicked at a tussock.

"Nonsense." She looked back across the city; there was a shower across the valley, slanted rays of dark and light where the sun caught the falling rain.

"You've heard what Servius has done?"

She hadn't, but she knew Tarquin would want something done about it; and that pulled her back to the city below, away from her gods and the open sky and the freedom of the air all around her. She felt the energy that had sung in her blood a moment ago drain away, like a sigh.

He told her. At least he didn't tell her at length, he didn't allow his anger to show, didn't sound like a sulky boy with a grievance. And he'd learned something from her, she thought, because he went right to the heart of the matter.

"He's dispersed my support," he said; "and he's put his own spies everywhere. I could stand it while his immigrant paupers were restricted to the slingers; but now, wherever we are, they'll be. And he'll know just what's going on."

"And what will be going on?" she asked, and saw from a twitch in his cheek that there was, as she'd suspected, something.

But what she could do was very limited. She might be able to save Tarquin's command; but as for the reform as a whole, that would go ahead – it was, as Tarquin had said, obvious that it had been planned as far back as the census, and Servius would never turn back. Besides, he'd be putting the army to use soon. The Etruscan cities were running scared now.

"When I came here with your father," she said, "they didn't want Rome; there was nothing here for them but sheep, pigs, and mud. But now Rome's got rich, and it's got an army."

"Which makes us dangerous."

"Which makes us a target. But I don't think Servius is planning on letting the League do any target practice. He'll march first."

"Where?"

"As if I know."

"You must have an idea."

"He's said nothing. But it'll be Veii, I think."

"There's something worries me about going into action. I don't trust Servius. He has some scheme going on; he'll put me into danger, and then he'll cut the rope."

"Send you off to battle and make sure you don't come back? Like Arruns?"

"Worse."

"Worse than death?" Nothing, she thought, nothing would be worse than losing her son; a thought that surprised her with its sudden ferocity, a surge of feeling that brought sweat to the creases of her palms.

"He wants me shamed. He'll hold the cavalry up; find some way he can blame us, or keep us out of battle."

"That's tricky. He could do it, but he has to do it without risking a defeat."

"A defeat he could blame on me."

"He wouldn't lose. He's devious, but he's a soldier; he won't lose. But even so..."

"Why do you think he's been drilling the hoplites all week, and the slingers, and we've been stood down?"

"Because you're ready."

Tarquin shook his head. "The horses have to be kept fit, the men's reactions kept sharp. A continual state of readiness... you can't just stand a fighting unit down. He's doing it to weaken us, I'm sure."

She wondered. How much would Servius risk to free himself from Tarquin's opposition? He had no son of his own, nor any appointed successor; that was another risk, that without Tarquin, the way would be open to any adventurer to make himself king. The way Servius had. The way Tarquinius had... Would Servius take that risk, the risk of Rome unravelling after his death? Perhaps he would; he was, when all was said and done, only a hired fighter, a warlord made good.

"Watch your back, Tarquin," she said.

"I will. I do. Look at the men I have around me. Mamarke..."

"Servius' man."

"Don't be too sure of that. He's been telling me a few interesting things recently. Strephon."

"That idiot!"

"I thought you of all people would realise there's more to him than the song and dance act. He's well informed.."

"He's a clown!"

"He's smart enough to be clownish. People let their guard down. He hears a lot. Like Thesanthei."

"Ah, your silent Northerner."

"No one ever remembers he's there. They don't think he's listening. But he is. They don't think he understands. But he does."

"And this is why you chose them as companions?"

He looked down at that, at the toe of his right foot. He'd always done that when he was caught out; fruit-stealing, swigging his father's wine when no-one was looking, fighting with Arruns; and then later when she asked him whether he'd got one of her girls pregnant.

"Of course not," she said. "You chose them because they drank, because they amused you, because you feel superior to them." She saw from his face that it was true, and also that he was surprised by that last deduction; but it was obvious, at least to her. "None the less, you've worked out how they can be of use." That's smart, she thought, but she wouldn't say it; he was proud enough of himself already for her not to risk making him cocky.

He was smiling. Time to spoil that self-congratulation. "Are you sure of them?" she asked.

"Is anything ever sure?"

He was beginning to understand the game. Life was a series of risks, a series of uncertainties; even if you had the gods and prophecy on your side, there were vast dark wastes of doubt and danger. But you died in the end, whatever you did, and went to the dry land of whispering hinthials; however carefully you spun out the twisting thin threads of life, you died in the end, so you might as well gamble on greatness.

***

The House of the Vestals slumbered through the afternoon; Fabia had the curtains drawn against the glare, so that the hall was dim, and cooler than the air outside. A cat was rolling in the dust by the door, crooning to itself quietly.

Tanaquil raised herself on one elbow; the couch had already become unpleasantly warm where she had been lying, and her dress, where she'd lain on it, felt slightly damp now it was exposed to the colder air.

"They're only masks," she said.

Fabia frowned. "They are the ancestors."

Tanaquil sighed. This wasn't Tarchna, where her ancestors surrounded her everywhere. She'd seen her great-great-grandfather, seated on the great chair cut out of a single tree trunk, beneath the painted sky of his tomb, and made the libation to him the day she completed her first lustrum, as Spurinna children always did; every time she went out of the city, she passed the tumuli of her mother's family. Here, the ancestors were gone to sifted ash; they kept the masks, as they did in Tarchna, but that was all. Fabia saw a flat and colourless world where Tanaquil's was shot through with gods and ancestors and spirits and signs; Rome was a place where the roots had been cut away, where the past was incinerated daily and only the future seemed to matter. She'd loved this city for its possibilities, but now Tanaquil was seeing how much she had lost.

"Well then, they're the ancestors, I'll admit that; but even so, Rome seems to me a very young city."

"I've never known another," Fabia said. "So to me, it seems old, since I was a child here. I remember seeing the great Vestal Anna, when I was only three – long before I was chosen as Vestal – and she seemed as old as the Tarpeian rock, and as solid, a woman made of rock and iron. There was the Black Stone, and the great pit where the dead spirits lived, that we opened once a year, and the great scar of the Tarpeian Rock; mother used to threaten to throw me off it if I was bad. And there were old women, old even then, who said they could remember Numa, and told tales of the kings of Alba Longa, twenty generations of kings before Rome."

"It's changing too fast."

"Everything changes," Fabia said gently; "the river flows and takes us with it."

"Not me," said Tanaquil; "the river can flood, and I'll still be the one swimming upstream," and she smiled a thin and mirthless smile.

"I'm sorry. I'm getting too philosophical for you. It's a tendency in ageing Vestals."

"I started it," Tanaquil said. "I suppose it's a tendency in ageing queens, as well. You get to a certain time in life when you begin to wonder where everything goes. Where everything went. I looked at Tarquin the other day and thought to myself; how did he get to be this splendid princeling, when I remember him grabbing at my legs to haul himself up, when he could hardly walk? Where did the years go, Fabia?"

"It's not just where they went, is it? You're wondering whether it was worth it?"

"Something like that."

Fabia shook her head, but she was smiling. "Some of us, she said, have always wondered whether it's worth it. And you only just started. You were very sure for a very long time, Tanaquil."

A jagged line of light flashed suddenly into the room as the curtains lifted, and a thin girl slipped through the fabric.

"Mother," she said, and looked down shyly, "the goats have got in the garden again."

"Well, chase them out of it!" Fabia said, and laughed.

"I asked the youngest to."

"That was a good thought. Did the goats eat anything?"

"No, I caught them in time. Your flowers are safe."

The older woman smiled, and the younger, too, for a moment; but it was a hesitant smile, that flickered and was gone, as if smiling was something not usually permitted.

"I have to remember she isn't youngest any more," the senior vestal said. "And she has her studies to attend to. Well, so do we all; it never stops, for us."

"What are you studying?"

"Many things," the girl answered, "as Arkhilokhos says of the fox."

Which, Tanaquil thought, Arkhilokhos hadn't meant as a recommendation, probably distrusting people who showed off their education in just the way the girl was doing now; but she smiled at the witticism, and asked for specifics, drawing Fabia out.

"History; well, that is, the Greeks – and the Iliad, and the works and days. And then the stories of early Rome."

"That's history, also."

"Well, maybe not," the girl said. "Everyone thinks they know the stories, everyone thinks the stories are true, but when you look more closely, they unravel. Nothing is what you think it is. Aeneas lived in the time of Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus – so there must have been twenty, thirty generations of Alban kings, but their names are lost; and Romulus, they say, died in his sixth decade, and became a god, but the Sabines have a different story, that he was torn to pieces by the people. Already, in four generations, the truth has been forgotten. People forget."

"People invent," Tanaquil said.

"That too." The older Vestal sounded distant. "Tales that poets make up sound more true than the truth."

"Now I see how old Rome is. Not just old enough to have a history; old enough to have falsified that history. How careless, though" – she spoke lightly, the hint of a smile on her lips – "how very careless to mislay your history in just four generations."

"And useful things, too." The girl seemed eager to please, eager to distract Tanaquil from the subject of Roman history, or the lack of it. "Medicine, the healing plants, the poisons - some are both. Hemlock, for instance."

"But that's a poison!"

"Mainly, yes. But in very, very tiny quantities, we use it against pains in the joints."

The older Fabia nodded. "I'm old enough to need that pain numbed occasionally, though it has to be a bad pain indeed for me to take the risk of hemlock."

"You might tell me how you use it, then," Tanaquil said to the girl; "I'm as old as your mother. My joints ache too in the morning sometimes."

They talked a little about plants, after that; the use of willow bark against inflammation, the culinary herbs, those that gave visions – "false visions," Tanaquil said, "and no prophecies" – the mushrooms, good and evil. Then the girl surprised her.

"We study the markets, too," she said: "commerce, the trade with Greece and Great Greece, the prices of things, of slaves, of produce. Land and the price of land."

"That's something new," the elder Vestal said, looking warmly at her protegé. "I started to consider that, but young Fabia has a gift for such studies."

"I thought you lived apart from the city?"

"We do. But you know we are the witnesses for Rome. We witness wills, we witness contracts. And so we see the values of farms, of properties, what people are importing and how they pay for it."

"With what we know," the girl said, "we see how things are changing. The value of land, for instance; it's doubled as the city has grown, since my mother has been following it. And the trade in oil; every year more being brought in, from the south, from Greece."

"And you don't use it?"

"That's not our place," the older Fabia said.

"You could build a temple bigger and far more splendid than Tinia's."

"We could. But then..."

Then, Tanaquil thought, everyone would realise just how much the Vestals knew. Not for the first time, she wondered whether she'd met her match in the older Fabia; a woman with as much cunning as the fox, but as single-minded as Arkhilokhus' hedgehog, the creature which knew not many things, but simply one.

***

She hadn't ordered new jewellery for years. She hadn't needed to. She had never needed to, she admitted to herself; she had always had good jewellery, even as a girl of eight or nine, some of which had come down to her from her mother or grandmothers, some of which her father had bought, or aunts who had visited Velzna for the festivals, and brought back gifts. But she'd used to enjoy the process of commissioning a new piece every so often, or seeking out something new, fine, unusual; when had she stopped? She couldn't remember the last time, and yet she'd never taken a decision that such and such a piece was her last; she'd simply let the habit slip, and now she thought about it, she was shocked by her forgetfulness.

Why had she stopped? Had she stopped caring about her appearance? She thought hard; no, she still dressed her hair as neatly as she ever had, she still wore the bright blues and scarlets of her youth, she still carried herself well. She knew she was one of the few women in Rome who could wear the full panoply of the Etruscan nobility – the great pectoral, the heavy earrings, the headdress, the gold-embroidered purple tebenna – and still attract attention for her striking looks, not simply for the weight of gold. She had not stopped taking pride in herself; but maybe she had stopped taking pleasure in herself. It was time she changed that.

It was time for a trip to the jeweller. Or rather, it was time to command a goldsmith to make the trip from Tarchna to the Palatine; a man she'd patronised before, one of the great goldsmiths who had no particular speciality, unlike many, but used all the techniques together – granulation, filigree, casting, carving, embossing, repoussé – so that the work sparkled and shone, and seemed almost alive. He'd made her disc earrings once, spinning stars with tiny black glass insets that glittered dangerously, like tiny points of night set into the face of the sun.

Meanwhile, she had Servius to attend to.

***

"There's no council today," Servius said bluntly, as if she had no right to be in this part of the palace unless she had been called; these rooms where she'd lived with Tarquinius for years, where she'd talked with Ancus Marcius for years before that. Biting down on her anger, she smiled blandly.

"I wanted to speak to you in private."

"The place for debate is the council."

"Not for this, it isn't. Believe me, you'll be glad I didn't bring this to the council."

He thought that over for a moment, nodded curtly, and sat, not on any of the couches but on the folding stool he'd brought from campaign, a soldier's refusal to soften his life.

"I've heard you're changing the way the centuries are made up."

"Where did you hear that?"

"I should have heard it from you."

Servius shifted a little on the chair. "The army needs to be better organised."

"It was all right for Tarquinius."

"Yes. But he was lucky. He could pick off his targets one by one, city by city.He could take Collatia like a man picking on a drunk in the street late at night when everyone looks the other way and no one wants to get involved. That game's over. They're warned now, they know what we're doing; it won't be us against one city, it will be us against the lot of them."

"You doubled the size of the army."

"More than that, I think, if the census is right."

"I still don't see why you have to change the way it's organised."

He sighed. He got up, ran a hand through his hair, began to pace.

"Have you not seen the way Rome is breaking up?"

She wondered for a moment if he'd gone mad, the way aspirant augurs sometimes did. Had he seen some strange vision, cracks opening in the walls of Tinia's temple, the great acroteria statues toppling?

"The city keeps growing. More people, more houses, a greater expanse to defend. Its needs are greater; more grain, more oil, more weapons."

Get on with it, she thought; she knew all this.

"It's too big," he said. "No one knows everyone any more. It's breaking down into cliques and factions, neighbourhood against neighbourhood. The Celian men against the Aventine crowd; the old Romans against the new, the rich against the poor. It's falling apart, and the army is the only way to bind it back together."

It sounded so good. She almost believed it, for a minute.

"It's a problem with Tarquin, isn't it?" he said.

He was sharp. Well, if he wanted to see it that way, it made her task easier.

"You're a horseman yourself," she said. "You can see the work he's done."

"Yes," he said, and nothing more.

Oh, he was on his guard, he'd seen how she was appealing to his own pride, and he was resisting it. Time to take another tack; a risk, of sorts. Let him commit himself.

"Tell me honestly. Are they as good as Tarquin tells me?"

"You haven't seen them yourself?"

"I can ride; I'm not a general. How would I know?" If he was going to be short with her, she'd be short with him.

He smiled at that. It wasn't often she made such an admission. "Actually yes. They are good. Any general would be proud of them."

She nodded, waited. Let him think about what he'd just said. She saw his lips move, and just as he was about to speak, she said, quite lightly, "Tarquin's proud of them, too."

"I'm not taking anything away from him."

"He thinks you are. Giving him recruits he doesn't want, moving his best men elsewhere."

"It's change. He has to learn to cope with it."

"He's learned a lot this last year or so," she said.

"He's still undisciplined. I never know what he's going to do. I can't trust him, Tanaquil."

"Exactly why you shouldn't change things."

He sighed, and shifted, and she wondered if he was about to dismiss her; but then he frowned, and said, "Explain."

"First: if he's changeable and undisciplined and temperamental -"

"I didn't say temperamental."

"No, but you meant it. If he is, and you hurt his pride like this, you're pushing him into reacting. He'll do something stupid. Or at least, he'll want to do something stupid, and it'll turn him bitter."

"He has to learn to take orders."

"Not like this," she said. "Is it worth losing him over this?"

Servius didn't reply, but at least he was thinking. He could have his binding-together army of happy mixed-class, mixed-race, mixed-wealth Romans, or he could have his crack cavalry; but perhaps not both. Well, let him think.

"And secondly: he has good men at his back, good men that he trusts and listens to. They'll keep him honest."

"They're young."

"Yes, but they're good; and he trusts them. Break up that group, leave him isolated..."

"He'll be lonely without his friends? You don't expect me to care about his feelings?"

"Leave him on his own, and they'll have no influence over him. Next time he feels wronged, they won't be there to talk him out of his own rashness."

"You expect me to change my entire army to suit one man?"

You changed it to suit yourself, she thought; but it would hardly achieve anything to say that, and though she felt the beginnings of a headache at the corners of her eyes, she smiled, and said no; she was only asking for a little trimming and smoothing, a little more time for Tarquin, a few small changes to a single unit.

Servius shook his head, stroking his chin with one hand, and massaging his cheek with his thumb. Gods, he was ugly when he was thinking; ugly and obvious. "Why couldn't he be more like you?" he asked. "A mother who never does anything without thinking, and a son who never thinks before he does anything. What a pair."

That, agreed, was a mystery, but humans didn't breed true the way horses did, or hounds; "More's the pity," she said, but she was thinking of the two Tullias, not her son.

When she left Servius still hadn't said what he was going to do; but she felt reasonably certain, from his humour, that she'd won at least part of what she'd wanted.

***

One of the girls showed the goldsmith in; a man prematurely old, who stooped and squinted a little, though, she knew, he was several years younger than she was.

"Lady," he said, and waited for her command. (Ah, that was civilised behaviour, so different from the boomtown rough manners so prevalent in Rome, now that Servius was in charge.)

"Cuffs, I think."

"Lady?"

"A pair of cuffs. Heavy gold cuffs, with beasts. Lions."

"Lions rending an antelope?" he offered. "Though it's a rather dated theme. Most of my customers now..."

"Just lions," she said. "The pride of Tarchna."

He nodded. "So. Lions. How many?"

"That, I leave up to you."

He seemed surprised. "Most ladies specify exactly."

"I'm not a smith," she said. "You'd know what looks best. I leave it to you."

He smiled, and with that smile the years seemed to fly up from him like scattering goldfinches, his face almost boyish for a moment.

"Just... not too many small ones?" Tanaquil suggested. He looked shrewdly at her. "I'm not telling you... but larger designs do look better on me. And I want the cuffs good and heavy."

His frown disappeared. "No, if you want heavy cuffs you're right, a filigree treatment would seem too light. Two larger beasts on each cuff, then, and perhaps I can hide some smaller ones in the decorative background. You wouldn't see them, unless you looked."

"A secret for those who know."

"Exactly so." Then the creases laid themselves again over his face, and his voice was hesitant. "I had better get to work; I may not be able to make many more pieces."

"Is that so? Are the mines drying up?"

"Rome is taking it all," he said. "They say it's for the army."

"You want to scare me into buying new earrings too? No – you're serious, aren't you?"

"I don't know what I'll do if I can't get the metal," he said. "I have enough work in hand, it's getting the materials worries me. Oh, and I have a piece to make for Tullia."

"What does Tarquin's wife want with new jewellery?" she said crossly.

"No. The other one."

"Arruns' widow?" He hadn't wanted to say her dead son's name, obviously; it was no sacrifice to say it for him. "Well, what is she getting?"

"A whole set; diadem, earrings, hair ornaments, one large pendant, four sets of bracelets, and a laurel wreath, in gold. But that's not for her, that last."

"It isn't?"

"Her head's the wrong size."

"So who is that for?" she mused, and saw the smith's face close up. "I'm sorry" – the easy, insincere apology of the ruler to the ruled - "I shouldn't be asking. No, you're quite right not to tell me."

It was interesting that a widow would make such a large order; unless perhaps she was considering a new marriage. Did that, perhaps, have something to do with her recent difficulties with Tullia? They'd always been friends, which Romans considered odd for a woman and her daughter-in-law – well, Etruscans knew better ; Tullia seemed, sometimes, a little like Tanaquil's younger self, bright and personable and a little headstrong, not like her lumpish sister, who was nothing but a nuisance (but fortunately was easily distracted by giving her some spinning to do, or some weaving, as long as it was neither delicate nor a complicated pattern, though what the point was of having a princess spin when you could get a slave to do it, she couldn't fathom). But recently she seemed to have set herself against Tanaquil somehow, quarrelling with her father when it was least helpful, supporting Tarquin against his mother.

She'd fallen in with a younger set; inevitable, perhaps, that she would, that an older woman like Tanaquil wouldn't interest her as much as the company of those her own age. But she'd fallen in with Tarquin's set, who, for all that she'd defended them to Servius, Tanaquil regarded as, in the main, wasters; wasn't Tullia smarter than that? They claimed the values Tanaquil had fought for – Etruscan civilisation, the freedom of women, art, nobility – but all subtly changed, like a parody of Tarchna; sexual licence, luxury, drunkenness, arrogance. They'd lost the refinement and subtlety her generation had possessed; and not one of them had studied augury. They flaunted their difference.

(That word; she remembered Tarquinius, once, angry with her when she came back from a hunt, telling her not to flaunt her Etruscan pedigree; and she wondered: had she ever been that flagrant?)

Still, young blood was hot blood; youth was a time for sudden spite and as sudden changes of heart. Give it a few weeks and there would be a tearful reunion, like the last time Tullia had burrowed into Tanaquil's arms and sobbed for some dream lost or betrayed.

Tanaquil thought back to her own youth. Who of all her friends were left? Tarquinius dead; Hanuna, her best friend once in Tarchna, dead in childbirth, twenty years ago now; Larthia, who had gone to Spina with her second husband, and last time Tanaquil heard, was a fat grandmother of a tribe of little northerners – was it six daughters she'd had, or seven, and all of them with their mother's fertile nature; and there was Lecne, who'd gone to Greece with his father and never came back, and if she knew anything was probably half-ruling some small city-state – either that or dead; and Metli Spitu, who had won the girls' long distance race one year, had died of fever last year. Thresu Spurinna, of course, lived, and ruled in Tarchna now; little fat Thresu who'd made her laugh with his face-pulling, and his ability to spout fluent gibberish, and his stupid practical jokes.

It was only in Velzna that she still had friends from the days of her training; Nerinai, Kaisie Spitu's daughter, two years younger than Tanaquil, and her cousin Venel, had never come back to Tarchna, but stayed in Velzna. Nerinai staying had been no surprise; she was one of the most talented of that generation. But Venel should have taken up his father's position as zilath; he only needed enough knowledge for that, and he wasn't considered particularly bright, though he didn't disgrace the Spitu name. Some said he'd stayed on in Velzna because of Nerinai, that they were lovers; Tanaquil had never been sure whether she believed that. Whatever the truth, perhaps it was time she visited Velzna.

She was missing Tarquinius. It was his time, she said to herself, the owls had told her that; but even so, he had been her choice, her partner for so many years. He'd been, almost, her equal; even if she had pulled the wool over his eyes a few times, even if he lacked poise, until he'd set foot on that long, downhill slide, he'd been worthy of her. When she woke alone in the morning, she regretted sleeping in a cold bed, without another body to keep her warm, without the morning pleasure of rediscovering wakefulness alongside another. The days she'd watched him sleeping, wondering where his thoughts wandered, whether he dreamed; sometimes when he slept, he looked like a boy again, his face relaxed and open. People wouldn't believe you could have killed someone, and still miss him, and it surprised her, too; grief sharpened her life, like vinegar.

She could have slept with one of the slaves; there was always a slave who could be relied on. But while a slave could warm a bed, a slave wasn't company; you can't play games with someone you own, can't fight with someone who gives in, because they don't dare to anger you. It would be like a stag-hunt she'd seen once, when she was a girl in Tarchna, with an old stag, worn out, and the hounds had him at bay; she'd wanted to stop it, there was so little dignity in murdering that sad and ancient creature. They had killed it, just the same; and it taught her another lesson, a little afterwards, when her father told her the Spitu, who had organised the hunt, had failed to get Venel's father reappointed as zilath for the next year. She learned: never be associated with failure.

She had never had time for daydreaming. You could daydream or you could do; not both. But now, after so many years of effort, she allowed herself to drift a little into the comfort of nostalgia, thinking back to those first days with Tarquinius, with Lauchme, before he got fat and she got bony, when they were golden of skin and dark of hair and in love...

She was startled by a shadow falling across her face. She'd only closed her eyes for a moment; she should never have closed them at all. How long had she been dreaming? For a second she was confused, blinking into the light.

It was Manius. He looked determined; not quite angry, but as if he'd decided he was going to get something from her, and he wouldn't leave without it.

"Have you heard what he's done?"

She had no idea what he meant; and he was almost too angry to explain, but she managed, eventually, to find out that it wasn't only Tarquinius who'd been upset by the changes in the army, and that Manius had lost his command, and been demoted, or rather, that in the merging of two centuries, someone had forgotten to ensure he was given a place in the new entity, so that he was left on the strength, but without a posting, and, if you took the rules literally, subordinate to a man vastly his junior.

And the worst of it, he said, was that he'd thought Tanaquil was going to make him king, and now he was nothing, nothing at all.

"But I tried," she said. "I did try."

"It didn't look like it."

"It was obvious the army wanted Servius, you know. What could I do against the army?"

"You could have spoken up for me."

"You never asked me."

"The years I spent doing your business in Velx, in Tarchna, in Cisra. All the work I did against Faustus' faction, for you and Tarquinius. For you, even, I killed Tarquinius."

"You did not," she said; "I did."

"I helped."

She nearly said, then; "If it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else." And she nearly told him, too, how the man who killed Tarquinius could never become king; how she'd had to keep Servius away from any breath of suspicion, how she couldn't have done that for Manius. But she was too canny to let him know that; and too canny, too, to try to seduce him, this time, to flatter him or flirt with him.

"Manius," she said, "it simply wasn't possible. We would both have fallen. And Servius... he's surprised me. I thought he would be just a figurehead, a general. War is his game, I didn't think he wanted to be a king."

"He's making too many decisions, changing too many things."

"I thought we could control him. We might still."

"We won't. But even if we did, he has the name of king. History will remember him."

"History has strange ways of remembering," she said. "It's not always the kings we remember. Tarchies, for instance. Every Etruscan knows Tarchies, but he was never a king. But he made the Etruscan cities, with his prophecies. And we're making something here – a new Rome, a new Etruria, a new Italy."

Manius shifted uneasily. "You make things sound so simple," he said. "It's only when I get home that I start wondering why everything is so difficult."

"Trust me," she said. "Servius goes to war soon."

"So do I."

"Without a command?"

"I'll get one. Or you'll get one for me."

"No," she said, and put up her hand when Manius started to bluster. "You don't go to war. You stay here in Rome, and we run Rome together, the way we were always going to. And if, by some chance, Servius were not to come back..."

Manius nodded. He seemed thoughtful, but he was smiling. Now he understood the plan. Or rather, he thought he understood the plan; but there were plans within plans, and lies hiding more and better lies, and paths that forked in directions Manius would never guess.

"Trust me," she said.

# Master

Hoplite armour; the smell of greased leather, straps pulling tight, the reassuring feel of leather around his wrists, around his calves. Stale sweat in the headband of a helmet. That dent, he'd forgotten now what battle he'd acquired it in, and every time he put the helmet on he vowed to have it beaten out; but now he probably never would. The sharp smell of metal, which reminded him of the taste of blood, which was the taste of battle; his own blood from a scalp wound, or from having bitten his tongue or his lip, stumbling, or another man's blood on the hand he'd raised to wipe his mouth, mixed with his own sweat and spit. There was always blood.

He heard the dull clank of bronze, the grunts of men tightening straps, the swish and snap of a sword thrust into its scabbard. The usual armour, and one extra piece of equipment, today; the usual, familiar sounds. The world telescoped in, as it always did, to the immediate tasks of preparation, the few men around him.

He dreaded the fight, any sane man would, but in a way, he was never happier than when he was actually fighting. It was honest. You lived or you died; you won or you lost. Words and destiny didn't worry you.

"Way I look at it," one of the men said, "we're either fucked or we're not, and worrying won't change anything."

He looked around to see who'd spoken; an old soldier, he thought, with grey hair chopped short and a square stubbly jaw. Their eyes met; Servius grinned.

"Amusing you, am I?"

"Well, yes." He waited till the other man was simmering nicely, and then said, quite softly; "better make sure it's us do the fucking rather than the getting fucked."

"Especially if they've got chickens," someone else said. Servius made sure he was the first to laugh, and the joke spread, as he'd hoped it would (though, perhaps, without the chicken bit).

There were his kind of men: good, ordinary soldiers. Most had bought their own armour; one or two, he'd sponsored, even before he opened up the treasury to buy weapons for the new troops. That was something Tarquinius wouldn't have done. Something young Tarquin wouldn't have done either. And Tarquin wouldn't be sitting here, with the footsoldiers; he'd be ordering some poor groom to make his chariot ready. Still, today Tarquin would fight under the orders he was given, for once, or take the consequences.

It had gone quiet again. It always did, at some point, and that was the dangerous time, when men started thinking. What if my neighbour in the line falls, or runs? What if I can't keep up? Does it hurt, dying?

But Servius couldn't help thinking again of Tarquin. Remembering again that conversation.

"Not my fault she died," Tarquin had said. "Anyone could have slipped on those steps."

And now Tarquin wanted to marry his other daughter, though from what Servius heard they hadn't let the absence of a blessing over the grain and the fire get in the way of their mutual attraction. It was amazing they'd managed to pull the wool over Tanaquil's eyes, though; perhaps there was some truth in the old saying that the greatest augurs could never forecast their own wives' faithlessness, and the closer to home you got, the less you saw. But Tanaquil was usually smarter.

Tarquin. A problem. And Tullia might be a good bargaining chip, if there was a man he needed to have on his side, Gnaeus, or Mamarke, or more likely the head of some Latin town... Well, it might not be a problem after today. Tarquin might die; any of them might die. Or he might disobey his orders. Or they might lose. Or Servius himself might not come back...

Gods, this was dangerous thinking.

"You've all gone a bit quiet," he said, looking round at his men, all bar a few now fully armour-clad, except for their helmets. "We can't have that. They'll be saying we crept up on them and took them by surprise. And that's not the idea."

No, really, it wasn't.

"Doesn't anyone know any good songs?"

"The one about the chicken?" some wit shouted; he couldn't see who it was – no doubt the man counted on being out of Servius' sight, he'd not be so brave otherwise.

"If you insist," Servius said, and almost straight away wished he hadn't; there were several verses he hadn't heard before, with ever increasing elaboration and exaggeration and a number of things he would never have thought of doing to a chicken if some bored soldier in the seventh century hadn't made it up. Still, it kept morbid thoughts away, that was the thing; and they loved him the more for letting them take a crack at him every so often, so when he needed them most, they'd be ready.

Take a good look at Veii, he thought. A difficult city; perched up on rock. They don't need walls.

"Ready for the ladders?"

Mamarke had arrived; a cavalryman, with Tarquin, which made him a useful go-between for the orders he didn't want to give Tarquin directly.

"The ladders?"

"Sorry," Mamarke said, "I thought you'd get the joke."

Servius let a tiny grin twitch the side of his mouth. "Not a very good one."

(Infantrymen were only good for a siege, Tarquin had said at one of their meetings, and then he'd stormed out, when he was told the cavalry would be held back. Then Mamarke, trying to dampen down the tension, had said gently, "Well, if we have to, there's this chap on the Celian we could ask," and let Servius ask him what they needed, before delivering the punchline – "he's taught his donkey to climb a ladder, maybe horses could learn to do it too." But Tarquin wanted a pitched battle fought the old way, and it was difficult to bring him round to Servius' ideas; a new kind of battle, an addition to the usual armour, a more complicated plan.)

"Ready, anyway?"

"I think we are." Servius raised his voice: "Are we ready, boys?"

That got the response he wanted; and he said to Mamarke after the cheer died down, "Well, pretty much. We had the sappers working all night. They've made some interesting little traps; spikes in ditches, to catch the chariots coming out from the city."

"The new methods of warfare," Mamarke said, with a smile.

"Not that new. Velx had hoplites when the general's grandfather was in charge, and his father used them, and the general was a past master when it came to using a phalanx, and it was ..."

"...the general who taught you," Mamarke said, a beat before Servius could say it.

"Bugger," said Servius with a scowl that was mostly but not all pretence; "you've heard it all before."

"Some of it."

Servius snorted. That was diplomatic. What it meant, of course, was that Servius was turning into an old bore. "But it really isn't new," he said.

"I know." Mamarke had a tendency always to try to smooth away differences, though it was like trying to smooth away wrinkles; they always came back. "Tarquin only calls it dangerous innovation because he doesn't like it."

"His old style warfare. It's not a glorious tradition, you know that? The Celts still do it."

"Anyway," said Mamarke. "You've got your men ready to draw the Veians out?"

Servius nodded. "You know the orders?"

"I do."

"Help me get this breastplate on, will you?"

Mamarke slipped behind him as he raised the breastplate to his chest. It was Mamarke who pulled the leather straps through the shoulder buckles.

"You're done."

"Not yet. There's the backplate to come."

Mamarke raised an eyebrow.

"You think it's cowardly?"

"It's unusual, anyway."

"They all came home with spear wounds in their breasts; not one had shown his back to the enemy... that's the heroic thing, but since when did heroes have anything to do with war?"

"You'll be running, then."

Servius laughed. "You damn well know we will. As soon as we've got them interested."

***

It had taken them too long in the warm sun to get here. They were tired and thirsty; it was hot under the armour, and there was no breeze. Ahead, a low mounded hill's eroded slopes of brown rock closed off the view; on each side, narrow valleys dark with woods protected it, and above, on the broad flat summit, stood Veii's acropolis.

It looked easy; the hills were low, the plain open, the slopes, though scrubby, not steep. But the rock crumbled; grass and moss slipped underfoot; hundreds of winters' rain had carved gullies, and sinkholes that might suddenly open up and swallow a leg, a man.

"How the fuck do we get up there?" one of the men grumbled.

"We don't," Servius said. "We wait."

The sun rose higher in the sky; it became hotter. The air was heavy, and full of fat, lazy black flies, that stumbled into men's faces or clouted their arms, ten times more annoying than the usual fast, small flies. (Why had they got so fat? Why so slow, like flies in autumn, when they come into the house drowsy on fermented windfalls and half-dead from the early chill? It felt like an omen.) It was the kind of muggy day when sweat didn't run down, but pooled, heavy, in droplets on the skin.

One or two men fell out of line. There was a desultory conversation somewhere in the back, but no one had the energy to say much, and it petered out after a while. A fitful breeze fluttered the plumes on the officers' helms and raised hopes that the weather might cool, but it flagged and dropped to nothing, and the sun bore down relentlessly.

One man rested his spear against his shoulder and scratched his groin absently. Another took his helmet off to wipe his forehead.

"That man!" someone yelled. Servius recognised the kind of voice, the rawness and projection and bluntness of the drill leader. "Put that back on!"

"It's too hot, sir."

"You want to make some slinger's lucky day? Some archer?"

"We're too far from them, sir."

"You're sure? How bloody sure?"

The helmet went back on. Servius looked at the shimmer of tiles above the cliff. He thought they were probably out of shooting range, even with the height advantage the Veientes enjoyed, but he wouldn't bet on it. Carelessness had a way of costing.

