The Furies

Chapter Twenty-eight Steelflower

Teyla stood by the Stargate. Above, the duty crew on control were trying to not stare at her. She did look impressive, in a very Wraith way. And yet perhaps Teyla would not take the stares for anything so friendly.

Radek put his hands in the pockets of his rumpled pants and shrugged. “It is just that it is another mission,” he said. He gave her a sideways glance, a twist of humor to his mouth. “And perhaps that you are hot.”

She laughed as he had hoped she would, turning about, her boot heels loud on the polished floor.

“We will see you soon,” Radek said seriously. “We will get Rodney back, and then I can get out of the field.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Believe me,” said Radek. “No one is more motivated than I to get out of the field.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Though if it does not go as planned and John…” He broke off and shook his head. “I do not know what will happen. If Rodney…”

Teyla regarded him with a Wraith’s golden eyes. “If it comes to that, John will do what he needs to do.” Teyla raised her chin, her voice low. “Though it will not come to that, Radek.”

“You do not know that,” Radek said.

“If it is necessary, I will do it,” Teyla said evenly, her eyes on his face. “He will forgive me when he will not forgive himself.”

Radek swallowed. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to speak. And so he squeezed her shoulder instead, black silk slick as water under his hand.

Woolsey came down the stairs, rubbing his palms against his pants legs. “It’s time,” he said.

Blue fire kindled and the gate quickened, the honor guard standing well back of its opening. The surface rippled and a small figure stepped through, her black skirts billowing above tight-laced ankle boots.

Sable, Commander of the Honor Guard, went to one knee, his head bent. “My Queen,” he said, a frisson running through him as he felt her mind sweep over him, clear and bright as a beacon beam turning through the night sky, calling the darts home to their cradles.

*Sable,* Queen Steelflower said, her eyes passing over those assembled. *Yarrow and Swiftripen, Elude and Gamester, clevermen and blades all. The best men.*

He rose at her touch, the perfume of her skirts brushing his face. “Your shuttlecraft is ready, My Queen.”

“I have walked a strange road, my men,” she said aloud, her eyes touching each in turn, bright as stars. “And you shall walk a stranger one still with me, perhaps. If any among you dare it.”

“We are all your daring men,” Swiftripen said eagerly. “And it is our honor to follow where our queen bids us.”

Her eyes rested upon him like a caress upon his face. “I believe you are daring,” Steelflower said, “and true as well. Sit with me on the shuttle, and we will speak further.”

Gamester rolled his eyes behind Swiftripen’s back, and Sable grimaced. How like Swift to manage to gather the queen’s attention first! And now he would sit with her on the shuttle, a signal honor. Perhaps he would even be her first concubine.

“If you will come this way, My Queen,” he said, bending low again.

“Of course.”

Surrounded by her blades, Queen Steelflower went aboard her shuttlecraft, a fragile seeming figure among two tens of men.

The Consort was in the dart bay, of course. He went to one knee stiffly, but then Guide was not young enough for grace. “My Queen,” he said, and his voice was warm.

“My dear Guide,” she said, and the caress in her voice was enough to send shivers down Sable’s spine. All was as it should be. They were not queenless men, renegades with no hope for tomorrow. They served Steelflower and in her bright orbit were made whole.

“The ship is primed,” Guide said, “and all the company is at your disposal. Will you walk its paths with me?”

“With great good will,” Steelflower said, and put her hand to his wrist, her fingers resting lightly on his flesh. Sable thought that she spoke to him alone, some private words of tenderness perhaps, for Guide smiled and bent his head.

“This way, My Queen,” he said.

The hive ship hummed through hyperspace on its way to a deadly rendezvous. And yet it did so with a sense of deep satisfaction shared with every man aboard. It had healed much since Guide returned, but now it was better still. Their queen was there as she should be, her mind a steady presence in its dreaming sleep. Even when she was not lost in shiptrance she was there, her mind on the edge of its consciousness.

Every man had seen her, every cleverman, and every drone. Every last one of the ship’s company to the youngest fledgling barely out of the chrysalis had seen Steelflower, had felt her touch. It steadied them all. Some who had doubted she existed were now reassured while others were the butt of good humored jokes. There was no doubt she was real. There was no doubt she was a great queen. Even those who had seen Death were impressed.

*As they should be* Guide said as the doors to the Queen’s chambers irised open before them.

Her forehead rose, but her mental voice was amused. *You have much more confidence in me than formerly,* she said.

*Does that surprise you? Given what you have done?*

*With Waterlight?* she asked.

Guide snorted. *Among other things* he said.

The Queen’s Chamber was wreathed in fragrant mist, welcoming and cool, to soothe the skin and the senses alike. Cunning alcoves revealed strange compartments, boxes that might have been treasures or more utilitarian things, branching off one another so that first one charming vista and then another presented itself through half-walls of woven bone, grown that way as much for pleasure as use. Her bed was suspended from the ceiling on tendrils that looked like living vine, its covers of green silk piled high, each piece worked in thousands of fine stitches. Tiny lights were woven into the tendrils that might be extinguished at her thought, to light her or leave her in darkness as she preferred.

