Secrets

Chapter Twenty-one A Door Into Summer

Teyla saw John move before she saw why. Of course she sensed Wraith. Rodney was standing right behind her and had been, his mind a constant irritation, like listening to continual chatter. She was thinking that she would have to work with him not about speaking as Guide had worked with her, but about maintaining silence…

And then there was the Queen. She stood in the doorway of the cave, her long dress of undyed wool blending with the gray stones, and her mind leapt with delight for one moment before it was eclipsed by fear.

Her eyes met John’s as he brought up the weapon, so slow, but not slow enough…

…there was a high pitched scream and John’s finger jerked just as he pulled the barrel of the P90 up, bullets ringing off the hanging bells, off the stones, missing the child who hurled himself between, throwing himself at the Wraith Queen’s waist.

“No,” Teyla said, her hand on his arm as he took a deep breath, feeling the muscles in his arm shaking. “No,” she said, her eyes on the Queen’s, the Queen’s eyes on hers, held in tableau.

“Damn it,” John said under his breath.

The child looked up at him, a boy perhaps five years old, his white hair shoulder length, the Queen on her knees beside him, her arms around him and her shoulder turned to the humans as though to shelter him behind her regenerative abilities. They had never seen a Wraith child before. There had been Ellia, of course, but she was already adolescent, the young queen John had killed. This child was much younger.

Behind, she heard Ronon’s pistol power up. “Put it down,” John said. “Teyla’s got the situation under control.”

“I do,” Teyla said slowly. She could feel the Queen’s mind in their locked gaze, fear — mostly fear there. She would do nothing to harm them while they might harm her child. He was too young to regenerate. Teyla knew that in a moment, felt the Queen’s astonishment that she did not know. And astonishment at all she did.

Her pale bluish brow knitted. “What are you?” she asked in a tone full of curiosity.

“I am Teyla Emmagan of Athos,” Teyla said. “Teyla Who Walks Through Gates. Osprey’s Daughter.” All her names, birth and earned name and her lineage, as was proper.

The young queen shook her head. Yes, Teyla thought, she was young. Not so young as Waterlight, but young as Steelflower pretended to be. Her eyes flicked to Rodney. “What is he?”

“Mine,” Teyla said, and felt Rodney’s flicker of pleasure and embarrassment at once.

She shook her head again, long red hair half covering the child. “You are impossible.”

“So I have been told,” Teyla said, words spoken and thought at once. “I am abomination. A cleverman of Osprey mixed his DNA with that of his captives, and I am that result, Osprey’s human daughter.” John shifted, and she thought he was looking behind her, catching Ronon’s eye. “And who are you?”

She stood up, still holding the child before her, one hand on each of his shoulders. “I am the Bride of the Lord of the Dead, Alabaster of the lineage of Osprey, and I am the Guardian of the Shrine.”

The child bit down on his lower lip, his eyes going back and forth from one to another. “Mama, I’m scared.”

Ronon made some inarticulate noise Teyla couldn’t interpret.

“There is nothing to fear,” she said, and hoped she spoke the truth. “Not if your mother will treat with us under the six symbols of truce, as is proper queen to queen.”

“A human queen.” Her yellow eyes were expressionless, measuring, but the tenor of her mind was bright, curiosity warring with fear.

Teyla had felt the like, knew suddenly where she had heard the name before… “You are Guide’s daughter,” she said.

A flare of bright hope, just as quickly cut off and held close. “I am Snow’s daughter, and Guide was her Consort,” she said carefully.

“Guide’s daughter?” Rodney’s voice went up a scale. “Oh for the love of…”

“Ok.” John slung the P90 to port arms. “Ronon, put it away. We’re not going to shoot Todd’s grandkid while we’re technically his ally.”

“You are allied with my father?” Alabaster looked from one to the other skeptically.

“For some value of allied,” Rodney said.

“No.” Ronon kept his gun leveled, the barrel over Teyla’s shoulder. “No. We’ve had enough of this.”

She turned about. “Ronon,” she said quietly. “You cannot shoot a child.”

He didn’t waver, his eyes on Alabaster. “What do you think they eat, her and that little parasite there? Those villagers we saw a few minutes ago. People who are stupid enough to come here looking for healing and find her instead. You think she doesn’t kill their children? You think that little girl you were talking to earlier is anything but a snack for her? You want to watch that kid wither into a ninety-five year old without having her life?” Ronon’s lips opened in a snarl. “It’s a delicacy for you, isn’t it? Feeding on children. So tasty. You like babies in arms best, don’t you? But they go so fast. They don’t usually even have time to cry.”