He wondered when his plan was going to work. Or if it was going to work at all. It certainly wasn't now. The whole of the Roman foot was spread out beneath the city, phalanx by phalanx, dense squares of darkness on the dusty plain. Tarquin's horsemen were gathered in a restless cluster to the right, slightly apart, the horses treading and jostling, but here the men stood fast, the front line of the phalanx straight,

Servius looked along the line; faces white or grey with dust, as if an army of ghosts had been summoned against Veii.

He hoped Vulca hadn't gone back to the city. Or if he had, that he wasn't fighting. (A cripple wouldn't fight, would he? At least he could hope that no one had given him a horse and made him ride.) He hoped Tarquin would do the right thing, and obey his orders smartly. He hoped Mamarke had explained...

A straggle of men had crept forward on the right flank, holding their shields high to protect from arrows or slingshots. They advanced, not straight, but towards the valley on the right, where the road from Veii came down, past the shrine of Menrva, past the tombs, broadening out into the great plain. Do they have time? Servius wondered. They reached the place where the ground began to break and rise, and stopped, huddling together for a time; then moved on, only fifty paces or so, and stopped again; and so they continued, stopping and starting, stopping and starting.

The Veientes would be watching, wondering what was happening. When would they lose patience? Would they guess what the sappers were up to?

"We're going to besiege them, sir?" one of the juniors asked him. "No," he said, and saw the youth's puzzlement.

It still hadn't worked. All was quiet above.

Servius looked down the row. His men stood ready. He felt such pride; so many men, so well drilled, so faithful to their king. But pride deceived; how ready were they, really? He looked with the sharper eye of a general, and was reassured. Tired and hot as they were, the men were still facing front; the line stood firm and straight; every man armed, helmed, spear in hand or held tight to the side of his body. Every man bound like a tortoise by breastplate and backplate, a bronze carapace. Everything stood ready; all he needed, as every soldier always needed it, was good fortune. If you are a god, he thought, stand by me now; goddess Fortune, hidden demon, lucky chance.

He raised his right hand. He felt rather than saw the spears leap upright, no longer sloped, heard the great rustle or sigh of an army standing to attention, made up of thousands of small sounds – the chink of bronze, the swish of leather, one man clearing his throat, another breathing in hard, the thump of feet planted more securely, the slap of sandals against foot-sole, the thud of a spear butt brought down on the ground. And then, silence.

He lowered his hand. The army began to advance.

***

They advanced two more times, till they stood at the edge of the slope, and still there was no response from the city. It put Servius on edge; it felt almost as if the city had been abandoned to the ghosts, and stood empty, undefended. He had taken his army so close that if anyone above had pushed a boulder down that rough slope, chance could carry away ten or a dozen men of his front line; they were vulnerable, standing there, even in armour.

They stood there, sweating with heat and fear, in the vast silence of noon. The sappers he'd sent forward had finished their work, and the right-hand phalanx swallowed them up. They felt stillness settle heavy on their shoulders. If it hadn't been for the fear Servius thought he would have begun to drowse. Even the fat flies, now, were sleepy, easily brushed off into the dirt where they were trodden on, and burst like mulberries.

It wasn't working. He'd gambled on his plan, and lost. The sun had reached its zenith; the glare seared his eyes, and made him squint into the dazzle. He gave the command; retreat. Cavalry first.

"You can't do that, sir."

One of the veterans. Plain speaking, as all his men were; you might depend on that for your life, some day.

"I just did."

"Yes, but..."

"Tell me."

"They're not covering us now, sir. We're unprotected."

"So we are."

"Sir." The man's voice was hollow, as if he'd been given the order to suicide.

"Don't worry. There's a plan. A good plan."

But he felt hollow. There was a plan, but the plan wasn't working. He was still doing what he'd planned to do; but Veii... Veii wasn't joining the dance. All this discipline, and effort, and planning, might go for nothing, and at nightfall, if they were lucky, they'd be back in camp, having achieved nothing, admittedly at little cost, but the men would start to grumble, and Servius would have lost a little of their respect. The gilt of good luck and the lustre of success soon rubbed bare, and men began to suspect there was base metal underneath.

Retreating before a single blow had been struck. Retreating in front of what was, perhaps, an empty city; in front of a city that had not resisted. Retreating, against all the rules, without the horse to cover them.

He felt, at least, relieved that Vulca could be in no possible danger now.

***

"Retreat?" Strephon spat on the ground. A tiny fleck of spit which he had failed to eject hung at one corner of his mouth.

"Yes. And before the footsoldiers, too."

That was dishonour indeed, to scuttle away before the unmounted motley. But Tarquin, touchy, prickly Tarquin, was smiling. What the hell was that about?

"You'll see," said Tarquin, and eased his horse into a gentle walk, and began to whistle. "The maidens' legs are open," that was the tune – sometimes, really, it was possible to lose patience with the way Tarquin made light of everything.

Mamarke followed Tarquin, his horse dancing a little as if speculating about its chances of bucking him off; it must have been as unnerved by the strange quiet and the long wait as most of the men had been. Strephon shrugged, and made a third; gradually, the rest of them followed.

It took him a while to realise that Tarquin wasn't going back the way they had come, but instead had veered left, towards the forest fringe where the sides of the hills fell away into the plain, so that their path was gradually diverging from that they'd followed on the way out, distancing them from the main body of the army. They came to a stream. The horses picked their way across, the formation spreading out a little as some horses skittered on rocks in the uneven stream bed, and others slipped on the churned up mud of the banks.

He'd thought Tarquin might have planned to stop here and water the horses, but instead they kept going towards the woods, through greener country now, till they were sheltered by overhanging branches, and the air was cooled by the dark shade of trees. Then Tarquin turned sharply, and led them into the forest; it wasn't till every man was within the trees that he stopped, and gave the signal to dismount.

"We're hiding?"

"We are," Tarquin said, smiling a smile that was very like his mother's, the kind of smile that gamblers smile when they've made a throw that takes their pieces off the board and wins the game, or when they realise that a three and two sixes lets them take all their opponent's pieces.

Tarquin had many faults, Strephon knew, but he'd never thought cowardice was one of them.

"We leave the rest of the army to its fate?"

"Don't worry about them; they're low class. And anyway..."

"Turan's tits! You've left them completely naked if the Veientes come out..."

"You're getting the idea," Tarquin said, and smiled that smile again.

***

An army's discipline is always more severely judged in the retreat than in the advance, but Servius' men retreated in good order, their phalanxes as dense and their lines as straight as when they had stood beneath the citadel of Veii. A musician at the back of each phalanx played his strident reedpipes, the rhythm stressed by blurting high notes to keep the men's pace even on the long march. It looked almost like a parade, apart from the dust and the absence of spectators, and a certain lack of good humour; no one liked to retreat, no one understood why they were retreating, and a few of the men had started to wonder whether Servius had lost the luck that had always been his.

They didn't see it, of course; they were facing in the wrong direction. They didn't hear it; it was too far away. From his wood, Tarquin saw the Veientes pouring down the road that led down from the acropolis, down to the plain, fanning out when they reached the bottom; chariots and horses travelling easily enough, and picking up speed as they came out on to the flat, like a wave as it comes to the gently shelving sand of a beach.

"Shit," Strephon said. This was the end of the Roman army; the end of Rome. There was still time for the Romans to turn and face the attack; but the longer they left it, the less their chances of surviving. Veii would flatten them. Was that what Tarquin had intended?

Tarquin had seen it too. And he was smiling. He was laughing.

Tarquin must have seen Strephon's look; incredulity, disgust, shock that he hadn't realised earlier what the plan was. "Just you wait," he said; and then added, languidly, as if it wasn't an order, "We might as well mount up."

They drew their horses up just at the edge of the woods, where the branches would hide them from view, but they could gallop out to the rescue of their countrymen; but as Strephon readied himself to charge, Tarquin leant over, and put a hand on his halter.

"Not yet," he said.

Not yet, Strephon thought. Wait till it's clear the army will be destroyed; and then charge, too late, and come to terms with Veii, and blame Servius. Whether Servius lives or dies, he'll be broken. By all the consenting gods, Tarquin was a smart bastard; but he, Strephon, wasn't going to stay in Rome after this. He'd be off to the cities of the south, to Syracuse or to Greece, to find better friends and more honesty.

The Veientes were picking up pace, and the Romans still hadn't seen them. And then, suddenly, everything changed. The first two Veiian chariots flew up in the air. One charioteer was hurled out of his chariot on to the ground, from which he never rose, but the other's fate was worse; he'd wrapped the reins round his waist, and his paired horses, escaping the broken shaft of the chariot, pulled him out of it, and along the ground behind them, his body turning over and over till the reins unwound at last, and he lay limp and still.

Then three or four of the horses staggered and fell. Those behind ran into them, and others reared and swerved to avoid them, and meanwhile more chariots and horses were still streaming out from the road, and found their way blocked and no way to turn against the tide of traffic.

Tarquin was laughing crazily, throwing his head up so that the braids of his hair swung and whipped back.

"Now," he yelled, "now we ride. And thank the hidden gods the sappers did their work."

***

The stakes that the sappers had pushed into the earth behind the long grass, and the concealed holes they'd dug to catch and break the horses' legs, had done their work; the first rash impetus of the enemy's onrush had been broken, and those who hadn't fallen were isolated, a mere handful of riders whose speed had carried them out into the empty plain, while those backed up behind were confused, circling aimlessly like fallen trees in the rapids of a flooding river.

But now the survivors had had time to gather their wits, and the forerunners had pulled up; Veii's forces began to push forwards again, gaining on the Romans.

"They'll need their backplates," Mamarke muttered.

But one of the back markers had seen the attack, and now the pipers had fallen silent, and the men were standing still; and then, in a single great movement like grain rippling in the wind, they were turning to face the enemy, bringing up their shields, raising their spears, and moving forwards (slowly at first, breaking into almost a run as they closed the gap), a breakwater against which the waves of attackers scattered and fell.

***

Servius swore as his foot was caught, looked down, kicked at the leg that lay across his way, and saw it flop back; balanced himself again, saw a gleam of light through the narrow eye-slit of an enemy helmet, pushed his shield forward to shove the man back, brought his arm up to stab with his long spear, saw the man fall, and pulled the spear back, and realised from the heavy softness under his feet that he'd trodden on a body, friend or enemy he couldn't tell; all this in a moment, and then he was moving again, as the line pushed forwards. He didn't know the soldier on his left – two men in that position had fallen, and the line had squeezed up – and on his right was the old veteran who'd questioned his decision to let the horsemen retreat before the footsoldiers. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw them shuffle forward, stab, shuffle forward; but in the phalanx it wasn't sight that counted; he could almost feel what the veteran was doing from the way their shields locked together, the way the sides grated as the men moved, and he could feel the man on his left pushing into him, as the line shifted – as a phalanx always did, no matter how well you trained – always towards the right, further and further right.

It had been easy pickings at first, the strong Roman line against an enemy already depleted in numbers, and morale was on their side too, the Veientes already discouraged by seeing so many of their front line dead or disabled, and then by the Romans they had thought were running away turning back to fight. The challenge had been not to break the line, to keep that tight formation they'd practised over and over again.

But now it was getting harder; the Veientes had had time to form up again, and it had come to push and shove, their shields pushing against their opponents', in a sort of deadly tug-of-war in reverse. Fallen enemies were more threat dead than alive, Servius thought sourly, as again he nearly tripped; bodies and abandoned armour littered the field, and the phalanx had to advance blind, each man feeling his way. More than once he found himself standing on a dead man's chest, for a moment – till the line passed on – head and shoulders above his neighbours. He could feel the shield of the man behind him pushing him on, and behind him, there was another man, and another; the whole phalanx a force unstoppable, merciless against its own men as it was against the enemy. A step forward, a step forward, check your neighbours are still with you, step forward again, keep pushing; always looking for that flash of flesh between helmet and shield, the one spot that was vulnerable in this close fighting, and if you saw it, you stabbed quickly, exposed for a moment while you lifted your spear, and got back behind your neighbour's shield, if you were lucky, before any of the enemy could take advantage of it. Another step forward. At least they were winning, they had the Veientes on the back foot; every time he pushed he could feel the opposing shield wall give.

"There are still more of them coming out from Veii," his neighbour shouted.

"I saw them."

"We'll be buggered if they keep coming."

"I'll remind you of that later," he said, and pushed forwards again.

He was more worried by what he'd seen a few moments ago, as the dead man's rib cage raised him for a moment above the line, above the pushing mass of the enemy; chariots rushing out towards the right flank of the Roman phalanx. They must have pulled up the stakes by now, he thought; and knew, as they all did, that the weakness of the phalanx was the last man in the line, undefended by any neighbour's shield. If they could get round the edge of the phalanx...

But they wouldn't, he thought. Not if the plan worked. Come on, Tarquin. Come on.

He knew the risk he'd taken. He'd given his success into the hands of the boy who hated him; who, if Servius fell fighting in the phalanx, was King of Rome, and knew it. He'd thrown the dice, and he could only hope his luck was with him, and the throw would be Turan, not Vanth.

But still the enemy were pressing them, and now he couldn't see further than the end of his spear, and his ears were full of the noise of battle. And even though the Romans were still pushing the Veientes back, step by step, the opposing line showed no sign of thinning out, and who knew how many lines back their men were ranked? The battle was still finely balanced, Servius knew; he needed Tarquin, and he needed him now.

Still, the front line held, and as long as they stood together, they could not fall. (They said one of the Porsena had been killed in the first clash at the battle of Curtun, and the line had carried him all the way through the battle, wedged between the men on either side; it was only when Kukrina's phalanx broke and ran that the body fell.) The fight was getting tough now; each step was harder and harder, and brought less and less advantage. The veteran had lost his spear, stuck in an enemy's body, and was using his shield to bludgeon his way forward; his neighbour on the other side had given up trying to use his spear in the crush, and was stabbing with his short sword when he got a chance, or slashing down where he saw an unprotected leg or arm, or across at a man's face. Servius' legs were numb with tiredness, and the sweat was running into his eyes, and all he could do was blink it away, but still his eyes stung, and his head was beginning to ache. He wondered how the new recruits were coping, back in the third and fourth lines – how many had come forwards to fill dead men's spaces? - how much work the veterans had left in them; how long it would be till his legs wouldn't move any more, till he got slow, and made a mistake, and left himself open, or let the line drag him under. And all the time he was thinking this, he was pushing, stepping, pushing, trying to stay upright as the line swayed, as one of the enemy staggered into him and then fell, and the Roman phalanx moved over him, trying to stay behind the shelter of the shields. How much more of this could they take?

Come on, Tarquin.

He nearly missed the spear butt that aimed at his ankles, where the greaves ended and the shield didn't protect him. Saw it just in time, twisted and jumped, and stabbed quickly. Man down. Thank the gods. That was sneaky.

Then at last, he heard the thunder of hooves like a storm across the mountains, that low rumble when a storm is still two valleys away and there's just enough time to scramble for shelter under the trees or in a shepherd's stone hut, and he hoped it was Tarquin, and not reinforcements from Veii.

"What the fuck's that?" the man on his left shouted, and Servius grinned, feeling his skin cracking at the corners of his mouth, feeling his mouth horribly dry, tasting blood and not caring.

***

They piled into the Veientes from the back, wheeling across the plain, hitting them hard at the gallop. The stragglers at the back fell quickly, and Tarquin's troop swung away, regrouped, hit the enemy again.

Now the men on the end of the phalanx were turning to face the attack, and the Veii horse and chariots were caught between a bristling line of spears and Tarquin's horse troops, which swung back again and again to charge down the Veientes. Their horses were fresh, and they were better drilled than their opponents, and more mobile with the whole plain to use, while the enemy were squeezed into the narrow gap between the phalanx and Tarquin's skirmishers.

This was war! War at the gallop; not the boredom and drudgery of standing in line, but the whistle of wind in your ears, the intoxication of speed, dashing up and slicing, piercing, skewering.

Some of the Veientes were making a run for it now, trying to get back to the safety of the road now they could see the Romans weren't the easy picking they'd thought. Tired horses, cowardly riders; Tarquin sent men to ride them down. They picked off the smaller bands; some they simply charged down, others fell to sword or javelin. Tarquin saw Strephon lean low in the saddle, slashing at a horse, not its rider; the horse went down, one leg useless, and Strephon turned, and slashed again. The rider's head span through the air; the blood spouted up from his truncated torso, three times that Tarquin could see, before the body toppled. Strephon, flashy in war as he was on stage.

***

It was a while before Servius realised that the pushing was becoming easier, that each step he took was covering slightly more ground; the enemy's resistance was fading, as if the men in the opposing front line could sense that things were not right, behind them. One, stupidly, tried to turn his head to look, and Servius slashed his throat while he was distracted. No one closed up the gap he left; discipline was failing. Servius slowed his pace, held the line, refused to be sucked into the hole; the Roman line held. The Roman line advanced.

Now the opposing line was becoming ragged; there were gaps, there were bulges, there were places where the men were bunched up so tightly they couldn't fight, only stand and watch as the Romans butchered their neighbours. In one place the whole line caved in, going backwards so fast the Romans nearly fell as the resistance collapsed. Then, suddenly, the Veientes began to run.

"Hold! Hold!" Servius yelled, but he didn't need to; his men were well drilled. They let the Veientes go, concentrating still on holding the line, moving forward inexorably, pace by pace by careful pace. In some places the back ranks were still pushing forwards, and the panicking frontliners died on their own compatriot's spearpoints, or were held back by the shields of the rank behind their own, and felled by the advancing Romans. Elsewhere, great corridors of space had opened up in the ranks as the Veientes fled.

In front of him Servius saw one man hesitating, thinking which way to go. Servius didn't hesitate; as the man turned, and his shield slid to one side, Servius plunged his spear into the man's guts, bearing him to the ground. As he pulled the spear back, half the man's guts came with it.

"There's augury for you!" he screamed, and heard the cheer go up on each side of him. They were winning, they were winning, Tarquin had come through after all.

***

There were those who wanted to press on to Veii, up the valley road past Menrva's temple, to the gleaming city above the plain. Servius refused; let them sweat, he said. They'd spend the night sleepless, fearing attack, wondering what Rome was doing; counting their dead, their wounded, their missing. They'd sue for peace in the morning, that was for certain, and meanwhile, even if the sun was still high, it would be declining soon enough, and there was work to do.

They took the dead and laid them neatly in a great row in the middle of the battlefield, and Servius called for wine, and covered his head with a cloak for lack of a proper veil, and poured the wine out on to the ground, to the Ones who Remained and those who had gone before. Then Tarquin did the same, and Gnaeus, who had taken the left wing, sacrificed to Turan, the war god.

The sun was dying by the time they had collected enough wood from the forest edge; dry bracken and gorse for a fast flare-up, and rotten logs that they hoped weren't too wet to burn, and wood from lightning-struck trees that they'd found standing bleached and gaunt among the green. It wasn't a good pyre, but what could you do? It would burn. Not beautifully, but it would burn. At least most soldiers knew how to build a fire properly.

They piled the wood over the bodies; there wasn't enough time to set it out neatly now, since the search for wood had taken so long. They'd poured olive oil on to the pyre, as much as they had left in the supply carts that they could bring up; that should help the blaze.

Servius struck his flint with a knife; there was a knack, which a soldier on patrol soon acquired, if he was any good at all. The tinder caught; he blew on it carefully, an act he'd always considered a tiny magic, as if his breath had the power to transmit heat and life. He'd made a small hearth, and there he kindled a fierce little fire, from which the chosen men lit torches. By this time it was nearly dark; the torches' flames seemed to smear the velvety blue of the sky, as their twenty-four bearers carried them on their divergent paths along the sides of the pyre.

The bracken caught quickly, burning with a savage flare and crackle, and blurring the air with black smoke; then the wood started up, glowing darker and more red.

They had stripped the enemy corpses of their armour, and built a great pile of it; shields and breastplates, helmets and spearpoints gleamed in the firelight, and round the pile skeleton warriors kept watch at the eight directions, where a spear had been rammed into the earth and a breastplate and greaves slung from it, a helmet balanced above. The air was beginning to swim with the heat of the fire, and though the stars had crept out, vast regions of the sky were blotted out by the rising smoke.

Now the men who had crowded to watch the lighting of the pyre parted, and through the middle of the army a young soldier in a white tunic led an empty chariot pulled by two white horses. It was time for the triumph.

A howl split the night; the great carinxes bayed, the ancient war horns full of savagery and yearning.

They waited, usually, till a general returned home; it humbled Servius to realise his men didn't want to share him with the city, wanted him to ride in triumph here, on the field of his greatest victory. When the youth, the youngest soldier who had fought today, or at least, the youngest who still lived, brought the horses to him, he was ready to mount the chariot and ride through his army.

It was Tarquin who stopped him, stepping between Servius and the chariot, holding up a hand in warning. Jealous Tarquin; proud Tarquin.

Servius was about to step forwards, even so, when Tarquin spoke.

"Not without the blood," he said, and Servius remembered the red face of Tinia, the reddened faces of triumphing generals; saw Tarquin's face glowing red in the firelight.

"Isn't there enough blood on it already?" he asked, short tempered. What did Tarquin want; to share the triumph?

"No. There isn't," Tarquin said; "It's important. Some things, you have to do right." In one simple and quick movement he pulled his sword out of his scabbard.

Three men stood forward immediately. Tarquin wouldn't get far if he made any attempt on Servius; but it was too far for them to reach Tarquin before the knife was buried in Servius' flesh. Servius could be dead in three heartbeats, and there was nothing he could do; unarmed and tired, too old, too slow.

But Tarquin extended his left hand, palm up, as if in a sign of peace; and suddenly the knife was flashing in the air, scribing a line across his palm, a line that filled instantly with red blood.

"There's no ox to sacrifice," he said, "so this will have to do", and leant towards Servius, and smeared his bloody palm on the king's face, once on each cheek, and once in a long, almost caressing trace from the forehead down to the chin. And then he laughed, high and a little mad, just as he'd laughed when, in the battle, he'd finally reached Servius and the front line of the cavalry, and ridden down the last of the Veientes still fighting.

***

The gates of Veii were still barred when Servius rode up to them the next day, but a brief parley saw them open, the thick wooden gates grinding on their massive hinges. Three massive stone heads looked down from the archway, so erorded you could hardly see if they had eyes; they must have been centuries old already, Servius thought. Veii was already old when Velx had still been young, or so they said. But whether those heads had always been there above the gate, or whether they had been brought from some sanctuary in the woods, he did not know.

They rode up through the fate, up to the plateau at the centre of the city. Below, on the plain, the great pyre was still smouldering, its trail of greasy smoke dirtying the sky. A small temple stood at one end of the great open space; lower buildings crowded three sides. In front of the temple, still and silent, stood the people of Veii, or what was left of them; the women, and those too old to fight or too young to bear arms, and those who had run fastest. The rest lay lifeless on the battlefield below, or burned along with the Roman dead.

One boy with shorn hair gazed at Servius with sullen, huge eyes; slave, or orphan? Girls with unbound hair, still unmarried, stood silent, watchful. No one moved.

"Who's in charge here?"

Silence. Some of the Veientes shuffled uneasily. No one met his eyes.

"They're all slaves," Tarquin said softly.

"Where the hell are the others?"

"Dead. Or running."

The whole place abandoned. The princes, the golden ones, must have valued their lives above the fate of the city; and they'd sent even their male slaves out against Rome, to fight in a war that was not their own. And they'll mourn for the princes, he thought; but the slaves who died with borrowed weapons and third-hand armour, or none, died without lament, without monument or renown. And were no more and no less dead for all that.

Servius raised his voice. "You're free," he said. "All of you. Free."

They were still staring at him, silent, unmoving. He looked for the one face he wanted to see, the one man in the whole of Veii who meant something to him. He saw an old man with a withered arm, with an angry face and wispy beard, and a girl whose body trembled like a poplar in the wind, and was, from time to time, convulsed by soundless sobbing; and then, at last, he found the face he was looking for. So Vulca was all right, anyway.

Not one of them met his eyes.

"Don't you want your freedom?" Tarquin shouted. (But that, Servius thought, was a provocation, not a question.) "We are giving you your freedom."

But Servius knew in his heart you can't give freedom to slaves. He'd had to earn his own; and still, even in this moment of victory, he felt small and dull next to Tarquin's glorious assuredness.

A small cheer started, none the less, in one corner of the square; but it died, and left an embarrassing silence in its wake.

"You see," Tarquin said, "at least a few of them know what freedom means."

But it turned out the men who cheered were Romans, and they'd stopped only when they found no local enthusiasm for their action.

***

It worried Servius that the princes had fled; he knew from dealing with Robur that a ruling house could always find support elsewhere, from cities opposed to Rome, or which thought they could play a game of favourites to achieve their ends, whether those were improved trade, or military protection, or simply a little private arrangement between two princes.

At least the princes' flight had left the palaces and temples empty; that made life simpler. He remembered cities where he'd had to fight through the streets. Here, he set up his headquarters in the lucumo's house, using the same room, the same bed, the same slaves. (Freed slaves, he reminded himself, but his meal came, just the same.) Him, and Tarquin, and an always changing number of junior officers reporting in. It was easier when the room was full; when he was alone with Tarquin, he felt constrained and uneasy, even though he knew his gamble had worked.

As his men brought Veii under their sway, he calculated how much plunder would flow into Rome. There were golden pectorals, gold bracelets for the men, gold fringed tebennas. Even the Latins hardly objected to the new wealth, though he'd noticed the Romans tended to wear less delicately worked ornaments than his own Etruscan people, as if it was no shame to carry your wealth on your chest, only to have expended effort in making it look elegant. It was almost a pity he'd freed the slaves; but there was so much wealth in Veii, not just in its people, but in the granaries, in the treasury of its temples, and what he valued more than gold or grain, cold steel, the weapons of the defeated army to equip his own men.

He was still looking at the tally in the deepening dusk when he heard a scuffle. In the courtyard, a dark squirming mass slowly separated into two of his slingers dragging a limping, yet still struggling man between them.

"We've found someone you might want to see."

"Have you really?" Tarquin said coolly, but Servius narrowed his eyes to see better. A bruiser, he thought, looking at the half-destroyed face; scratched and grazed all over as if he'd been dragged on the gravel outside, one eye puffy and almost swollen shut, a bruise on his cheek already blue and darkening in patches to almost black, and his lip split and bleeding.

"We bust his foot," one of the slingers said proudly.

"It was his third shot," said the other.

The prisoner turned his head to one side so that he could see Servius better with his one open eye, and spat. That truculence seemed familiar; the face, under the swelling and the cuts, he felt he should know, but searched hopelessly for the name, like scratching an itch he couldn't quite reach.

"Sodding Vanth!" Tarquin hissed. "Do you know..."

He realised, before Tarquin could say the name; it was Robur. Older, of course, much older; fat had rounded out the solid squareness of his jaw, but he still held himself head forward and shoulders up, like a bull about to charge.

"Well," he said. "I hadn't expected..."

"Where's the king?"

"Gone," Tarquin said, before Servius could shut him up. Giving information to the enemy; never a good idea, even if it wasn't going to be useful to Robur, who was, quite obviously, going nowhere, with his smashed foot dragging.

"Bloody coward."

This could get tiresome, Servius thought. It was like watching two roosters strutting and scratching, and gods help them if they started using their spurs. He looked at the two slingers; good, he thought, they hadn't slackened their grip. He nodded to them, let a grim smile cover his weary face, told them to take him away. Even now, Robur struggled, lurching from side to side to shake them off, but they gripped like mastiffs, dragging him out. They knew where to take him; there were fewer prisoners than Servius had hoped to take, but even after the princes had flown, a few of the wealthier Veientes had stayed, some of whom he thought he could talk round to assisting Rome in exploiting the cities' resources, while others might be ransomed.

"A triumph!" Tarquin smiled; Servius wondered if he was thinking of the climax of the triumph, the execution of the defeated king.

"That's what you want?"

"Isn't it what everyone wants?"

"Gods, are your desires really as simple as reddening your face and jamming laurel on your head?"

Tarquin flinched at that, and he wondered if he'd spoken too roughly. Mamarke could smooth it over; but Mamarke wasn't here. When Tarquin was involved, he always seemed to say the wrong thing; and he was a man who had always been able to say the right thing to his men, before a battle, or after it.

"You're entitled to it," Tarquin said.

That was an interesting word, 'entitled'. He'd never been entitled to anything. It had been hard labour to win a word of kindness; his whole youth he'd walked the edge of a precipice, never sure whether he'd pleased the General, never certain he wouldn't be turned away. And Tarquin, what

"My men are entitled to it."

"Even the slingers? They didn't even fight."

Servius didn't bother to answer. He simply sat, and waited till Tarquin realised, and grimaced slightly, and turned away. The slingers might not have fought, but it had been two of them who had brought Robur in; and it had been his slingers and his footsoldiers who had, already, set up the army's quarters in the surrendered city, organised the kitchens, started logging the contents of the temple treasuries; the horsemen too drunk with the suddenness of their victory to think about strategy.

"Well, a triumph," he said at last. "I think the men will enjoy that."

# Tanaquil

All her teachers were gone.

Old Spurinna, who was so old and dry everyone thought he was a hundred even when she was a girl, had died five years ago; he'd made it through the hard winter, but one spring morning he'd gone to sit in the orchard in the first sunshine of the year, and fell into death like a gentle sleep. The woman they'd called Spina, after her town – so many years later, Tanaquil could remember her reedy thin voice, but not her true name – had gone back to the watery margins of the Other Sea, and no one had heard from her since the spring before last.

Nerinai was here, still. But she sat immobile, hunched beneath her blanket, and looked at Tanaquil with empty eyes. A girl brought her out in the morning and settled her by the hearth, and there she stayed till it was time for another girl to put her to bed. When a spoon was pushed at her mouth, Nerinai ate, without greed and without enjoyment; but she said nothing, and hardly moved, and her hands lay still and limp on her lap.

Venel had died, about the time of the vintage last year, and Nerinai had run wild for two days with grief. She ran into the shrine of Talna and ripped the image of the goddess from its place – two strong men couldn't have done it, they said; then she ran down from the city, among the crags, dancing the edge of the precipice, and they thought she was sure to fall. No one dared follow her, but they saw her run down to the place of the tombs below the city, and into the forest, and then no one saw her for those two wild days of storm till she turned up, blank eyed and shivering, at the hearth in front of the temple.

Some said the gods had blasted her for her blasphemy. Others said it was the vengeful gods who had kept her alive when she clearly no longer wanted to live, shrivelled, like the Sibyl at Cumae in her bottle. (Tanaquil had always imagined the Sibyl in an Egyptian bottle in bright blue glass, like the one her favourite Spurinna uncle had brought from the Delta, with the stamp of a black beetle; but this was the truth of the myth, the shrivelled body and the claw-like hands, and the whispering breath of a body that had no soul left to keep it alive.)

And this morning the visit to Aplu's temple, another disappointment. Tanaquil wondered why she'd come; nothing seemed to live up to her memories. The portico of the temple seemed smaller than it had been, and less beautiful. The lumpish Aplu on the pediment brandished his bow like a baby with a stick of bread in his hand, not clumsy with the powerful roughness of antiquity, but simply badly made. The steps were cluttered with gifts; bronzes, tripods, vases. The priest insisted on showing her every one.

"That tripod," the priest told her, "was given by Sostratos of Aegina."

"Really."

"A magnificent gift, but then Aplu had been good to him."

"Indeed."

He didn't get the hint. She heard how this or that thing was given by a trader from Tarchna, by a noble of Clevsin, the women charioteers of Felsina, a zilath of Spina.

"They're very generous, the northerners," he said. "Some of the older cities could learn from them."

"I'm sure."

She remembered the temple spacious and white and cool. A space of simplicity where she'd learned that power could come from renunciation as well as possession; where she'd learned how bareness could be more elegant than opulence. It took her aback when she saw the great doors closed; they'd never been closed all the time she had studied in Velzna. But now visitors had to enter through a low and narrow door in the side of the temple, blocked by a table behind which sat an old woman with a squint, who stretched her hand forwards till she saw the priest accompanying Tanaquil shake his head.

She squeezed through the space between the table and the wall, expecting at every moment to see the great space of the temple, with nothing between her and the figure of the God. But between the pillars that supported the great roof, wooden barriers had been set up, and small shrines erected, gaudy with painted pottery gods, each with its own attendant, who as they passed stretched out a hand for offerings; there was no way to go but between the barriers, which marked out a confused and zigzagging path. In one place a shoddily built wall hid the altar; in another, a railing kept the people away from the sanctuary, where six priests hid their heads in tebennas while they made libations, coming to the bar to take offerings, of which, Tanaquil noted, they poured out only a few splashes on the altar before putting the vessels to one side. She could hardly breathe in here, hemmed in between the railings and the mass of pilgrims, with the smell of spilt wine heavy in the air. The whole place was busy and hucksterish as a market. Only the god remained unchanged, his sharp-featured face wooden as it had always been, his eyes narrow slanted almonds, his mouth thin. He had always been a disapproving god, faintly distressed by the randomness and indiscipline of humanity; an exigent god, one many of Tanaquil's contemporaries had been afraid of. Now he had more to disapprove of than mere unruliness. This was not religion; this was begging, fraud, extortion.

If she'd had to pray it would have been to Vanth; Vanth who wanted blood, not offerings, who wanted the dead on the field of battle, the blood of mourners flowing as they cut themselves in anguish or ecstasy. She'd bitten her own tongue often enough, or clawed at her thighs till the pinched flesh bled, to make the visions come when prophecy would not flow; she'd tasted her own blood on her fingers, knew the taste and stickiness of it intimately. She looked at the prating priest and thought of blood, and smiled at him.

***

The feast that evening was more pleasurable than the visit to the temple, at least. But still strangers cringed to her like timid dogs, seeking approbation for their flattery. "Tanaquil, who we always knew would do so well," said one, who, she remembered, had told her definitively that she would be thrown out, that she had no talent at all; and another remembered "how wonderful you were, Tanaquil," but when she asked his name and lustrum she knew he had come to Velzna two years after she'd married Tarquinius. There were others, she remembered, who had been distantly polite, as anyone would be to a lauchum's daughter, and used that now as a claim to intimacy.

She nodded and smiled and put on the benign, calm face of the true noble, like an ancestor's death mask. The smile tightened her skin, and pulled at the corners of her eyes; she held on to that feeling. When you thought of yourself as an actor, things became distant; your emotions held at arm's length, you could think more clearly. A room full of annoyance became a room full of advantage if you knew how and where to look for it; though among these people who licked and snuffled like badly brought up dogs, she couldn't for the moment see what advantage could be gained.

The feast was worth her attention, though. Velzna's cooking was the one thing that hadn't deteriorated since she was last here. There was a good red wine, with a tannin load that cut through the first rich fruitiness; so good that they drank it unwatered. There were small birds, with the flesh so long and slowly cooked that it fell off the delicate bones at a touch, at a breath almost. There were slivers of rich meat in a sweet white almond sauce; there were walnuts and hazelnuts ground up in a mortar with herbs and oil and spice; there was venison, dark and sumptuous, cooked in a black honeyed gravy spiked with last year's vinegar. Game birds had been stuffed with apples that melted, almost like butter on the tongue; fish swam in pungent oil, with soft, spongy bread set on one side for mopping up the oil; there were soft fruits simmered in mustard and honey, dripping and sticky, and fresh figs with slices of cheese so old it had crystallised and become translucent.