*It’s very…* she began, and finished aloud. “Pretty.”

Guide laughed, his voice loud in the small chamber. *We are not without aesthetic senses.*

*I did not think that,* she replied.

*Did you not?*

She did not reply, only walked over to the edge of the bed, the set of her shoulders dropping with weariness.

*You should rest,* Guide said more gently. *We have a full turn around of the watch to run before we leave hyperspace. There is no need for you to sit awake so long.*

*Sleep? And make myself vulnerable?* Her voice was skeptical, but she sat down on the edge of the bed.

*I will watch over your sleep as a consort should,* Guide said. *No one will disturb you. I shall be at your side.*

A shadow ran fast across her face, and though she did not speak he caught the sense of it — a swift and brutal fear of his body against hers, of relaxing in sleep only to awaken pinned beneath him.

Guide could not help but recoil in horror. *What do you think we are,* he asked, *that you imagine such bestial things of us?*

*If you try anything, I will kill you,* she said, and he heard the fear beneath the steel in her voice and did not doubt her.

*What man would do such a thing?* he asked. It was unimaginable. To defile a queen was worse than crime. It was sacrilege, unthinkable. The blade who even contemplated such would have no place in any hive. To take from all something so rare and remarkable…

She lifted her head. *It is common enough,* she said stiffly.

*Among beasts,* he said, and could not keep the distaste from his mind. What could be clearer proof that they were no more than animals?

*And do such things never happen among you?* she demanded.

*Among blades,* Guide conceded. *But to force oneself upon a queen…* He could hardly get the words out. *It is an unspeakable obscenity.*

Perhaps his distaste convinced her more than his words. She could, after all, sense the tenor of his mind.

*Then you may stay,* she said, and sat back upon the pillows, drawing her feet up before her like a young girl.

*If it is your wish,* he said, courtly as one should be, and sat down opposite her, his back against the tendril that suspended the bed. *Sleep. I will watch.*

She turned on her side, her eyes still upon him, pulled one of the large pillows so that a corner of it was beneath her face. *I have a knife,* she reminded him.

*Think you that I want you so much?* he asked. *I know what you are.*

*And yet,* she said, and he felt the humiliation burn through him like desire.

*It is who we are,* Guide said softly. *We are born to serve queens. Obedience and desire, courage and beauty and cleverness — they are all for her. It is an unusual man indeed who can defy a queen in word or deed.*

*And yet you defy Death,* she observed, the first of the tiny lights winking out. Her mental voice was cool, curiosity overriding all. That was always true of this one.

*She is not my queen,* Guide said.

*Nor am I.*

He leaned his head back against the tendril, looking up at the mist-wreathed ceiling. *My true queen is dead these many years. And yet her memory is a shield to me.* Snow in shiplight, soft washes of color playing across the skin of her shoulders, her eyes on his… He pushed the memory down, down into the darkness.

Not before she saw it. *You loved her,* she said.

*Do you think we cannot love?* Her mind was bright as fire, curiosity burning bright. *Anger and hope and fear, tenderness and desire and greed. Do you think we do not have these things?*

*I do not know,* she said softly. Another light winked out. She had sat thus once, years ago, watching through another night to another dawn with Sheppard, wondering if they would die that day. She had told him stories, and he had told her ones as well. The memory rose in her mind unbidden, vivid and crisp as any he held to his heart.

*Old stories,* she whispered, *Stories are powerful things.*

*They are indeed,” Guide said.

She turned about on the satin pillows, her eyes on him. *Who is Osprey?* she asked.

*A story,* he said, only mildly surprised. *I will tell you if you want. It is no secret.*

*Yes.*

Guide put his feet up on the bed and began. *Long ago, in the first days of the world, there were the First Mothers. Osprey was one of them, nine in all. Nine queens and ninety-nine men, blades and clevermen alike, for that is how people were made. That is how we were born in the ice of the first world, beneath the light of the moon. To each queen were given certain gifts, no two alike, for no two lineages are the same. We all count our names from them, from the First Mothers, and each tells its own story. I am a blade of Night, that mother who took her name from the darkness between the stars, but I know Osprey’s story well.

*She is queen of mists and shadows, strong in mind, weaving illusions to hide and deceive. She is a white flower, a white bird, a fog rising among the trees. She is the shadow of clouds trailing across the moon.*

*Wraith,* Teyla said quietly, her mind closed to him. *Revenant.*

*Osprey queens are strong minded,* Guide said. *And there is no illusion they cannot penetrate. Yet they are impossible to read if they do not wish it.* He looked at her keenly, a thought occurring to him. *Why do you ask?*

Her eyes did not leave him. *I have dreamed of her,* she said.

