81

For those of you anxiously awaiting the next chapter, my apologies, but I've been without power for nearly three days. It is not a good thing when you can see your breath sitting in the living room.

Queen Evree

Evree paced the spacious confines of her quarters aboard Anubis' ship and wryly noted the contrast between them and the much smaller and infinitely more Spartan quarters she'd briefly occupied at the SGC until she'd been moved to medical.

Now, instead of a plain, flannel nightgown, she was arrayed in brilliant silks and satins. She considered it ironic that Anubis should put so much at her disposal when he planned to move her into a breeding tank and keep her there. And even more so when she thought of how much more contented, if confused, she'd been among the Tau'ri.

&&&&&

"Well? What does it say?" Jack was hovering over Daniel, so much so, in fact, that Daniel had had to ask him to move out of his light three times now.

"I'm working on it, Jack," Daniel replied with exaggerated patience. "It's not as easy as you might think. For one thing, there are terms here for which I have no referent. For another, it looks like she was writing in some kind of code as well."

"Code?" O'Neill's eyebrows shot up. "How many people does she think can read Goa'uld around here?"

"She really wasn't here long enough to find out," Daniel pointed out, eyes still glued to Evree's note, trying to decipher it. "If I'm right, this cartouche at the bottom is her name. It certainly doesn't appear anywhere else."

"We already know her name," Jack said impatiently. "I want to know what she..," He broke off suddenly, as though rehearsing what to say next. "What the double-crossing little back-stabber has to say."

Daniel bit back a grin. Jack was bending over backwards so far to keep Evree as the villain of the piece that he was about to fall flat on his ass. "Jack," he suggested mildly. "This is still going to take a while, and I'll probably get it done faster without you circling me like a vulture. Maybe you ought to talk to General Hammond about it. I'm pretty sure he'll want to know about it."

"Stop looking over your shoulder and driving you nuts?" O'Neill ventured. Daniel's politely worded phrases had sunk in and he realized he was making himself obnoxious.

"Well." Daniel found himself torn between friendship and honesty. He decided the friendship should be strong enough to tolerate a little honesty. "Yes, actually. Listen, Jack, I promise I will call you the minute I have it translated."

"Yeah, well..," Jack was feeling acutely embarrassed now. "I'll just go.., tell Hammond about it."

"You do that, Jack," Daniel answered evenly, and gave a sigh of relief when O'Neill left the room.

&&&&&

"What precisely do you think General Hammond meant about O'Neill taking the news of Evree's behavior hard?" Teal'c asked Sam. Jacob had had other things to attend to for a while, so the two of them had been left to their own devices for a while.

"I know we weren't around them that much," Sam responded, a little shocked that the usually observant Jaffa had missed what had seemed incredibly obvious to her. "But couldn't you feel the sparks shooting between the two of them?"

"O'Neill and Evree?" It was Teal'c's turn to be shocked. "I am sure that you must be mistaken, Major Carter."

"You think?" Sam's eyes were twinkling now. "Then why did Evree say that she didn't feel complete when Jack wasn't around? And why did Jack delegate me to take Evree off his hands quote, before I kill her, unquote, and then shows up before more than an hour has passed."

The Jaffa looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "It cannot be," he muttered. "O'Neill hates the Goa'uld even more than I." His voice, however, lacked conviction.

"He hates Goa'uld who fight us, kill people, torture people and are megalomaniacs," Sam amended. "What about one who doesn't and isn't?"

Teal'c still looked scandalized. "O'Neill and Evree?" he repeated.

&&&&

When the summons came for Evree to dine with Anubis, she didn't feel she could refuse, much though she wanted to. At the moment, food had absolutely not appeal for her, and yet, she knew that she would have to eat, maintain a facade of normality.

To further the illusion that all was well and that she was a willing conspirator, she even summoned slaves to adorn her in regal splendor. Jewels at her throat, wrists and ankles, and an elaborate coiffure. She looked at the final results in a mirror and suppressed the desire that O'Neill could see her thus, just once.

With a sigh, she rose to her feet and suffered herself to be escorted into Anubis' presence.

&&&&&

"Jack." Hammond spoke just to call a halt to O'Neill's pacing. "Daniel is good at what he does. He'll decipher the message."

"Probably just a farewell screw you," Jack grumbled. "I guess she figured stabbing us in the back wasn't enough, so she had to kick us in the..,"

"I think I've got it." Daniel burst into the room, notebook in hand, interrupting O'Neill's tirade.

&&&&&&

"I must compliment you on your choice of hosts," Anubis remarked as Evree settled herself on the divan on the opposite side of the low table from him. "Absolutely exquisite."

"Thank you," Evree murmured. Now was the time to preen, to boast, to say all the right things to convince Anubis of her willingness to ally herself with him. And yet, the words would not come, they stuck in her throat. She lounged back, giving him a seductive smile, every gesture carefully calculated to foster the effect of the words she could not bring herself to say.

"You speak little," Anubis observed. "And yet you have this day stolen Ahriman's alliance out from under him. Does that not please you?"

Evree found herself shrugging, reacting rather than thinking things through first. She had to hasten to repair the damage. "I have nothing against our alliance. If I seem to have reservations, it is merely because I had to steal the opportunity to make an alliance in which I was an integral part of the agreement."