It would be easy to give in to greed and eat till she was stuffed, though she knew if she did, she would regret it later; sleep never comes easy on a bloated belly, no more than does wit or alertness.

The flutes were drowning out the chatter, thank the gods, and a few people had started the ring dance, when Tanaquil became aware that someone had sat on the couch next to her. She turned to see better; the woman looked familiar, though it took her a few moments to put a name to the sharp face.

"Ramtha."

"Tanaquil."

Neither knew if the other was friend or enemy. They prodded each other with small questions like cats pawing the air in front of each others' faces, before they decide whether to fight or run. What was she doing in Velzna? Had she visited this temple, that temple? What was happening in Rome while she was here? To which she replied with another question; who was in charge in Velx while Ramtha was here?

Ramtha took a piece of cheese and nibbled a small piece out of its edge. Tanaquil picked up her cup and took a sip of wine, looking at Ramtha over the rim of the cup, waiting.

Ramtha smiled, and took another tiny bite out of the cheese. Two could play at this game.

"I'm not here on Servius' business," Tanaquil said, venturing as little information as possible. She was surprised by the flicker of hatred on Ramtha's face; just a flicker, soon wiped smooth again. Of course: Ramtha must blame Servius for the death of her husband. So even if Ramtha was not a friend, they had a common enemy.

"He's made enemies in Rome," she said carefully.

"He has?"

"People thought they knew what they were getting."

"People?"

Damn Ramtha, she was as good at playing this game as anyone. Tanaquil shrugged.

"He was a good soldier," Ramtha said. "Honest."

"I don't doubt it. His honesty isn't the problem."

Ramtha nodded. "My father trained a hound once. A marvellous hunter. We called it the Silent Death. Then one day it turned and bit me."

"He killed it, I suppose?"

Ramtha nodded. Then, suddenly bright voiced, she said "We'll be meeting tomorrow, I gather?"

"We will?"

"You're going to Turan's shrine?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I am."

"Good," said Ramtha, stretching one palm flat on the couch to push herself up. "Good. I'll see you there." And she left, lost within seconds in the whirl of dancers.

***

Tanaquil wanted to wander on her own, but everyone had plans for her. She was shown the sights like a tourist, as if she hadn't spent years in Velzna, as if she didn't know every inch of the city better than the sleek and glib youngsters they sent to accompany her. Everything had to be shown; it wasn't enough to see it, it had to be explained and itemised and made into stories, as superficial as her guides. Her time had to be accounted for, like a prisoner's. They took her to see the vegetable gardens, as if she'd never seen one before; the goat pens, the temple of the consenting gods, the classrooms, the grove. Frivolities and sublimity, the quotidian and the numinous mixed together in deadening juxtaposition.

They took her to a class being taught in one of the porticoes. The students had been chanting one of the prophecies, the words accentuated in a strange halting rhythm, but they stopped short as soon as she entered, except for one boy who carried on for a few beats before realising he was alone. There was always one of those, she thought.

She felt immediately the falsity of her position; here's a distinguished visitor, boys and girls... They had risen from their cushions on the floor, now, at their teacher's bidding, but they were still so much lower than her eye level that she felt clumsy and grotesque. They stared at her as if she had let them down in some undefinable but unforgivable way. She wondered how many distinguished visitors they had to put up with. She wondered, too, how many of those visitors were truly distinguished.

"Ask them a question," her guide said.

What kind of question did you ask? Never at a loss in a diplomatic meeting or at a banquet, Tanaquil couldn't think what was appropriate in this situation, and the guide hadn't given her any help. She thought back to what she'd learned; one of the unanswerable questions old Spurinna had liked to spring on them ("to make you think", he'd always said).

"What did Tarchies say when he sprang from the furrow?"

No one answered. They stared at her again. One child was chewing a stalk of grass she'd put in one corner of her mouth. Tanaquil could see a couple of others shuffling their feet.

"That was too difficult," the teacher said. Something censorious in her attitude rankled. The question had been meant to be difficult, after all. Something easier, then; a question from the basics of the augur's discipline.

"Which is the region of the infernal gods?"

"That's too easy."

"Well, then."

Still none of the children answered. One of the girls looked sideways, wriggled her shoulders. She had bright eyes, Tanaquil saw, and an air of impatience.

"You," Tanaquil said. The girl's mouth twitched.

"Arunthia," the teacher said. There is a certain tone of voice which threatens condign punishment at the same time as indicating a great weariness with the certainty that such punishment will be needed; it was this tone of voice which Tanaquil recognised, instinctively, with the mere saying of the girl's name.

"The-region-of-the-west-is-given-to-the-infernal-gods." The girl said it all in one breath, in a fast, clipped monotone, as if she were repeating a much-rehearsed lesson: which she probably was.

"Good," the teacher said, as if it was anything but.

"Do you enjoy studying?" Tanaquil asked the girl.

"Miss?"

"Your studies. Do you enjoy them?"

The question didn't seem to make sense to the girl. She screwed her face up, looked at the teacher, at Tanaquil, back at the teacher.

"I suppose," she said.

"Good," said Tanaquil, and saw relief on the girl's face. "Where is she from?"

"The north. One of the new cities," the teacher said. "I think she's half Celt. Quite a few of them are, these days. Too many, I'm afraid."

She made the students recite for Tanaquil; not the prophecy they'd been chanting when she came in, but part of the Medicinal. "The following plants are poisonous," she started, and the students joined her in the list: "the nightshade, the foxglove, the hemlock. Hensbane and wolfsbane, and the oleander. Of the nightshade, the berry, the leaf and the root. Of the foxglove, the root, the seed and the leaf."

She'd learned like that; repeating, so that now, if she thought of nightshade, the words "foxglove, hemlock, hensbane" came straight after, without her making any effort to recall them. Being able to call that knowledge up so easily, so many years after, had its uses; but she found it dispiriting that these students had so little to say for themselves.

"Do they learn the medicinal uses of foxglove?" she asked.

"Not yet."

She looked around. None of the students met her gaze.

"It's not appropriate, at this age," the teacher said.

"Which is what?"

"Fourteen."

Old enough to bear children, not old enough to heal. Tanaquil had surely known more, and more deeply, by fourteen; not just dull facts. Old Spurinna had taken them out to the plain, looking for plants, healing and hurtful; this lot wouldn't recognise nightshade berries if they saw them, or the signs of a poisoning, come to that. Like everything else in Velzna, the schools weren't what they had been.

***

There was another feast in the evening. Tanaquil sent word that she was ill; she wanted to eat alone. She'd have an early night. A good excuse; when they wanted to send someone to look after her, she pointed out that she was as well trained in medical sciences as anyone else in the city. If she needed anything she'd ask; meanwhile, she was over-tired, and an infusion of camomile and an early night would sort her out.

She'd spoken again with Ramtha; they understood each other, or so Tanaquil hoped. Not for them the ways of violence, but the patient weaving of personal alliances, the calling in of favours and allegiances, a life of waiting in shadows. Every woman had a bright face and a dark face; the bright, tight face that surveyed the banquet placidly, and the dark side that planned, that waited, the dark implacable fate.

The mingled noises of the banquet were thinned by distance to a gentle murmur of chatter, hints of music in which no tune could be clearly identified, only the feeling and recurrent rhythms of the dance. It was strange how distance lent things an attraction they didn't possess at close quarters; physical distance, or the distance of memory, the effect was the same. Tanaquil let her thoughts wander back, to days searching the cliffs for plants, nights of wakefulness at the valley shrine, to departed friends...

"Lady?"

She looked up. A girl had come with a basket and a jug. Tanaquil roughly remembered the face. The girl unpacked the basket; spelt cakes, figs, cheese. Simple food for an invalid.

She remembered who the girl was; the student who'd answered her question that morning. She looked at the figs, and remembered they'd been speaking about poison. The nightshade, the foxglove, the hemlock.

"I'm not hungry," she said, waving one hand to dismiss the girl.

"Lady?"

She looked up. The girl was waiting, not forward enough to speak, not obedient to go.

"Speak," Tanaquil said.

"Lady, they say you studied here."

"Only for a few years. We all did, all of us from Tarchna. Some for longer, others not so long."

"Were you lonely?"

Tanaquil couldn't remember ever asking herself that question. She'd never thought she was; though if she thought back, she couldn't remember any of her friends from that first year, only her teachers, and a few friends who had arrived later; she'd missed Hanuna, left back in Tarchna (not for her the training, her future as a lauchum's wife had already been mapped out), missed her dogs and hunting the coastal marshes, though the teaching had excited her from the first day and Spurinna's question, "What did Tarchies say when he sprang from the furrow?"

She must have had more friends than that, but she could hardly count more than a few before her memory failed. Places were carved deeply in her mind - the temples, the groves, even the sky and the track on the day she'd seen the eagle carry off Tarquinius' cap – but people were harder to recollect. Sometimes she remembered odd phrases in the particular intonation of a voice long unheard; Spina saying drily "Just being alive isn't living," or her father's sad stern admonition, "We all die, but we do not all die unremembered," or her mother's "If you don't look after the cats, the rats will take over the house." But apart from these few flashes, remembering became harder the longer she lived; her childhood had become dark, like looking into deep water.

"Lady?"

Tanaquil tried to remember what the child had asked. Lonely? Had she been lonely?

"Only sometimes," she said. She wondered whether she should make the girl share the food; at least then if it was fast-acting poison, she'd be warned.

"They don't like me," the girl said.

"The teachers?"

"And the other children."

"They won't. Children are little tyrants."

The girl's face twitched; it wasn't quite a smile.

"Arunthia," Tanaquil said, remembering the name, "You'll find when you get older..."

She saw in that moment she'd lost the girl's precarious trust. Arunthia must have heard that line too often, threats and promises alike deferred. You'll find your match when you go to Velzna; you'll change your mind when you're grown up; you'll understand when you get older why we made you do it, why we sent you away, why we beat you, that it was all for your own good...

"Well, maybe you won't," she said. "But I always found children were the most cruel. Adults have too many other things to worry about."

The girl's eyes shone again, though she still didn't smile. Perhaps she never did.

"They don't like you. Why? Because you're a northerner?"

Arunthia nodded. Soundless, as if she were used to hiding.

"Well, do you like them?"

"Not much."

"Hold on to that. You don't like them. Why should you care for their good opinion?"

She could see the girl beginning to think it out.

"You're smart," Tanaquil said. "You don't like to show it."

"They don't..."

"They don't like a smart girl? I thought so."

"They don't like a smart northerner."

"Well, come to Rome, when you're ready. You might like it better there."

Arunthia looked at her steadily, no doubt trying to work out whether this was an invitation or simply advice of a disinterested sort. Tanaquil thought better of asking the girl to try the food; she wasn't hungry. She was feeling slightly sick, as if the lie she'd told had become truth.

She dismissed Arunthia again, and this time the girl went. Would Tanaquil ever see her again? Would the girl remember her words, perhaps as a talisman, a spark of light in the wild night?

The flutes were still playing, high over the rustle of sistra, as Tanaquil wrapped herself in her tebenna against the coming chill of the night. How many times the round dance had been danced, hand in hand through the ages; someone dancing tonight would have danced with old Spurinna, and he might have held the hand of one of the older masters, and she in turn might have danced as a young girl with one of the elders next to her in the ring, that hands interlaced, and so on to the dawn of Etruria, in one great circle of dance back to Tarchies and Tages...

# Servius

He sat in the house of the Curia he'd had rebuilt, wondering why it was so easy to build up stone and timber, so difficult to build a city.

He shivered. He'd caught some kind of fever at Veii, he thought, that night in the field. It was cold in here, too; the walls too thick, the roof too high. The old Curia's homely intimacy had been replaced by size and grandeur, and he regretted it; but the admission of the plebeians to government had forced him to increase the size of their meeting place, that was just simple logistics.

There was a huge amount of business to get through. The building of new granaries at Ostia, promotions in the army to fill dead men's offices, support for the families of the men killed at Veii, purchase of metal from Aithalia. None of that would be contentious; in the nature of things, there would be some tussling over the promotions, plebeian and patrician factions each keen to gain more than the other, and every family having some young nephew or grandson needing a leg-up, but that was the way things were, and he'd dealt with that often enough in his career as a soldier. You sat back, you let the argument run, and then when the shouting died down, you made the appointments you had been going to make anyway. Everyone wasn't satisfied of course, but then they never would be.

Then there were the proscriptions. That might be a trickier subject. Too many of Rome's great families had hedged their bets going into the war with Veii; some had opposed Servius openly, while other men restricted themselves to snide comments about what happened when slaves became masters and the world turned upside down. You could never tell when snideness might slide into treason. All the more reason to strike before it did, and strike hard, and without warning.

They were in the middle of the shouting bit right now. This had all been better managed in Velx, where the Vipienas' word, or the General's, once, had been final; but everyone wanted a say in Rome, argument being part of the price you had to pay for meritocracy. (And it was strange how in a system that everyone said rewarded merit, by pure coincidence the sons of the great families had always been more meritorious than anyone else.)

"What has Gnaeus ever done?"

"He did what he was asked to."

"He stood still and waited!"

"It's what he was asked to do."

"Not much, is it?"

"Lentulus hunted down Robur."

"But he had no place in the battle."

"Well, he did what he was asked to, then. You can't have it both ways."

Dust motes shifted in the light, in the narrow space between the tall walls. The black stone of the floor shone greasy and wet. Servius frowned; the black stone covered the great pit of ghosts, that was opened once a year, and as he looked at it he felt the pull of his own ghosts, the dead Vipienas, the head buried below the Capitol. There was something wrong about this city, something that had turned Tarquinius rotten; it was an abode of death, and its ghosts were vindictive, thin, and rapacious.

The voices were becoming quieter, apart from two red-faced men who were still yelling at each other. Time to get started. Servius stood.

"Enough!" he shouted.

Instantly the place was still.

"I have heard what you have to say. It is, as always, useful. You've made some good points."

Flattery, but they sucked it up.

"Tarquinius obeyed his orders. His men were valiant; Mamarke, Titus, Sextus."

"And Strephon!" someone shouted, but he ignored.

"I confirm them in their offices. Gnaeus did well. Him I also confirm. Among the hoplites, promotions for three men distinguished by their bravery; Lecne Apatrui, Decimus Camilius Felix, Marcus called Baldy."

There was a murmur at that, and a solitary cheer. Not so much that Lecne was an Etruscan; Servius had been waiting for a post to open up for him, and the appointment was expected. But Baldy – the absence of family name and patronymic was telling. And the Romans didn't like it.

"And among my slingers: Lentulus. I'm putting him in charge of his own century."

The few cheers for Lentulus were drowned out by protests. Servius had broken the rule that a man had to buy his own weapons for the slingers, and now one of them was being made an officer. Well, that was out of the way now, and there was one easy way to calm this crowd. One of the Cornelii, two of the Gabii, young Sextus Valerius, Marcus Junius. Some of them would be adding those up; five, six if you included Gnaeus, against three outsiders. That should keep them quiet.

"What about Strephon?" someone called. He ignored it.

There was still some commotion; Baldy was at the centre of a noisy celebration, and a couple of men none of whose relatives had been picked out were complaining in deliberately penetrating voices. It died down at last, and Servius smiled.

"Lictors," he said; "stand forward."

They knew. He'd told them moments before the meeting began; they'd had no chance to tell anyone. He started reading the names.

Aufidius. Faustus. (The son, that was. Innocent, perhaps, but too dangerous to let remain.) Rufinius.

He saw Tarquinius scrambling to his feet, Mamarke – bless Mamarke for being in the right place at the right time – pulling him down, whispering urgently to him. He remembered; Rufinius was Strephon's uncle, and Strephon part of Tarquinius' coterie. These things couldn't be helped.

Kalkas. (Even-handed; a Greek among so many Romans. That would help the medicine slip down, even if Kalkas hadn't done much more than spout a few imprecations when he lost rank in the army reorganisation.) Rutilus. Appius Clodius. Strephon.

Immediate uproar. Tarquin was on his feet and shouting, now, and Mamarke looking desperately unhappy, and some (Servius' slingers, and some of the infantry) were applauding, their voices were almost drowned by the opposition – cavalry, friends of Tarquin, the younger members of the house.

"All of these I now declare enemies of Rome," he said, forcing his voice to be heard above the din.

"Enemies of Servius, Friends of Rome," someone shouted. He couldn't see who it was.

Gods, that was a dangerous slogan. He hoped it didn't catch on. Not like the chicken thing.

"Enemies of Rome. They have one day to put themselves beyond our boundaries. One day, after which their lives are ours."

All done without blood, he hoped, as long as they saw their own interest, and fled. All done quickly, efficiently, striking like a viper in the long grass, before anyone saw what was coming. Without blood, without guilt.

"Their property goes to the treasury of the city. The city they betrayed."

"Not true!" Tarquinius shouted. "Strephon was with us in the attack on Veii. He was one of the best of us. One of the bravest."

"He's been plotting with enemies of Rome."

"Damn you. I'd know if he had."

"Would you? An actor as good as he is?"

Tarquin drew breath. Suddenly he was on the back foot.

"It's an act. A marvellous act. Getting close to you. Your greatest supporter. He had you fooled. He was always a friend of Robur's."

"He was only a child when Robur was exiled." Tarquin still thinking, but the doubts had begun.

"He was still a friend to Robur. He still is."

"And what about Robur?"

"What about Robur? Indeed. Because we have him. We have him, now. And what do we do with him?"

That had changed the subject. Not for the better, really; he'd dreaded that it would come to this. But he needed something more to give them; something to silence the doubters, something to make his supporters rejoice, to make his detractors fear. He needed blood. He'd feared this for so long; he'd feared making Robur a martyr; he'd feared what would happen if he slid from being a popular king, a king of the people, a king with open hands who offered arms and wealth and opportunity and, yes, roast chicken, to a king whose hands were dirty with blood and whose business was the business of fear. Yet now he'd taken the step, he felt an overwhelming relief.

"Kill him! Kill him!" they were calling, not a single voice against. He remembered Tarquinius talking about a triumph. Even in this moment, he felt impelled to speak for mercy, and it wasnt completely a sham.

He was shouted down, of course.

"Kill him! Make an end of him!"

"Well," he said, "Robur will await our justice."

But he thought to himself; it's not just me who's changed. Today the people have got the taste of blood, and like hounds gone rogue, they might turn on their master.

***

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.

***

Robur was still alive. Another loose end to be tied up. A price that had to be paid. Servius remembered the Vipienas' deaths. Was there where it had all started? He longed for the cleanness of war, the open battlefield under heaven; now he was alone in the darkness, here under the Capitol, in the prison Ancus Marcius had made.

He trod carefully. Do it in the dark, he'd decided, where there were no eyes to see, not even his own. A thin crack under the door he'd locked behind him, at the top of the stairs, let in all the light there was to the first great vaulted chamber; a hundred shades of darkness, from furry grey to velvet black, in which it would be easy to misstep, not to see the single round opening that gave on to the second, more cramped, prison. Only a hole, and a rope; to this prison there were no stairs, and once the rope was drawn up, there was no way out, nor, for Robur, would there ever be.

He felt the damp in his bones. He felt the weight of Rome over his head. He felt the hard cold stone under his bare feet. A hard decision he'd made; but he'd always said, "If you want a thing doing, do it yourself," and he wouldn't push this act on to someone else, he'd take responsibility for it personally.

There was no one in the upper chamber. He'd made sure of that; no prisoner, no warder. There had been a prisoner last week, Mamarke had told him, but he'd been freed, in the end; an old cobbler who had said Servius wanted to conquer the moon, once he'd taken over the world, and blamed him for melting Romans down to make tallow.

("What happened to him?" Servius had asked.

"His son's looking after him. He's clearly insane."

"Clearly," Servius had said, and smiled.)

As for Robur, he was secure enough without a guard; no one got out of the lower prison alive. One way or another, they died, by violence or starvation, or the cold, or the damp.

Careful, he thought. Go slowly. He saw a patch of more intense darkness in front. That would be the opening, he thought, and relaxed his watchfulness a little to take another step forward without feeling the ground first.

His foot found nothing under it. Only the heel caught the edge of the hole, and held, and it was all he could do to stop himself crying out with the fear and shock. Whatever that deeper darkness held, it was not the entrance to the depths.

He felt around with his hands. There was a rope up there somewhere, slung over a hook in the roof above. He thought how stupid he would look, if someone could see; groping and waving sightlessly, moving only from the waist, afraid to move his feet other than to shuffle along the edge of the gap, feeling with his toes for the rim. At last he found the end of the rope, and followed its length with his hands down to the floor, where it lay coiled and dusty.

Grit scratched at his palms as he paid out the coils. This prison didn't get much use; a payment or a sacrifice covered most crimes. What couldn't be paid for? Parricide, incest, treason; even treason was more often punished by exile than by death. Parricide, incest, treason; and a more nebulous crime, the crime of being dangerous.

He'd paid out all the rope and still he hadn't heard, in the silence, the slap of the rope's end on the floor below. Was it not long enough? He should have measured the rope as he'd let it down, hand over hand. How many times had he moved his right hand past his left? He couldn't remember. If it was ten, let's say, that would be thirty, maybe thirty-five feet of rope; how deep was the pit? No, the rope had to be long enough; it wouldn't be there if it wasn't.

He held tightly to the rope, lifted his feet from the ground, and grabbed for the rope with his legs. It swung wildly for a moment as he clung to it; as its movement slowed, he began to climb down, moving hand over hand, foot over foot, embracing the rope like a lover, letting himself slowly down into the dark. He heard only the creak of the rope on the hook above. If it should break, if it should break... it wouldn't, of course, someone must be maintaining the place, someone must have checked.

He felt the end of the rope slip between his feet, so that for a moment his hands took his entire weight before he brought his feet up and his legs together and managed to trap the rope again between them. And still he wasn't on the ground. Again the calculations flickered through his mind; ten pays out, maybe some more, thirty feet, it had to be, maybe more than that.

Below him only blackness. If he jumped, how far would he fall? Chances were he was a few inches from the floor. Chances. He'd trusted his luck so far, and it had carried him. About to jump, he suddenly thought of what he'd forgotten; even if he made the bottom without hurt, would he be able to find the rope again? Would the end hang too far above him to climb back? He felt the rope trembling between his hands like a live thing.

He let himself fall.

He felt the breath go out of him as he hit hard. He staggered, threw out an arm for balance, felt the end of the rope whip against his outflung hand. Good; he could still reach it. The noise he made was alarmingly loud.

"Who's there?"

Of course he'd been heard. Robur's voice sounded weak. He tried to fix where the voice had come from, but was baffled by echoes. Only when Robur coughed, a small, dry sound, did Servius feel sure enough of his direction to start, silently, moving across the floor.

He was sure he could kill Robur easily enough; an unarmed man, weak with hunger and illness. If he'd been another man he would have shouted: "It's Servius, come to kill you," or "I am your death"; he wouldn't have crept silently towards him. But he'd decided to do it in the dark; no lamp, nothing to obscure his purpose or occupy his hands. Robur's last sight would be of blackness, blackness and nothing. He would never see the man who killed him.

And he'd do it in silence. He didn't want to hear Robur's voice; didn't want to hear a last defence, a whining plea, defiance. But he could hear Robur's breathing now, a rough edge to it, rasping in a dry throat.

Robur must know his death was coming. He was Roman; he would know. No one ever descended into this darkness and came out alive. But he wouldn't know when, or how; having been in the darkness so long, he might wonder, now, if he'd ever heard that noise, or if he'd imagined it.

Servius crept another few paces across the floor. He kept his breath even, his stride short, silent as a cat on its padded feet. He tracked that rough breath he'd heard. It was closer. He could smell Robur's sweat on the air, sour and sharp. He felt suddenly weak, not wanting to continue; but someone had to do it, and better him than another, he told himself.

He could have just left Robur here. Someone would forget to leave food and water, a chill would carry him off. There was a small risk, there was always a risk; he didn't know whether Robur was fettered, didn't know how fit he was, how much three days of darkness and starvation might have taken out of him. There was really no need to kill him. Yet without doing it himself, he could never be sure; and he needed to be sure.

He took one more step, and as he did so was startled to hear, directly in front of him, Robur's voice. "Is there anyone..."

He knew he had Robur then, and bent, rushing the prisoner, pushing his shoulder forward, feeling a body slump under him, between himself and the floor. The fall should have knocked most of the fight out of Robur, but the dark was full of squirming body and thrashing limbs; Servius felt something that might have been a hip, or a knee or an elbow, thrust at him, and arched his back and flung himself sideways to avoid it, feeling all the time with his hands for what he needed, riding his prisoner the same way he used to bareback the unbroken horses. He found an arm and twisted it, feeling which way the elbow moved, pulling the arm up behind Robur to immobilise him; and now he knew, without seeing, exactly the position of the man he was to kill - his back to Servius, his right arm held in a lock behind him, his hips under Servius. He kept the armlock onehanded, moved his right hand up to the soft hollow of the shoulderblade and the neck, and quickly across, hooking his arm round Robur's neck, pulling back to choke him. Robur struggled, pushing up on the one arm he had free, but it was no use; Servius leant into him, lying on him with his full weight, feeling him toss and wriggle, but with ever decreasing force, till at last Robur sagged limply.

A clever man might sham unconsciousness, hoping for a moment of inattention to give him a last chance. Servius kept the pressure up, counting his own heartbeats, the roaring of his blood in his ears, till he was certain Robur must be dead.

It was done. Servius exhaled, breathed deeply in again, wondered why he had been holding his breath.

He must have let his hold slacken, for suddenly, Robur bucked and twisted, strong as a pig when it sees the knife. He got his shoulder under Servius', and tried to throw him off, and nearly succeeded; he'd managed to turn himself around, and now he'd got a hand free and was going for Servius' eyes, since there wasn't enough room between them to get a swing for a good punch.

Only one thing to do; disengage quickly, then attack again. Servius sat back, relaxing his hold, pulling his arms roughly free; and just as quickly threw himself forwards, both hands finding Robur's throat, his whole weight thrust on to his wrists. He felt, under his thumbs, Robur's blood surging, the artery hard as a cable. Neither man had uttered a word; he heard only Robur's feet kicking against the floor, the roaring of his own blood.

Stop the breath, stop the blood; he pressed deeper, harder, felt the pulse waver and die. To have a man's life in one's hands, people said, and never knew the meaning of it; now he felt through his own fingertips the moment of death, as he never had when he'd thrust a sword or spear into a man's guts, or slashed at an enemy's throat. It was intimate, and horrifying, and he realised, as he felt Robur slacken under his hands, enjoyable.

This time he kept his hands on Robur's throat. You didn't get to play the same trick twice, he thought. Sitting there in the dark, pressing down, his whole weight was on his hands; his wrists began to ache, but he kept pushing, till he knew what lay under him was meat, and nothing more.

***

"It's where the augur said to put it," the foreman said.

"But it's still in the wrong place."

"I just do what the augur says."

Servius turned his back on the foreman, looking along to where the land had been marked out with stakes and rope. He shook his head. Augur or no augur, it was wrong. The land outside sloped downwards to the gate, and there was a huge blind area just over the shoulder of the hill, where an enemy could gather unseen. He'd come out to see the work on the new walls - everyone was building walls now, Perusna and Tarchna and Curtun and Velathri; he'd come with Tanaquil, and Mamarke, and Tullia (for once amenable, which he put down to Tanaquil's good influence) and a couple of dozen other attendants.

"Does it matter so much?" Mamarke asked.

Servius sketched the land out with his hands, showed Mamarke the problem. "Don't you see?" he asked.

"I do. But..."

"It's important. Get this wrong, we might as well not build a wall at all."

There were problems, of course. The augur protested. There had to be a certain number of gates. They had to be in the right places. Not the right places as Servius saw it, but one facing each direction of the heavens, equidistant, one for each of the gods, gods of life and death and boundaries; sixteen gates.

"Sixteen is too many," Servius objected. "We can't defend sixteen. Sixteen weaknesses. Not enough men."

"None the less, sixteen have to be built."

This was a nonsense. "At least build them narrower," he said.

"You can't argue with an augur."

That was Tanaquil, and she should know.

"I can. And I need to."

"The gods..."

"Bugger the gods. It's not the gods we have to fear. It's Tarchna."

"Leave Tarchna alone."

"Don't worry," he said; "I've no plans in that direction. But whether they'll leave us alone is more of a question."

So sixteen gates there were, and one of them in the worst possible place to have a gate; but some of them were no wider than a man's shoulders.

The walls might not have been what Tanaquil wanted, not strong, regularly coursed stone, topped with many towers; but they'd be effective - deep ditches, and high earth banks that would slow any army, and stop most. Only at a few points, and at the gates, were huge soft tufa blocks used to build a true wall.

They walked along the line that had been laid out; in one place the banks had already been thrown up to their full height, the soil a raw scar on the landscape, but for most of its length only a low mound ran alongside the beginnings of the ditch, and towards the little spur of the Viminal hill and the long sloping table of the Esquiline there was only a line of rope slung from roughly hammered-in stakes.

There were men working further along, slicing the turf up where the ditch was to be dug. Mud had already spattered their legs and they worked slowly, without enthusiasm. Two leant on their spades and chatted, till they saw Servius' group approaching, and bent their backs to the work again.

Tanaquil had told him how Tarquinius once stripped to work with his men; once, he would have, too - would have worked with them, drunk with them, told them tales, listened to theirs. The way he'd been with Vulca, man to man. But the way they started work as he approached showed him as nothing else did how they saw him, like birds frightened of a scarecrow.

"You're getting along with it?" he asked genially, and they said they were, and he asked a few questions about the lie of the land, and where they would join up with the next section, and they gave him answers, and one of them put a mattock in his hand and asked him to turn over a turf or two. But that wasn't work; it was a symbol of work, a pretence, and he felt false and ill at ease.

"How many days' work have you got left?" he asked one of them.

"Too damn many."

""Was supposed to be one day a week," another volunteered, "but we've been told it's two now."

"Rome's at war," Servius said. "Or might be. We need those walls."

"No doubt. And I need to get my fields ploughed."

"Now?" Servius raised an eyebrow. "Bit late for ploughing."

"In a manner of speaking. There's always work on a farm."

"It's not ploughing, and it's not harvest. You'll survive."

The man scowled at him, but he knew he had the right of it. Every able bodied man was working two days a week on the walls, apart from officers and the lictors.

"There's those that don't work," the first man said. "If you know someone, they say, you can get off."

"Do you know anyone who has?" Servius asked.

"No."

"Well, there you are."

"I don't know that kind of people. If I did, I wouldn't be working here, would I?"

There was nothing could be said to that argument, so Servius changed the subject, encouraging the men to imagine how the walls would look to an approaching enemy, how the northern Celts for instance, or the southern Greeks, might have cast envious eyes on the growing wealth of the city, but this would deter them; but he knew, all the time, the men had only half a mind on what he was saying, but were still thinking about their farms, their businesses, the way Rome had stolen their time and given them only mud and backache to show for it.

At least Servius had had the foresight to bring cakes and cheese and some thin dry sausages, which were shared out, and a paunchy wineskin did the rounds and came back much shrunk; despite the undercurrent of grumpiness, he bought a few smiles and confidences with his provisions, and rather more when he told the foreman to let the men off early for the day.

After that refreshment, the way should have been easier, even though it lay over rough ground now, too rough for a chariot to take though easy enough to walk; but they all felt tired, after the wine, and the long uphill slog took the breath out of them.

"They don't like it," Tanaquil said.

"No."

"Rome was the place they came to get away from this kind of thing. Forced labour, excessive privilege..."

"What privilege?"

"Look at who's working there. Farmers, butchers, smallholders. Is Tarquin doing forced labour? Mamarke? Gaius? Any of the nobles? Who do you know from our families who's working on the walls?"

"They all have things to do."

"Tarquin? Really?"

He looked away. Here it comes, he thought, she'll expect me to do something about her son.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Tarquin doesn't matter. And I know Gaius has his troops to drill. But you've built your kingdom on the plebs, and now the plebs arent happy. I'm just telling you how it looks to them."

"I know how it looks to them. But walls must be built."

Walls indeed had to be built. The land had been too permeable, out here, in the land that wasn't quite city, nor country neither. There were streets that tapered off into rural tracks, or ended in gates on to fields, or simply gave out altogether in a dusty circle of ruts where the carts turned to go back. Rows of stone-built houses stopped suddenly; in one place a single house stood unfinished, as if waiting for the city to catch it up. This was a nowhere land, without definition, without boundaries. Without laws or reason; roads and tracks wandered, turned odd angles to avoid a shack or a field corner, came to dead ends. Someone had put a shack up overnight in the plain centre of the street, and now, years later, rebuilt in stone and with a second storey added, it had become The House In The Middle Of The Road, as if it was a monument to be celebrated, not a nuisance.

This was not Rome, exactly, but it wasn't not Rome, either. Not one thing nor the other. The wall would cut the land between two houses, leaving one in, one out of the city; would cut one field from another, would chop an orchard in half between the rows of the trees. Everything this side would be Roman; everything the other side would be cast out.

At last the long climb was over; they could look back along the line of the rope, where the wall would stand. Its ambition was impressive, carving a huge curve out of the land. From here they could see the city's hills; the lumpen Palatine, craggy Capitol, and beyond the silver ribbon of the Tiber, the long slope of the Janiculum, dark with trees.

Servius felt some satisfaction at the sight, even if the wall was still largely a matter of rope and stakes and hope. Tanaquil was less enthusiastic; judging from what she'd seen that morning, she thought it would take two years, perhaps more, to finish the wall.

"We just have to hope nobody decides to attack while your wall isn't finished." Damn the woman, she could spoil the best of days with an acid aside.

"You think they will?" Mamarke asked.

"If I was in charge of Tarchna, I would," she answered; "because if I waited, it would be too late."

"Fortunately the current rulers of Tarchna aren't as clever as Tanaquil," Servius said. "Or as bloodthirsty."

It was a good point. He wondered if he'd be in time to take the Etruscan cities before they, too, organised their defences; the longer he played this game, the harder it got. He knew, too, he was up against his own people; he could push them only so far before the indulgence he'd won with his victory over Veii ran out, and they started to complain, and to remember how things were better, once, under Tarquinius, or Ancus Marcius, and from there it was a quick step to plotting and revolt.

"I wonder," Mamarke was saying, but his voice tailed off, as if he was afraid of the thought. "I wonder... Are the walls to keep the monsters out, or in?"

# Tarquin

"He's gone too far this time," Tarquin was saying. "And after I saved his sorry arse at Veii."

"Regular orders," Kallisthenes said. "What's unusual about putting men in the same armour? Saves money, at least."

"It's not the way things used to be done."

"So, things change. Aren't you usually the one who wants them to?"

It was a morning of bad temper. One of Aglaia's girls had just reported she was pregnant, and it was too late, Aglaia thought after a cursory examination, to do anything about it, so up went the costs of her establishment (and she'd nearly hit Kallisthenes when he suggested there was nothing wrong with the time-honoured custom of infanticide by exposure); Kallisthenes had heard that a distant cousin he particularly disliked had taken advantage of his prolonged absence in Rome to take over his father's estate; and then Tarquin had heard about Servius' latest edict on the army, and that seemed the third and worst stroke of bad fortune on what was anyway an unlucky day in the calendar.