“Ronon!” John stepped in front of the gun. “Put it down, buddy.”

“No.”

“Let Teyla handle this,” John said, his eyes level even as Ronon’s finger twitched.

“No. This stuff has gone far enough.” He looked at Alabaster over John’s shoulder. “How many? How many villagers have you killed?”

“None,” she said quietly.

“Liar.”

Alabaster’s face seemed even paler. “I have fed on many, but I have not fed enough to kill, and I have fed on no one unwilling.”

“Parasite.”

“I give them full value in return,” Alabaster said. Her eyes shifted to Teyla, her mind open so that she could see the truth of her words. “What mother would not give years off her life for her child’s healing? What man would not do the same for the woman he loved, or for his best friend? They come to me seeking healing, and if I can give it I offer a bargain. I will heal the one they love with some of their own years, two thirds to heal and a third as my fee. If they wish, I will spread it among several people, as many as care to come and plead as intercessors.”

“Lyra’s brother,” Teyla said, a piece fitting into place.

Alabaster nodded. “Just so. Without healing that is far beyond the technology of this planet he should not have lived more than a few days. But his grandfather stood surety, saying that he had already had many full years. Fifteen years I took from his grandfather, five as my fee and ten to heal Jasen. I closed the hole in his heart that he had been born with.” Her eyes flicked to Ronon. “I gave him life, not death.”

“Ronon,” John said quietly, “Stand down.”

Wordlessly, Ronon turned and walked away, his footsteps loud on the trail above.

“Rodney, stay here,” John said, and followed him. She could not touch John’s mind, but Teyla did not need to. She saw it all in his eyes.

“It will be well,” she said. And why not? She was a trader and the daughter of a trader, and she was Steelflower too. Why not negotiate with a Wraith queen with no one but Rodney for backup, a Rodney whose mind was entirely open to the persuasion of a queen? Then we will see who is the stronger queen, the part of her that was Steelflower said.

Alabaster watched them go, and when John’s footsteps had faded away she looked at Teyla instead, her shoulders relaxing fractionally. “I do not understand what passes among your blades.”

“Ronon has known much harm from your kind,” Teyla said rather sharply. “He is of Sateda.”

There was no comprehension in her face. “And what?”

Teyla lifted her chin. “You have been here since before Sateda was destroyed?”

“I have been here twenty-one planetary years,” Alabaster said. “Twenty-one years with no news and no word from outside. I did not know that any of my kin lived.”

Teyla let out a breath. “Then I have much to tell you. May we come inside?”

Alabaster nodded slowly. “If you will abide by the six symbols of truce, your cleverman and you.”

“We shall,” Teyla said, “And we will do no harm to your child.”

“Then come within.”

The inside of the cave was dark, but perhaps not so to a Wraith’s eyes. Teyla had gotten used to moving in the dark as though she knew what she was doing when she was Steelflower, wearing Steelflower’s face but without her vision. Rodney had not. His Wraith vision had been real. And so he promptly fell over a chair.

“Sorry,” Rodney said, picking it and himself up.

There were two chairs, presumably for Alabaster and the humans she consulted with, and Teyla took one as by right, leaving Rodney standing. Miraculously he did not complain.

*I know how this goes,* he said, his mind voice as clear as if he’d spoken, tinged with faint embarrassment. *I know how a cleverman acts in the presence of his queen.*

*Dear Rodney,* she thought. *I know I can count on you, my friend.*

*You can.* Rodney stood behind her chair, jaw forward like a pit bull.

There were no offers of refreshment. Wraith did not eat together. “How did you come to this place?” Teyla asked, leaning forward in her chair, her hands together as one should hold them when one does not mean threat.

Alabaster still held the child’s hand, and now she let him go to return to his games. “Twenty-one planetary years ago,” she said quietly, “My mother died. No, my mother was murdered by another hive, by Hightower’s men, Hightower of the lineage of Cloud. We were taken by treachery and boarded. My father bought time for our cruiser to put off with me and a few others aboard, for I was newly carrying my son and he feared for my life as he had for my mother’s. It was her last wish that he should guard me rather than her, and he did so.”