"You would not have offered yourself to me if Ahriman had not used you as the basis of our alliance?" At least he didn't try to deny that she had been right about being the focal point of the agreement.

This time the shrug was calculated. "Could I not have bargained better on my own behalf?" Evree inquired lazily. "That I was able to bargain at all was only due to your unprecedented generosity."

Anubis laughed. "I like your spirit, Evree," he rejoined. "When I have overcome all my enemies and taken my place as ruler of the cosmos and have no need of further warriors, I shall release you from breeding to have you rule at my side."

More likely to be used as another trophy to prove his dominance, Evree thought sourly. But she did not let her thoughts show in her expression. She dared not let her guard down for even a moment. That one slip could have been excessively costly had she not been able to effect some damage control. But better not to make mistakes than to have to constantly be correcting them. "Do you believe that it will be long?" she queried, trying to keep the despair out of her voice. Then, just for good measure, she added, "One sees so little from the inside of a breeding tank."

Anubis laughed again. "You shall breed me many fine warriors," he commented. "With your spirit, how could I fail to be victorious?"

&&&&&&

"That's it?" O'Neill's voice rose in indignation. "She's been planning the whole thing from the get go and all the note says, essentially, is thanks and please take care of the kids."

"She really didn't have a lot of privacy," Daniel pointed out, sounding a little apologetic. "I'm amazed that she managed this much."

"And considering where it was found," General Hammond added. "She had to have written it before she actually gave birth to her children."

Jack was not appeased. "Asking for asylum then taking off before the paperwork is all filled out," he grumbled. He looked over to the enlisted man at the door. "Soldier, let me see your lighter."

"Excuse me, sir?" the private said, perplexed by the request.

"I know that you smoke," O'Neill stated, trying not to loose his temper on someone who had done nothing to merit it. "I need to borrow your lighter."

Mystified, but obedient, the guard handed over his lighter.

"And here's all this is good for," Jack remarked grimly, snatching Evree's note out of Daniel's hand and setting it afire.

"Hey!" Daniel protested. "I was going to keep that." He watched as the page blackened, turning to ash from one end to the other, then his look of dismay became one of consternation. "Wait a minute, there's more on there, the heat's bringing it out."

O'Neill hastily stomped the fire out, with, it must be admitted, a little more force than was absolutely necessary. "Even when she's not here she's got to be a pain in the ass."

Daniel carefully picked up the remains. Since he had already solved Evree's code, it wasn't going to be as difficult to translate as the initial message had. "Here's a new cartouche," he muttered. "It seems to come out as 'the warrior who does not play well with others'." He blinked, then looked up. "I'm guessing that would be you, Jack."

O'Neill covered his eyes with one hand. "I'd say that's a good guess," he agreed reluctantly. "How long will it take before you can translate the rest?"

"Just a minute," Jackson assured him. "I've already worked out the code. She hasn't changed that."

Hammond had remained silent during the exchange, and he was starting to feel a little uncomfortable now. Daniel was the only one who could translate the message, but if it got too personal.., He salved his conscience with the thought that as commanding officer, even a personal note could contain information he needed to know. And self-honesty prompted him to admit that he was more than a little curious.

"She says that no one ever showed her the consideration that you have from the very start unless they had no choice," Daniel replied softly. "She says that she's going to miss you more than any of us."

After that, there was a long, awkward silence. Then, O'Neill delicately gathered up the charred paper and left.

&&&&&&

Evree eyed the breeding tank, waging a losing battle against letting her disdain for the thing show. Not that she truly expected to be there long, but still. She nearly jumped out of her host when a pair of hands came to rest on her arms.

"I did not mean to startle you," Anubis rumbled. "But I had not expected to find you here, given that you seemed, shall we say, less than eager to fulfill the role for which you were designed."

"I wanted to see it," Evree stated flatly. She viewed the chamber that contained her soon-to-be prison. "You could at least place it where I could gaze out and see the passing stars."

"If you like," Anubis answered indifferently. Where the tank was, was a matter of complete disinterest to him. All that mattered about the tank was that there would soon be a breeding queen in it again. "You are not like the others."

"Other Goa'uld, or other queens?" Evree inquired, stalling for time as much as anything.

"Either, both," Anubis responded. "I certainly never had a queen complain about the location of the breeding tank. I think what seems so.., alien about you is that you seem to take an interest in your surroundings."

"Is being observant not a survival trait?" Evree hazarded. "And surely, Goa'uld are survivors if naught else."

"There is that," he muttered grudgingly. "And yet, you still are unlike any other."

"Which will make no difference whatsoever to you as long as I breed you young that you can turn into your warriors," Evree rejoined.

"And for that, I will tolerate any number of idiosyncrasies," the lord of death replied.

&&&&&&

Jack sat in his room, alone, staring at the paper with the burned edges. In truth, it was of no use to him, since he could not, on his own, read it. And even with Daniel's help, he wasn't sure that he comprehended it. But the one person who could make it clear to him was who knows how many million miles away. And the tone of both notes were starting to wear holes in the shell of dislike and distrust he had re-built around himself.

"I kind of miss you too, Evree," he murmured into the silence. Long moments after the last faint echo of his whisper had died away, he sat. At last, he turned out the light and went to bed, there to toss and turn the better part of the night away.