It was the same old company, Tarquin's set, Sethre and Thesanthei and Aglaia and Tullia and Mamarke, and Kallisthenes keeping up his act of wise old cynic. It was getting on for midday and Thesanthei was already half drunk, or hadn't quite sobered up from last night. Strephon was here too, though he was supposed to have left Rome.

("You should have ridden out," Sethre had said.

"Nonsense," said Tarquin; "Servius' anger won't last, someone must have got to him, I'll sort it out," but he'd not mentioned the matter to Servius - somehow Servius was always in a bad temper when Tarquin saw him, so he judged it better to let the matter lie - and meanwhile, Aglaia kept Strephon well hidden.

Still, Sethre had pressed, it would have done no harm if Strephon had put himself out of harm's way, somewhere in Campania or the Alban hills; Tarquin could probably have arranged for his friend to borrow his mother's villa, and since that was only a day's ride from Rome, Strephon wouldn't be cut off from his friends. He'd be back soon enough. Or if Strephon didn't mind slumming it, Sethre would be pleased to offer him the hospitality of his house in Velzna, or rather, his mother's house...

But Strephon said damn no, he wasn't scared, and he wasn't running: and that, for the moment, was the end of it, though Strephon was in a sombre mood, and there was no play-acting today, and few jokes.)

"It's not just change. It's mean mindedness. We saved his arse at Veii; the infantry was falling apart. And as our reward we get what? Strephon proscribed, and then he tells us we look too flashy. No red tebennas, he says, no gold plated armour, no this, no that, and gives us dull harness with no shine to it and helmets that look like pisspots. How are we supposed to get any respect..."

"Our horses are still better than anyone else's," Sethre said.

"My horses, you mean."

"Well, yes."

"He'll be taking those next." Tarquin flung himself down on a couch; the cat which had been lurking underneath it jumped out, and ran towards the door, and under the low table, body low to the floor.

"There is a point to what Servius is doing," Tullia said.

"To make us look small. He's already given the plebs the taste of blood with Robur."

"Surprising he didn't have him executed publicly," Kallisthenes said. "Is that a Roman thing?"

No one bothered to answer. Tarquin didn't understand why Servius hadn't made Robur's execution the focal point of his triumph, but he didn't much care.

"It's true the outfits Servius proposes lack style," Kallisthenes went on. "A good goldsmith could improve the infantry shields, for instance, and I'll miss the plumes you wore in the cavalry - it was a brave sight, the feathers in a battle, waving softly, like a cloud. Oh! The poetry of it! And the red..."

"Oh, shut up," Tullia said. Her voice was as sharp as her little teeth. "The point is..."

"You're going to be boring," Tarquin said. "Boring or disagreeable."

"Maybe I am. But the point is, he looks at the sky. And where your father saw an eagle, Servius sees starlings."

Thesanthei roared with laughter at that, and the rest smiled, but Tullia went on; "Starlings are hardly noble birds, but look at the way they wheel in a single movement. Look at the density of their flocks."

"Always looking for food."

"And they get it. Look, you want a land of eagles; he wants a black cloud of starlings, that will eat up all the cities of Italy and shit them out."

"Not much there room for bravery and elegance."

"No one said Servius was civilised. But he's efficient."

"Well, if all you want to do is win..."

"You don't?"

"Not at that cost."

Everyone else had fallen silent, almost as if they were embarrassed to witness the two quarrelling.

"You really don't want to win?" She sounded disappointed. "Because I do."

"And you don't care how you do it?"

"Of course I care! But I want to win. That above all. And I can see what Servius is driving at. And he's right, at least partly."

"Only partly."

She tossed her head; her nostrils were flared, like a horse's when it has run a race, and her earrings clashed as she turned.

"You don't get it, Tarquin, you just don't. Whatever he does, he's building a city for you to take. He'll misstep, in time. It's inevitable. We just need to wait for it."

"And what do I do I the meantime?" he asked, holding on to his sour mood though her own flash of anger reminded him what he loved in her, the fire and suddenness of her.

"Oh, you just look... beneficent, and brave, and magnificent. Though admittedly, maybe without the red cloak or the flashy helm."

"And you?"

"What I do is wait."

That was food for thought, and needed chewing on; but Thesanthei and Sethre had got bored listening to the argument, and had laid out a game of robbers - from the look of it, black was winning already, and Aglaia was leaning over to whisper something to Sethre, who had the white pieces. Kallisthenes, meanwhile, was pouring wine for himself and Mamarke - the two seemed to have become close recently, perhaps because both found themselves slightly out of sympathy with the rest of Tarquin's clique, one too old and the other still too tightly bound to Servius and his projects. That left Strephon sitting alone; he was feeding the cat, which had crept out again from under the table, with leftovers of cheese from their breakfast.

He really should have gone. His uncle Rufinius had gone to stay with his wife's family in Cisra; people said though he'd taken nothing in his saddlebag, his wife had walked out of the house in enough jewellery to buy them half a city anywhere they wanted to go, or so people said. He could have joined them there; he could have waited at Tanaquil's villa; he could have gone to Tarchna, and Tanaquil's name would have got him a welcome in Velzna, too; or he could simply have gone up country and disappeared for a few weeks, tickling trout or hunting, which he enjoyed as well as a true countryman for all his city sophistication. And here he was, not acting, not enjoying a poetry reading or a mime, but sitting in luxurious imprisonment playing with a cat.

"Bugger! That's my bloody king!"

Sudden reversals happen more often in the game of robbers than they do in life, and perhaps Aglaia's whispered advice had something to do with it; from a winning position, Thesanthei's black pieces had been routed, the sharp little king-piece isolated, surrounded by whites. He swept his remaining pieces off the board, rolled them over in the palm of his hand a couple of times, and then started putting them back on the starting line of the board, carefully ensuring an exact placement, each one centred on its square, so that the line was quite straight, unlike Sethre's rough straggle of pieces.

"I'll kill you this time," he said, "for sure," and made to move his first piece; but his hand was still in the air, indecisive between the two moves he could have made with it, when there was knocking at the door.

"Not open," Aglaia yelled, and said, to no one in particular, "Aphrodite's arse, the poor girls have to get some sleep some time." But the knocking carried on, and in the end she had to go to see what was happening.

"I'll give them a piece of my mind," she said, but she never had a chance; as soon as she opened the door a crack, it was shoved roughly back, and armed men were pushing into the room, spreading out, looking around.

"Where is he?" asked one of the men, but another had already seen Strephon, who had got up, but uselessly, too late to run. The cat had already disappeared, probably out into the street, and never came back, though no one could ever, later, remember seeing it go.

It was over stupidly quickly, while Thesanthei was still holding on to his tiny King, before the cup Kallisthenes had dropped hit the ground; one man crossed the room, three steps, four, and rammed his sword into Strephon's body, once, hard and quick.

The rest was clearing up; the other men spreading out across the room, the killer pulling out his sword and wiping it, once each side, on the couch before thrusting it back in the scabbard. Strephon stood, for a moment, his eyes puzzled, and a dribble of blood came from the corner of his mouth; and then he fell.

Then Aglaia began to scream, and Tarquin started shouting that Servius really, really, really had gone too far this time; and it was only Mamarke who saw the lictor standing at the door nod to him, and depart.

# Servius

He had got it all wrong. He expected to feel many things after Robur's death. Relief, for instance; indeed he did feel relief, that the decision was made, at last. But he hadn't expected that savage joy. He hadn't, either, expected sadness.

He'd never been sad before, and not before or during the deed itself, but it was if having felt a man's life fading away, he understood his own mortality more clearly; or as if having given in to the people's desire for blood, he had transgressed some boundary of his own making. He'd killed before in war, in a brawl once, to save himself; he'd never been an executioner, never killed a defenceless man. (Once, in a fight, storming a small town's walls, he'd disarmed his opponent, and could hardly bring himself to make the final thrust; he still remembered the man's face, the shock in his eyes as he saw his sword flying out of his grasp, and realised how fast death would stick its claws in him.) He wasn't the Servius he knew, any more; kingship, or Tanaquil, or Rome, had twisted him, or perhaps he had always been twisted and had only just found it out.

Sadness. It was like wet autumn weather, a greyness that never let up.

Preparations were under way for a move on one of the Latin cities; but this time the planning hardly interested him, drilling his army became a chore. He felt distant from things; it was like that feeling he'd had once or twice when he'd slept awkwardly, and woke to feel one arm numb, as if it didn't quite belong to him. He had to force himself to focus, and it hurt, shocking himself into wakefulness like treading down on a numb foot and feeling the prickles of pain burst into his flesh.

Tarquin was difficult. The incident with Strephon; that had been badly handled. He'd been so sure that Strephon would run, like his uncle, that he'd not thought to tell the lictors not to pursue him, to soften the iron laws with temporary leniency. His gamble on Tarquin at Veii had succeeded, but would it again? He was minded to give Tarquin's command of the cavalry to one of his own men - but they were all footsoldiers; the charioteers he'd known were all too old, now, and there were few good drivers or riders among the Etruscans of Rome who weren't, in one way or another, bound to Tarquin, as friends or debtors or members of his own troop of horse. Brave and magnificent as he was, Tarquin was difficult.

He sounded out Mamarke, laying out his reasons; that he couldn't trust Tarquin, that the trouble over Strephon had pulled the link between them so thin it was fraying, or perhaps even broken; that Tarquin couldn't be allowed to be the only officer in the entire army not to accept the new rules on equipment. And Mamarke, even-handed as always, reported back what Servius needed to know.

"He understands his men. There are no floggings for petty infractions in his troop."

"No discipline, you mean."

"There's enough."

"He only refrains from flogging his men because he knows Gnaeus flogs his. And you flog yours."

"It makes him look good? Yes, I suppose. But I don't think that's how he sees it."

"More fool him. It makes his men look shoddy."

"It makes you look harsh."

"They call me a tyrant, do they?"

Mamarke, for once, didn't answer. He coughed gently.

"That was a joke."

Mamarke ventured a small smile, which was less reassuring than none at all.

"We can't allow individuals to unsettle the state. Tarquin unbalances things."

"Only in small ways."

"Rome has a greater destiny than any of us. Greater than Tarquin. Greater than me. The freedom of the many demands the sacrifice of the few."

"That's almost a quotation," Mamarke said. Servius was congratulating himself on having created a statement of lapidary concision and sure memorability, before he realised Mamarke might not have meant that as a compliment.

"You can't sack him," Mamarke said, flatly. (No "with respect," Servius noted, and that was unusual, at least for Mamarke.)

"I can't?"

"In charge of his horsemen he's no harm. I think the men like to see one man get away with that little difference. It makes them well disposed to army life, that the army tolerates it. If you take his command... they won't like it."

" _His_ men won't like it."

"The others won't, either. You'll have trouble; more than you'd have if you kept him."

"I want him gone, though. At least for a time."

Mamarke nodded, and kept his head bowed for a short time, and then nodded again, as if he'd reached some kind of conclusion.

"I can only think of one place that might tear him away from Rome."

"Tarchna?"

"No." Mamarke smiled. "I can see why you'd think that. But Tarquin's dreams are bigger than Tarchna can hold. He dreams of the League, a great Etruscan kingdom; the whole of Italy brought together. Tarchna is only one of the Twelve; Velzna is the only place they all come together."

"I see. So you'd suggest I send him as an ambassador?"

"Gods, no!"

Servius glared at Mamarke, who coloured a little, but went on.

"You don't want him to see your hand in this, at all."

"Well how..."

"Tell him you would be unhappy if he went."

"I don't see... oh, I do."

"You wouldn't, you couldn't forbid it, but it would be best if he didn't."

"And then, of course, he will."

So that was done, he hoped, heading Tarquin off the same way you corralled a restive young bull.

But he had started having bad dreams; climbing that narrow passage up between the cliffs at Veii, but when he arrived at the top, it was Robur's head, and Caile's, and Avle's, which looked down at him from the gate, and when he got inside the city, it was a maze of streets without exits, and houses without doors, in which he was soon lost, and the streets became narrower the longer he wandered, till they seemed to be closing in on him.

He thought of the story the general had told him once, of the Minotaur in his maze, his head too heavy with the weight of his horns. He'd forgotten the name of the hero who killed him, there was some girl involved, who had helped, but he remembered the pitiful beast, doomed and solitary.

That was the year he heard Rasce had died. At the funeral he wanted to weep, to show the world that even a king could have a true friend; but his eyes, even stung by the smoke, were dry.

# Tanaquil

Every winter now Tanaquil thought might be her last. There was no reason for that thought, really; her health was good, she was not so very old, and yet every autumn as the days shortened and the trees became bare, and the sun became pale, the light grey, she wondered if she had seen her last summer, and felt she might not reach another spring. When she sat in her chambers she always felt cold; though she saw the fire flickering, she hardly seemed to feel it. The cold had crept into her bones.

Tullia was often with her now. She wondered if Tullia was becoming the daughter Tarquinia had never really been; the daughter she'd wanted, who could hold her own in politics, who understood augury, a woman strong and capable like Tanaquil herself. She listened to Tanaquil talking about the Tarchna of decades ago, and about the recent changes in the Federation's power base, with equal interest, whether it was real or feigned. (And it might well be feigned; Tullia was expert at listening without giving any clue to what she was thinking, her face carefully arranged in a polite counterfeit of interest.) But she'd seen Tullia with young Tarquinius enough to realise, despite any misdirection, what was going on there; and though Tanaquil herself thought the match would have been a good one, there was no way the Master would allow it.

It was a difficult conversation to start. "You want to be careful what you get up to with young Tarquinius," she said, and thought that sounded too moralistic, too grandmotherly. Tullia's face darkened; Tullia angered easily, more easily than Tanaquil.

"I'm an Etruscan woman. I can do as I please."

"I didn't say don't do it. I said be careful."

"Careful?" The sneer was evident.

"You won't be allowed to marry him. He's already married, you know that."

"To that..."

"To your sister. And you know your father won't let him divorce her."

"So?"

"So what you do is your affair, I know. Believe me" – she saw she had only a moment to press her point before Tullia's anger would erupt, and all hope of managing her would be lost – "I'm as proud of my Etruscan heritage as you are, I'm hardly about to give up my freedom of action to any man, I've been fighting for better treatment for women in Rome for years, I'm just telling you to be careful. Please, Tullia."

"And by careful, you mean..."

"I'm not telling you to give him up. I'm not even telling you to be careful who you're seen with. But for Tinia's sake..."

"Tinia!..."

"... don't get yourself with child."

"There are ways," Tullia said sulkily.

"You think I don't know? And it wouldn't hurt if you were to be seen less with him – or not in Rome; or not without an excuse, a hunt, or the games, or a family outing... You know what Romans think about women at banquets. Just find excuses. Or have him visit you, secretly, without those hangers-on of his."

"But why the hell we should all pretend to be goody-goody little Romans, to pander to Roman prejudice, to fit in with Roman ways and Roman wives and Roman brutishness..."

There was something in this rage of Tullia's that Tanaquil never quite understood. They had the same views, they led the same lives, and yet there was a wild edge to Tullia, not quite unhinged, but dangerous.

"We only do it while we have to. Things will change."

"In your lifetime?"

Tanaquil shrugged.

"I didn't think so."

"You know the penalties, too, under Roman law."

"But I'm not Roman." She was stubborn, this Tullia.

"Your father is. And you're his property, under the Roman law."

"Not under the Etruscan laws!"

"And how long do you think Etruscan laws will last, if the Romans turn against the cities?"

That made Tullia think. Good; perhaps she'd come to understand the long game – the slow, almost imperceptible movement of nations and societies, so long that Tanaquil knew she would never live to see all the consequences of what she did here and now, that they would play out in the lives of her son and his successors, long after her death.

"You've never bowed the head." Tullia accused her, obstinate; and Tanaquil realised Tullia would never know the small humiliations of a homespun dress; the small victories of giving her daughter a name. For Tullia lived her entire life among Etruscans; here in the palace, with Tanaquil and her attendants, or with Tarquinius and his noble youth, the wealthy young aristocrats of all the Etruscan cities who flaunted their riches and lived in all ways as they would at home, but with less restraint.

"What I've done is neither here nor there," she said. "But my children are all recognised."

"You mean you've never been caught."

"Exactly what I was telling you. Don't. Get. Caught."

And that, Tanaquil thought, was the whole of the law, at least where the Romans were concerned.

Tullia had controlled her anger, though Tanaquil had seen the look on her face as she turned it away from the older woman; not hatred, but distaste, as if Tullia had seen something tasteless, even, perhaps, laughable. (Were all parents laughable to their children? Tanaquil wondered; or was it more than that?)

Tullia extended the fingers of her right hand elegantly, considered the back of her fingernails, then turned her hand and let it rest in the cupped palm of the other. You would have said it was a studied movement, but it seemed so natural; and if you'd thought it was natural, Tanaquil thought, you'd have been double-bluffed, because it was so long studied that by long practice it had become almost second nature.

She wanted to say more; wanted to excuse herself, to justify herself, to explain why she'd left Tarchna in the first place, to talk about the visions she had sometimes in the swimming golden light of sunset or the hot swirling of a fire. She wanted Tullia to understand; she wanted to understand herself. She wanted love, she wanted confidence. And she knew that she could not say another word; that it was no use, that for all she loved Tullia, they lived in two different worlds.

And now she had to deal with Manius.

***

She'd taken a villa up in the Alban hills, some time ago. It was pacified country, and had been for some time – since before she'd come to Rome with Tarquinius; but it hadn't been completely divided up and built over, as so much of the countryside nearer Rome had been. There was a touch of wildness to it, still.

Tarquinius had had some kind of an idea about retiring from politics, and taking up the life of – what, she wasn't quite sure; not quite a farmer, as he proposed not to do the work himself, nor a chieftain as he might have been in the old days, but a sort of overlord of a peaceable estate, living from his own production. The vineyard had been laid out before he died, and she had a couple of slaves look after it, bringing in hands from the nearby village for the vintage; when she stayed here, she brought her own servants, if she were going to entertain, or hired in a girl from the local village. (If she'd been in Etruria, she would have hired a young man; but this was Latium still, and Latin men never quite understood these things.) The Latin girls were sometimes rough, but there was one advantage to using them; they were completely ignorant of the identities of the guests, the King of Rome and a Faliscan spy looking just the same to them, so if she ever wanted to be able to hold a discreet council with total deniability, she would draft them in, rather than bringing her own maids. There would be a girl coming over this evening; and one of the old women from the village, who was a deft cook, but never came out of the kitchen.

The only remnant of the productive gardens on which Tarquinius had expended such thought was the set of skeps under the trees. Tanaquil had let the vegetable gardens return to grass; she wasn't here often enough to justify the work that was needed. Hemlock had invaded the meadow; you had to be careful not to mistake it for the fennel that grew wild here too, that flavoured many of the dishes her cook came up with. But the bees flourished with little care; and there was always honey for the kitchen, and enough left over to make mead over the winter. They were strange things, bees, she thought; little furry bodies that weighed nothing, that launched themselves into the clear air and foraged miles around, and you could always hear them, that low insistent buzz, quite different from the noise of flies' wings rasping or the vapid wet fluttering of moths. Here on the terrace there were a few bees hovering on the rosemary flowers; there would be more in the meadows, scattering widely in their search.

It made her smile to think of their tiny city-states; the Myrmidons, the little hoplite troops that issued out of the hive on their king's command, the neat architecture of their cities. They played for high stakes, those bees; out of all the royal brood, only one survived the slaughter. And then the whole city would be destroyed anyway, all the bees killed at the end of the year; you couldn't get the honey without ripping the hive apart.

She heard the sound of boots on the floor, echoing in the empty house.

"I'm here," she called. "On the terrace."

Manius had come alone, as she'd asked, obedient as he always was. He'd even grown his hair a little, in an attempt at Etruscan style, and thrown a purple tebenna over his shoulders. (Was that an innocent gesture, the rich colour, like his red, pointed-toed boots? Or had he worn purple as a king to his crowning?)

"It's not so easy to find, this house of yours," he said, taking her hands in his.

"It's not intended to be. I don't want the whole of Rome thinking they can turn up and be housed and fed."

"Particularly tonight."

She swung his hands a couple of times, and smiled at him. "Particularly tonight. Come, let's walk in the gardens."

They walked down to the end of the paved path, where there was a view across the valley below, and she showed him where the cattle went down to the ford to drink, and where the road he'd taken wound up the flanks of the hill.

"It doesn't seem as steep from here," he said.

"Nothing ever does, when you see it from above," she answered.

Out here there was solitude; she hadn't even brought her dogs, they were quite alone, the two of them, above the world, in the long green afternoon of early summer. You could live in retirement here. "This is how we should live our lives now," he said; "leave politics to the young people."

"And Servius."

"Well, and Servius maybe, but live like this; simply, quietly, without care."

She laughed, but gently. There was no point hurting him.

Dinner was lamb roasted with rosemary, and a stew of fruit, and barley bread; simple, but good, and with a sweet and thick wine that was nearly brown with long ageing. She'd had water heated in the kitchen and brought in great jugs to the chamber, for bathing; she would always remember the look in his eyes when he realised she really was going to sleep with him.

Manius surprised her with his elegance, his tenderness, his confidence; she'd expected him to be diffident, as he was in politics, always taking a lead from his superior. He was skilled at leading her without seeming to, holding himself back, but he took what he wanted; and for a moment she had second thoughts. Life with him could be good, here in the villa in the hills. He'd always been a friend; he could be more. They could pass the evenings together...

But she knew she could never give up; Rome always called. And she knew, if you ever fell from a stallion's back before it was well and truly broken, it would turn and trample you. There could never be retirement for her; she would last only a week, maybe only a day, before men came after her, with swords in their hands and regret in their eyes.

They woke early, in the misty hush of dawn, the air damp and cold, and she drew Manius to her to feel his warmth. The servants had gone as soon as dinner had been cleared; she warmed the remains of the wine in the embers of the fire, and they drank it sitting with the blankets tented around them, and ate honey cakes.

"I have to get back to Rome," he said.

She nodded.

"I'll be back as soon as I can get things settled. There's not much." He sighed. "I sometimes think I don't have much to show for my life. A few books, a few pieces of furniture, more pieces of armour than I really need; a rented house, no wife, no children... where did my life go?" And then he smiled, and kissed her just beneath the ear, almost clumsily, and said, "but it's all different now," and she let herself believe it, while she was still in his arms.

He didn't leave, after all, till after noon, having taken a meal of bread and goat's cheese and green olives with her. She sent him off with a flask of the sweet spiced wine.

"It gets hot in these upland woods," she said, "and you don't feel it, and the heatstroke comes suddenly. Sometimes it kills. So make sure you drink."

He smiled. She knew that smile; guileless, a smile that said they understood each other now, there were no more secrets. How little he knew. How little any man knew of a woman. He kissed her before he went, and when his horse reached the end of the gardens, he turned and waved, floating a kiss on the air.

She went to the end of the gardens, and looked down into the valley, and waited till she could see the dust rising from the road that rounded the headwaters of the stream. She could not see Manius, could hardly see the grey track of the road against the vegetation that covered the slopes below the villa, but she followed the dust cloud with her eyes till it thinned and dissipated in the still air.

***

Somehow there seemed to be far too much to do when she got back to Rome. Half of it was ceremony, and she felt herself getting impatient, wishing it were all over. Increasingly she wondered whether the gods had stopped speaking to her; sacrifices were just blood and noise and screaming, and the crunch of the mallet on the beast's skull made her wince and narrow her eyes as she had never done when they simply slit the animal's throat in the old, Etruscan way.

Even the temple of Menrva seemed to have been taken over by savagery; Diana, as the Romans called her, was a different god, or a twisted shadow of the god to whom Tanaquil had made her vows. Menrva was a god of the open heath, a god who wielded her thunderbolts in joy; she was the god of the foot-race, the horse races, of the lovers in the woods. She was a god for women who loved to run or ride, a god for girls who danced till they felt giddy, a god also of weaving and making, of crafts, of healing and the arts of the mind; everything about her was expansive, generous, noble. Menrva hunted words down the lines of a poem, wove philosophies and omens into the life of a city. But this Diana was something else; a thin god, mean and sour.

She wondered by what right the Romans changed the gods. Sometimes they didn't; on the Capitol, Menrva was still worshipped as herself, with Tinia and Uni, though they had romanised names; and the doctors of Rome had recognised her as the healing Minerva. But her temple on the Aventine had been taken over by Diana; not the same god at all.

Tarquin had told her that the Romans denied Diana had anything to do with healing, or with poetry or music.

"I suppose they have their own man gods to do manly things?"

"Of course," he said smoothly. "There's Apollo for singing and dancing and poetry, and Asklepios is the god charged with healing and medicine."

"Romans can't bear women to be doing anything other than breeding and spinning wool," she said. After all these years of living with them it still made her angry.

"They're, ah, Greek gods, actually."

"Greek, Roman, they're all the same," she grumbled, but she held her anger back; she could see how it had unnerved him. His father, now, he'd liked her angry; that was one of the things she missed about him; but the boy had become afraid of her, and if it weren't for his affair with the spirited Tullia she would have wondered if the Romans had got round him after all, and made him into one of those brittle woman-haters they called men.

"I don't mean to shout at you," she said, and that was as near as she'd come for some years to apologising to anyone.

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"You think it doesn't matter, but it does," she told him; "you can't live healthily and have unhealthy gods."

"Oh, let them believe what they like. It's not as if we have to believe it, after all."

There was something wrong about their religion, though. She wondered sometimes if she'd made a dreadful mistake that day in Tarchna when she seduced Lauchme, the half-Greek, when she planned to come to Rome, seeing it as her freedom. She'd wanted freedom from the simplicities of life in Tarchna; from the way life was, the way it always had been and always would be, a life that was rightful and good and boring, gods damn it, and she'd wanted excitement. But now she looked at Rome, the Capitol squatting above the festering marshes, and felt there was something evil in the very ground, some festering wound in the rock.

"They'd like Phersu," Tarquin said. "He's a good god for Romans, with his mallet for bashing out the brains, and his leering mask. Let them have Phersu!"

She hushed him quickly; when she was a girl, no one ever spoke of the demon; it was unlucky. But Tarquin, in the full splendour of golden youth, didn't care for superstitions any more than she had in those far off days of her pride; and she shrugged, and thought first that the damage was done, anyway, and then wondered at what point she had changed, at what point she had begun believing those folk tales she'd once have derided.

"They take all the bloodthirstiness and all the violence they can get," he said. "They love it. You know they've got a little man dressed up as Phersu at the games now? He's some kind of defective, not just a dwarf, an idiot of some kind... they make him butcher the dead horses in front of the audience."

"Have you ever thought," she said, and saw from the blankness in his eyes that he hadn't, "how Rome was founded on a fratricide?"

"Oh, that old story," he said.

"Exile and fratricide, that's what's at the root of this city."

"Exile? That's rich, coming from you. We're all exiles here, mother, and you know it. Exiled Etruscans in a barbarous city."

"Exiles? We own this city, Tarquinius."

"No," he said, "that's the trouble; we don't."

"Etruscans rule here; you, me, Servius. Hadn't you ever noticed how all their kings came from somewhere else?"

"What, unlike your great-great-great-however-many-times-fucking-great-grandfather, who pushed his way out of the dirt in the middle of Tarchna?"

Tanaquil turned at that blasphemy, ready to let her wrath loose; but Tarquin was grinning, the whole thing a jest, as everything was to him, and it was impossible to be angry in the face of that easy charm.

"Isn't that the point?" she said, and was rewarded by a frown. She'd made him think, for once.

"Isn't that the point of the myth ? Granted, it's only a story, but none the less, the tales we tell are what make us ourselves. And we tell stories of men rising from the earth, but Roman earth is barren. They are men from somewhere else, murderers, men on the run."

"So? Father was always telling us how Rome was started by outlaws. No man would come here who had a choice."

"We had a choice."

"Father didn't."

"Tarchna was probably begun by exiles. How does anything ever start? But we wanted to belong to the land."

"Romans want the land to belong to them."

"Exactly."

"So I don't understand your problem. Romans want to conquer, and we rule the Romans. Quite simple."

And how sure are you that you'll be the one doing the ruling? she wanted to say, but she realised he had no doubt , no doubt at all. Perhaps it was that very lack of doubt that drew supporters to him; the golden youth offered them a golden age, a return to the heroic, when all her generation seemed to offer was drudgery and the difficult. He was so unlike his father; and for the second time that afternoon she found herself missing Tarquinius, who had doubted everything, and most of all himself.

"You've got blood on your hem," he said. It was true; she had. She shrugged. It was hardly worth stooping to try to brush the stain away; it would most likely make it worse.

She poured a little water on her hands, dried them on the cloth that her son held out to her. She faced the altar and began the ritual words, as she had so many times before. Tarquin handed her the ear of wheat, and the cup of wine to pour on the ground; the only sacrifice she would offer today; but he didn't repeat the words of the ritual, and when she had poured her libation, he offered her his arm to leave the temple without pouring his own.

***

At home there was more business to attend to; an embassy from Velx, which meant more ritual and more politeness, and without any discussion of substantive politics. That she kept for her communications with Ramtha, hidden from Servius as they were from Ramtha's own council. "Give them some flummery," Servius had said; "I don't want them knowing what we're up to."

She'd decided Tarquin could sit in; he was gracious, and elegant, and all in all a good advertisement for Rome, without actually doing or saying anything much. And he kept his mouth shut, as she'd told him to. She could tell that he was impressed by the ambassadors, though not awed by them; Velx had chosen well, one of the Spurinnas, a distant cousin of hers by all accounts, though she'd never met him and the name wasn't familiar, a man of refined habits and elegant speech. He wasn't as well versed in current diplomacy as he might have been, though; or perhaps he was just trying to seem unaware of Rome's expansionist policies in the north, as if not looking would make the Romans go away.

It was late when they retired. As she crossed the atrium to her chamber, she saw the glow of the lamps in the chamber where they kept the ancestors' masks. For the third time that day she thought of her dead husband. Third time's the charm, she thought.

His mask regarded her silently. No thunder came from the heavens, no voice from the grave. It wasn't a good likeness, she'd thought at the time, but now she could hardly remember what he had looked like; in all her memories of him, the mask had come to stand in for his face. And he'd grown old, old and tired. She tried to remember him in those early days, days of hope and optimism and long rides in the Tuscan sun, and it was like summoning up a dream, in those few moments after waking when you can almost do so. But like a dream, it had become faded, blurred.

She laughed mirthlessly. At least the mask was no threat. He was buried with all due ceremony, and no ghost had come to disturb her, nor ever would.

She was aware, suddenly, of the slap of bare feet on the stone behind her, so quiet she knew their owner by the stealthiness.

"Tarquinius," she said. Let him know he still lacked the ability to surprise her.

"Mother."

"You have something to say?"

"Manius is dead."

"Yes."

In the silence she could actually hear the tiny hiss of the lamp burning, the slight hiss of her breath over the dry folds of her throat; could hear Tarquinius move one foot forwards, uncertainly.

"They found his body in the forest. He must have fallen from his horse. The fall killed him."

He was dead when he hit the ground, she thought. Another death, another secret. And there was blood, still, on the hem of her tebenna.

# Tarquin

It was good to be out of Rome, he thought. Good to be away from Servius and the implacable thing Rome had become; away from the greyness.

It was good to see the sun. There hadn't been a lot of that in Rome recently. Up here; this was real Etruria, a land golden with sunshine and corn, and even at this early season the sky was cloudless, and though the air was chill, he was warm where the sun fell on his shoulders.

He laughed, and pushed his horse into a gallop, turning his head to look back and see Tullia, surprised, kick her horse on to try to catch him. She rode almost as well as his mother did; but where Tanaquil was cool, commanding her mount with almost imperceptible touches of rein or heel, Tullia was all fire, throwing herself into the motion of the gallop, pushing her horse onwards.

She'd have hated the cull. He hadn't dared mention it to her; she'd heard from one of the others, and if he found out who it was... He'd never thought to see it, their best chariot horse destroyed. It was another of Servius' commands. The horse was too keen, he said. (Too keen? How could a horse be too keen? Breeders spent their entire lives manipulating bloodlines in search of greater courage, horses more eager to run, brave and free in their running, as this one was. How could that be wrong?)

Servius had changed. The old Servius, the horseman, the old soldier, would have loved that horse despite its vices. Fair enough, it was a vicious beast, it tried to take a bite out of you any time it could. Tarquin hadn't loved it, nor had anyone else; but they'd mourned for it. It was a good horse, fast, a born leader; it would pull the other horses with it, into a battle or round a tight corner. He'd seen it fall, poleaxed; it stood for a few moments, its legs beginning to wobble, before its body swayed, and it fell slowly, pitching over one shoulder, nose first to the ground.

Tarquin wondered how long it would be till Servius would try to have him killed. Just as well he was out of the way, now, and so was Tullia.

She'd almost caught him, now, and he wanted to be caught; but just letting her overhaul him was too easy, so instead he let in his rein, pulled his horse's head in on the left, forcing him to wheel roundh - that had to be nicely judged; too much angle and too much speed, and the horse would stumble, and throw him - and rode in a great arc, heading back the way they had come. She'd missed his move, and had ridden on for a few heartbeats before she realised she'd lost him as he veered off; she yelled, though he couldn't hear the words clearly - bastard, that was one, anyway - and he slowed his horse further, laughing. She was too easy to fool, sometimes, was shrewd Tullia. They'd played this game before, quite a few times, and still she wasn't smart enough to work out that he was going to play her false... unless, of course, she enjoyed being caught as much as he enjoyed catching her, which wasn't impossible.

He tried to imagine her with Arruns, and failed. His brother had never really known her; had possessed her only in the dry meaning of the law, and even the law, Tarquin thought, would not have been enough to give him authority over her, not an authority, anyway, that she'd have respected. It was a good thing Arruns had managed to get himself killed.

"Bastard!"

He was right, that was certainly one of the words. He ducked, but too late to avoid the slap, open-handed and free-swinging, that landed on the back of his head, and heard her laugh as he swore.

"Vicious bitch, am I?"

"Wild-cat."

"Only a cat? I thought I was at least a tiger."

"Tigress."

She rode closer, and angled her head away cutely with a pretty and rather coy smiles, and said, "A pussy-cat, you know, but only for you." The horses had slowed to a walk now, and she dared to put an arm round his waist and lean towards him; but when he leant over to kiss her, she pushed him back, and slapped him hard, and rode off, and when she reined her horse to a stop, yelled at him; "Even pussy-cats have claws, you know."

"I wonder sometimes," he said, "if you're on my side."

"Whose side would I be on?"

"Your father's, for instance."

"I have something to prove, do I?"

She had an edge of temper like a blade, and suddenly was ugly with it, her face sharp and vixenish. He hadn't meant to goad her; he didn't really doubt her, or rather, he hadn't, up till now. She'd come willingly with him, though she knew Tarquin's trip was a venture Servius wouldn't approve of, and he'd doubly disapprove her accompanying him; she'd ridden half way on an excuse, something about hunting, or a visit to one of the old Etruscan shrines, and joined him, at a shrine not far from Nepet, where there were mineral springs and a small grove. Yet her sudden anger had him wondering whether she'd come with her father's connivance; was that why she'd been so furious at his joke?