Dishonor. Dishonor that a Consort should outlive his Queen, even at her wish.

“Our ship took fire even as we fled, and we were badly damaged. We opened a hyperspace window, but when we came out we could not decelerate properly because of thruster damage. We entered this world’s atmosphere like a missile, on a ballistic course. There was one lifepod.” Her eyes met Teyla’s, and for a moment she saw as Alabaster had seen, the deadly calm on the bridge, the hatch irising shut, the commander and his three men still and dark at their posts.

“For the queen,” Rodney said.

“The ship crashed north of here,” Alabaster said. “There was nothing left.”

Teyla bent her head.

“I was injured, alone. The villagers took me in. They said I was the Bride of the Lord of the Dead, sent from the skies to bring them hope. I did not persuade them otherwise.” Her voice had a bitter note, one that suddenly reminded Teyla of Guide, that tone, that inflection. “I have lived here twenty-one years of this planet with them for company, hoping against hope that some of my people would somehow find me. The Ring is orbital. I have had no way of reaching it, and if any Darts have come through culling they have not come here.”

“And your son?” Teyla asked.

“Darling was born my second year here. He is nineteen years old.” Alabaster looked at Teyla sharply. “You did not know our children take so long to grow? We are long lived, and twenty years to us is not half a lifetime.”

“I have only met one young one before,” Teyla demurred. Ellia.

“He does not feed yet, except on such food as the villagers bring in trade. Fruit, eggs, plants from the sea…” She looked over at the child by the hearth. “But you have told me nothing. Tell me.”

“Guide is well known to me,” Teyla said carefully. “It was he who taught me to speak mind to mind, and who has tutored me in much I know. He is a power yet, the Consort of one Steelflower…” And she could not hide it, not mind to mind. She was Steelflower, one more turning in Guide’s machinations, one more gambit on the table — a human woman with the mind of a queen, brought forward to forge an alliance and legitimize his power.

“Oh, Father,” Alabaster said softly. “What are you playing at?”

Rodney snorted. “I don’t think anybody knows that.”

Alabaster’s eyes flicked up to him, and Teyla saw Rodney blush. “That is Guide through and through,” Alabaster said.

Teyla thought it wise to lay the trades on the table. “What is it you want?”

“Is that not obvious?” Alabaster asked. “Safe passage for myself and my son back to the hive, to where my father is. You said that you were his ally. If so, then you know what I will be worth to him. He will pay you whatever you ask.”

Teyla knew the truth of that, felt it in her bones.

“And what do you want?” Alabaster asked shrewdly, her eyes flicking from Teyla to Rodney. “You have not come here by chance.”

“We came here seeking something hidden long ago by the First Mothers,” Teyla said carefully. “A power source.”

“The ZPM,” Alabaster said. Her eyes did not leave Teyla’s now. “And more besides. You are seeking Hyperion’s weapon. But you must know that it will kill you as surely as it will me. It works by destroying the mind, burning out all that is touched by our abilities, all that carries our genetic code, leaving nothing but a mindless body behind it. It will leave you a husk, you and your cleverman both.”

Teyla felt a chill run down her back, but it was true. She knew it as surely as anything. “How do you know that?” she asked.

“Because I am Osprey’s daughter too,” Alabaster said. “And I know she left it here for a reason. If you seek it on behalf of the humans, you seek your own death, Teyla Emmagan.”

John hurried up the path to the clifftop swearing under his breath. He didn’t like leaving Teyla to deal with the Wraith queen by herself, but he’d seen her do it before. Steelflower had done it, and it looked like this was more likely to involve talking than shooting. Even if the queen had the ZPM, she couldn’t use it here. It would be better to barter it to them for passage off this planet, back to Todd or wherever. And having her might give them a hold over Todd. No, she was more use to them alive than dead, and they were way more use to her. After all, she couldn’t fly the puddle jumper even if she could find it under its cloak. And good luck trying to dominate Teyla mind to mind! John would lay good money that even the queen they’d met in the submerged power station under the sea nearly three years ago wouldn’t get the best of Teyla now.

John got to the top of the cliff and looked around for Ronon. Where the hell…?

