Svartalves were a group for whom a philosophy of business was less "live and let live" was closer to "live and be allowed to continue drawing breath in their presence." I'd met them, briefly, while working a case. One of my clients, a Bigfoot by the name of Strength of a River on his Shoulders, had hired me to protect his son from supernatural malfeasance that had transpired to be a couple of Svartalf bullies with a nasty guardian who could have cleaned my clock without breaking a sweat.

I'd luckily been able to resolve the conflict with the Svartalf bullies without having to involve myself directly and put myself at odds with their guardian. I'd never actually seen the Svartalf magic, but I knew enough about their lore to decide that it was a brand of nasty I never wanted inflicted upon me. They were old school creatures who never spelled vengeance without capitalizing the "V." By all accounts, however, they were one of the less malevolent nations of the supernatural world. Provided that one kept one word to them and offered them nothing that they might perceive as an insult to them or threat to their interests, one could be certain that it would not be the Svartalves who were responsible for failing to meet the terms of the bargain.

I'd never initiated any dealings with them directly because I knew enough to realized that I wouldn't be able to afford their help.. They were old school in the biblical sense, and reportedly asked prices that might have made dealing with Mab sound reasonable.

There were various stories about them, nominally to outright claiming that they were affiliated with the interests of Summer, Winter, or any number of other supernatural factions for one reason or another. It seemed clear to me that the only loyalty the Svartalves had was ultimately to the Svartalves - they would gladly deal with anyone who would offer them what they considered to be in their best interest. Apparently that included the Goa'uld.

Ammit was entirely relaxed with the Svartalf in a way I'd never seen from her before. Her posture was at ease and her normal stance of predatory wariness was gone. She looked calm. She never looked calm. Comfortable, sure, but Ammit had a level of perpetual wariness that never left her even while she slept. In fairness, some of that might have been a byproduct of the natural Unas inclination to sleep with her eyes open and staring out door to her quarters, but one was always left with the impression that she was sizing up everyone around her as a potential threat. It never quite approached Enlil's "booby trap my room with lethal devices while I sleep" level of paranoia, but few could manage that man's degree of internal paranoia.

Ammit seemed - dare I say it - happy, around the Svartalf. They chattered glibly in a language that Lash's gift of gab apparently didn't cover, sharing stories involving a great many hand gestures. Given that there was still a horde of Summer hitmen in direct line of sight, this felt somewhat premature. I did not, however, vocalize my discomfort - Ammit had made it abundantly clear that she was in no mood for any backsass from any whippersnapper would be godlings.

Muminah, always hyper-aware of my moves and moods, correctly read into my silence and vigilant stare towards the howling masses of Summer. She reached up to place a small hand upon my pauldron, staring adoringly at me as she intoned. "We are safely within the domain of Ammit, my Lord Warden. You need not protect us for the moment."

I chuckled, twisting my neck in the way that activated my armor's helmet controls. The faceless mask dissolved into the shoulders of my armor - opening my face to the night air of Cairo, still hot and dry without the sun's rays. "I don't know how much 'protection' I've been good for today."

The priestess smiled up at me adoringly. "You have saved the life of the one you are sworn to protect. You have saved the lives of the Tau'ri and your retainers. I know not what standard to which the gods feel compelled to hold themselves, it is not for mortals to know, but any mortal would be thrilled to have managed half as much. We owe you our very lives."

My lip quirked up into a smile, in spite of the melancholy I felt appropriate for the moment. Muminah was the human equivalent to a golden retriever, really. No matter what I did - no matter where I went - I felt confident that she would follow me without hesitation. She would do anything, go anywhere, just to be around me.

Her smile was utterly dazzling as she ran her fingers over the symbols along my pauldrons. I fought the urge to swat away her hand, as would normally been my reaction. I felt overwhelming shame as I realized that my default reaction to this woman who had never offered me anything but kindness was to dismiss her. I had been doing it out of discomfort - the relationship Heka had been in with his priestesses could chairtably be described as profane. He'd been raising women from infancy to love him unconditionally so that he could slaughter them without consequence. The adulation of the priestesses had felt dirty to me, tainted by the corrupt nature of that twisted paternal relationship.

I'd spent most of my childhood hoping for a place to belong - a family who would love me. When I thought I'd found it, it had turned out that the man who was supposed to have been caring for me was - in actuality - raising me with every intention of breaking my will and turning me into his slave. And while I still had a lifetime worth of mental issues to work out relating to how DuMorne had raised me, Heka made DuMorne look like Fred Rodgers by comparison. Heka had taken children with that same desperation and raised them to believe that the only source of love in their lives was him. That they had no choice except to devote themselves to worshipping him utterly or their lives would be meaningless. There had never been a shortage of orphans and runaways on Nekheb, never a shortage of the poor and abandoned.

