AN: I'm still faithfully updating. Enjoy.
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Daria was woken in the morning by a young maidservant opening the heavy curtains over the window. The Tau'ka muttered something indistinct and rolled over, trying to get her eyes out of the light. She was seriously jetlagged, and she knew it. At the moment, the last thing she wanted to do was to get out of the nice, warm, comfortable bed.
"Good morning, Miss," the maidservant said cheerfully. Daria cursed silently. And the last thing she needed was someone perky trying to get her out of said comfortable bed. "Master Nelson wishes you to take breakfast with him."
The Tau'ka groaned and buried her head under her pillow. Terref, she said to the older agent, Do the words 'on a COMPLETELY different time schedule' mean anything to you?
You're young, Terref sent back, sounding almost as cheerful as the maidservant. You can handle it.
"Miss?" the maidservant asked nervously.
"I'm up," Daria replied, reminding herself to speak in English. She looked at the girl who'd been sent to wake her up. "Who are you, anyway?"
"Anna, Miss," the girl said with a curtsy as the Tau'ka clambered out of the high bed. The night had turned damp and chilly at some point- neither condition being one that Daria favored- so of course the room was cold as well. "Do you wish any help, Miss?"
"What?" Daria said blankly. "Oh, uh, no, I don't. Tell Uncle I will be down shortly."
"Yes, Miss." Anna curtsied again and left the room.
Daria waited until she had gone before facing the veritable mountain of clothing people here seemed to think was appropriate for a young lady. Why, there was enough cloth in the outfit to clothe a small family! She wished the tender mercies of Sokarr on whoever had decided that her new get-up would be a good idea. And there was no sense in getting started on the corset. Whoever had invented that torture device would get to languish in their own special circle of a horrible afterlife, if they weren't already. She sighed and began getting dressed.
Terref was waiting for her in the dining room when she came down after managing to figure out her clothes. He nodded in approval as she took her seat. "Very nice, my dear," he said conversationally.
I informed my staff that you may be "more comfortable speaking the tongue you grew up around", he told her. They are prepared to make allowances for a homesick girl.
Daria nodded. That had been a good idea- now hopefully the servants wouldn't find it amiss that she and Terref would be speaking Goa'uld on occasion. The thing that appealed to her sense of irony was the fact that it wasn't even a lie, just a bit of misdirection. And misdirection, rather than lies, is often what keeps an agent from becoming very dead.
Very true, he replied. You may be young, but at least you learned something in basic training.
"Did you sleep well?" Terref asked aloud as she pretended to ignore the slur on her training.
"Yes," Daria replied. From there they moved into seemingly inconsequential conversation. Subject-wise, it was, but Terref was taking the opportunity to coach his younger colleague in pronunciation and correct minor mistakes in her manner and bearing. Daria paid careful attention, knowing that even innocent mistakes in her demeanor could make life very difficult for her. She wouldn't be able to get her job done if the people she moved amongst thought she was some sort of uneducated country bumpkin. The ability to seem just like one of them was the key to success.
"I've arranged for a dressmaker," Terref said. "She will be coming for fittings this afternoon. And I do not believe your parents told me if you dance?"
Daria covered a flinch. She knew that Terref was speaking in-character, but her parents were a sore subject with her. The elder Tau'ka noticed the hesitation and raised an eyebrow.
Don't let that happen again, he said sharply. Do you know any of the appropriate dances, or do you not?
"I know a few, Uncle," she said.
He frowned. " 'A few' is not good enough. You will need to take lessons."
"At least I learn quickly," she replied in Goa'uld. "Now, are you going to pussy-foot around all day, or will you let me know what the situation is?"
One of his eyebrows shot up nearly to his hairline. "You will need to be more tactful with the people here," he told her in the same language. "English women are not nearly so forward. Or blunt." Then he shrugged. "As long as you moderate your inflections, we will be able to pass this off as a normal conversation. Spoken Egyptian- Goa'uld- is a dead language on Earth. No humans speak it."
She nodded, indicating that he should continue.
"Very well then, Maria," Terref went on, reminding her of her current alias. "The Black Hawks are working with a crime lord called Professor James Moriarty. He is actually less of a criminal than he is a mastermind- he has an entire network of people who work for him. If any major crime is carried out in London, or indeed much of Western Europe, you can probably safely conclude that Moriarty had a hand in it somewhere along the line. Either he planned it, organized it, or ordered it carried out."
Daria nodded, understanding how this sort of thing worked. "A spider in a web," she said.
"Exactly." Terref took a sip of his tea before going on. "A few months ago, I noticed a rise in the crime rate in the area in and around London. Not too long ago there was a fire near a major cargo dock, six bank robberies, and the Royal Museum has been broken into several times."
