The Seven Hills(45)

She smiled, a strange sight because it made her facial tattoos writhe. She wore a proper gown of Greek design, but it left head and neck, arms, shoulders and the upper surface of her breasts exposed. Every square inch of visible flesh was covered with exquisitely rendered designs of twisting vegetation and bizarre, elongated animals in vivid colors.

"I lack for nothing, Hamilcar. In fact, I never knew the meaning of abundance until this visit. No, the night is fair and I am not tired and I thought that this might be an opportunity for us to speak candidly." Her accent was heavy, but her Greek was excellent. There were a number of prosperous Greek colonies on the coast of her nation, and where there were Greek cities, there were Greek teachers of language and rhetoric. It annoyed Hamilcar that the eternal rival of Carthage had such a monopoly on culture, but it was certainly convenient that all educated people had a common language.

"Then this is my good fortune. Will you sit?" He gestured toward the fine table and chairs in the center of the terrace, pure Carthaginian in their drapings of precious fabrics and exotic animal skins.

"Thank you, but I come of a people more at home in tents than in palaces. We are always on horseback or afoot, surveying our herds. I think and converse better while walking."

"Excellent. I, too, find myself pacing when I have anything serious to ponder." Idly, he wondered what this chieftainess might have on her mind. He knew little about her people save that they were largely nomads, that some had founded settlements but only in recent generations, and that they seemed to be a mixture of Thracian, Scythian and perhaps Gallic in blood heritage. The woman herself was tall, strongly built and had abundant hair as white-blond as he had ever seen. Her face was handsome, with broad cheekbones, and her brilliant blue eyes had a distinctive tilt that hinted of Eastern ancestry. As for her complexion, he had no idea.

She walked to the parapet and ran a palm along its polished marble. "I was struck by your exchange with the Princess Zarabel late in the banquet."

"My sister lacks tact and regards the goddess she serves as the rival of Baal-Hammon. You needn't take her words seriously."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I know all about troublesome siblings, never fear. I had to put aside a few brothers and sisters to win my throne."

"You have a refreshing directness of speech," he observed.

" 'Directness' meaning I am blunt. I agree. My tutors taught me the Greek tongue. I never learned the subtleties of innuendo and indirection. Such things are alien to the customs of my people."

"All the better."

"No, what intrigued me was one of your own replies. You said that you have no close kinswomen. Have you no sons, either?"

"Nor wife," he said, striving for a Spartan terseness to match her own.

She nodded. "As I thought. Yet the survival of the Barca family must be assured, must it not? The seed of Hannibal must not be allowed to die out."

"As you can see, I am not elderly yet. There is plenty of time."

She stepped closer and held his eyes with hers. "Let me be even more blunt. If you marry a Carthaginian noblewoman, she must be of one of the other great families. With a consort and in time an heir of their own blood, that family will feel itself greater than the Barcas. Some of the great houses probably do already, is this not so?"

He nodded. "Every one of them. You studied us before making this visit, did you not?"

"I would have been a fool not to. Do I seem like a fool to you?"

"Not at all," he said, enjoying this immensely. "In fact, I wondered why a reigning queen wished to accompany what amounts to a band of mercenaries. I suspect that you have a proposal for me."

"Precisely. I have no husband and am in much the same position as you. Chieftains of other clans and their sons swarm around me, pressing their suits. If I marry one of them, he will regard himself as my master as soon as he has bred a son on me. If that happens, I will have to kill him and then there will be trouble. I am young and can breed many sons. You need a royal wife. In all the lands surrounding the sea there are only two royal women suitable for you. One is Selene of Egypt. I am the other. A match with Selene is unlikely."

"There would be obstacles to such a match," he said, stalling for time to think. "While the Barcas have never adopted the obscene Egyptian practice of brother-sister marriage, wives have always come from Carthaginian families, dating from our emigration from Phoenicia."

"And no queen of Illyria has ever wed outside the ancient clans of our people. What care the likes of you and I for such rules? They are the customs of a world as dead as that of Agamemnon and Hector. That mold was broken for good when Alexander made the world his footstool and united West with East when he wed his best men with princesses of the old Persian Empire."