It felt perverse to indulge in even a remnant of that relationship. It would be a betrayal of every hurt I'd felt as a young man, the sense of betrayal and abandonment I'd felt when someone had used me to their own ends. The Priestesses of Heka had been indoctrinated to follow Hekas words without shame or hesitation, even as they committed profanities of magic. He was in the running for worst parental figure of all time right there with the White King.

I didn't want to go in depth on what the old doctrinal requirements of the clergy had been, what I'd skimmed from the leftover scrolls guiding how to Priestesses were to be raised in order to ensure their loyalty had been stomach churning enough for me to sit down with Bob and just generate up an entirely new book of rules for how the priestesses ought to be raised. I'd mostly just stolen wholesale from what I remembered of how Michael and Charity seemed to be running things combined with largely stolen passages from Ebenezar McCoy's Elementary Magic, and as much Sesame Street and the Muppets that felt like it could be converted into a practical allegory.

After having given them a guide book for personal conduct and raising the younger members of their order that felt less like the Jonestown school of childrearing as informed from the dictated memoirs of Lucifer, I'd gone out of my way not to make choices on their behalf. I'd borrowed a teaching tool from my own mentor, the aforementioned Wizard McCoy - one of the few men I'd ever respected. Whenever they asked me a question regarding something, I grunted, asked them "what should be done," and then asked "are you sure?" when they replied. Generally speaking, if someone isn't willing to hold their idea up to scrutiny the it probably isn't a good idea. If they were totally off the rails I said something, but other than that I mostly just stayed out of it.

I'd additionally placed distance between me and my priestesses whenever possible, eschewing physical contact of any kind. I felt a stab of guilt as I ran through the time since I'd taken over Nekheb. Muminah had been with me at nearly every waking moment. I could not think of a single time she'd made contact with a human being simply to touch them except when she was grappling with the other priestesses as part of combat training. I'd felt that loneliness before. Most orphans had. It was an emptiness that one learned to live with because they felt that there was no other option other than to stuffer it.

Stars and Stones, I'd become as big of a hypocrite as McCoy… I kept distance between myself and the people who cared about me deeply, maybe even loved me, out of some misguided attempt to create a moral example for how to wield power. But I wasn't wise. For all the power I'd accrued, largely by accident, I seemed to just be finding new ways to kill things and endanger the people for whom I was responsible. Hell, McCoy was light years less the hypocrite. My choices in the past year had probably killed more people than McCoy had ever dreamed of as the Blackstaff.

"Lord Warden?" The High Priestess' asked, her voiced twinged with worry and apparent regret that she was calling attention to the fact that she'd been touching me for several minutes while I stared out at the Summer assassins.

"I'm fine." I replied, though I sounded anything but. "Muminah… thank you. Thank you for being here. With me. Thank you for choosing to help me."

"Lord Warden." She replied, her voice a breathless whisper. "You owe me no thanks."

"Yes, I do." I shook my head. "If you hadn't summoned me, I would be at the Seelie Court's mercy. Dead or worse." I paused, thinking about it. "How did you know to summon me?"

"Your book, Warden." She replied, as though it were obvious, "You taught all of the devoted."

"Huh." I blinked. Holy crap - I'd included Elemental Magic because it stressed the importance of using power responsibly and because it included a king sized warning against making deals with creatures from the Nevernever. It hadn't really occurred to that they would actually be able to cast anything. All living things had at least some magic to them, but unless you were actually born with the gift there was a limited degree to which one could actually use it. Creating a magic circle was something that anyone with a pulse could manage. Given the ardent nature of Muminah's constant fixation upon my every word, only a fool would have managed to miss that the clergy would take every opportunity to put philosophy into practice. "I'm really glad we wrote that book."

"Your book and the Bob's sequels have been much studied." Muminah beamed. "We are doing our best to act upon that guidance."

"Sequels?" I asked, dreading the answer. Bob had at least three mischief minded scribes from the Great Library who I'd long suspected were actively aiding the Skull in chaos behind my back. I'd forbidden them from entering the throne room, but they seemed to see it as their solemn duty to sneak around my prohibition by any means possible. Most recently I'd been forced to ban then from the outer corridors so that Bob couldn't pass them messages via Morse code by flashing his eye lights.

"Yes Lord Warden. Worry not, words spoken by he alone are treated with suspicion. We know that the Honored Skull acts out in ways that you do not approve of, while remaining your most trusted ally. As a consequence the parables of Emanuelle have become a point of great contention within the clergy. Some allege that they are a test to find those of insufficient chastity. Others suggest that they are displaced urges from your Lordship that we must act upon as you are not able." Muminah bit her lip in a way that somehow managed to make her look more naked than she usually did. Perhaps it was the slight twinge of lust behind her eyes. "Perhaps hope is a better word."

