by AM Kirkby
***
"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.