"Anything stolen from the Museum?"
"Only a few ancient Egyptian artifacts- or more correctly, Goa'uld artifacts. Mostly weaponry or data-storing devices."
"But those can only be used by someone with Naquadaah in their system."
"Correct, Maria. None of the Tau'ri have it within them, so if the objects were stolen with the intent to use them, then it couldn't be one of them behind the robberies. I have heard nothing about any Egyptian, Roman, or Asian cults cropping up, nor of any unusual possessions, so I had to conclude that this was not a case of a rogue Goa'uld."
"And Jaffa never move unless it's on their System Lord's orders. On top of that, Goa'uld don't know the meaning of subtle. They have a rather universal MO and never seem to learn any better." Daria rolled her eyes. "Egotists. You're right- if these attacks and thefts didn't link to anything cultish, then it probably isn't one of them."
"The fact that a witness to one of the Museum robberies described a pair of near-identical individuals with Tau'ka eyes cinched it- the Hawks are on Earth."
"You're sure?"
"I interrogated the witness myself," Terref confirmed. "The description matched that of the Hawks."
Daria sighed. "Alright then, so we have a confirmed Hawks sighting. How do we know they are working with this Moriarty fellow?"
"I was present at one of the Museum thefts. The individual I saw is one known to work exclusively for Moriarty.
She frowned. "That's a little shaky," she pointed out. "Plausible, but a bit of a stretch."
"It fits with the way the Hawks do things," Terref replied calmly. "They have been known to work with underground and criminal organizations before, then turn right around and destroy their so-called 'allies' once their goals have been met. They want to start a world war- Moriarty's organization is one of the best places to start stirring one up. Moriarty has the resources and the intelligence to make countries blame one another for attacks he organizes. The Hawks have ways to motivate him to arrange such attacks. They get him to do the dirty work, while Moriarty thinks he's in charge of things. Then the Hawks get their world war and knocks the Tau'ri out of the running. Without the Tau'ri to complicate things, the Hawks can focus on wiping out the Goa'uld their own way."
"Which will be very messy."
"They think the best way to wipe out the Goa'uld is to deny them their hosts. Think oceans of blood- human, Jaffa, Tau'ka, and Goa'uld, all will be slaughtered if the Hawks have their way. Even then the Goa'uld may not be stopped for long. The humans of Earth must be ready within the next hundred years if the Goa'uld are to be defeated permanently."
"And if they kill each other off now, they won't be ready." She sighed. "I'm going to need everything you have on this Moriarty fellow."
Terref nodded. "There is someone you may be able to speak with, but not for some time yet."
"Who?" Daria wanted to know.
"An amateur detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes," he said. "Holmes has been trying to get Moriarty arrested for nearly two years now. He is the best deductive reasoner I have ever heard of- makes Scotland Yard look like a pack of lazy fools on a regular basis. However, the exact skills that make him valuable to us also make him dangerous- if you aren't spot-on with your disguise, he'll figure it out in about three minutes tops." Terref shrugged. "But he is the only other person that really knows anything about Moriarty and isn't also in Moriarty's inner circle. Holmes would be a good ally to cultivate. Now," he added, switching back to English, "More tea?"
The next week was a solid seven days of intensive training, the likes of which Daria had not endured since she'd been first learning the skills she needed to be an Intelligence agent. Lessons began at breakfast and continued late into the night. Terref coached her in language, customs, and all the funny little rules of English society. Despite his work, however, Daria still spoke English with a faint accent that, while not overpowering, was still distinctly there. When she focused on her speech, it more or less vanished, for which they were both thankful.
"You should pass," Terref told her after one particularly difficult session. "As long as you stay away from any phonetists like that Henry Higgins fellow, you'll be all right."
There were other lessons too, lessons in history and the dreaded dancing. Daria was not particularly graceful by nature- having been trained as a warrior rather than a dancer- and constantly had to fight to remind herself to relax. The only thing that made these lessons bearable was the fact that she learned physical activities very quickly- a holdover from her long combat training. Once she had a step or series of steps memorized, she could perform them well enough to satisfy Terref. The elder Tau'ka was an exacting and demanding teacher and was more than willing to work his student until she dropped. Such was the way of a partnership between Shadow and Special Agents.
At the end of the week, Terref pronounced himself satisfied. Daria could now mimic a mid-to-upper class English gentlewoman well enough to fool most people she would encounter, especially if she continued to take supplemental lessons from him. "But we don't have time to put you through anything more," he told her. "We don't know anything more about the Hawks, and we need to know more. We need to get you out into society so you can start working. The sooner, the better."