Ronon was a little ways along the cliffs, sitting on the stones looking out to sea. He didn’t move as John came up beside him, as John sat down beside him on the rocks, their shoulders not quite touching. The wind off the ocean lifted Ronon’s hair. His eyes were clear, and somehow he looked younger than John had ever seen him.

John swallowed. “I understand how you feel,” he began.

“No, you don’t, Sheppard.” Ronon didn’t look at him, and his voice was quiet, his eyes on the sea. A wave crashed ashore, spray dashing thirty feet up the cliff and then subsiding. “You have no idea the things I’ve seen.”

John glanced away, as if there were some answer in the water, picking up a rock and worrying it between his fingers. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.” He paused, putting the words together, and then went on. “But I know this. It’s done and you can’t change it. The only thing you can change is the guy it turns you into.”

Ronon looked at him sideways, and John turned the stone around in his hand, tossing it over the edge and watching it disappear into the waves. “You don’t want to be a guy who kills little kids.” The bodies were still there in memory, the ruined village smoking from the airstrike. It was still a sick feeling, still a punch in the gut, even here in the clean sea wind — but it was far away. Time and distance blurred the memory, not into forgiveness but into occasional oblivion.

Ronon glanced away, his eyes on the far horizon. “I can’t do this, Sheppard.”

“I know you can’t.” John swallowed. “I’m not going to ask you to do this again.” He’d pushed too far. He’d pushed Ronon beyond where he could go. If he pushed any more he’d break him. Everybody has limits.

“McKay is one thing,” Ronon said. “I mean, it’s McKay. He’ll get over it. It’s just like he’s been sick or something.”

“Yeah,” John said.

“Teyla…” Ronon looked out to sea, his eyes clear and scoured clean, as though he were looking for the right words.

“Teyla’s back to normal now,” John said.

“No, she’s not. She’s changed. You’ve changed. We’ve all changed.” Ronon shook his head. “I don’t know who any of us are anymore.”

John didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say except things change. People change. Ronon said they wouldn’t, but they did. And sometimes it was bad and sometimes it was good but it was always a crap shoot.

“I could go back to Sateda,” Ronon said, the wind lifting his hair away from his brow, “but I’m not crazy enough to think that it would be like it was. It wouldn’t be going home. That place doesn’t exist anymore.” He shook his head. “Radek talks about rebuilding and trees growing and new generations like somehow that fixes it. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t make it the way it was.”

John swallowed. “No,” he said. He stretched his legs out in front of him. “My mom said that the past was a different country, a place you could never visit. So you gotta find something you want, something out there in front of you that’s worth it. A new world. A new sun. Something worth living for.”

Ronon looked at him sideways. “I thought you had a death wish.”

“Not so much a wish as a …” John looked for the right word.

“A geas?”

“Yeah, maybe.” He picked up another little rock, turned it around in his hands carefully. “I’d rather stick around. I mean, there’s Atlantis. It, you know, kind of needs me. And there’s Teyla. She’d be really upset if I died. And Torren. It would tear him up. And you and McKay…”

“You think we need you too.” Ronon’s voice was quiet.

John tossed the rock over. “Yeah, kind of.”

Ronon watched it fall, its trajectory clean and swift. “At first I just wanted to stay alive,” he said quietly. “That’s all. Just stay alive. And then I thought maybe I could hunt them. I could avenge Sateda. I can’t bring anybody back from the dead, but I can avenge them. I can make them pay in blood for every kid, every old person, every place I lived that was ground into rubble. Every person I ever loved.” His voice stopped.

John waited.

“If I’m not a Satedan Immortal and I’m not a runner and I’m not a Wraith hunter, who am I?”

“My friend,” John said. “You’ll have to figure out the rest.”

Ronon looked at him sideways. “Just like that?” he said with a bitter smile.

“Yeah, just like that.”

Out to sea a cloud bank was building, cool and purple and white. White as snow, white as Antarctica where an alien drone had chased him, where a chair beneath the ice had called to him. I think anyone who doesn’t want to walk through a Stargate is cracked, O’Neill said, and he hadn’t gotten it then. He’d never seen a gate, never seen a sunrise on a strange world. There were beginnings worth having but nobody could give them to you. All they could give you was a gate to walk through.

There would be a gate for Ronon, but he’d have to decide if it was a door into summer. John hoped he was still around for that part.

He put his hand on Ronon’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go on back and see if McKay has managed to totally screw up Teyla’s negotiations.”