Ok… that was more than slight.

Plate, mail, and leather felt like an insufficient barrier between me and the woman's woman's dark skinned hand upon my pauldron. I was uncomfortably aware of both the weight of her hand and that the only thing preventing me from acting upon her apparent desire was my own conscience.

Damn if I wasn't putting that thing through its paces.

I swallowed a frog in my throat, trying to parse the religious nightmare of how to decline her transparent offer without accidentally causing a Jihad.

To say that I was glad when the Goat-like Summer assassin crossed the threshold and strode towards us was an understatement. Though my gratitude at the distraction only slightly mollified my horror at watching a fairy walk across a threshold as though it weren't there. "But… but they can't do that." I protested what my eyes plainly told me was true. "They can't just cross a threshold."

"They can, Sir." The Svartalf security guard replied. "The grounds are accorded neutral territory. The Seelie and Unseelie courts can come and go as they please - provided that they abide by the terms of the Accords."

I relaxed greatly. The Unseelie Accords were not something even mortals chose to mess around with. Even if fairies could break the terms of it, they'd be suicidal to do so. About the only thing that all the nations of the Supernatural world agreed upon was the rules of hospitality and the terms of the Accorded nations. If someone were to break them, they would effectively be declaring war upon all the signatory nations.

He wouldn't break the terms of the bargain. He was a fairy.

I looked at the Russian Colonel. "Don't initiate anything. We're in neutral territory. Unless we start something he can only talk."

"You have a great deal more faith in treaties than is perhaps advisable, Lord Warden." The Colonel and his men had their weapons raised, ready to fire upon the fairy.

"Empty Night - give it a rest Ivan." My brother rubbed the bridge of his nose with his palm, cursing them in English before reverting to Russian. "They're fairies. They physically can't break their word. They're biologically incapable."

The Colonel's reply was cut off as the Svartaf snapped his finger and said something I couldn't understand. The Russians fell to the ground in an instant as they fell unconscious. Lucky for them, their descent was slowed enough not to harm them by a blue plume of energy. He looked at Ammit and said something in the same warbling language.

Ammit snorted, relying in Goa'uld for my benefit. "No - the Warden has a deal with them. Asleep will do for now."

Enlil looked at the Svartalf. "How long will they remain asleep."

"Until the spell is removed." Replied the Svartalf.

Enlil nodded, them kicked the sleeping Colonel in the face hard enough to break his nose. Kincaid smiled broadly, pulled one of the bangles from his pocket, and returned the jewelry to Enlil. The bearded god looked at the jewelry in surprise. He stopped kicking the Colonel in the face and spoke in broken English. "But… you insisted upon this one?"

"Friends and family discount." Kincaid grinned wolfishly. "I'd been wanting to do that all day."

"Not in front of the Fairy." I hissed, interposing myself between the Russians and the Goa'uld Lord. I looked at the Svartalf in surprise. "Wait - why didn't you stop Enlil from attacking him?"

"Senior Management has the right to enact corrective actions on the premises to any non-signatory member." The Svartalf replied in a bored tone.

A wicked, wicked realization occured to me. "Ammit - why are you considered 'Management' here?"

"We're standing atop the Grand Necropolis Anubi from before the Folly. It is holy ground for all pantheons." Ammit's teeth split into a cruel grin. "The Svartalves were hired to protect it from those who would defile it after we left, preventing the blood born from feasting upon our dead. All Goa'uld of Apep's bloodlines are welcome here - " she looked to Enlil " - even the disowned pantheons."

"Dagon is hardly germain to our current situation." Enlil spat back, his eyes flashing with anger at the jab.

"Were at the Necropolis. I can't imagine anyone more relevant to our current situation." Ammit shrugged.

"So we're on freaking holy ground with Svartalf backup on accorded territory where I'm considered family?" I shook my head. Spiritual beings generally had the run of places they "belonged," family homes, crypts and the like. "That makes no sense, why did the threshold stop me?"

"There are several millennia of additional wards, sir." The Svartalf shrugged. "We didn't anticipate one of you becoming semi-corporeal. Seth is the only senior manager to visit in five hundred years. He insisted on the additional provisions."

"There is seriously a Goa'uld named Seth?" I pinched the bride of my nose. "I got my ass kicked because some prick named Seth?"

"Setesh has been a laughing stock for centuries." Ammit sighed. "Drip drop drip."

While the context of the joke was lost on me, apparently that was hilarious judging by both Muminah and Enlil's reactions. No accounting for taste.

I clapped my hands together and started walking towards the Fairy. Ammit laughed, "Warden, what are you doing?"

"I would have thought that was obvious, Ammit. There is a murderous, powerful fairly who wants me dead coming to talk in a place he can't actually do anything about what I say." I grinned. "I'm going to go be vague and insouciant."