They were within sight of Velzna now, and here all the roads from north and south began to bunch together into a great skein of bare trodden tracks; for the first time since Nepet they sighted other travellers, some on foot, some with mules and horses, some in the huge slow ox-carts that carved great corrugations in the dirt. Ahead, the great cliff rose from the plain, abrupt and forbidding; he thought it would easily overtop the Capitol, put Rome in its shade. He felt a thrill in his blood; his people were made to live on the heights. This was what he had been born to.

The road ascended in broad zigzags, first through thickets of slender trees with shimmering bark, on which only a few dry, brown leaves remained; under their horses' hooves the fallen leaves rustled restlessly. A little further on, the dark winter green of prickly-leaved holm oaks closed in on the path, shimmering as if with fear or rage. Tombs were cut in the rock face to one side of the road; a great carved sea monster, painted bright green, guarded one, a tall griffon another. The laurel wreaths that garlanded the altars had dried; when the wind blew, they rattled and shook. Occasionally the plain was visible through the trees, but it was not till they came to the cleft in the rock through which the road climbed steeply into the city itself that they realised how far up they had come.

For a few tens of paces the stone reared up on both sides, and the road was in shadow, grey and cold, before it levelled out and came once more into the sun. Here the city started at once; there was no hinterland of scattered shacks and fenced yards, as in Rome, but instead the first shrines flanked the road, and neat walls of crumbly sun-coloured stone or white plaster. Further on there were arcades, supported by massive timbers. Every roof glared with tile; from every roof ridge, gorgons and griffons looked down, and the bright colours of painted terracotta flowers edged the eaves. Gaudy gods strutted and flirted on the temples' pediments. The streets were busy, but not full; children played in front of one house, and in front of another three women were slapping flatbreads between their hands to stretch the dough, and singing as they worked.

Said Tages to the ploughman,

The field is not yet tilled,

The flint lies in the furrows,

When will the wheat be milled?

The ploughman said to Tages,

When the white ox is killed.

Half a dozen mules ambled under their loads towards the gate, followed by a thin boy with a thinner stick, which he whisked through the air occasionally; despite the pathetic ritual of goading, the mules seemed to lead the boy, rather than the boy driving the mules. He grinned as he passed the two riders, and threw his stick up, where it spun two circles in the air before he caught it again, and went on his way.

The sound of flutes reached them from a large house where two servants were sweeping the road outside, timing each stroke of the brush to the music, and laughing at some joke one of them had made; far off, a reedpipe whined its grievance to the world - sooner or later the player would start into a dance rhythm, but not yet - and a great trumpet groaned from one of the temples up ahead. To all this, the soft slap of sandals on sand and the puttock, puttock of hooves added another layer of rhythm, so that the city seemed to be breathing a single great music.

For a moment Tarquin almost forgot where they were headed; not up to the great temple of Aplu, as they would be if he were here officially, for the ceremonies, or as an envoy, nor to the schools where his mother had stayed last year, but to a private house, "my humble abode" as Sethre had called it. (If only Strephon had come here, instead of staying in Rome. And that thought led to another, which was that perhaps Tarquin was wiser than he knew to have put himself out of Servius' way.) A great painted gorgon on a house wall reminded him of Sethre's instructions; "by the house of the Medusa, opposite the old olive tree." True enough, there was the ancient olive, a mass of twisted, fissured trunks growing from a single root, a huge scar on one where a branch must have snapped off; the road divided around it, and beneath its leafless shade passers-by had left small clay figures, and a couple of oil lamps burned.

A side street led them past tall and windowless walls, into quiet squares where only the insistent cooing of doves echoed; as they passed one house they heard the click, click of a loom, and a woman singing - "Where is the child who will bring me the moonlight? Where is the man who will bring me the sea?"

"It's a honeycomb underneath here," Tullia said, as they turned a corner. "All the rock is hollowed with tunnels and shafts and wells, wells that go down a hundred yards till they reach water."

"How do you know that?"

"Father said, once. He knows that kind of thing."

"I bet he does." All those little details in Servius' retentive brain, and he'd never know which of them would be important till the moment he needed to know. Probably had never thought the tunnels under Velzna were more than a colourful local detail, till Tarquinius holed up the Vipienas under the rock. There was a lesson there; never overlook, never forget.

"Not just the shafts," Tullia said. "There are wells, and caves, and whole hidden shrines down there. People disappear sometimes and no one knows whether they've been murdered, or sacrificed, or fallen down a shaft, or simply wandered too far and never been able to find a way out."

"Maybe they're still down there, wandering," he said, and saw her shudder.

Three lefts, a right at the house shrouded by an ancient rambling vine, to the third open space; and there, a high green-striped wall, higher than he'd expected, and a great arch in the centre leading into a quiet court with a still pool. Humble abode, indeed.

They were expected; the horses were taken, their exiguous baggage placed in the hands of silent, white-robed servants, and they were taken to wash, and to change their clothes for fresh ones, provided by the house; and only once they were refreshed and presentable were they taken, at last, to meet the lady of the house, the mother of the Tlesnasa.

Sethre's mother was older than Tarquin had expected, her hair already grey at the temples, though her eyes were young and her voice rich. Tarquin felt an instant of shock; she was happy, in a way no one at Rome ever was, with an uncomplicated contentment like a cat in the sun. His parents, Servius, the Roman youths he knew, always seemed to be searching for something that, the more they sought, the more surely escaped them; but Seianti was content as an old cat lying in the sun, and she welcomed Tarquin and Tullia with warmth as well as ceremony.

She took them to the gardens behind the house, through tall rooms with coffered ceilings of dark wood shining with gilded stars and flowers; the perfumed smoke of incense drifted through the halls, while braziers slumbered in the corners. In one great hall, a huge bronze candelabrum hung from the central beam, unlit, heavy in the darkness; they passed a ceiling-high niche where the whitened masks of a hundred ancestors regarded them flatly. The floors shone gloomily, their surface undulating gently where generations of feet had worn the softer, whiter stone away between the higher, harder black and green marble. This was the deep patina of ancient wealth, everything rubbed smooth by the ages, not the shallow glitter of Rome. It was the birthright he'd been robbed of, the princeliness of Etruria.

Then, suddenly, the view of the plains; you felt like a god here, it was higher even than the Capitoline, and it was the whole world, not just the shallow valley of the straggling Tiber, that stretched below.

"Everyone has that reaction at first." Seianti smiled tolerantly.

Tarquin's face was dark. "The light's too strong," he said.

Seianti made no reply, but jerked her chin almost imperceptibly; in the same heartbeat, a servant appeared from behind them, bringing wine. (Like all the best servants he was unseen, unheard, till the moment he was needed, appearing as if whisked into existence by some enchantment; had he not moved so smoothly, he would have startled Tullia.)

"You're here privately?"

"I am," he said, though it was not quite true; he needed to find friends, to ally himself with interests that might back him against Servius, or at least to support him when Servius fell from power, deposed, abdicated or dead. But they'd be his friends, not friends of Rome. "And in any case, Rome has no place in the council here." Which was true enough; Rome was no member of the League.

"You'll find people interested, none the less," Seianti said; "you may not speak for Rome, but you can talk about Rome, and that's a subject that gets a lot of airing."

***

Seianti was right; all Etruria wanted to know Tarquin - an Etruscan Roman, or perhaps a Roman Etruscan, since no one knew quite where he fitted, and his assertion that he was in Velzna purely as a private person was another puzzle that was endlessly debated, with some maintaining he was Servius' spy, others saying he clearly had some alliance to conclude, and very few believing the story he told, which was that he had simply decided he needed to acquaint himself with his Etruscan heritage. Staying at the Tlesnasa house, they were in any case at the centre of the life of the city; they met Sethre's father a few days later, when he returned from a visit to one of the country estates, and it was clear he was something more than the fair-to-middling farmer and trader Sethre had always claimed him to be. A big-boned man with a gaunt face, he had a disconcerting way of bringing home some half-pissed drinking companion who turned out to be the ruler of one of the northern cities (whose husband came looking for her half way through the evening), or the head of a Volaterran war band (who had a fine light tenor voice, and refined taste in lyrical song), or a high ranking zilath of one of the port cities (whose taste ran to bawdy, and engaged Seianti in a bantering duet).

Life became a round of banquets and feasts and visits, the incessant demands on his time that his mother had warned him against; it was seductive, it pulled him in. At last came the invitation he'd been waiting for; the great banquet that started the Commemoration of the League, the patronal feast of the whole Rasna people. He had thought he'd have to find the right people, to talk someone round to inviting him, to promise favours in return; and because he was staying at the Tlesnasa house, he and Tullia were invited as a matter of course, even perhaps as an afterthought.

***

He settled the wreath on his head, feeling it dig into his hair and prickle his scalp, till it was tight, and when he moved his head sharply, testing, it stayed fixed in place; only his hair moved, the thick braids swinging easily and together. The golden leaves were thin, their ends sharp; he'd pricked a finger putting the wreath on, and sucked it thoughtfully, then took it out of his mouth and looked at the pink flesh. A small dot of red appeared, grew, and rounded itself into a droplet; he smeared it down with his thumb.

"Hurt?" Tullia had already finished dressing, her flaming hair matched by the red and golden stripes of her dress, and the heavy gold of her jewellery.

He sniffed. He'd been through the battle at Veii, and he might not admit it even to Tullia, but to himself, he would; it hurt horribly, far more than any blow he'd been struck. The smallest hurts were always the worst. He sucked his thumb again, hard, trying to dull one pain by causing another.

"It's not too pretentious, is it?"

She laughed. "Are you going all Roman on me? Manly homespun toga and no jewellery?"

"I just don't want to look like a ..."

"Look," she cut in, firmly; "on anyone else it would be pretentious. Or overdressed. But with your good looks and that mass of dark hair, it sits well."

"You're not convincing me."

"Trust me."

He looked down from where they sat, through the one window that wasn't shuttered against the chill breeze, and saw a line of horses crossing the flat below, silhouettes against the dusty fields and dustier road. The sight saddened him; he always felt some deep melancholy when he saw, from afar off, a traveller or a caravan moving slowly, as if that other world that they belonged to had touched him very lightly, and then passed out of his life. They always moved on... He started to say something to Tullia, then feared she'd laugh at it, and laughed himself, nervously.

(Was this what his mother's gift of prophecy felt like, he wondered; this feeling of having been touched, across great distances?)

"You're shivering."

"The wind is rather cold," he said, and hoped she didn't notice that it had stopped blowing some time ago.

***

"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.

***

The ceremonies began some days later. In between were more days of winter sun, more nights of feasts and dancing, fights with Tullia and making up with Tullia, conversations that might have been diplomacy and might not. And then the ceremonies.

For the whole day before, the town was restless. In every street small children practised waving banners, trailing long ribbons that undulated like snakes, or whirling them in circles; girls broke their step to try a few dance paces, before recollecting their errands. Last-minute panics disturbed the vast spaces of the Tlesnasa house, like mice scurrying above a ceiling; one of Seianti's best pair of earrings could not be found, a good tebenna had been holed by moth and needed patching, a filament of gold thread had unravelled and trailed from the hem, a tune long unplayed had been forgotten, and needed working into the fingers again. Floors were swept, and swept again to fill the time; some of the girls spun to pass the hours, but the spindles were put away after the winding filaments broke too many times in their stiff and clumsy fingers. In the gardens, fitful gusts blew up tiny whirls of dust, and slammed a badly fastened shutter against the house till someone went to secure it, the sound like a dead man knocking on the gates of Hades - or so Tullia said, for once nervy, and biting at a broken fingernail.

Night came. Night, and at first, silence. And then, slowly, the noise began; a slow tread, the noise of many feet in rhythm, and far off, one pipe playing a fragmentary little tune, a question without an answer. People were coming out of the houses into the streets, silently joining the slow river that flowed from the plains, from the fields, from the walls, inwards towards the temple. Another pipe played, closer this time, the same wistful shard of a tune, and a shout answered it; and then silence again, and the sound of feet passing.

The night was glorious with torches and fires; in every square, great bonfires and braziers threw shadow into the corners, lit the walls with glare and blaze. Still the great Tlesnasa house waited in silence, and Tarquin and Tullia stood with the rest of the family in front of the household shrine, and the ancestors looked down on them with dark and vengeful eyes.

Then at last they heard the thin sound of the pipes in front of the great door, the same never completed melody that stopped without ever reaching its end. It stopped, and Tarquin counted two heartbeats of silence, and the air was chill despite the hissing torches, till the great gates swung back soundlessly on their hinges, and one of the men struck a single great clout on the shield that hung by the door, which echoed brassily from the walls, and dazed the ears; and then - he couldn't say who had started, whether anyone had led them, or whether some instinct drew them on - they were moving forwards, into the street, and through the silent flicker of the flaming square, uphill towards the temple.

Past the square, there was another street, narrow, between high walls; they heard the pipes two or three streets over, calling out another house, and at the corner of another alley they were joined by another silent procession, which filtered into theirs, dividing Tarquin from Tullia and Seianti, so that as they went along, he saw them carried further and further away, like leaves on a fast-flowing stream. At the place of the great well, more processions were arriving from the slopes below, and they began to slow, and the path turned back on on itself and began to rise again.

Now the temple could be seen, at the end of the already crowded street. Tarquin kept trying not to lose sight of Tullia, but she kept disappearing, only to appear again a little further away; he would find a gap in the crowd, or push himself sideways aslant the stream, towards her, and as he did he would lose sight of her again. Still in silence, they were approaching the temple, its great columns glaring red in the firelight, and between them only darkness.

The crowd kept pushing forward, and soon, they had reached the forecourt in front of the temple. Their movement was checked by the mass of people in front, who were no longer moving, but they were still being pushed onwards from behind; the crowd became denser and more closely packed, yet despite the jostling and pushing, the occasional surge of movement backwards or forwards as the pressure grew, no one spoke, so that the only sound was that of thousands of feet treading a slow rhythm, and the occasional crack of resin spitting from one of the torches, and the distant crackling of the great fires.

He caught sight of Tullia again, separated from Seianti now, and pushing towards the front as he'd known she would be; he followed her as best he could, turning into every small gap that opened, angling his body to squeeze between two others, feeling the warmth and press of bodies. Once he felt someone behind tread on his heels, and once, he felt himself lifted quite off his feet as the crowd surged forwards, for a single nightmare moment; and once, someone he must have pushed turned, sucking his teeth, and stared at him angrily, but said nothing.

He had almost reached the front. In front of him were only three or four more people, and then the temple steps, white and clear where no one dared to tread, and guarded not only by gorgons but also by the temple youths, dressed in white, with peeled willow wands in their hands. And there, so close he could almost have touched her if only he could have extended his right arm, caught close to his side by his neighbour's flank, was Tullia, shaking her hair loose in the firelight.

But there was somebody on the steps, where there was meant to be nobody; an old woman - no, a woman not much older than Tullia, but her movements crabbed and halting like an old woman's, and her eyes turned up, sightless. She was blind, and yet she was making directly for Tullia, limping sidewise down the steps, till she faced Tullia, and squatted like a spider in front of her. Tarquin shivered; he'd never seen one before, but he recognised instantly the oracle - the prophecy and the madness. The words came, a thin keening that he could hardly make out, that made no sense and too much.

"It's the womb life in the green tree. Thinks you aren't looking. And the dead head with its open eyes. Watching you bleed."

"She's mad," he hissed at Tullia, and she turned at the sound of his voice, but the prophet started again, and Tullia turned back, transfixed, like a child seeing a pig killing for the first time and not able to look away.

"You think the heads aren't watching but they are, all the deadheads and their dead eyes, waiting in the dark. It's a clever father knows his own daughter..."

Light seemed to strike the edge of his vision, and he looked up to see a thin sliver of moon frosting the edge of the inky clouds, slightly yellow like a bruise.

"When I was a girl I was a fish flashing in the silver water, but now I'm grown I know the world is darkening and the water is murky. It's the ghosts who take the children, you know, the ghosts who take them away. It's always the ghosts. They think we don't know but we do."

Her eyelids were lazy, the eyes wallowing the way blind eyes always do. He saw them reflect the torchlight, and for a moment saw a skull with embers glowing in its eye sockets, and then he blinked and she was just a mad blind woman again, looking frail and puzzled and sad.

She looked up again as if something had astonished her, and said to Tullia, wondering: "Your hands are red. Your hands are red." Then she put her hands over her mouth and began to scream, "father, father," and huddled herself into a bundle, wailing and rocking like a hurt child, till one of the temple youths came and led her gently away.

At last, Tarquin was able to push away the man next to him with one shoulder, and grab Tullia's hand, pulling her towards him; her face was rigid, her eyes wide and unblinking, and for a moment she seemed not to recognise him.

Still the crowd was silent. There was something disturbingly strange about that silence; it wasn't the deep, rigidly held silence of a phalanx standing immobile and alert - he could hear the scuffle of feet, a woman coughed somewhere, a child cried out once and was hushed, all the small sounds of everyday life magnified and somehow ashamed in the face of the gods.

He thought of the goddess waiting, inside the temple, in the darkness; the goddess who was never seen by any eyes but her priest's, the single priest vowed to her service, who was appointed for life, and succeeded only on his death, the same priest who would drive the year-nail tonight. Seianti had told him that only the priest knew the goddess's secret name, the name that could not be spoken, the secret name of the city itself that could never be written, and spoken only once, in a whisper, to the priest's appointed successor; and if the name was ever lost, Velzna would fall, and with it the Rasenna and their gods.

Everything waited now; the goddess, and the vast dark void of the temple behind its huge oak doors, the doors that glistened from the sill up to the height of a man's head with bronze nail heads, hammered roughly into the wood, one every year since the temple was first built; before that, in fact, since the door of the oldest, tiny shrine had been set as a panel in the doors of the new temple, and so on, through rebuilding after rebuilding, till the wood of the original door was jewel-hard and black with age. And still, every year, a new nail was driven in. How many years had it taken to cover those doors with nails, Tarquin wondered; how many more years would it take for the nails to spread across the remaining bare wood? He felt almost breathless at the immensity of the unimaginable ages. He could hold thirty years of nails in his own two hands, he thought, and that was already as long as he had lived, longer than he could remember.

Then suddenly it was as if everyone had drawn breath at the same time; there was a sudden stillness, and three priests with high hats and thin faces mounted the steps of the temple. Two turned, half way up, to face the assembled people, but the third of them proceeded to the great door of the temple, where he was swallowed by the shadow between the great pillars.

It could not have been that loud, but Tarquin would always remember the three blows of the hammer as great drumbeats resounding across the sky; the thunder would pursue him in his dreams, but he could never see where the lightning would fall before he woke, sweating, and feeling guilty of some undefined great sin, and judged. Once, twice, and a third time the priest drove the bronze nail into the door, and the world was still, waiting; and then the third blow had been struck, and the new year had come, and the world breathed once more and began afresh, and the silence was broken at last with a great shout.

Now madness broke out; dancing, cheering, two youths in the middle of the crowd kissing each other, children riding on their fathers' shoulders, or pushing through the thickets of adult legs in a mad chase; girls throwing handfuls of wheat over the crowd, young women playing tiny two-note whistles that shrilled and squealed, old men singing songs even older, impromptu circle dances that grew like whirlpools, sucking in more and more dancers as they spun, young men shouting out some kind of question-and-answer song. Even here at the very edge of the crowd they were being pushed and pulled around by the currents of the dance, and he felt Tullia's hand grabbing his tightly as she was pulled away, pulling hard on his arm before finally her fingers slipped from his, and he lost her; he kept his eyes on her face for a moment, but then he was jostled, and half-turned, and when he turned back, she was gone, whirled away from him.

Grains of wheat stung his cheeks \- a girl had dashed a handful at him - and he grabbed her, and half playfully slapped her arse; another woman grabbed him and spun him round three or four times before moving on in the dance, and he found himself being passed down the line, dancing with all the women and not a few of the men, before the dance spat him out half way across the square. He kept looking for Tullia; there couldn't be that many red-headed women here, surely, but in the light of the torches, it was difficult to tell. Once, he was sure he'd found her, but when he took the tall red-head's hand and she turned he saw she was old, her face blotched by a huge red burn. He shuddered, hoping that was no true prophecy, and turned away.

A hand caught at his, and he turned again, but it was a limping, meager man who apologised inaudibly and disappeared. He must have mistaken Tarquin as Tarquin had mistaken that woman. Or perhaps he was a thief; yes, there'd be thieves in any crowd of this size, with everyone wearing their best jewellery. Tarquin felt the bracelets on his wrists; all there, thank the gods, none missing.

He felt panicked, lost without Tullia; people were bumping into him, everyone was standing too close, he was cold, a spark from a torch flew into his hair and singed it, and the stink of burning and sweat and smoke was making him nauseous. At the last moment he recognised the panic, breathed deeply - felt his breath come raggedly, his ribs tense against the breath - thought; Tullia can make her way back, she knows the city, she is not lost, and if she is not lost, I'm not lost...

Just as he felt the fear leave him, his body almost limp with relief, he heard his name being spoken, and it was Tullia. "I've found you!" she said, "I looked..." but he never heard the explanation, if she ever had the chance to give it, as he was pulling her to him, gripping her tightly enough to hurt, saying her name, kissing her.

She laughed and broke away in the end, but she kept his hand in hers. The crowd was thinning a little; some people were going home, others had moved to streets where they had more space to dance. The little whistles had been joined by pipes and flutes, and the thrum of lyres thumping out the rhythm beneath the wailing tune. In one street two women threw torches from hand to hand, tossing them up high in the air, catching them neatly and turning to throw them back; sparks showered everywhere, the buildings seemed to sway and melt in the changing light.

They saw Arathenas, standing on a table, holding up five torches above his head, and Seianti dancing with a young girl in a wolfskin, and a dance in two long lines where the dancers had to leapfrog their partners, and then throw them up in the air, as they crossed over. But Tullia seemed restless and abstracted, so that they found themselves heading home, through the gradually dispersing crowds, earlier than he'd thought they would, and without having joined the dancing.

"I thought it would be more impressive," Tullia said as they came to the square of the old well.

"It wasn't?"

"The sound," she said. "I expected a great booming noise as the nail was hammered, and all I heard was a little tap, tap, tap. And I thought how surprising, at the centre of all this ceremonial is something so very ordinary. But if you do something ordinary tens, hundreds, thousands of times, then it becomes something else."

He thought he had heard something else; but he said nothing, and they walked on, as the sounds of music and the shouting died away.

"Imagine," Tullia said, "how many people have stood and watched this, and how many of them dead, more dead than living."

"All the more reason to live now," he said, and saw that crooked smile of hers, one side of her mouth twisted up and the other not.

It was over. Nothing had changed; everyone was a year older, the Etruscan League a year older, the Etruscan race one year closer to the end of its life, as foretold so long ago; the world had added a year more to its endless years, and tomorrow people would remember the nagging present - things left undone, or not started, procrastinations, necessities, excuses, apologies.

***

"At least it went well this year," Arathia said. "Last year, the priest forgot where he'd put the nail, and things were held up horribly till they found another one."

"I never heard that." Arathenas' eyelids drooped, and his voice was drowsy, as if he'd only just woken, though there was something stagey about his sleepiness; he probably slept, like a cat, with one eye half open.

"Tarquin lost one of his golden hair ornaments," Tullia said.

"It probably fell off. I shouldn't have worn them; I knew I'd be dancing, and however well you think they're fastened, they never are."

"No," Arathenas said; "nothing is ever as secure as you think it is."

But Tarquin couldn't help feeling he had fixed it well, and that a slight man with a limp had a golden lion more in his possession than he'd had last night.

That was one of his diplomatic silences; and there were excuses, and apologies, half-truths, and outright lies, and the very occasional truth advanced as a pledge or inducement. It was a game he'd seen his mother play, a game he thought he knew; but this was no simple checkerboard, no game of Robbers with black and white pieces set out against each other in lines - there were too many players, too many alliances, so that a zilath from one city was tugged by invisible threads that led to other cities, to other allies or enemies. Tarquin trod warily; he was stuck in a forest, in shifting fog that only sometimes cleared a little to show a path, but at other times thickened, filmed across his eyes.

"All this eating," Tullia was saying. "I'll get fat."

"I'll send you out with the troop for exercise when we get back."

"You wouldn't."

"Don't try me," he said. "I've never liked fat women."

He put as much growling bad temper as he could in his voice, but she smiled at him anyway.

The days passed evenly. It was good enough; it was a life, a life full of good things, fine food and engaging music, intelligent conversation and gentle flirtations. An even tenor of life, in which, after that one horrifying and splendid night of new year, day succeeded easy day, and only the gradually lengthening evenings marked the passing of time. Tarquin wondered how long he could extend his stay in Velzna; no news came from Rome, no summons from Servius.

Tanaquil had often spoken about Velzna. He remembered her stories of the dark temples, of vigils kept, of days wandering the cliff paths looking for a rare herb, that could be picked only at the waning of the moon; she used to sing him asleep with the qualities of the plants, and he could still remember the names - ratbane, the monarch, butterfly, cloudflower, fox-ivy, chalk-holly, silver-feather, thousand-leaf, augur's staff - though he couldn't recognise a single plant, and had forgotten, if he had ever known, what they were good for. But the Velzna he saw was nothing like her tales; there were no mysteries, there were no prophecies. Instead of being filled with silence and stars, the nights blazed with lamps and resounded with the flute and lyre and the sound of the dance. His Velzna was not his mother's; nothing looked like what he'd expected from those childhood stories, except for the view down to the plain. That, he thought, could never have changed, must be the same for everyone. (But was the city different for everyone, he wondered; would it, even, be different for him, if he came again, in twenty years, or thirty? Would he have forgotten the pattern of the streets, would he be surprised by some view he couldn't remember in the middle of an otherwise familiar scene, would the whole flavour of the place seem different or changed?)

One night there was a dance in the temple square, a dance of a different kind from what they'd seen before; an entire phalanx of leather-kilted dancers, their heads encased in helms with only slits for their eyes, advancing as one, slowly, seemingly inexorable, with two sideways steps for every forwards one. They came diagonally across the square, stepping out from one corner, fanning out from single file till a broad front almost filled the diagonal; and then, suddenly, a single girl leapt and bounded from the opposite corner, all flounced skirt and flying ribbons in a great blur of dark purple. She jumped high, sweeping the long streamers of ribbon under her feet, riding the flaming cloud of them; the phalanx stopped, each dancer dropping to one knee, raising one hand to his head, palm outwards and upwards, warding off the sight of her.

On she came, flicking her long ribbons at the phalanx, dancing fast and seemingly with abandon - but her techique was impeccable, split-jumps and pirouettes and side-capers and tiny mouse-like scampering runs, and she kept turning, turning, every time the phalanx pushed forwards or tried to close in on her, wrong-footing them, dancing close and then springing back, and every time she did it, she wound one of her ribbons round one of them, round the ankles or the wrists. The line pushed forwards, but every time, one of them would be hampered, out of line; and then with a single great leap she was over the line, running towards the opposite corner, shouting her victory. (Thinking about it afterwards, Tarquin was sure physically she couldn't have done it; had one of the other dancers stooped, or slid sideways out of her way, or given her a leg-up? But he'd seen nothing, and he wasn't usually fooled by ribbons and sleight of hand.)

He was applauding madly along with the rest of the crowd when Tullia scowled at him.

"Tactless," she said. "Bloody tactless."

"Not very realistic," he said; "but it was a marvellous dance."

"Gods! Do you not see? It was all about Rome. That's why it got such applause; nothing to do with the dancing. The triumph of Etruscan individualism over Roman efficiency. The noble spirit against the spirit of discipline. The Roman threat is vanquished by sheer..."

"Effrontery?"

"Flummery. A complete fiction. An insult. And you applaud it."

He wasn't just applauding; he approved of it. It was everything he'd been saying for so long about what was wrong with Servius' plans; the faceless gloom of Servius's army. And against that, the life and joy of Etruria, a hope like sunlight seen through wine. That's Rome, he thought, not me; not me.

"That's what they think of us, Tarquin," she said, and there was real anger in her eyes.

He was glad that Arathia arrived just then, and said smoothly, "You should meet the new head of the League, Tarquin".

He hadn't realised it was so late in the month already, that they'd elected their new leader; he'd thought things would take longer. "Who is it?"

"Tarchna's head this year."

"Not good news for us," Tarquin said.

"But your mother came from Tarchna. Your name, even."

"She left. She turned her back on Tarchna, and I don't think they've forgiven her that."

He wondered, even, if the new man had planned this whole ballet to warn Tarquin off; or perhaps more to the point, to warn off any of the cities which thought they could strike their own private deals with Rome. A suspicion which disappeared as soon as he met Thresu Spurinna.

Running to fat, a man who waddled slightly, and a bit too fast, rather short, which meant he had to look up a little to look most people in the eye; an ingratiating man, with a ready smile, his head wagging and nodding, and a sheen of sweat on his face even on this cool evening.

"Laukums," Tarquin started, and saw Thresu looking happy as a fat duck; but Arathenas, who had followed them towards this meeting, interrupted.

"Never a laukums."

Tarquin turned to Arathenas. "No?"

He heard Thresu cough slightly. "It's unusual," Thresu said, his voice low and rich as candied fruit: "it's unusual, though not unprecedented, you understand, for the League to appoint a man who, though he has worked hard for his city, as I have, has yet never been a king, or indeed a war leader, a master of horse; but as you see, sometimes..."

"Sometimes it happens," Arathenas said.

"And you are Tarquinius?"

"Tarquin. They call me Tarquin. Not to confuse me with my father."

"Oh. I see. Well, Tarquinius, I met your mother. A wonderful woman. Really a wonderful..."

"You don't invite her back to Tarchna, though."

Thresu blinked, and sniffed, and then smiled. "Oh, that's what she says. Dear Thanchvil. She'd be welcome if she really wanted to come, of course. What a marvellous woman she is! It's not often you find such beauty and such intelligence matched with such ambition. She was always ambitious, you know, even when we were children together..."

That was a lie, Tarquin thought, watching him burble, no longer hearing his words; Thresu was ten years younger than Tanaquil; Thresu was a child when Tanaquil was already a woman. Even if they'd been the same age, Thresu would still have been a child to Tanaquil.

"...but it might not come to war, exactly, though I dare say one needs to prepare for some sort of military, er..."

War, he thought, are you talking war? A pathetic man like this. Instantly he felt there was no accommodation possible with Thresu; if it came down to Thresu or Servius he knew whose side he was on.

"But truly, Rome has been a trial to us. Veii, and Velx, were not well played. I'm sure we have our part to play in the League, but Roman ways must change, must..."

"Oh, this," Tarquin said. "I understand you don't hold with Roman ways. I would have myself you inclined rather to the Greek, at least in one respect."

Let Thresu rise to that bait if he wanted, and if he did, Tarquin would deny any insult; and since he'd been known to fall for a good-looking slave boy himself, he'd get away with it. But though the sweat beaded on his red forehead, Thresu ignored the remark.

"Rome will change, anyway, if I have anything to do with it," Tarquin said; and he was about to go further, and explain exactly how he might rule given a chance, when a miraculous being entered the room.

He was stunned. It was as if his mother had come into the room; only a much younger Tanaquil, hardly twenty. The same disdainful eyes, the same long nose, the same way of holding the chin up and looking down at the world; the same sense of quiet self-command. The same cruel smile, the same eyebrows raised at the world. A Spurinna, he thought; sometimes the blood runs true. A Spurinna, just like his mother; only so much younger. And male.

"He looks so like you," Tullia whispered.

"Teitu," the youth said.

"Thresu's..."

"Boy?" Teitu laughed. "Hardly. And not his son, either, which perhaps was what you were really asking. You're Tarquin? If so, we're first cousins. Has Thresu upset you already?"

Tarquin warmed immediately to Teitu's quick, wicked wit, and Tullia was fascinated - not entirely to Tarquin's delight - by his resemblance to her lover, and so when the Spurinna house was thrown open for Thresu's inaugural feast, they went along with Teitu, and ended up, against all the usual rules of ceremony, sitting with the new head of the League and his household, above the rulers of the cities - Cisra, Clevsin, some old woman from Velx, and all the others. They'd be talking about that tomorrow, he thought, and complaining that Thresu had shown a preference for Rome, and the idea of Thresu so neatly trapped amused him, so that he grinned to himself till Tullia dug an elbow into his ribs.

"I don't know what you're up to tonight," she said; "you upset Thresu, then you sit here grinning like a dog that's just fucked a bitch."

At least with a hedonist as head of the League, the food was guaranteed to be exquisite, even in this hungry season of the year, when there was little fresh, Thresu's table was well set. A thick dark soup of chestnuts and dried mushrooms, with tiny slivers of onion fried in butter and a dash of dark vinegar to sharpen it up; ham sliced so thin the light shone through it, soft and salty; geese stuffed with apples and wild garlic, so that the sharpness of the stuffing cut through the fattiness of the meat; a slop of lentils cooked with onion and walnuts, hare stewed in wine and its own blood, dried figs in honey, quince paste with sharp cheese, a sweet cake made of nuts and candied fruit, dumplings of muddy fish flesh flaked with breadcrumbs and onion greens, shredded chicken cooked with beet till it was purple; different textures, different tastes, different colours, the luxury of variety and contrast.

Thresu ate with flamboyant enjoyment and his hands; Arathenas, on the other hand, was neat in everything he did, delicately picking meat off the bones with a small knife, slicing the quince paste thinly, dabbing his fingers or wiping his mouth on a cloth. Thresu did not confine himself to eating the food, but talked about it incessantly; if you had eaten everything on the table, you would get a new appetite listening to his conversation.

"One always looks forward to the delights of Velzna," Thresu said; "such wonderful cooks they have here, I always think even better than in Tarchna. And the pigeons; wonderful little squabs, plump and soft-fleshed, in dark gravy. A truly succulent dish. I might even say it's fit for a king."

Which of course, Tarquin thought, you're not.

"He only likes them because they're the one thing in the place that's as fat as he is," Tullia said; she had lowered her voice, but Thresu still heard, or heard at least part of what she'd said. "Eh, what's that?" he asked.

"You don't get birds in Rome as fat as these are," she said.

Arathia seemed slightly shocked by Tullia's joke, but made the mistake of looking at Thresu; it was true, his face had just the pallor and flabbiness of a plucked squab, and she had to stifle a laugh.

"Is he as much of a fool as he looks?" Tullia asked her.

"Stupidity doesn't run in the family."

"I suppose not."

"It definitely doesn't," said Tarquin, as if he feared they were joking about him; "nor does obesity. Look at him tucking in. That's his fifth cup of wine, too."

"He didn't get that fat by accident," Tullia said; "he's probably planning to eat Rome up, rather than bother making war."

Teitu was vastly amused. Uncle Thresu - "well, not an uncle exactly, he's married to my mother's half-sister by my grandfather's third marriage, but he's also related on my father's side; we Spurinnas are an incestuous lot" - had already eaten up two wives, Teitu said, and "the new one's got no meat on her at all."

