Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  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.