He nodded slowly. There was no sense in trying to keep his thoughts from her, not so close with her attention focused upon him. And yet he was not surprised. *We do not know what cleverman played with your ancestors’ genes to such effect,* he said. *Nor whose genes he gave you. But it may be Osprey as well as any other.* He stopped, and at her silence went on. *It is part of being a queen,* he said. *To some extent lesser or greater, all queens remember. They share in some part in the memories of their foremothers, experience and knowledge the legacy of the blood they bear. For most it is a small thing, dreams and hazy memories without context. Some great queens claim to remember details, to recall with clarity things that happened to their foremothers. That is part of Death’s allure. She claims to recall all that Coldamber knew, that Death in her time who led the first assault of the Great Armada.* His mental voice was dry. *Whom you killed beneath the sea, Teyla Emmagan. You killed her, Death who fed on Emege, who drank the blood of the children of Athos.*

He felt the flicker of her mind, and showed her Coldamber as he remembered her, when he was a blade scarce fledged, young and uncertain, expecting to die in the next assault, fodder for the weapons of the Ancients to screen the real attack. One look from Coldamber and he had gone to his knees, his face against the deck she walked upon.

*And does Death remember?* she asked quietly.

*I do not know.* Another light winked out, and he looked at her in the darkness, lovely and shadowed as any he had ever seen, the young queen with her mind like flame. *But you may well be of Osprey.* He did not want to add it, but it slipped between his reaching fingers. *Snow was.*

He could not stop the grief that welled, surprising as rising music, stark and pure as though it were hours old, and she caught it like a bird in her hand, held it to her chest. *I am sorry,* she said. And still her mind was closed to him.

They sat in silence in the darkness for a long time. He thought that perhaps she slept. Humans had to sleep so often. She could not go thirty of their hours without sleep and be sharp. It was best she sleep now. The last lights died. He waited. He kept the watch. The ship’s ventilation systems breathed softly.

“I will tell you a story,” she said aloud, and her voice sounded rusty in the soft air. “You have given me a story, Guide. Now I will give you one, a story to rend worlds and tear the veil from the stars.”

“Tell me a story,” he said.

She cleared her throat and began, her voice soft at first but gaining power as she spoke. “Once, long ago and far away, in the beginning of the world, there was a queen who had three daughters. She was a strong queen, but not a particularly good mother. She was inattentive, and over-absorbed with her own concerns, uninterested in nurturing her children.”

“Her eldest daughter was born when she was very young, and for the most part she was left to her own devices. Her mother was often away, and when she did see her would set her tricky puzzles to solve, or try to teach her vast tomes of knowledge in a single night. And yet when this daughter had need of her mother, her mother was gone. But she was a resilient girl, and she learned to depend upon none except herself, to survive alone.”

“As sometimes happens,” Guide said.

“Indeed.” There was a soft rustle in the darkness, and he saw the faint gleam of skin and satin as she moved. “The second daughter was the child of her choosing, and at first she was beloved, and her baby antics were her mother’s delight. But time came when her mother grew bored with all that, and she was left more and more to the care of others and to her own private games. Having been doted upon, she missed her mother dreadfully, and she worshipped her and thought she could do no wrong even though now she was neglected.”

Her voice hardened, strengthening in the dark, resonant and seeming to touch him to the bone. “The youngest daughter was unwanted and unwelcome, the bastard child of congress the queen did not wish to admit to, and she was cast out to make her own way. No one watched over her babyhood and no one guided her steps. Thus she grew full of bitter resentment for the matrimony that would never be hers, for her mother’s regard and the full share that she should have had. And so in time this youngest daughter led a war against her mother and her sisters, and plunged all into disarray. Her mother she killed, and the favored middle sister she ground beneath her heel, wrenching from her sister all the tears and sorrow she could not gain from their mother. All the queen’s vast holdings were hers, an empire uncountable. And so the eldest sister fled to a place far away, and there lived in obscurity, seeking to forget all that had been lost.”

Her voice softened, and he could see what she saw, the pictures that she spoke. “The story begins as all stories begin, in the blue fire of a gate. A gate opened. A city rose from the sea, and legends walk. We stand in the time of story, my Guide. Blood binds to blood and like to like. Three sisters dwelt apart, one toiling in a distant land, one a slave, and one a queen. But that cannot be the end of the story, can it? How, Guide, shall this story turn?”

Like vast blocks beneath the earth moving in darkness, a piece fell into place soundlessly, like a deep subsonic shockwave spreading endlessly through the night. Stories too vast and too dangerous to tell, boxes with no keys, shadows cast by no light — all those things and more ran through his mind. Guide saw, and so did Teyla Emmagan.

“We are the story,” she said.

Sheppard’s blood running through his veins, bringing him to life in the depths of Kolya’s prison. Sheppard beneath the sea, falling on his knees to Coldamber. Snow turning to see him, her eyes lighting in a smile like Steelflower’s, warm and full of mysteries. The spires of Atlantis against the sky, the secret turnings of the hive, Earth’s Stargate flaring deep within its concealing mountain.

Sheppard and Guide. Snow and Teyla Emmagan. Waterlight and Alabaster and Jennifer Keller bent over her work. Osprey vanishing like mist and Amitas clothed in white, and a woman from the distant plains of Earth going about her work with a weapon in her hand, her green eyes bright as Sheppard’s.

“We are the story,” she said. “We hold it all within us.” Her voice choked and steadied. “And I do not know how it can end except in rivers of blood.”

“I do not know either,” Guide said, and reaching took her hand, as though she were his queen indeed, as though they were long lovers.

She did not flinch, only closed her small fingers around his. “I do not know,” she said.