"Speaking as a woman," Tullia said, "I'd say at least Thresu has the advantage of being well padded. Not all knees and elbows like some men I could name."

Inevitably, half way through the evening, the talk turned to politics. It was inevitable; first someone mentioned the recent standoff between Cisra and Tarchna. Like siblings, or like some couples, the two cities never seemed to be able to work out whether they were best friends or natural enemies; currently, Cisra was sulking, and would sulk all the more now that Thresu was heading up the League.

Then someone (later, Tarquin thought it had been Arathia, but he was never sure) talked about the changes in Veii, the freeing of the slaves.

"Your king was a slave, wasn't he?" Arathenas asked, lazily enough that Tarquin could almost be fooled into thinking he wasn't being deftly filletted for information.

"Maybe once," Tarquin admitted; "but then he was a commander, too."

"He knows how to use slaves, though," Arathenas said. "From what I hear, he's giving honey to the plebs, and vinegar to the nobles."

"Plebeians are not slaves."

"No? They're worse than slaves. At least a slave knows which family he belongs to."

"Well, Servius' policy is his own," Tarquin said, and hoped that would put an end to the discussion.

"You want to be careful," Arathia put in; "you're high-born, and Etruscan. Servius' friends are not yours."

Which was why he was here. He shrugged. "Servius won't last forever." He waited till he saw their frowns, then added: "and there are other cities, besides Rome."

"You'd go to Tarchna?"

He shrugged again. "I've come here."

"You might stay?"

"The food is good. And I have that on good authority."

He winked, and looked in Thresu's direction, and smiled, so as not to laugh at his own joke. Teitu was laughing, with the innocent good humour of a child, while Arathenas allowed himself an exasperated sneer.

"Anyway," said Tarquin idly, while they were still enjoying his witticism, "suppose Rome were to ask to join the League?"

"They won't," Arathenas said.

"Suppose?"

"That would depend," said Arathia.

"On Thresu?"

"As long as he leads, he'd be one voice against it."

"But it's not up to him to decide?"

Arathia actually looked shocked at that, as if he'd told her he didn't know how babies happened, or that wine got you drunk, if you had enough of it.

"The head of the League doesn't do the deciding," she said. "He facilitates. Brings opinions together. Ensures order. There might even be some voices in favour, if Rome promised to lay aside its wars."

"We have noticed, you know," said Arathenas.

"Noticed? What?"

"How you play one city against another."

"Not me," Tarquin said.

"How Rome plays city against city, then."

"Well, obviously that wouldn't be the case, in certain circumstances..."

"Which we needn't discuss here," Arathia said, stern for once; "but if Rome stopped its conquests, there would be some voices in favour of letting it take its place in the League."

"A thirteenth city?" Arathenas was scathing. "Hardly a lucky number."

"Even so," she said. "Or a new League. There's been a northern Federation for years now; Spina and Felsina, Hatria - the fenland and the plains cities, facing the eastern sea as we face the western. And the southerners, too - Capna, Irna, Irnthi, Capeva, Anth."

"That's only four."

"You never could count, Arathenas; that was five. And you know, in any league of twelve, there are only a handful of cities that count."

"It wasn't always like that."

"Maybe not, but that's the way it is now. And now Tarchna..."

She stopped herself quickly. There must be something she didn't want to say. Was there bad blood between Tarchna and Velzna? Or was Tarchna planning the same strategy as Rome, Tarquin wondered, taking over its smaller rivals one by one? He looked again at Thresu and thought; no, not him. Greedy as he is. Though there might be someone behind him...

"Anyway, it'll never happen," Arathenas said. "Rome works by conquest. Gold streams into the city from its wars. Servius won't give up conquest, because he can't; he's created a monster that eats cities, and he has to carry on feeding it."

"There are other battles to fight," Tarquin said. "The Sabine cities. The Umbrians. The Greeks. Gods, give us the backing of the League and we could take on the Celts together."

Arathia nodded. "That could work."

"But does Velzna have a deciding voice?"

Arathia shook her head. "You've been in Rome too long," she said. "You've forgotten how your own people do things. No one 'decides'. Velzna has a voice. A strong one. But only one voice."

"Anyway, I obviously can't speak for Servius, so..."

"It's just speculation." Teitu finished his sentence for him. "Because you're certainly not speaking for Servius."

That was true, but the way Teitu had flattened Tarquin's careful construction of hints and half-truths rankled. Teitu was altogether too clever, and Tarquin had made the mistake of thinking his own cleverness was enough; whereas it had been patently transparent, at least to Teitu, what he was doing, probing tentatively, trying to gain support without giving anything in return. Tarquin found himself pinching the flesh of one thigh through his tebenna, feeling the pain twist in him and comfort him, the way he had when his father found out his childish misbehaviours.

Damn, this was the great game his mother played, and never showed the slightest strain or effort; and it was a game, he realised, that didn't go by rules, and had more players than expected, and some of them hidden, and in which it was no longer even obvious how you worked out whether you had won.

***

Tullia was out late, without him. Tullia seemed sulky when she came back.

He'd already gone to bed, making himself a nest in the wool blankets like some small animal, turning and pulling the blankets over till he was comfortable, and the cold didn't seep in from the side of the bed. He'd been slowly letting himself fall into a doze, day-dreaming of how Velzna must look to an eagle, imagining himself soaring above the plains, under the warm sun of summer, and thinking how good was the eagle's life, drifting, wings extended, on the wind's support, without ever having to beat its wings, when Tullia came in.

"Where did you get to?"

She hadn't answered at once; she'd gone to the other side of the room and started taking off her jewellery. First the hair ornaments had to be teased out, and then the great hooped studded earrings had to be put aside, and the necklaces, which had to be laid out in concentric loops, so as not to tangle; and though many women, Tarquin thought, would have taken their bracelets off first, she left her rich gold cuffs till last. All this she did in silence, and when she came to bed, still not speaking, she pulled the blankets across roughly, and despite the cold, didn't push towards him for warmth.

"Dancing?"

"Hmph."

That was yes. Or maybe no.

Well, let her sleep. She'd talk tomorrow.

They lay there uncompanionably. The room was tense with silence. He felt one arm numb, wanted to turn over, but didn't want to disturb her; didn't want, either, to give her the idea he was surrendering in some way. He was a prisoner of his own pride. He wondered if she was asleep, or lying there in the same silent prickly rage, rigid as he was, hating the body that wanted to soften and yield.

It was late; it became later. He could not hear her breathe, couldn't hear the slow, deep respiration of restful sleep; she must be lying awake, as he was. Was she listening for his breathing, wondering why he wasn't asleep yet?

He saw time had passed; the moonlight falling through the shutters across the floor had fallen straight towards him when he came to bed, and now slanted thinly away. The moon had flown, and the sun under the earth must have been galloping hard towards dawn, as he lay still, and for a moment the thought of an entire cosmos spinning around him weakened him, made him clench one hand against vertigo as he'd had to do the first time he ever rode a horse. Then he realised the bed was, in fact, moving, shaking almost imperceptibly. Soundlessly, Tullia was sobbing.

That undid his resolutions and his pride; he reached for her, wrapped his body round hers, held her gently in the warmth of the blankets and felt her rocking as she wept.

He asked her nothing then, and she said nothing, and after a while, they slept.

When he woke she was up already, combing her hair, pulling at it viciously to get the knots out. Her face was turned away from him; in the pale light of a misty morning her hair's fire was subdued to dull russet, all the life gone out of it.

"Where did you get to, Tullia?"

"Nowhere. Lost."

"You weren't..."

"With Arathenas? No."

"I didn't... I meant, you weren't angry with me? You weren't looking for a reason to leave me?"

She turned. Her face was wet, he saw.

"I was lost," she said.

"But you know Velzna now; how were you lost?"

She looked at him, her eyes dull. "Even you don't trust me."

"Gods!" He spoke more loudly than he'd meant to, and saw her flinch.

"I was lost," she said again, and bowed her head, and let her hands fall to her lap.

There was something strange about this, he thought, and his skin prickled, though that might have been merely the chill of the morning air. Her listless eyes, her flat voice, were like his mother's, after one of her visions; something too great to deal with, that left her depleted and lacking.

He went to her then, and held her, and stroked her hair, and murmured things that might have been nonsense, gentling her as he would a horse, and in the end she sighed one great, deep sigh, and he felt her trembling in his arms. He thought he heard some great dark thing fluttering in the roof, and then he heard the cock crow outside, towards the rising sun, and knew from that omen things would be all right.

"I don't understand," he said.

"I was just lost," she said; "just, suddenly, miserable, and lonely, and I looked at you, and saw you with Teitu, so much a part of things here, so much a prince, and I felt so far from that world you live in, as if I was seeing it from a long way away, as if I were a hinthial watching you from the dry lands."

He thrust his thumb through two fingers in the sign against evil. "You've no need to feel like that. You're as Etruscan as I am. You're the daughter of a king."

She twisted in his arms to look him in the face, suddenly showing a little of her usual spirit. "You have no idea! You know what he was like as a father? Always reminding us we were half barbarians. Always saying that he could turn us away, and our mother, or sell us. And he did sell us, you know he did, me to Arruns...

"He used to tell us how he'd been brought up with nothing, and why should we deserve any different. I hated him; I dreamed of killing him, taking the great spear he kept in his room and stabbing it into his belly. One day I found a potsherd on the floor, and I slashed my arm with it, where the skin was fleshiest. I watched the blood come welling up, the first tiny jewel-like drops, and what I felt wasn't pain, but relief, a wonderful emptiness. I thought I would die, and it was wonderful."

"It didn't hurt at all?"

"Not then. I felt nothing. Later, it did. The wound festered. It scabbed over, eventually. The next time I did it, I washed the scar in vinegar."

"Gods," he said, "why did I never trust you? I've loved you, Tullia, but I never trusted you because I thought you were your father's daughter, and when it came to it, I thought you'd choose him over me, because you loved him."

"You think I'd love a man like that? A man who gave me to your brother like a good meal or a golden bracelet?"

He tightened his arms around her again, and this time she took his face in her hands, and kissed him, desperately hard, the kind of kiss that left no room for breathing or thinking. Empire and victory collapsed into airy dreams, the whole world condensed into the fire of their bodies and the blaze of their love. No father, no king, no god could tear them apart now; they were all they had, and for once that was enough.

***

One thing rankled with Tarquin. He'd met the head of the league; he'd met the head zilaths and the laukums of most of the other cities; he'd become firm friends with Teitu, who by all accounts was the heir in waiting, the hope of Tarchna; and he had a passing acquaintance, through Arathia and Arathenas, with many of the nobility and the priesthood of Velzna (nobility and priesthood being far from mutually incompatible, many nobles being priests, though some were not, and some priests were not noble); but he had never met any ruler of Velzna; no zilath, no laukum, no priestly king.

Arathia and Arathenas stuck close to the Roman couple; he was almost sure now they'd been delegated to keep an eye on him, private citizen though he claimed to be, to make sure he started up no diplomatic incidents, didn't make trouble. But he still wasn't sure about their relationship; sister and brother?

"After all," he said to Tullia, "their names are so similar, as if the parents..."

"I don't think so. There's some constraint between them. Almost as if they'd once been lovers, but now... not."

"He's highly placed, I think."

"I did find a little out about Arathia. She's a devotee of Menrva; comes from one of the ruling families. But she doesn't seem to have any public office."

"Not that that means anything." It was one of the mysteries of Velzna; so many offices - priest of Turan, keeper of the waters, divider of fields, or was it divider of waters and keeper of fields? - but none of them amounted to anything; there seemed to be no magistrates, no king, and when you met someone who, you suspected, might have been some kind of ruler, like the high priest of Tinia (and she had the look of a ruler), they were at such great pains to disclaim any power at all that you felt there was something odd going on, but Tarquin couldn't have said what.

"That makes her what? Someone's spy?" he asked.

"Who knows?"

"Arathenas is playing at something. He seems to have got very close to Thresu."

"I didn't think he liked him."

"He doesn't. So why do I see them together so often?"

"He's not important," Tullia said. "He can't be."

"My mother told me something about Velzna, once," Tarquin said, hesitating, as if he was searching for something he'd nearly forgotten.

"She must have told you quite a few things about Velzna."

"No, there was one thing in particular. I never thought it was important."

"Well? Is it? Are you going to tell me?"

"She used to say they're strange in Velzna, they have a hidden king, like the hidden gods."

"A story for children."

He wondered, though. Thinking through everything he knew about Velzna, and he knew a good deal, he could never remember the name of a single laukum. He must surely have heard of one, in one of the stories of wars between the cities, before the time of the League, on in his mother's stories of the temples and the city. If he thought of any other city he could remember the name of its founder or one of the great rulers: Osiniu of Clevsin, Velsu of Velathri, Sarina the high queen of Perusna, or Cisra's Mezentius the Just, exiled to Latium by the tyrant Lars. If he'd thought about it before he would have believed he'd forgotten, or perhaps that nothing interesting ever happened in Velzna; or that the head of the League was also the king of the city, but that clearly wasn't the case; and that absence of any names in the city's history was curious.

The whole city seemed built around an absence, now he thought of it; he knew his way through the city, had walked every street, and yet had a feeling the real city was elsewhere, hidden behind high walls, in secret courtyards, hidden gardens. The streets always seemed to have too many corners, or too few, to end up quite where they did, so that he'd think that he had walked three sides of a square only to find he'd come round a complete circle; he kept finding alleyways he hadn't seen before, that led under roofed-over passageways to tiny patches of garden, or solitary altars under ancient trees. Was he making a mystery out of nothing? He felt off balance, a stranger in a world that didn't work by quite the same rules he'd thought it did.

"You think they're just being evasive?" he asked.

"I doubt it," Tullia said. "You haven't actually asked for an audience, after all."

"I can't, can I?"

"Not officially, no."

"I wonder if it's like Clevsin, where the king's very old, and has been sick for a long while..."

"Vanth's tits! That says something about a city. An old, sick king wouldn't last a week in Rome."

"Ancus Marcius did."

"Your father didn't. Nor Romulus."

"The god caught up to heaven?"

"You believe that fairy story? He was lynched by his generals when he got too kingly. Tullus Hostilius was burned in his house, and they blamed that on a lightning strike. And there's always been suspicion about the way old Marcius died."

"Rome is a harsh place, and new. Here, their kings grow old, and still rule," Tarquin said.

"And still live."

"It must be to someone's advantage," he said. "Someone who couldn't or doesn't want to rule openly."

"Perhaps it just makes it easier to refuse audiences."

Which left them no further advanced, and with Thresu pulling together the enemies of Rome within the League. Which left them only one firm option; to open up the cracks in Tarchna's ruling family. Teitu was the one they needed to talk to.

***

Tarquin had instinctively recoiled from Arathenas; there was something offputting in that languid pose, like seeing a coiled snake, puffy and inert. His elegant affectations reminded Tarquin sometimes, and with sudden pain, of Strephon, but he hadn't Strephon's innocent desire to be loved, nor Strephon's energy; there was something sluggish and sour in his nature. On the other hand he found himself spending more and more time with Arathia - initially at least because the more time he spent with her, the more he could palm Arathenas off on to Tullia, who seemed more able to tolerate him, and then later, because he had become rather captivated by her slight and hesitant charm.

They had made something of a habit of walking on one of the terraced parks that overhung the great cliffs, down gravelled alleys under mop-headed box trees still glossy and green, looking out to the plains and the great sky with its neverending drama of clouds. Some days there were immense thunder-heads like anvils, such dark grey they were almost black; other times, soft folded clouds like the fur of a cat's belly, or thin streamers of tattered faint white.

For all his doubts, for all his feeling that there was something about this city he didn't understand, he loved it; the ceremoniousness of its life, the way it was governed by song and music and the rites, and its wealth, too.

"Isnt Rome rich enough for you?" Arathia asked him. "You dress well, well enough to rival the richest families from Cisra or Tarchna; you have taste, and that usually doesn't come without a certain amount of funds."

"It doesn't always come with a certain amount funds, though; look at Thresu."

"Surely Rome is rich?"

"It's a shanty town. My mother told me stories of Tarchna, the wonderful city with its walls and its fine temple and the families who wore purple and gold; and we were living with chickens scratching holes in the floor, and pigs stealing anything you put down for a moment. Even now, we've got a great temple of Tinia, and the forum is paved, but the walls are a scratch in the ground, and if you go a hundred paces from the palace you find squalid huts thrown up overnight, and children running round naked and dirty."

"And Tarchna was different?"

"The invitation never came."

"Rome will be rich," she said; "when you govern it, you can make it more orderly."

"But it's so new. Everything we have is new. Everything has had to be bought. I don't have anything of my grandmother's, not even an old pot or a single earring. It makes life so shallow; we practically don't have ancestors, whereas here..."

"Oh, here!" she said, and looked sad. "Here, you can't move for ancestors. Everything we do has been done before. You know, compared to Velzna, Tarchna's the same; all bright new pots from Greece, and Phoenician jewellery, and ostrich eggs and exotic flimflam."

"Terrible," he said, with a feeling of having been, ever so slightly, put in his place.

"I don't know; I rather like it."

She wasn't fiery like Tullia, but she had a peculiar quality of intensity; like a strung bow, ready. And he thought suddenly; like a bowstring that splits and unravels when it's fired without an arrow set to it, she would be spoiled if she wasn't used, if she didn't find a task great enough to use her talents.

They had come to the end of the walk, and turned to go back. He noticed she'd fallen into step with him. It happens, he thought; people do fall into step, naturally. But there was something peculiarly right about it, with Arathia; it was a sign of some sympathy between them. Then as they turned, their bodies touched, and he was tempted to reach out for her small wrist; but he hesitated a moment, and they walked on, though he could feel, for a moment, her fingers brush his, and the soft hair on her arm. And before he could turn his face to hers, she had turned away to look at a small bird that was drinking from a smear of rain left in a hollow of the path.

Well, he thought, if she noticed, leave her wanting. He wouldn't risk making a fool of himself. But the world glittered again with possibility; this was what life was about, the wonderful game, the chase, the danger, the excitement. It was like when you had the blood up in a fight, or a cavalry charge, and everything seemed to slow around you, and the world became as clear as mountain water or ice.

"I've been wondering," he said, and she turned, her face raised to his, eyes wide.

"Yes?"

"About the king," he said, and it was as if a cloud passed overhead, and the world darkened.

"The king?"

"There is a king in Velzna, I suppose? But I don't hear anything about him."

She looked away. "He's ill," she said, looking unhappy.

"So there really is a king? You're not just ruled by the temple, or a council of twelve?"

"We don't talk about it. It's not lucky."

"Suppose I wanted to speak to him." She started to answer, but he held up a hand to hush her. "No, I don't want to, but suppose I did - or anyone, Thresu, perhaps, or Teitu - how would I go about it?"

"He'd find out," she said. "A king always does find out. And someone would be sent."

"And then what?"

"We really don't like to talk about it," she said, and nothing he could say would bring her back to the subject.

***

In the gradually lengthening afternoons, Tullia span yarn with Seianti and her maids. Two of the maids always sang, one starting the song, the other responding to each line, sometimes repeating it, sometimes varying the tune; when one tired, she would hand her line on to another of the women, so that though singers dropped in and out of the song, the song itself continued the whole afternoon without a pause. Sometimes all the women would join the singing for three or four repetitions of the response, and then drop out again; there must be some rule that all these women knew, but Tullia could never work out what it was, so that she was always surprised by the chorus, and never dared to join her own voice to it.

A girl went walking

by the woods and the fields

and the wheat waved to her

and the ox bowed its head.

When she came to the river

she saw a young man

with a green tebenna

and a golden crown.

Come over, come over,

come over to me,

you shall be the queen

of my fine city.

How can I come over?

the water is too fast,

there is no ford

where I can pass.

I'll throw you a thread

answered the young king

so you can come over

the wild wild water.

The hoopoe and woodpecker

warned her not to go,

kraa kraa said the raven

and the black hooded crow.

He threw her the thread.

Silver it became.

She trod lightly on it

To the other side....

Grandmother, grandmother

make me a shroud

for the king has called me

under the ground.

Winter is coming

the frost lies on the furrow

and under the round hill

I have to go.

It was an odd choice of song for springtime, and it never arrived at its conclusion, for Thresu arrived with three or four of the Tarchna contingent, and both song and spinning were put aside.

Ostensibly he'd come to talk to Seianti, but after a while he left her with his friends, and came over where Tullia sat, spinning quietly, her thoughts still caught in the tale of the girl stolen by the lasa.

"Tullia," he said, as if she weren't there; "Tullia, the little half-Etruscan girl from Rome. What a strange mixture, what a very strange... Oh, how can a girl be half one thing, and half another, and both halves something else? That's a riddle, at least to me, a real enigma."

"Thresu Spurinna, did you come here to talk pedigrees?"

He looked at her greedily, as if he was considering where to start eating her, where the flesh would be most succulent.

"Oh, talking pedigrees? Indeed not. Ignore me, Tullia my dear, I'm talking to myself, old fool that I am, old fool that Teitu tells me unceasingly that I am... I hear you're getting on well with dear Teitu?"

He misses nothing, she thought, fool though he likes to appear.

"And you must be enjoying Velzna. As am I, indeed, as am I, and not just for the excellent cuisine. I find Velzna a very civilised city, on the whole, very easy to live in, not of course that Tarchna isn't, but it's different here, not quite so ..." His voice tailed off, as if he'd forgotten his train of thought, but his eyes, pale and soft as oysters, dwelt on her.

"Velx," he said. "That's where you're from, isn't it? Before Rome, I mean. You were born in Velx, brought up in Velx, so I hear. I visited Velx once. Did you ever... They have some fine women there, very fine indeed."

"Finer than you deserve, then," Tullia said.

He didn't take the hint. "Fine, but rather headstrong, the women of Velx. That Ramtha. Did you ever... I bet she's one who likes to ride her men hard."

"I wouldn't know. I only saw her once. She was the laukum's wife."

"And none too faithful to him, I heard."

"Perhaps she wasn't. What of it?"

"I wasn't there that long," he sighed. "I didn't have the chance to... but I did wonder whether... but no matter. Who were those boys last night?"

"What?"

"The ones who danced."

"I'm glad you noticed them. I didn't."

"Oh, no doubt you have better things to look for. Or perhaps you expect them to look for you; now that's a luxury I don't have, being an old man, and fat. But you're rather fine, aren't you? Altogether a nicely put together girl, though with all that fiery hair I wonder if you haven't a touch of temper to you, perhaps, or..."

He had put his hand on her knee, where it rested like a tame toad or a damp rolled dishcloth.

"Your hair would come from your mother, I suppose, not your father. I met him, did I tell you? He was very often with Ramtha, when I was in Velx. Now, that's a long time ago, I suppose..."

One of the girls was bringing round warm cakes, that she'd just fetched from the kitchen, and Tullia took advantage of the interruption to move very slightly, so that Thresu's hand fell away, but she knew this would only be a temporary respite unless she found some excuse, soon, to leave the room entirely. Unabashed, Thresu reached for the girl with the cakes, pulling her towards him and down on to his lap; but once she was there, it turned out to be only the cakes he was interested in. They were oozing with honey; Seianti was nibbling hers delicately, holding it with the very tips of her fingers, but Thresu crammed his into his mouth, not caring that he had let a dribble of honey fall from the corner of his lips.

"Aren't you having one, Tullia?" he asked, before he had quite finished it. "They're very good. And all good things have to be tasted."

He took another cake, and leant backwards, kicking his legs out to tip the girl off his lap, laughing when she staggered slightly as she rose, and nearly upset the boy who had brought winecups and a jug of steaming spiced wine.

"Don't mind old Nuncle Thresu," he said. "He doesn't mean any harm, you know." His smile was wide and sticky with honey, and innocent as a baby's. "Just a little fun, a little fun to pass the time, to pass the time in these dull winter days. Dont mind it, my dears." But Seianti was scowling, even though one of the youths Thresu had brought with him seemed to be flirting outrageously with her.

If only Seianti would say something. But though she scowled, she remained silent, and turned back to the young man, saying something that made him laugh, taking attention away from Thresu. And Thresu had noticed, now, that Tullia had moved away. She had only a few moments to think of a way out.

Suddenly, the youth with the wine was stumbling, one foot caught where Tullia had stretched out her leg, and she was twisting to get out of his way; at least, that was what she hoped everyone would see, as she caught for his left hand and pulled the jug towards her. She had to hope the wine had cooled down on its way from the kitchen; but she'd risk scalding to get away, if that was the price. She heard a sharp crack as the handle snapped off the jug; then she was drenched with hot wine, which cooled almost as soon as her clothing absorbed it, so that within moments she was shivering.

"Turan's tits!" Seianti was yelling - and Seianti never swore; "what kind of gods-blasted idiot..." and one of her girls was trying to calm her, while the lad was looking at Tullia with a ghastly abject face, and Tullia had grabbed a cloth from one of the girls and was holding it to herself, ostensibly to soak up the wine but just as much to hide her body, too visible through the clinging folds of her wet clothes, from Thresu's avid eyes.

Tullia walked over to Seianti slowly, with the kind of dignity a queen might use attending an embassy, or a mother at her daughter's betrothal, and said, very simply; "I should go."

She turned, but Thresu had got up, and was coming towards her, with a look that was half concern and half greed.

"I am so sorry," he said, taking her hand and bending over it; "so sorry, we were getting on so well, I was so enjoying your company..."

He carried her hand to his lips, and as he kissed it, she felt his tongue darting between two of her fingers.

She pulled her hand back quickly. Only after she'd done so did she realise she'd been trapped; everyone had seen her rudeness to him, a rudeness into which she'd been provoked. In that one instinctive movement she'd probably ruined Tarquin's chances of ever winning Thresu over.

***

Yet another banquet. Life in Velzna was turning into a round of suppers, each more luxurious than the last, the days only vacant spaces of waiting till the next banquet, which were filled with desultory and meaningless activity, so that life only seemed to begin once the sun was already declining, and the lighting of the lamps was the signal for the beginning of the real business of the day.

There was too much food, claiming too much attention. Too many different birds; larks, perhaps, or thrushes, very small, with purplish grey meat, and some kind of game bird with rich dark-fleshed thighs, and geese dripping with fat, pheasants that would have been dry if they had not been wrapped in lard before roasting, and duck breasts stewed with honey and vinegar. And fish, speckle-scaled, pink-fleshed trout, and a kind of carp that tasted of nothing so much as mud, but everyone thought was some kind of treat, almost as if the more disgusting a food tasted, the greater the connoisseurship of those who ate it; little dumplings stuffed with bland pike, and chunks of eel in highly spiced stew. That was without counting the different cuts of pork, of beef, of tender veal or mutton richly spiced and cooked long in clay to disguise its toughness, the venison, the hares and boars and rabbits, and then the cakes, the thick wheat or lentil stews, the soft messes of onions or leeks and roasted roots, the dried and candied and pickled fruits of last year, so that you kept eating, and kept on eating, beyond fulness, till eventually you felt surfeited and sick; it was a heaven for the gourmet and a kind of hell reserved for the glutton, Tarquin thought, only Thresu, clearly, did not feel that way.

Then there was the chitter-chatter, which more and more came to resemble a posturing game, in which one made a statement not in order to assert any meaning, but simply in order to prove one's superior intelligence or taste. It was like watching roosters strutting; and he thought angrily, I'm a fighting cock, I should be fighting. This was not the great game he thought it was, in which the fates of nations were made; it was just a fight between self-discipline and gluttony, that Thresu had already lost. For Tarquin, these days of disillusion were made bearable only by his game with himself, to pursue Arathia without pursuing her, to come as close as he could to touching her without ever openly doing so; and that, gods knew, was a poor game, compared to the thrill of the chase he'd enjoyed in the old days in Rome.

And yet, and yet; even though he was stuffed full of banquets, even though he was beginning to tire of doing nothing, he kept seeing flashes of what life could be, in a city that wasn't run by outlaws, that wasn't poor, and striving, that wasn't Rome. There was the time when Thresu said, looking at yet another sumptuously laid table, "Noble life is the availability of good things," and Arathenas (right, though obnoxiously self-righteous), looking at the four trails of scab down Thresu's cheek, disagreed: "Nobility," he said, "is knowing how to use retraint when all good things are made too much available."

Then there was that conversation, after the formal dinner had broken up, and some of them were playing kottabos battleships, trying to sink floating saucers in a fountain by throwing the dregs of wine from their wine cups at them - success demanded a neat overarm throw, so that the wine flew in a dense, tight stream to its target - and a few people had wandered outside in a warmer than usual night for the Tuscan spring, into the gardens where the darkness afforded privacy, and that unmistakable moan of ecstasy came from somewhere out in the darkness, and someone, he couldn't remember who, had asked: "Are things the same in Rome as they are here, between men and women?"

"Not exactly," Tarquin said.

"A Roman would feel he owned you," Tullia said.

"It's only slaves you own!" Arathia said, shocked.

"I don't belong to anyone," said a woman with a viciously reddened mouth and too much nose, who had just destroyed one of the kottabos 'ships' with a ferociously accurate throw. "Certainly not to Larth."

There was some laughter at that, and an easy-going older man, who must have been Larth, said "That's true enough. I've lost count of the boys she's brought home. But they never stay long. Funny, that."

That got more laughter, and a scowl from his wife, till he took her hand and swung it in his, and grinned, and said, "Probably because they lose to her at kottabos."

Thresu passed them, on his way out.

"Never trust a Roman," he said; "they want to own everything. Not just the women."

Tarquin had been a stranger to shame all his life; now it clamped its constricting hand on his heart. He'd always felt Etruscan; but his own people rejected him.

"Well of course," he said, and felt his heart beating too fast and his voice trembling, "Romans need to be educated."

And even so, he felt inspired by this society, in which a woman could be on easy terms with her husband, in which the joy-denying ordinances of old Rome had no place.

It was shortly after that evening that they met Lars Porsena, in the house of the Velianas, one of the ruling families of Cisra. He was talking to Arathenas and Thresu when Tarquin met him, and jerked his head up slightly, and said "Lars" - no family name, no name of father or mother - in his clipped, laconic way, and then turned back to Arathenas and continued his conversation.

"No knowledge is ever wasted," he said.

"Really?" Arathenas raised an eyebrow with a movement that never got quite as far as becoming a shrug, suggesting that knowledge, like so many other things, was just too much effort.

"Of course," Lars said, "that's not quite true. Is it?"

Tarquin began to laugh. That was a stupid way to make conversation; state a fact, then contradict yourself. But Lars simply put his head on one side for a moment; his tongue crept out and licked his top lip, and then he took up the theme again, almost as if he was talking to himself.

"Nine out of ten pieces of information probably are a waste. Truth told. You'll never need them. The tenth thing you know will save your life. Trouble is, you can never tell which is which."

"Well that's true enough," Thresu cut in, with a wide grin. "There was a man up Suana way – well, you know what they're like in the back country – who knew all sorts of odd things, like how to dry fish skin, and all kinds of old stories, and what horses were scared of, and how mares got pregnant by the wind."

"That's a load of shit," Tarquin said rudely.

"Of course it is. But that's what he believed. Can't say his horses were ever particularly distinguished in the races, so he'd have been better off getting them served by a decent stallion like everyone else. Anyway... where was I?"

He broke off to pick a stuffed prune from a youth who was passing with a platter, and gnawed on it speculatively.

"Oh yes," he said, his mouth still half full, "that old chap in Suana. Well, he came across a story that there was a hidden treasure somewhere up the Fiore. One of those stories you hear, and think it's probably all imagination anyway, and forget as soon as you've heard it. But he didn't. He thought about it, and asked Phoenicians about the rocks in their country, and started splitting rocks and looking at them, and then a few months later off he set, and found a dried up waterfall, and flakes of gold in the dust. Tiny sparkling flakes, no bigger than a white speck on your fingernail, but gold all the same. He collected up the dust, and had the gold melted out, and made himself rich."

"Rich beyond the dreams of avarice!" Tullia said.

"Not exactly. But he could have afforded to get better horses."

"So why isn't everyone headed up the Fiore?" Tarquin asked.

"Oh, this fellow went back a year later, with a few men he'd recruited, and they started digging for the gold a bit further up river. But they never found anything. And now in Suana, if they want to tell you you're an idiot, they ask if you're related to Arnza Achu."

"In the far east," Lars said, "near the Inhospitable Sea, they put fleeces in the river to catch the gold."

"Nice story."

Lars looked levelly at Thresu. "As good as yours."

"As good as mine! As good as mine!" Thresu cackled, slapped Lars on the back, then changed his mind and hugged him tightly; too tightly, to judge by the way Lars winced, or perhaps he was just fastidious about fat and greasy men becoming over-familiar. "As good as mine! Oh, the stories you tell, Porsena! What a wicked boy! What a wicked one!"

That was when Tarquin realised he was talking to the fourth son of the king of Clevsin. Lars was a soft man, short rather than tall, of middling build; he was in almost every way quite unmemorable, but his deep brown eyes, extravagantly lashed, like a cow's, were startling.

Tullia said afterwards, "He's smarter than he looks."

"He'd better be smarter than he sounds, as well."

"I bet we'll find Clevsin getting richer, and no one will know where it all comes from, but it'll be somewhere up the Fiore."

Tarquin grunted. Another of Tullia's infatuations, he thought. "He's a fourth son, anyway. No chance of him inheriting."

"I don't know," she said; "it doesn't always go to the oldest, nor to a son, nor in the male line. And you were a younger son, after all."

"You like it here, don't you?" he asked - anything to change the subject.

"I do," she said. "And not for the reasons you think."

"Which are?"

"Teitu, and Lars, and Arathenas, for three."

He scowled.

"I just told you they are not the reason. Aplu's balls, you're hard to love sometimes, Tarquin. I like... the freedom. The air. Here I can go to banquets, I can feast, I can play kottabos."

"Badly."

"Fair enough. I can lose at kottabos. They were my earrings, not yours, anyway. And in Rome? In Rome I can sit in a room spinning. Or weaving. Or weeping."

"Or you can come to Aglaia's with me."

"And nowhere else. No, I like it here."

She wanted to stay, he thought; but there was no question of staying. Another week, another month; but later or sooner, they must leave Velzna. If only, he thought; if only he had been accepted as the Etruscan he was, not the half-barbarous Roman ogre that naughty children were warned about; if only he had any prospect of getting his own wealth here, but however indulgent Seianti and her husband were, their welcome for him would eventually run out, and everything he had was his mother's, or his father's, and was tied up in Rome; if only he was achieving anything here, if only he had a purpose here. And even so, to be free of the greyness of Rome...

"I have to go back to Rome."

"Why not stay here?" Tullia's lower lip stuck out, a sign she was beginning to sulk already at his lack of compliance with her wishes. That was a dire warning; from sulking it was never far to fighting.

"I have my horsemen. I have my friends. I can't afford to lose my place in Rome. Not like you; you have nothing to lose..."

"You'd go back without me?"

"Only for a time. We'll be together, Tullia, that I can promise you, but there are things I have to do."

"You're in danger as long as my father lives."

"A prince is always in danger. It's like swimming in a river in flood; there are always dangerous currents. Whirlpools and riptides."

"You'll spend your entire life waiting, Tarquin. Waiting and wondering and trying to work out the rules of the game."

"And if I stay here, I'll just be waiting somewhere else."

"You could make yourself a prince here. Work with Teitu. Or go to Clevsin with Porsena; he's hungry."

"He's weird."

"Wouldn't you rather be a prince in Etruria than a king in Rome?"

Of course he would, of course. But Etruria could not last. Rome was too big and too greedy; Servius would choke all the cities one by one. Tarquin could live as a prince here, but in the end, he'd be an exile, driven from city to city by the fortunes of war. Like Robur, he thought, and formed the hand Tullia couldn't see into the sign of the forked man. "Have patience," he said.

"Patience," she said disgustedly. "I want to live."

***

"Everything grows out of his fears," Teitu said. "He thinks Tarchna will only be safe if she rules the entire League. "

"He's only head of the League for this year, though."

"Wait and see."

"But the election always passes to the next city, in order."

"There have been exceptions. Under Thefarie, when the earth shook on the day of the election, and the comet confirmed his precedence. During famine and drought. That's recorded in the temple histories. And in time of war."

"War with Rome?" asked Tarquin.

"Exactly. Why do you think he's so strong for war?"

Gods, this was strong stuff. Without thinking Tarquin turned to look behind him, checking for unseen listeners; but this was why they'd ridden out this morning, down the cliff road to the plains and then north to the sharp valleys still half hidden in mist, and the hills stippled with bare trees. For hunting, they'd said, and they'd brought two tall hounds with them, as well as their bows and a javelin each, but they both knew it was to talk, as well, to talk seriously and without any possibility of being overheard.

The morning had not been fruitful; they'd seen the slots of deer in the soft mud of the path, and the dogs had given tongue, but they had seen only one small hind, who splashed across a stream some way from them and bounded diagonally up the slope opposite till she disappeared into the skimpy woods. They'd found a spot on rising ground overlooking the valley, where foresters had been at work; the ground was scattered with woodchips, and there were huge tree stumps cut off about knee high, one of which they had used as an impromptu seat. The dogs had gone off chasing each other down towards the river, and the horses were hobbled and grazing in the pasture below. Drifting mist still obscured the course of the river, though here the air was clear, and the sun cast golden highlights on the woods opposite.

They'd sat and shared their provisions, not frugal but yet plain; hard sausage they had to tear with their teeth, and an aged cheese like a breast, with an off-centre nipple where the cloth drainage bag had been tied, and yesterday's bread, the crust gone hard. But the sausage was finely flavoured with fennel, and the cheese, though yellowing, was soft and pungent, and they washed the meal down with a wine that seemed to be full of autumn's warmth, tasting of blackberries and tannin. And they'd talked; or rather Tarquin had asked the questions, and Teitu had talked, about Tarchna, the city Tarquin had heard so much about but never seen - about the temple on its hill, about the walls, the harbour town of Gravisca, the potteries, the palaces, the laukum and the twelve great families of zilaths, the gardens and the December horse races and duck-hunting in the marshes, and the never ceasing music of the jewellers' planishing hammers in the dark streets of the inner city.

But now talk had turned to policy, and Thresu's determination to take the League to war.

"And you?" Tarquin asked Teitu. "What do you think? Is Rome to be destroyed?"

"I think we can be more ambitious."

"What's more ambitious than an enemy's total destruction?"

"A greater League. Look: Tarchna goes back how many generations? Walk out from Tarchna along the ridge of the hill, and you pass the tombs of my ancestors; ten in a line, each tomb another forty, fifty years, perhaps, and beyond that, the nameless mounds half fallen back into the grass, as the road runs downhill towards the valley. Tarchna's wealth has been long in the getting. And yet in three generations Rome has risen from nothing. We may be rich, but the past is always pulling at us; nothing changes, nothing moves. And Rome, on the other hand, Rome's very nature is rebellion and change. How much more could we do with Rome than against her!"

Tarquin had thought he was too old for such enthusiasm, too cynical for idle dreams of glory; what had his wonderful performance at Veii won for him but exile? What had Strephon's bravery won but death? But looking at Teitu's open and earnest face, he felt himself warmed by the inspiration; perhaps, just perhaps, they could wrest a golden age from this cold grey winter. It wsnt just Teitu's youth that made his face such an imperfect copy of Tanaquil's, despite the startling similarity; there was an unguarded quality to his look, as there never was to Tanaquil, a kind of innocence. Let Teitu never be disillusioned, he thought, let disappointment never tarnish him.

"I need the right partner," Teitu said. "I need a man who could stand back to back with me against the world."

"That kind of thing is overrated," said Tarquin, arguing against his own feelings. "Once you're standing back to back, you know you've lost your bloody army."

"Two of us against the world." Teitu leant closer, and his eyes were full of strange brightness, and his lips trembled. Tarquin could feel Teitu's breath, warm and moist, on the side of his face.

"You know," Tarquin said, "they don't like this kind of thing in Rome." He leant forward, and put his hand on Teitu's cheek, long fingers against long curve.

"And you don't, Roman?"

"I'm not a fucking Roman," Tarquin said.

Teitu was softer than Tullia; with Tullia it was like wrestling, whereas Teitu seemed fluid, yielding. Tarquin had never thought much about loving men; he'd never needed to, there being so many women available to him, though perhaps, if Strephon had lived, they might have been closer. In the end, he thought, it was all much the same which sex you fucked; the result was the same excruciating moment of breathless surrender, like the pain of breathing in frozen air after a run on a cold morning.

Afterwards, they finished the wine, and Teitu whistled the dogs back. There was not enough time to go further along the valley in search of a good chase, but they could cross over, and get back to Velzna on the other side, on fresh ground, though crossing back over the river lower down might not be easy. They crossed up the slope where they had seen the hind fleeing, and into the woods, where the bare branches still dripped dew, and drifts of wet leaves muffled their horses' hoofbeats. After a long, slow ascent, the woods gave way to high open moors, but though they twice startled hares from under the horses' feet, they saw no sign of any other game, and the hounds lost the first hare, though one of them brought back the second, limp in the dog's soft mouth.

They were silent for a long time, and then Teitu said, without preamble: "You won't tell Thresu about any of this?"

"I thought you were not ashamed of such things in Tarchna."

"Fool!" Teitu said, colouring, and his horse, catching his movement, sidestepped and shied a little, till Teitu could gentle it into obedience. He rode on for a few paces, and then said, quietly, "about our alliance. Well, if it is an alliance."

"I can't make promises, you know that."

"I know. You're not king of Rome."

"Servius won't rule for ever."

"All men must die," Teitu said solemnly. Yes, Tarquin thought, Servius certainly must die.

***

He'd hoped the message he'd so casually dropped might at least have got through from Arathia, that he wanted to talk to the king; but if so, the king evidently didn't want to talk to him. Perhaps Arathia wasn't, after all, as far up in the hierarchy as he'd thought she was; perhaps her cover as a priestess of Menrva was her real calling, and she had nothing to do with the city's governance at all.

It was another of those things that told Tarquin his time in Velzna was coming to an end. He had sounded people about about the League meetings, but no one would tell him anything; not even Teitu, who had talked an unwilling Thresu into taking him to at least some of the meetings as an extra secretary.

"I suspect he only takes me to the boring ones," Teitu had said; "I'm sure when there's anything interesting to discuss, he finds some reason for keeping me out."

But when Tarquin pressed him, Teitu wouldn't tell him what had been discussed even at the meetings he had attended. If Tarquin had been in Velzna officially, he might have pressed to be allowed to observe - though Rome would never have been given a voice on the council, he had just enough friends that it was achievable, even though he would have to grit his teeth when they made patronising comments about "letting the barbarians see how a real government works", and "teaching the Romans about consensus, and gods know, they're not much good at it". But he was here as a private citizen; and there was no more he could achieve.

One last night, then, one last mad night, and they'd start for Rome in the morning. Tullia, of course, was unhappy. She'd wanted to stay, but that, of course, was impossible; he'd be in enough trouble for bringing her here, but as long as he delivered her safely back to Rome, he'd rely on Tanaquil to secure forgiveness, or at least, an absence of punishment for them both.

He'd miss the ease of their relationship here; waking up every morning with Tullia's red hair spread out on the bed covers next to him, the joined warmth of their bodies, watching her comb out and braid her hair. The small things; sharing a last drink at night, her hand reaching out for his in the street, following her in the wild dance. Or when she was in the women's dance, catching sight of her through the crowd, when their eyes met; moments like that punctuated their days and nights with sudden infinitesimal graces. Above all, being alone with her; walking the precipitous paths on the cliff faces surrounding the city, chatting over a simple meal of bannocks and tart cheese, huddled by the brazier on a cold day, or on the infrequent sunny days warming themselves in a sheltered corner of the gardens. Just knowing, even when she stayed out without him, she would be there in the morning. And all this would change once they went back to Rome; back to snatching afternoons at Aglaia's, surrounded by a crowd of friends and slaves, or the odd day they could ride out hunting.

One last night. It would be a good night; the Kaikna had just arrived from Felsina, where both elder and younger Velthur Kaikna were members of the ruling college, and they were opening the Kaikna mansion with a great feast. Teitu had said they were bringing provisions from Felsina - massive hams, and sacks of grain, and all kinds of dried fruits; and their cooking was different from what you got down here, stews with pounded meat, and soft sausages, and sweet-and-sour dishes with the dark and musty vinegars they made there, everything richer and fattier. And there were musicians with them - the pipers of Felsina were renowned; people said there was something in the air, or in the blood, that made them play with a particular wildness, that made the dancers' feet fly faster and the world spin.

Teitu called for them, and they made their way to the Kaikna house, with northern brashness situated right on the main street - it was the house outside which he'd seen the servants sweeping to the sound of the flute, that first day, unless he was mistaken - rather than in the twisting alleys where the southern nobles hid from the public gaze. Outside, two huge fires had been built in the street; on each, an ox was roasting, and one of the pigs that had been spitted there was already being carved up. The two butchers' knives danced, flashed, laying the pig open, splaying it out, slicing flabby petals out of its sides. The entire street smelt of roast, and of fat burned in the embers. Two young children fought over a piece of crackling one of the butchers had doled out; older children were queuing for their rations, while plates of steaming meat were being carried into the house.

They lost Teitu, after a while, in the packed rooms inside; the food was as prolific and as rich as had been promised, and the music as wild as could have been hoped, and the dancing was fast, insanely fast, with long lines of dancers running through the halls, barely managing to hold on to each others' extended arms, to keep up with each others' feet and hold the beat at the same time.

And there was Lars Porsena, all on his own and dancing madly, whirling his arms and legs about, darting his head in every direction like a heron, or pawing and strutting like a horse or a cockerel, and then spinning around, completely unaware of the rest of the dance. His clothes were dark with sweat, and his hair was wet, stuck to his head and neck in curls that looked almost rigid. It wasn't till the pipers ran out of breath and took themselves outside for a break that he stopped; he stood swaying, as if the world would not stand still enough for him to stay upright, and looking slightly dazed, and shivering a little as the cold air got to him. When Tarquin held his tebenna out to him he took it, without expression, and held it till Tarquin had to tell him to put it on.

"What the hell do you call that kind of dancing?" Tarquin asked. Lars looked at him without seeming to take the words in.

"Is it traditional in Clevsin?" Tullia was trying to be tactful, perhaps.

"Oh, I can't dance," Porsena said.

"What were you doing then?"

"Moving. Living the soul of the music, you might say; strange music it is... I'm lame in one leg, I never learned to dance. Just as well I've never minded being made a fool of. I'm a fourth son, I've got used to it, with three older brothers who take the piss."

He smiled, and rubbed his face with a corner of the tebenna. Tarquin reached for the tebenna, annoyed at seeing it spoiled; then suddenly smiled, liking the artlessness of this strange boy from Clevsin.

"I'm glad you're here," Lars said. "I've been wanting to talk to you."

"This isn't the place..." Tarquin started, but there was no stopping him.

"I wanted to talk about Rome. I need to learn about Rome. It's fascinating, what's happening now, and I want to understand it."

"Why not come to Rome? We're going back tomorrow; come with us."

Porsena looked disappointed. "I can't. I'm here to study; I have to stay. I'm a fourth son, I have limited freedom, but father thinks it's time I ... you know the things fathers say; settled down, chose a path in life, I think really he means time I became like everyone else, like my brothers, time he could manage to fix me and nail me down nicely like a dead magpie on a fence. Whereas I live in the whirl of things... as you see." His self-deprecating grin made Tarquin smile in response; Porsena, like Thresu, let himself look like a fool in public, but either he wasn't quite smart enough to keep up the pretence, or else he was clever enough to have worked out that while a pretended foolishness let him talk freely, no one really liked a fool, and no one trusted one, either. Whereas Porsena, for all his strange talk, Tarquin instinctively felt he could trust.

"So learn what you have to learn here," Tarquin said.

"I don't think I can. Velzna doesn't have anything I want. Rome is changing everything; and I am on the side of change."

"Do you speak for Clevsin there?"

Porsena shrugged, and grinned, and shuffled his feet. "A fourth son? Three elder brothers and a father who thinks I'm an idiot? I don't think so. I speak for myself. Charun's ninth hell, but in a world run like Rome it might not even matter being a fourth son."

"But in Clevsin, it matters," Tarquin said. "A pity."

"A pity indeed," said Teitu; "it's so much more fun being an only son. Tarquin, the mimes are starting in the yard - will you come?" And without stopping to excuse himself to Porsena, he moved on, moving as easily through the crowd as a fish swims through water, and leaving space and silence behind him.

"I'd better follow him," Tarquin said; "I need to speak to him before we go."

"Betting on a change of rule in Tarchna?"

"I'd hardly tell a prince of Clevsin if I were. Not even a fourth son."

"You may come to regret that," Porsena said, very softly. It wasn't a threat, it wasn't bluster; he spoke as if he were just observing, quite impartially, a distant event or a curious story, one of those odd pieces of information he collected.

"I don't think so."

Porsena hummed gently to himself, looking at Tarquin; Tarquin couldn't place the tune for a moment, and then he realised it was what Porsena had been dancing to, but slowed, and twisted somehow into a sadder mode.

"You might regret dealing with him. Thresu looks a bloody fool, but he's not. I wouldn't bet on his remaining ignorant of Teitu's plans."

"Whatever Teitu's plans are," Tarquin said; "I wouldn't know."

***

The day broke gloriously, the sun swimming in a melt of pearl and pink, the shadows shrinking from the plain back to the narrow valleys and the verges of woodland; streaks of clouds glowed golden on their lower edges against the lightening blue behind them. Tullia rode ahead, down the steep cliff road,under branches now furry with catkins and speckled with the faint but vivid green of young leaves. It was a day for beginnings, Tarquin thought, not for partings.

He rode out of Velzna as a prince of Rome; and he knew now he would be a king, if he played his game with patience. Teitu was on his side; Teitu, the heir to Tarchna, and Porsena, heir to nowhere, for what that was worth. He dreamed of the day he could bring Rome into the League; and Rome could carry on growing, could continue Servius' policies of making the city rich on the spoils of war, as long as it took the war to the Greeks, or the Gauls. Somewhere in his dreams Rome led the League over the Alps to the cold north, lands rich in amber and furs, and in the south to the rich lands of Great Greece and the ripening sun.

Tullia had hardly spoken all morning. When they got to the bottom of the slope, Tarquin caught her up; he was surprised she hadn't pushed her horse on, for a race now the ground was level, the track clear and wide past the great inscribed stone that marked the boundary between the city and the plain.

"You waited for me."

"I'm not in a hurry to get home," she said.

"There's no choice."

"For me there were never any choices."

"There will be," he said, although he wasn't as sure as he sounded.

"You should know," she said, "I loved every day we spent in Velzna. I love you. You should know that now, in case I never have the chance to tell you again."

"I know it won't be the same as here. But we'll still meet, at Aglaia's, or perhaps..."

"You think we'll still be able to do that?" She was angry with him now, and her horse, sensing it, had started by stamping a front foot, and was now beginning to dance sideways, shifting its weight from foot to foot nervously. "You think my father will let me out of his sight after this? He'll probably try to have me killed; you know he could, in Rome."

They both knew those rules; that Roman children (and Roman wives) were the mere property of their fathers; that a father could put a child to death with impunity; that, indeed, he might even be considered to have a duty to do so, in certain situations. A repugnant custom that they'd never considered Servius, as an Etruscan, would ever follow; but Tarquin suddenly felt the wind cold on his neck. He'd come to Velzna after Strephon's death, feeling Rome might not be safe for him; and now, without any settled plan other than waiting for opportunity, he was heading back. He tried to believe Tullia was safe; he'd put his faith in Tanaquil, but he wondered, now, how much Tanaquil really cared for this difficult and vicious-tempered woman he happened to love.

"We marry, then."

"You forgot. Another thing Servius won't allow. He probably has me saved up for one of his dour obedient Romans. Although..."

"What?"

She fixed him with what wasn't quite a scowl or a smile, as if she was weighing up whether he deserved to be told, or not. He must have passed her test, but she still looked angry when she spoke, and he hoped it was with her father, and not with him.

"Think, Tarquin, think. Servius married a king's daughter, and became king. And now you want to marry a king's daughter. Don't you understand how he'll see that?"

"Odd, that's what Arathenas thought, and you disabused him."

"You think he believed me?"

Tarquin looked down at his hands, lying on his horse's slack reins. All the confidence he'd felt as they came down the slope had gone, dispersed like the glorious sunrise into shreds of mist and damp cloud.

"There's only one way we'll be safe," she said, "and you know it. We have to deal with Servius. Just as you dealt with my sister."

So that was out in the open now, the thing they'd never dared to speak about. He'd never told, she'd never asked. He didn't bother to deny it.

"We have to wait," he said. "Teitu has ideas."

"Ideas! So does Lars Porsena. Lots of them."

"That's hardly the same. Teitu speaks for half of Tarchna."

"The half Thresu doesn't speak for? Or his brother?"

"Give Teitu time. Have patience."

"Bugger patience!"

Tullia kicked her horse savagely on, and Tarquin would have followed her; but at that moment he saw a litter descending the last stretch of the cliff path, and heard the great horns that accompanied it. He wouldn't clear the path before it arrived; and there were twenty armed men marching with it, and a mounted forerunner bearing the rods and the great double axe. This was a lucumo, a king; and since Thresu wasn't a lucumo, and there were no other kings in Velzna, only envoys and princes and zilaths, this could only be the hidden king that Tarquin had sought for so long.

"Make way!" one of the armed men shouted, and Tarquin backed his horse off the road. They were coming fast, faster than he'd wanted to on the steeper parts of the track, with a swinging stride; already they were nearly level with him, only the horn players were falling back, now that they were approaching the boundary marker.

He had no chance to approach, to make any request; but at least he'd be able to see this hidden ruler, since the litter's curtains were open. He waited, steadying his horse, wishing he hadn't backed under a tree that was still dripping with dew, and dripping down his neck. Then the bearers were running past; they were holding the litter high, so he could see clearly the white and purple robes that distinguished the ruler; and his eyes met hers, Arathia's, the king hidden in plain sight.

# Tanaquil

"So, you like the new chairs?"

That question had Tanaquil worried. She hadn't noticed the chairs at all; she'd simply sat down with Fabia to enjoy the late afternoon with a cup of wine and a little gossip. And yet Tanaquil had always been observant; she'd been a great patron of the crafts, in her time. In her time, and with that thought came the anxiety that she'd been superseded, and was already a shadow and a nothing, long before the fires were readied to make her ash - a shadow, living like a ghost in a Rome that was no longer hers. Sad thoughts; when she looked at Fabia, she saw the way Fabia had arranged a shawl so that it covered her neck, now corrugated with the approach of age, and noted the subterfuge, and thought, we've grown old together. She should have noticed the chairs; a few years ago, she would have.

"I hadn't really..." she temporised, but not quick enough for Fabia.

"Once, you would have noticed. You used to care about such things."

"I've had things on my mind."

"Tarquin?"

"Oh... and things."

"Tarquin is a problem. He's been spending quite a bit of time here since he got back."

"After the younger vestals?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. I don't like it."

Now Tanaquil looked at the third of the new set of chairs, it was rather lovely; the chi of the cross-struts elegantly elongated, and the arms curved outwards, and then inwards again, ending in rounded volutes. An untrained eye wouldn't notice, but the clawed talons of the feet were intricately carved, the claws inlaid bronze; there was brass inlay on the scissoring curves of the legs and arms of the chair, and the joinery was exactingly precise. And yet that in itself wouldn't be enough; there was one more important thing that the craftsman had got right. The chair looked inviting; its curves seemed to welcome the imposition of weight, the balled ends of its arms seemed made to be caressed with the palms of the sitter's hands. It was a chair that wanted to be sat on.

"Yes, good, isn't it?" Fabia sighed. "Some young snapper told me I wasn't entitled. Only the king and the flamen dialis get to sit on these, and magistrates sitting in judgment, apparently."

"So?"

"I said, I think I outrank the flamen dialis. I certainly outrank the magistrates, young man. And as for sitting in judgment, a Vestal is always sitting in judgment. She never stops."

"Ha."

"Yes, he went away rather quickly after that. And I have my chairs. Well, an old woman needs her luxuries."

Tanaquil smiled. No young man would ever dare take on Tanaquil, who had always cultivated a certain hauteur, a deliberately imposing presence; but those who didn't know Fabia saw a grandmotherly woman with a broadly tolerant smile. Tolerant and grandmotherly she was, up to a point - with the children who were always running around the temple, making up for the fact that the vestals, of course, had none of their own, and with the younger girls, and with anyone who asked for her help - but there was iron in her backbone, and a surprising edge to it, which it didn't do to underestimate.

"Luxuries," said Tanaquil. "There aren't many of those left in Rome."

"You can still get good cakes," Fabia said; "and good wine. Speaking of which; more honey cake? Or the chestnut?"

"No more. But you might get my cup refilled."

Fabia motioned for one of the girls to fetch the wine from the hearth. "You're worried?"

"This surrendering of jewellery is getting too fashionable," Tanaquil said. "Sexta of the Junii started it, and now the more excitable women are making a great show of it, and a few less excitable ones are being talked into it by their husbands. I'm determined to hang on to mine..."

"Quite right. Her jewellery is a woman's wealth and safety."

"But the goldsmiths have no work, and now Vulca's gone there are no artists left, either. War is sucking the life out of Rome."

"It's war that brought it in the first place."

That was true enough, but couldn't you ever stop? Couldn't you ever sit back and enjoy the fruits of peace, as Tarchna had been doing for centuries, and Velzna, and Cisra? Tanaquil had thought, when she thought about it at all, that with age would come contentment and certainty and the chance to be, at last, settled; but it was just more care, so that some days she thought it was more difficult to maintain her position as the first woman in Rome than it had ever been to win it.

"There are other ways," Tanaquil said. "I've been thinking a lot about some of the tales my mother told me."

"You're a bit young for your second childhood."

"By now I should be telling them to my grandchildren." That hurt, too; Arruns had died too young, she'd given up hoping that Servius would get a child on Tarquinia. "I was thinking of the stories of Cranu of Curtun; how when he founded his city of Curtun, there were enemies on all sides, the Sicels, and Umbrian war bands; how they occupied the fertile valleys, and he had only the barren heights to call his own. And how instead of doing what everybody expected, and sending his men to fight, he gave them seed and ploughshares and oxen, and dispersed them among the fields and pastures, where they settled, and married local women, and brought up children and horses and their long-legged, long-horned white cattle; and though Cranu didn't live to see it, by his son's day every single farm in the valley was in Etruscan hands."

"Pious dreaming," Fabia said; "of course he must have fought."

"The story says not. The Sicels went south, most of them, and those that stayed married with Cranu's people, and within two generations, they had forgotten the difference between the two peoples. And the land was richer than ever."

"Well that's something." Fabia sat back, pushing her hands into her thighs and stretching. "When the land's not worked, famine brings in its vengeance."

"We should be starting colonies, not just raiding. We could have pushed hard after Veii for alliances with other cities, for colonies in the Tuscan plains; but all Servius sees is more conquests, more battles, an army that eats metal and shits death."

"It's a transitional phase," Fabia said. "Wait and see, it will work out."

Transitional phase: what words. It was cruelty and privation, it was destructiion and waste, it was the murder of meaning and the rape of beauty.

"I miss Tarquinius," Tanaquil said. "For all his faults."

"And they were many."

"He had imagination. His world wasn't dreary."

They were silent for a while, each thinking of the old days. Tanaquil wondered idly if her prophecies of disaster all came from the same root, the new changes in her body, as the monthly ebb and flow of her blood died away, that last sign of what had been her youth; she was tearful more often now, saw the sadness in things more than the splendour. And Fabia's thoughts turned to a spring garden under a white-blossoming apple tree, where a smiling, slight girl bent to take a child up in her arms. She hadn't thought of her mother for years.

"Was I naïve?"

Fabia looked at Tanaquil almost sadly, considering. "Naive..."

"To think a city could be made great by something other than murder? Being more effective killers than the rest?"

"Oh Tanaquil," Fabia said. "That's what men do; they struggle, and fight, and in the end, they return to the Mother."

Which wasn't an Etruscan way of seeing things, but Tanaquil didn't correct her. She thought instead how Servius had stopped learning how to prophesy, as if he had been frightened, not so much by what he saw, as by the gift itself, by the very existence of a fate that didn't depend on the work of his own hands and brain, a fate greater than anything he could set in motion. He had the gift, that was the worst thing, even though he feared it; and the gift, undeveloped, turned sour as easily as milk in summer.

The Vestal saw men as if they lived in a foreign country, from a great distance; but Tanaquil lived in their world, and in Tarchna, at least, and Velzna, the world of men and women hadn't been a world of iron and treachery, their relations defined by rape and murder. There was something rotten in Servius, something that would infect the whole city.

Tanaquil rose, pulling the edge of her tebenna over her head. "I still worry," she said; "worrying is all I do, these days."

"Make cakes," Fabia said; "sometimes it's safer." But her smile was sad, as if she was not completely convinced by her own advice.

***

Servius was not the only problem. Tarquin, thank the gods, was back in Rome, but that posed as many problems as it solved; not least, pacifying Servius. Thank the gods, too, that Tanaquil had found Tullia before news of her return got about; she'd advised the girl to leave Rome at once, and head for the shrine of Menrva in the hills towards Cisra, where she knew the priest, a Spurinna girl who, at seventeen, had unexpectedly chosen the wilderness and solitude of this shrine above the luxuries of priestly office in the great temple at Tarchna, and marriage to one of the zilaths. If only Tanaquil could get everyone to believe Tullia had been there all the time, they'd get away with it; and meanwhile she'd sent Elissa round to Aglaia, asking her to dye her hair, and make sure she was seen openly with her hair dyed, so that if reports of Tarquin with a red-head came from Velzna, Servius could be put on the wrong track. Gods, though, Tanaquil hated being put on the back foot, having to conceal stupidities that should never have been committed, when it would have been so much easier, had Tarquin confided in her, to find some way of achieving his ends that didn't involve running off so blatantly with his dead wife's sister.

Tarquin wasn't even grateful. He seemed to think he was entitled to have his mother spend her entire effort on keeping him out of trouble; first the army trouble, and then Strephon, and then the abduction of Tullia, and now here he was again, telling her he had some kind of plot in action with Tarchna, or at least, with Teitu, and demanding her complicity.

"Why should I help you?" she said coolly.

"You're my mother. Isn't that everything?"

"You presume. First, I am also responsible for Rome."

"That's Servius' job."

"And I am responsible for him. Second, did you not consider that I have other plans, that they might not agree with yours? And I do. And they don't. Third, I have no confidence in your success. Some plot you hatched with Teitu because he has a sweet face, and I dare say a sweet backside. And fourth, what are you offering me as a price for my support? Because all things have a price, Tarquin, and it's time you learned it."

"Oh, I know it." He seemed amused at her sternness; he was almost laughing at her.

"Well then."

"So, shall I tell you my price? Or shall I tell you a story, first? A story about a woman who had a faithful friend. A friend who was always with her. A friend who knew everything."

"If you're trying to blackmail me," she said, "you're wasting your time. I don't have a lover."

"I never said a lover, mother dear. A friend, a good friend, a friend called Manius."

Important, now, not to put on the airs of a tragic queen, not to dab at her eyes, but just to sit, eyes very slightly more open than they would otherwise be, and remind Tarquin that she was still mourning for her friend. Vanth takes us all, she said; Vanth takes us all.

"Vanth takes us all, but sometimes she gets additional help," he said sourly. "This was a friend who ate with you. Who died a few hours later."

"I never denied he was with me that day. He rode back to Rome; he wanted to be in the city before night fell. And somewhere on his way his heart failed him, and he fell from his horse. He was dead when he hit the ground."

"He was dead when he left your house," Tarquin said.

"Dead men don't ride far."

"This one did. And you know your poisons, don't you?"

Of course; he'd been hanging round the Vestals. Whatever the reason he first went to the temple, he'd found a spy among the virgins, who had listened to her conversations with They both took feverfew for headaches, and lately, she had recommended Tanaquil a cold sage infusion as a tonic; but she couldn't remember talking more generally about medicine. Irrelevantly, she remembered her visit to the class in Velzna, and her interrogation of the girls on the uses of foxglove... and then she remembered; she'd been talking to young Fabia about her studies, about the herbs that both healed and killed. That was so long ago, she'd nearly forgotten it; but Fabia clearly hadn't.

"Fabia," she said.

Tarquin looked at her coldly. He didn't reply.

"You can't prove... a girl's word."

"The word of a Vestal. The Vestals; keepers of the testaments. The only women Rome allows to bear witness. I would have thought that was pretty good proof."

"So I know about poisons. That's no proof I killed Manius."

Tarquin said nothing. He simply sat and looked at her again, and nodded to himself without once taking his eyes off her, and his grim mouth began to bend slowly into a thin smile. She'd wondered when he would learn the uses of silence; she hadn't thought he'd ever use it like this.

"So," she said, grudging every syllable of her concession; "Teitu."

Tarquin explained the whole plan. Teitu already had his men and women in place; it was a question of picking the right time. Once Teitu was firmly in control of Tarchna, he would bring his army to support Tarquin in Rome.

"When?"

"In due course," he said smugly. She wondered how Teitu had managed to teach Tarquin the art of patience; he'd never shown much before, not since his infancy when he would grab at the tit, or punch her with his pudgy little fists if she refused it.

"And Thresu?"

"He's out of it completely."

She agreed, in the end, to meet with Teitu, secretly; it would have to be in neutral territory, somewhere deep in the back country between Rome and Tarchna, where they could ride out on an extended hunting trip from their respective cities, and meet as if by accident.

"You'll have to choose your party carefully," Tarquin said; "you don't want word getting back to Servius."

No, she thought; she didn't want word getting back to Thresu, with whom she had her own understanding. She'd agreed to meet with Thresu; she had agreed to nothing else.

Tarquin went. Lack of patience, she thought; he didn't push me as far as he could have, as far as perhaps he should have. He thinks the game is won when he's not seen that I have soldiers waiting in reserve who can take his pieces; he's played the obvious front-running game, like the player who launches an attack directly on the king in the first ten moves, but it's the player who slowly, steadily accumulates territory on the board who more often wins. Oh Tarquin, Tarquin, how very easy you are to outflank. Yet she felt proud of him, prouder than she ever had been of fine fierce Arruns, when she considered his careful blackmail. Yes, he took after her; he'd learned the lessons she had to teach, all except one, patience and the long game.

Her mirror was lying on the table; the mirror she'd been given as a bride gift, with the story of the weaver Arachne with her loom. An odd choice, she'd thought then; Turan, the goddess of sexual passion, or the queenly Uni, would have been more appropriate for a royal wedding. Now, though, she understood; it had taken her long years to learn the path of the patient weaver.

She looked at the burnished surface. The room behind her glowed dim and empty in the bronze circle; slightly blurred, slightly greyed, as reflections always were, imperfect, flawed, and in this, much like what they reflected. Far to the back a single ball of brightness flared where the sun shone through a window, like a tiny globe of mellow fire; she half-closed her eyes and let it warm her, letting it suffuse her, dreaming of a bright world where winter and age never came...

She put the mirror down; she didn't need it to show her how thin she had become, her skull evident beneath the papery skin. Her nose sharp and pinched, her eyes sunk in darkness. Servius, too, was growing old, and suspicious, the way Tarquinius had been at the end. Was that inevitable, a long slow dying reserved to kings? It was as if their bright future was gradually used up, like a bright cloth worn too often, bleaching out, becoming ragged; and instead they turned inwards, with a long slow poison that rotted them from the inside, and eventually everything around them was poisoned with their breath.

Where did the girl go, that girl who set her heart on Rome, on Lauchme? (Where is Thanchvil now, Tanaquil?)

She yawned once, and shook herself awake. Things had to be done. Nothing could be done now about Teitu, except to send warning to Thresu; Thresu who, she'd hoped, could bring the League together under Tarchna's leadership, even if he had to use a threat to Rome to do so. Did she want to warn him? That might depend... She'd have to choose, eventually; choose between Servius and Tarquin, her adopted and her true son; between Teitu and Thresu. She had thought she'd created a plan that avoided the choice between Rome and Tarchna; Thresu would lead the League against Rome, whereupon she would negotiate a handover to Tarquin, and Rome could join a League led by Tarchna, to rule all the subservient cities of Etruria and Latium together. Had she been dreaming? Had she been asleep? Now that plan seemed simply foolish, foolishly simple; and she wondered whether in trusting Thresu, she'd been mistaken; she'd seen an intelligent man who let himself be seen as a blustering fool, but he was actually the fool he let himself seem to be.

In the meantime, Tarquin was blackmailing her; but he had made a bad mistake. She knew who had given him the information, who was the lynchpin of his case; and if she wanted to maintain her own freedom of action, something had to be done about Fabia.

# Ramtha

Sometimes Ramtha felt as young as a foal when it first stands on unmanageably long weak-jointed legs, or a lamb when it first springs in the air, with brave and inexhaustible energy. Other days she felt empty, as if the wind blew through her, and she drifted through her life like a ghost, pale and soundless.

Something had changed in her; a long, slow change like the dripping of water on stone. She had lost a husband, and a city, and a lover, but it wasn't that which had changed her; it was what she had found in the ruins of her former life, in the revolution that changed the city. She could remember every child born in Velx that first hard winter, in the hastily converted sheds and stables of the great mansions; every one of them survived, she remembered with fierce pride, and every mother but one, who took a fever that burned her up in three days, shrivelling her like papyrus in a fire. Vel and Velthur, Seianti and Nerinai, Arnza, Avle and Caile, and a trio of little Ramthas, who still brought wild flowers every year's day to their namesake; nearly grown now, her children.

The world had served her; she had been given all the blessings the lasa had to give in the stories - beauty, wit, wealth, and the hand of a prince of the city. But it was that hard winter that she found the limits of what had been given her, and sloughed it all away, and found, beneath it, something vital, strong, tensile.

She had no regrets. She lived each day for what it brought; wild flowers clutched in a small fist, the sun shining on frost, a harvest she had to help gather in, the sight of blood on her hand where the sickle had cut her. In Velzna, she'd hidden her hands beneath her tebenna, so Tanaquil wouldn't see the scar. Wealth had come back to Velx, slowly, but that first year the Romans had taken everything, even the gods; they'd broken the house-gods up to melt them down, and people said they could hear the ancestors wailing on the wind.

Only the betrayal rankled. She thought of the long years she'd spent with Macstarna, and the way he'd betrayed her at the end. He'd called himself 'Master' when he was a servant, and now he was a king he called himself the Slave; the kind of acerbic irony he'd always liked. She wondered, idly, whether he had slept with Tanaquil? There were rumours, of course, but there were always rumours about any woman.

Two women, Tanaquil had said, will change the history of the League. They'll remember us, long into the evening of the Etruscan race, when Troy has been forgotten, and Romulus is only a name. So, between them, they planned the death of a king.

The yard was busy even though the sun was hardly up; the grooms currying the horses, harnesses being rubbed with oil till they shone, bags being brought out and mules led in. Some of the boys were sitting round a brazier, toasting small cakes; two of the girls had brought leather buckets of water up from the cistern, and were filling a trough for the livestock.

Ramtha drew her tebenna tight around her, though the morning chill still found its way down her neck, and along her forearms. It was time to start, she thought. She stepped towards the brazier; waited for the boys to make a space, and squatted down beside them, reaching her hands to the heat.

"Where to?" one of them asked.

"Suana, first; Staties, Satres. Then Cusa,Tlamu, up the coast to Velathri."

"Herkle! We'll be gone months."

"Weeks," she said; "we'll be back before there's any work to do in the vineyards."

"Not further than Velathri?" one of the older youths asked.

"No," she said. There was no point in it; Felsina was too far from Rome. Felsina would watch Rome take Tarchna or Cisra, and do nothing; in fact, if she knew anything, Felsina saw the advantage in Rome keeping its southern neighbours preoccupied.

A younger boy came over; little Arnza, who she'd pulled legs first out of his mother's womb, that hard winter.

"You're not coming," she said. "I've told you that already."

He stuck his chest out, head up, legs planted solidly. "Coming."

She sighed loudly enough for them all to hear. "Not."

"Am."

"Kavie?"

One of the youths got up; stocky, like a little bull, bright eyed under his dark brows. "Arnza," he said, and grabbed the boy around the waist, lifting him kicking and wriggling to his shoulder; "come on, Arnza, it's no use." But the boy continued to writhe, beating his fists on Kavie's back, and kicking in the air.

Kavie turned round; Ramtha could hardly see his face over Arnza's mobile little backside and the blur of kicking legs. "Let him come," Kavie said.

"We have a delicate mission. So I take my best and most trusted people, and a noisy child. Sensible."

"He's what we're fighting for. It might not be so bad to remind ourselves of that."

Ramtha shook her head, and muttered "Stupid, stupid."

"Take me! Take me!" Arnza yelled.

"Bring him here," Ramtha said. Seated, she was just at his level, once Kavie had put him down; she gave the boy a hard stare, the kind of look she gave any of the children when they'd been caught fighting or stealing.

"You know we will be doing a lot of big people talking, about boring things."

"No swords? No fighting?"

"No swords. No fighting. You'll be very bored."

"Still want to come." He looked down, but his fists were clenched.

"Sometimes you have to be very quiet. Can you be very quiet?"

He looked up and nodded silently.

"Well," she said, "Kavie's got a point."

She was surprised by the silence. She'd expected objections. She looked round; the two girls had joined the circle now, and were sharing a cup of wine. They must be in love, she thought, seeing the way their fingers touched as they passed the cup between them. Good; there should always be lovers in any court, the Spartans were right about that. Lovers have a future, they have a softness, they pull you back from the hard black-and-white of tyranny, from the loneliness of ruling.

"No one has anything to say?"

One of the girls looked up. "It's a good idea," she said; "we're looking for people who will take a risk, we show them what they're doing it for. Little Arnza is our future, after all."

"A farting, unwashed, grubby little future," Kavie said, but his grin took the sting out of his words.

When they mounted up, Ramtha held Arnza in front of her, one arm round him and the other holding the reins; he wasn't a born rider, bumped up and down at the trot, and his legs weren't quite enough to give him purchase, but he seemed happy enough, singing to himself, and occasionally announcing the presence of interesting phenomena. "There are cows lying down," he said, and once, "there's an eagle, look!" ("The augur speaks," Kavie said, and they laughed; but if the augur had spoken, it was a good omen.)

***

They came into Suana as the shadows thickened in the valley, into the sunken roads between deeply scored walls of soft tufa, where brown-leaved beeches whispered overhead; a painted mermaid glowered at them from a tomb, a contemptuous lion from another. Kavie had gone on ahead, so they were expected, and a vast room next to the temple had been allotted them; there three of the council came, without fuss or announcement, and were surprised to find Arnza running about barefoot, swinging a stick he'd picked up somewhere in circles around him, or prodding the air with it, and shouting "Die, Rrumach!"

"Is he yours?" one of the councillors asked Ramtha.

"Yes," she said; it was not a lie, really.

She sketched out the story quickly. The way Servius had been corrupted; from a man of the people he'd become a demagogue, a tyrant. She told them how his increasing depradations were impoverishing his people - ancient families' golden inheritances snatched to pay for more weapons, all the young men taken into the army, and no one left to work the land but the toothless old ones and the youngest women, and the children, and - she smiled at Arnza - what use were they, really, except for scaring the birds off the sown seed or the ripening fruit? He had set Rome upside-down; a peasant-slinger from some two-mule village up in the hills had been put in charge of the army, instead of the prince Tarquinius, son of kings, son of a princess of Tarchna. (She saw one of the boys wince at that; there were no kings in Vulci, now.) Free of constraint, Servius took what he wanted; wealth, boys, women. There was no stopping him, and under him, no stopping Rome.

The tale was a good one, woven by Tanaquil out of equal measures of true and false yarn; the stories of womanising were more true of the young Tarquinius, if Ramtha's informers had the story right. It was a story that was being told in Rome, too, and every thread of that weave ran back to the clew that Tanaquil held in her hands.

"Fine," said one of the council, an older woman with flabby cheeks but piercing dark eyes. "Servius is ruining Rome. Why should we care?"

"Rome threatens us all. Rome under Servius threatens us all."

The youngest councillor nodded; he'd instantly apprehended her meaning.

"You think Sovana can take on Servius' army?" the woman asked, and her tone of voice showed she clearly didn't expect an answer.

"Even with Velx? No. That's not the plan."

She wasn't putting together an army to take the war to the open field. She wanted only a few picked fighters, who could be placed within easy distance of Rome, discreetly hidden in the side valleys of the Tiber. Then it was a matter of waiting; waiting for Rome to revolt, waiting for Tarchna to make a move.

"This must stay hidden," she said; "it may never come to a fight. But if Servius falls, we are there."

"You mentioned Tarchna," the old woman said. "The last king of Rome was an exile..."

"More important; Thanchvil is a Spurinna."

"Then Thresu..."

"The Spurinnas stick together."

"And you've heard..."

"Nothing. I make a deduction, as you do."

"Deduc-shun! Deduc-shun!" Arnza yelled, and started running, shouting, ducking and weaving to avoid Kavie, who was trying to catch him. Damn, Ramtha thought, that's blown it. But then she heard a hoarse coughing; the old woman was laughing, laughing hard enough to choke, and that laugh, as laughs do, infected everyone, even Arnza, now firmly snatched up into Kavie's arms, who was chuckling to himself, unaware that he'd just cemented the new alliance.

***

# Rome

They were taking the Vestal across the waste. They had dug the tomb already, and put in it the couch and the lamp, and the bread and wine, so that she might eat, and no one could say they'd put a dead woman into the ground.

It was still half dark, the moon set and the sun not yet risen, and the mists thick. A dog howled somewhere. The landscape was unreadable; what looked like a stump of a bush might be the altar of a tomb, a dab of dirty white was a rock until it moved, a trail of dark might be a stream or a path or a shadow.

There was the sound of feet, treading in unison. The litter was coming, slowly in the half dark, with no torches, soft-booted feet on the soft dust of the path. One lictor in front: the Vestal's entitlement. A few men behind. Postumus, bringing up the rear, out of step, dragging.

One man watched them come, one man saw them arrive. His mattock on the ground in front of him.

"No senior Vestal?" he asked. He kept his voice low.

"She took it hard."

The bearers set the litter down next to a dark cone. It smelt, here, of damp earth, of bare rock. Like a wine cellar. The kind of smell that made Postumus think of spiders.

Fabia was motionless. She seemed not to realise they'd arrived. Her breath clouded in front of her in the cold air.

The men waited in silence. Fabia was staring into the distance. (What could she see? Postumus wondered. Was she seeing her death, the hinthials holding their papery hands towards her? Or her life, now it was over?)

The sky was beginning to lighten. The landscape of mystery was becoming a trivial, everyday wasteland; deep night waited to be brutalised and cheapened by the day. It was time, it was more than time. The lictor coughed, once, thickly.

Fabia turned her head to look up at him. Her face held no expression. Without a word she rose, refusing his outstretched hand. She looked towards the darkness. He nodded.

She pulled up her skirts to clear her feet. White, soft feet, and bare; all she was allowed to take with her was her simple white dress. The seven locks of her hair hung loose; they had taken the fillet that bound them and the veil that hid her head. She took a step towards the pit, wincing as her bare foot touched sharp stone.

"A pity," said one of the litter bearers.

"She knew the rules," answered another. "They all know the rules."

She came to the edge of the pit. They had made steps for her, a strange form of pity, so that she needn't, at the last, climb down a ladder, or perhaps fall. She stood looking down into the darkness for a moment, so still, so quiet.

Then suddenly she began to sob, huge sobs retched up from the depths, great gulps and moans; yet her body stayed still, only her head moving very slightly. There were tears on her face, snailtracks of dim light.

The lictor approached. He looked into her eyes, but he would not touch her.

"You must," he said, very gently, as if to a small child afraid of some dark passage.

She sobbed again, and again, but each time a little less, and then she gave him a strange, fleeting smile, that was gone as soon as he saw it, like the froth left by the waves of the sea; and she went down into the dark.

They worked quickly after that. Two of the bearers took the wooden board and threw it across the mouth of the pit; the noise was sudden and loud, and the men recoiled, then remembered what they were there to do, and stooped to ensure it was well in place, pushing one corner down where it had rested on a clod of earth, levelling the board roughly.

"Has she lit the lamp?" one asked, but there was no answer, and there was no way to see.

The lictor looked for the man who had waited for them. His mattock was in his hands now. Their eyes met. The lictor nodded.

The hiss and spit of the blade in the earth. The spatter and bang of dirt and stones on the wood, a sounding board, a hollow sound. How much space was there under it? A whole room, a room with a couch, and a lamp, and a meal. A room for dying.

And the thin line of red on the horizon.

"Hurry up," Postumus said. "We've only got half the job done."

"You'd know," said the lictor.

No one loves an informer. No one loves an accuser; even less when it's a young girl who has to die. But Tanaquil had told him what had to be done, and he had done it, as he had done things before which she needed him to do.

The easy part was over.

There are worse deaths, Postumus thought, but not many. How much pain can a body take before it surrenders? How much flesh can you lay bare, how much blood can you spill, and a man still live? He flinched at the thought, but he could not stop thinking of it; how many times could you flog a man before he stopped screaming? Before he stopped feeling?

The noise of shovelling had stopped. The newly turned earth showed as a damp stain on the land. In a few hours, it would have dried.

Back in the temple of Vesta, an old woman wept.

***

Tarquin's way was blocked. The Forum was thronged, as if for a triumph. He wouldn't have come this way round, normally, but he'd thought he might drop in on Aglaia's before heading to the Palatine, and now he was wishing he'd gone straight to Tanaquil, instead.

He'd been out of Rome for a few days, meeting with Teitu, listening again to Teitu telling him to have patience, and wondering whether Tullia listened to his own advocacy of that virtue with the same lack of it. Teitu's explanations of the fine balance of factions in Tarchna should have intrigued him, but he felt himself bored, after a while; Tanaquil's visit was quickly arranged, and there had been no real reason for him to stay, other than that they enjoyed hunting and sleeping together, and that the longer he stayed with Teitu, the longer he put off having to tell Tullia that yet more patience would be required.

It was too crowded; he couldn't take his horse through. He'd have to ride round, Tiber-side.

The crowd surged forwards. That would make it twice as difficult to back out, against the flow. He saw a soldier he knew - Crassus, he thought the name was, but it might have been Cassius - and managed to catch his eye.

"What's going on?"

"A fustigation."

"Oh. Bit of a crowd for it, though."

"You haven't heard?"

"Been out of town."

"One of the Vestals." The man leered slightly. The expression didn't suit him.

"The Vestals..." Tarquin felt the hair prickle gooseflesh up on his arms, even though the sun was warm this morning. Trouble in the house of Vesta might make trouble for him. Even before the soldier said it he was sure he knew the name. Fabia. O gods, Fabia.

But now, this would be her alleged partner, some poor bastard whose life was cheap enough to waste. It was all a fake, anything to shut Fabia's mouth for good; Tanaquil must have found a new immigrant, perhaps a vagrant, a man who could disappear easily. Here he came; two lictors leading him out. He came slowly, stumbling like a drunk, not a fighting drunk but the kind of drunk who wants only to piss in a corner and then sleep, sleep deeply... He must be drugged, Tarquin thought; that at least was a blessing.

He'd better get out of here before it started; the horse would shy at the screaming, and there would be screaming, there always was. However often Tarquin had heard men say they'd never scream, they wouldn't give the whipmen that satisfaction, his experience had been that when it came to it, they'd cry in the end. There were different kinds; the men who were shocked into it by the first stroke; those who bit it back till they weakened, and screamed; those few, very few, who stifled the screams, but in the end, whimpered like kicked dogs. Not one, ever, silent.

And the smell of blood. Well, his horse was used to that, at least; any hunting horse was. But still, he ought to be going.

There was Postumus, beside the lictors. What was he doing? So Servius had a hand in this, too, did he?

The lictors pulled the man's hands round the post; they pulled his arms up, but his head hung down. Dirty, tangled hair dangling almost to the ground. One lictor stood each side, whip in hand; they'd alternate the blows, they always did. A single man needed too much recovery between each blow, after the first five or six; two men could keep on beating, beating, as long as they needed to. And how long that would be, Tarquin wondered.

"Hundred blows?" It was the soldier Tarquin had spoken to. "Hundred? Hundred ten? Make it a bet?"

Tarquin scowled and turned his face away from the man. He really should be gone by now, but as he'd thought, there was no room to back his horse; he was stuck.

The first lictor pulled back his arm. The whip hissed, smacked; and the man's head came up, suddenly, his mouth open, screaming. It was Sethre, Tarquin's friend Sethre, the prince of Velzna; how could it be? But it was, and he was sobbing now and hitting the side of his head on the post as he tried hopelessly to angle his body away, as the blows descended, lurching crazily, stretching the leather bonds.

Tarquin's horse snorted. It would be bucking, next. He stroked its neck, talked gently. It jittered sideways. Tarquin looked over to the bet-loving soldier. At least he could get him to hold the horse's head, that might be worth something.

How could it be Sethre? How could it? The voice wasn't Sethre's, he told himself; but the voice could be anything, by now, a dying horse in battle, a pig with its throat cut, a dog run over by a cart. In the end he found himself looking at the collapsed red tatter-coated lump and thinking not: how could it be Sethre? but instead: how was this ever alive?

***

The Curia was half full today, and that was more than usual; there was enough room on the benches for those who had come to spread out or even sprawl. Three men in the corner were playing knucklebones while they waited; another was giving instructions to a servant, or perhaps a son, in an urgent whisper. It felt as if those with anything useful to do were doing it elsewhere; here only timewasters, the toothless or shiftless, men at a loose end, congregated.

Towards noon, though, the benches started to fill up. A stern, jowly man whose clothes were edged in purple strode straight to the centre of a front bench and sat, rigidly straight; but his eyes moved from one end of the Curia to the other, as if he were memorising every face, enumerating those attending. Three younger men arrived, pinkly clean from the bath, squabbling over some news or other.

At the back a scarred veteran had arrived with a swarthy looking friend, both of them muscled and tense, real fighters. There was a new sense of expectation; one of the knucklebones players went over and asked the man with the scar what was up, and was told, curtly, that Servius was going to be saying something.

"He'll be here, then?" the knucklebones player persisted.

"Bit difficult for him to say anything if he isn't."

Rumours started. Servius was expanding the plebiscite again. Servius was allying Rome with the Greeks. Servius was doing a deal with the Phoenicians. Servius was demoting Tarquin. Servius was promoting him.

"A Greek alliance? Balls. Tarquinius, now, he was half a Greek, he might have done that kind of thing; but Servius is up-country Etruscan, he doesn't understand Greeks, and he won't trust them as far as he can throw them."

"Ach, it's probably nothing after all, probably some monument commemorating another hero of the assault on Veii."

"Some bugger stupid enough to have stabbed himself with his own spear, like Maximus?"

"Oh shut up," said a tetchy voice which presumably belonged to the said Maximus.

It's odd how quiet spreads, like when a cloud drifts across the sun and the darkness moves across the landscape, hills that a moment ago blazed with gorse and light turning grey and lifeless. No one could say when it started, but suddenly the Curia was silent, waiting, everyone looking at everyone else; then the lictors came, and behind them, Servius.

He walked to the chair set for him at the other end of the house, turned, and sat, turning his head slowly to view his audience from one side of the house to the other. He set his hands on the ends of the chair's arms and drummed his fingers three times, and sat back a little before he spoke.

"None of you," he said, "will be unaware that under Tarquinius, and under myself, Rome has pursued the policy of taking individual cities, undefended cities. Like a carrion crow, we've pecked out the eyes of those that were already foundering. We've brought the Latin cities under our rule, and a few Etruscan ones.

"But the Etruscans are waking up. They've seen how we divide in order to rule.

"You all recognise the fasces that the lictors carry. An axe in a bundle of sticks. Some say the axe is tied in the bundle to make it harmless. Others that the axe is destruction and the sticks are creation, bound together as they have been since the gods first came to be."

One or two of the older men were nodding wisely at this. Time to wake them up.

"Ah, balls to all that. Anyone ever broken an axe when they were chopping wood? What breaks? The head or the handle?

"And I remember the first time I broke a stick over someone's head. It didn't stop him; he kept on coming. Well, that's what daggers are for. I'm here today, as you see.

"The fasces is strong because the axe handle and the sticks are bundled together, because they stay together. So far, the Etruscan League has been weak, every city for itself, every city betraying others and betrayed by them. But now they're learning. I have spies in Velzna.

"You think I don't?"

This to one of the knucklebones players who had incautiously whispered an opinion to his neighbour.

"Or am I just boring you?"

Knucklebones stuck his hands between his knees, and leant forward on them, looking down at the floor. Good, Servius thought. No one else wants to be handed out that treatment. It's sneaky and underhand and you have to be a bastard to pick on someone like that; but it works.

"It may not happen this year. It may not happen next year. It might not happen while I'm alive, but I think it will. Tarchna wants to pull the League together, to pull all their armies into one, to set up against Rome. If that's possible. It isn't now. It might not be for some time. But it will be.

"And when it happens, when Etruria comes against us, we will lose."

Servius sat back. The Curia hissed with whispers. The lictors stood in a line across the back of the hall, unmoving.

"So we attack Tarchna now."

That set them off. He couldn't hear what they were shouting, only the rhythm and the mood and the sheer volume of it. Some of them had their blood up - there were always some who loved a war, any war, as long as it gave them a licence for hatred, or for pillage. But there was more opposition than he'd expected. Were they afraid? Or had they been worn out by his campaigns, and Tarquinius's?

"Can't we stop?" one asked, and he shouted back: "We have started, we have to end it." And he truly did believe that if he tried to turn back now, he'd be overrun. (When had the Etruscans become so afraid of Rome that they began to plot its downfall?) The world must spin, must keep spinning, or everything would fall.

He had to shout now, and he felt his throat raw with the effort. For a horrible moment he saw himself and knew he was becoming a caricature, a parody; all the time he'd led armies he had never shouted - they used to saw the quieter his voice, the more you had to fear - but now he was reduced to screaming like a trainer of dancing bears or an incompetent schoolmaster.

"We must defend ourselves!" one man shouted.

"Defence is defeat," he roared back; "We must keep going. We must keep fighting. The day we stop is the day we die."

The doors of war stood open, and they could never close. In that moment he realised he had made the world his enemy; and there was only one thing to do with enemies.

***

"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.

***

Tanaquil wasn't pleased that old Fabia had come; she was still thinking whether to admit her, or pretend she was indisposed, or not in the palace, or was performing the rites for the house-gods. If Fabia had found out that it was Tanaquil who was behind young Fabia's death, it would be an uncomfortable meeting; and if not, it would still be a miserable one. She seemed to spend all her time killing people she liked, people she loved; it was easier for Servius, easier for Tarquin, killing strangers in the simplicity of war.

She was surprised when she heard an altercation, and looked up to see Fabia pushing her way past one of the girls into the room. Fabia's eyes were puffy and red, but her face was determined, none of the grandmother about her.

"You're not going to like this," she said.

Tanaquil steeled herself. She expected tears, wrath, imprecations. She expected, worse, the question: "Why?"

She did not expect Fabia to tell her Servius had declared war on Tarchna.

It was difficult to take it in. She felt stupid; more so when Fabia told her again, as she might explain something to one of her younger students. Had it been so obvious? Should she have seen it coming? Then she realised: Fabia clearly hadn't.

"I thought I knew... I thought he told me everything," she said, and realised how lame it sounded.

"Apparently not." The true, acid voice of the Vestal.

She thought Servius was hers. She thought she'd bound him to her, by prophecy, and flesh, and blood, but he was his own man, and all her plans were crumbling, and Thresu was not ready, not nearly ready, and Tarquin not ready at all, and her own time was running out.

Nothing to do. Nothing to be done. And so they sat there, the two of them, as the light faded around them, in the first hour of the evening.

***

"I can fucking drive," she said, and shoved Tarquin's hands away from the reins. He wasn't at all sure about her plan, but her blood was up, her eyes were hard, he wasn't going to get in the way of this woman with hair like snakes and a voice like ice cracking.

(They'd come back to Aglaia's first; but then Tullia had demanded that they stopped wasting time. They had to strike at once, and take the risk, even without Teitu. "We call everyone to the Palatine," she'd told him. "Everyone on our side. Every Etruscan ambassador who's left in the city, every one of your horsemen you can trust. And we take Servius down."

"We don't even know he's there," he'd said lamely.

"Then we wait. That's what you always say, isn't it? This time I'm telling you. We wait.")

She'd wrapped the long reins once round her waist, like a professional, so she could lean her whole body into them, and she set off fast, taking the horses straight away into a fast canter, crazily fast for the broken road. He feared her and he loved her then, clinging to the front board of the chariot as it lurched and swung. A dog ran out in front of the chariot, and she veered right, stepping on his foot as she caught her balance.

"We don't have to go so fast," he said, "no one will have got there yet..."

But if she heard him over the noise of the horses' feet and the clatter of the chariot, she gave no sign; she pushed the horses on, and even when they came to the streets nearer the forum, narrower and more busy, she kept going fast, and faster.

***

After the Curia, there had been things to arrange: logistics, commands, assembly points, interim administration while he was with the army. Servius had done this so many times, and every time he'd come back determined to make the process automatic next time; to have deputies already in place, to have lists of provisions drawn up and ready, to have each century know exactly where to assemble, and its order in the march. But over his long experience, however many holes you plugged, chaos poured in from fresh ones; so though he was supposed to have all his commanders ready and waiting, Tarquin was missing, and neither of his under-officers could be found, and although the men were supposed to carry most of their own provisions and all their own armour, there were seven loads of wheat and dried goods that were supposed to be sent out from the Janiculum gate, but only six had arrived. A strategic move seemed so simple, like pushing counters forwards on a board, but it was only in the moment of decision that one felt that certainty; and immediately after, the world contracted down to finding sacks of grain, mislaid weapons and lost horses, tracking down the drunks and the gone-on-leaves and the late risers.

As so often these days, he felt worn out by the performance, as if he himself had become paper-thin, and his shadow had sucked the life out of him; as evening approaches, he thought, all men grow shorter, and their shadows longer. He longed for the privacy of his rooms on the Palatine; it was a relief when he finished the dispositions, arrangements, directions, dispensations, distributions, and could make his way back, to a shady room where he could bar the door for a few hours on the man these people needed him to be. He'd sent half his lictors off on errands; from twelve down to six. He'd sent Gnaeus and Mamarke off, Mamarke who had looked shocked, who clearly didn't relish the thought of fighting his own countrymen; he'd put Mamarke in charge of the baggage, that should keep him out of trouble. Another complication he didn't need.

He walked between the two rows of lictors, and felt more their prisoner than their king. He put the mask of ceremony on his face, feeling the stern lines carving their way into his flesh. And suddenly he thought of that boy who came the first time to the general's house, and wondered; what would he make of all this? He could feel the springtime breeze of Velzna, hear the horses moving restlessly in the stable; he saw his mother turn away, and felt the deep sadness of the abandoned. A lictor said something to him, but he didn't hear it.

Then, suddenly, everything was noise, and movement, and he was being shoved violently to one side, and he saw a chariot swerving, coming straight for him, like Vanth riding out of her hell with her hair flying and her hounds off the leash.

***

She'd seen the lictors, up ahead, and the flash of red and purple that was the mark of a king; and she leant across, snatching the whip out of Tarquin's hands, and pushed the horses to a full gallop. He caught a glimpse of her; she was smiling, her nose flared, her eyes wide, and her hair whipped around her, loose, wild.

Two of the lictors had seen the chariot, and dived for the side of the road; cowards. A third looked, stood, staring, for a moment, before getting quickly out of the way; which left only three men, and the king. One of those men had stepped towards Servius, and then suddenly pushed him, hard, away from the line the chariot was taking; and as he did so, Servius looked up at the chariot, his eyes widening, and froze.

And Tullia kept driving, kept whipping her horses; and Tarquin realised, suddenly, stupidly, that the horses were drifting to the right, a moment before they struck.

***

They're out of control, the lictor thought; and then, they must be trying to scare us, they'll swerve aside at the last moment, perhaps it's a test to see which of the lictors will run. And then, a heart-beat later, he knew the horses were not stopping, were not swerving, and pushed Servius out of its way just before he went under the first horse's hooves.

***

If this was a battle, Servius thought; if he had a weapon, if he hadn't spent too much time building walls, thinking he'd be safe behind them... Tanaquil, he thought,

and then he was in that nightmare city he'd dreamt of once, a labyrinth of blank walls, and the walls were tumbling over his head, and the fire was rising up in him, the blood, the flame, he was burning up with the heat of it

***

The chariot jolted as the left wheel ran over the lictor's body, nearly throwing Tarquin out; he grabbed Tullia, and the recoil brought their bodies slamming together. She was pulling the horses up - thank the gods, he thought, she's got them under control, but she was pulling their heads round, turning the chariot, starting them up for another run.

The dead lictor had pushed Servius on to the ground, out of their way; now Servius was struggling to rise, but he seemed to have caught his feet in the folds of his tebenna, and was struggling like a dog whose spine has been broken. The tebenna that Tanaquil had woven for him, wrapping itself around him like a snake.

Tullia drove over him three times before she stopped, and the horses trampled his body, before she unwound the reins from her slender waist and stepped down from the chariot, wetting the little red boots of an Etruscan princess in the fresh blood of a king.

***

Postumus put his feet up on the couch and leant back, hands behind his head, feeling the muscles creak and pop as the tension left them. He steepled his fingers; the knuckles crackled. He sighed; it had been a hard few days, and now he was through with work, for the moment. Time to drink, and rest, and perhaps later spend some time with one of the Phoenician whores, or even two; he could afford it.

When Tanaquil's scheme worked, he would be well rewarded. She'd have to bring it forwards, of course - this new war on Tarchna complicated matters - but she had enough men well placed in Rome; the treasury was with her, the House of Vesta was with her, and a few hand-picked men in the army would see to it that Servius was left without support just when he needed it. Then it only needed the contingent coming down from the north, if Ramtha had done her work. He smiled happily as the thought crossed his mind that Tanaquil didn't even suspect he knew about that side of the plan; she wasn't always quite as clever as she thought she was.

He did wonder, though, what the young Vestal had to do with it all. Perhaps that was just a price that had to be paid to someone else in the alliance...

He was dozing, happily dreaming just what he might do to that henna-headed Phoenician, when a thin man appeared in the doorway, assessed the room quickly, walked up, and leant over Postumus, pushing a hand over his mouth and a dagger into his soft stomach. Postumus jerked up, half-awake, blinded with pain, and pushed his assailant to one side; the hand holding his mouth let go, but the killer kept a good hold on his dagger, pulling it through Postumus' flesh, and twisting as it went.

The man had rolled to his feet now, looking anxious, as if things had gone wrong; before he started to run Postumus recognised Tarquin, and saw, with sudden startling clarity, his own guts tumbling, iridescent, till the roaring in his ears crushed his thoughts into a purple haze.

***

Arnza had been charmingly naughty again in Velathri, but it hadn't worked the trick this time; negotiations had been sticky, and Ramtha had made promises she wasn't quite sure she'd be able to keep, and even then, the four zilaths had asked for a night to think it over. There was luxury here - separate rooms for some of them, entertainment, and a fine dinner - but she felt the chill of the poor relation realising, for the first time, that the welcome their wealthier cousins gave them was not unequivocal, and less warm than it seemed.

She was tired, staring dully into what ought to be, but might well not be, her last cup of wine before bed. When she saw Kavie standing at the other side of the room, gazing at her, she thought he must have been there some time; she'd been too tired, too distracted, to notice.

"You're quiet," she said.

"I suppose."

"It didn't go well."

"No."

He came towards her, sat on the couch beside her.

"Where's Arnza?"

"With the girls."

Silence was thick between them, scented with wine and honey. She filled a cup of wine for him, but as she passed it, he managed to catch one of the handles in his sleeve, and it spilled, warm and sticky and red, over her hands, over her robe.

"I'm..."

"It's nothing," she said, and wiped it down with a cloth from the table, but Kavie sat sullen and silent.

Then he smiled.

"The first time I saw you," he said, "your hands and clothes were stained."

How odd, she thought, that he should remember something like that. "When..."

"Those days after..." He was searching for a softer way of saying it.

"After my husband was killed? You can say it; it's stopped hurting now." Which wasn't quite true; but the raw edge of rage and loss had been worn smooth.

"You came out of the stables with your hands bloody, up to the elbows in blood."

"When Arnza was born?"

He nodded. "I thought you were a goddess."

"Do you still?"

She was joking, but she saw from his face that for him it was nothing to laugh at. She reached out, and touched his cheek gently.

"The gods don't have hearts," she said. "But women do."

When she woke, and it was early, she lay still for a while, listening to his breathing, even and slow. He'd curled up in his sleep, one hand under his face, the palm pink and open.

And then the noise started. Voices at first low and urgent and then rising in pitch and volume till she heard running, shouting. Kavie moved, opened his eyes, looked up, seemed for a moment not to recognise her; and she was on her feet, but naked, facing the lauchum of Velathri in his purple tebenna, the golden wreath askew where he'd jammed it hurriedly on his brow.

"Servius is dead," he said, "and Rome is in flames."

# Tanaquil

Blood, blood everywhere, the seething and boiling of hot blood.

The intestines oozed and slipped under her fingers. They were still warm, but cooling fast as the knots of life untied. Somewhere under the coils lay the liver, dense and dark. She reached for it, feeling the organs slide softly around her hands.

She remembered the feel of Servius' mantle, sliding under her fingers, slippery with half-congealed blood as she washed it, to decorate the effigy at his funeral rites. She'd washed the body, too, with Fabia; trampled, rolled in the dust, so many bones broken, it sagged like an unwieldy doll. It was ironic that after all that work, the king looked like a bloody puppet, and it was only the puppet, dressed in the tebenna she'd woven, that looked like a king.

The funeral procession had made its way down the Palatine, a line of torches flaring into the evening sky. There were no ancestor masks for Servius; his ancestors, whoever they were, were in Velzna, not here, and they were only slaves. There was only the effigy, crowned with the golden wreath, the massive gold amulets hanging on its chest, a beaten gold mask staring out; and beneath it, the crushed body, wrapped and shrouded and scattered with fresh herbs and nailed into the cypress-wood chest as Tanaquil had demanded.

"It's too unsightly," she'd said, the poor battered ruin of a king; but what no one knew, even Fabia, was that his body went to be burned without his head, which was now stuffed roughly into a jar full of boiled wine and wormwood in Tanaquil's locked clothes chest, and would join Avle's on the Capitoline. (Twenty-one and seven: twenty-one slabs from the door of the temple, seven from the left-hand wall. Three times seven, and seven.)

She'd watched the procession all the way down the hill, down towards the base of the Capitoline, and then turning tightly, down to the broad floor of the forum, down to the great pyre that reached up, four great storeys to it, higher than the temples. It was full dark by the time they lit the pyre, and she'd seen the flames streaming in the wind, a blur of yellow and red, and the sparks flying up, and dying as they flew.

Now the sun was high, and the stink of blood was in her nostrils. Daughter of a king, wife of a king, mistress of a third, now she had to read the auguries again for her son; the last time, she thought, and she was weary.

She had lived beyond her lustrum; she was the oldest of her generation, the last. Lauchme was dead, Macstrna was dead, Manius and Faustus. Even her eldest son had gone before her to the whispering shades. She was alone, a ghost; even the gods could no longer see her. She felt somehow that the world lay bare before her, motives and secrets open to her like a house to an invisible spirit. Not much had the capability to move her, any more; not even the sound of the aulos or the sight of a proud young man, or wine. Only the lone song thrush that she heard sometimes as she lay sleepless in the grey hours of early morning.

But Tarquin had asked her to take the omens for him. So here she was, standing at the altar with her hands dabbled in the blood of the ox, up to the elbow in the warmth of ebbing life.

When she'd looked at Tullia and Tarquin she saw the same feeling she and Lauchme had shared, for a time. They were like lions, bloody-mouthed and roaring. True Etruscans with their violence and passion, not the cold duty of Rome. They had stepped together to the dais on the Capitol, splendid in gold and purple, through the file of the lictors whose axes were smeared with blood. She'd failed with Lauchme, she'd failed in the end with Macstrna; perhaps in this golden pair, the pride of Etruria would be reborn. Rome, at last an Etruscan city, purged of its fratricidal darkness.

She knew as soon as she touched the liver that there was something wrong. The surface was blistered with bubbles of hard tissue, as if it had been burned. When she lifted it out, it was black, riven with bloody gashes that looked pink, not healthy red.

She looked up at Tarquin and Tullia. Her eyes must have shown the emptiness in her mind; the bleak vacancy where hope had been till a second before. I have lived beyond my time, she thought; they are all dead, all the bright youths and golden girls are dead, and fallen to ashes.

Then she turned to the senators below, and smiled, hailing Tarquinius king.

***

