Lorelei’s Library

By Besterette

Disclaimer: Characters and situations created by Stargate SG-1 and Fandemonium Books tie-in novel Siren Song by Holly Scott and Jaimie Duncan. No copyright infringement intended in this work of fanfiction.

An audience was the last thing Aris wanted, but he did as the First Prime bade him, bathed and lined his eyes in kohl, and dressed in the clothing given. Snowy linen kilted around his waist, gilded leather sandals, and the heavy collar of gold and malachite and coral. There were a few weapons he could hide in that kind of outfit, and he took them out of habit. He didn’t think he’d need them. If there was such a thing as a Goa’uld you could trust, Bes-tauret was it. Selfish, and casually cruel in the arrogant way of all Goa’uld, but where others turned to power games, she had her menagerie, and cared only for her pets…and at some point seemed to have lumped her human slaves and Jaffa among them.

He’d never had to deliver anyone to her and their death, and she traded fair. That made a job for her a good day’s work.

The First Prime bowed him into a painted chamber, the walls between lotus columns bearing festive murals of hunting cats and falcons. There was a table laid with a feast, bread and honey, a roasted goose, grapes, figs, stewed onions and beef, baked fish…more food than he saw in a week.

The Goa’uld goddess was on her knees, playing with the white fluff-furred pup he’d brought her. She rose, cradling the dog, and dropped carelessly onto her throne.

“I am told that you now ask payment in foodstuffs as well as roshna. I am pleased with the canine, and have doubled it, and would see you sit at my table and have your fill, and speak with me a while.”

He sketched a bow, and joined her. “I am honored,” he helped himself to a plate. She picked idly at the grapes.

“How fare your people in their freedom?”

“We grow strong,” he glanced at her askance, and she laughed in delight.

“Fear me not, you know well that I have no ambition.”

“Save for your pets, Milady, and for that you would have all that breathes in the galaxy come to you to be coddled.”

“I have love for all creatures that serve me, as all do. Those who dance for my amusement,” she fed the pup a tidbit of beef, and then gestured at the platter of meat, “and those poor beasts that die for it. What harm to see they live well? But I do know the nobility in the feral, and love as well the wild…and those who will come, and come and go as they please.”

“Is that how you see me? I might place this collar around my neck, and drink your cream, but I am no stray Mau to be coaxed in from the gardens.”

“As soon call a lion a house-cat,” she laughed again. “But I love you all the more that you are not mine, and for the wildness in you, for the beasts and birds you bring me, and the gossip. Now, what have you heard of my brothers and sisters, now that the Tau’ri have scattered them among the stars to squabble over crumbs?”

He told her everything it was safe for her to hear, not sure how closely she attended System Lord politics, even is she did not dabble in them.

They were interrupted by a servant girl, carrying a healing device on a cushion and with an urgent errand. Bes-tauret put the puppy from her lap and rose, wiping her mouth with a cloth.

“A breech-birth. Would that I were more Goa’uld than Tok’ra, and cared nothing for their suffering. Stay, Aris Boch, and finish your meal, with Tiy to entertain you. Go when you please, this may take a night and day to see to, it being the girl’s first babe.”

Tiy, a doe-eyed and plump brunette, took her task of entertaining him seriously, and took a plate and seated herself at his feet, and proceeded to eat figs at him with much slow parting of her lips for the fruit, and licking of the stickiness from her fingers.

There were other reasons a job for Bes-tauret was a good day’s work. He let Tiy lead him from the table, to her rooms.

After, he left her couch to dress. With a practiced pout, she inquired, “Did I not please you, my lord?”

“Very much, Tiy. I will speak of it, the next time I speak to your goddess.”

“Ah, so you did not mistake my name when you called out for the other, in your passion.”

Aris froze, and looked up from buckling his sandals, “the other.”

“Though I lay in your arms, you embraced she who you hold in your heart. I am quite jealous of this Khierhe who has your favor.”

Kerry.

Aris gave her sugared compliments until he could make his escape. Back on his tel’tak, he washed again, and changed back into his armor, checking that the cargo had been loaded and stowed properly, and packing away the collar…already planning to tear it apart for the beads and which of his people to send to which marketplace to sell them. And he kept himself too busy to think until he was well away off-world.

Kerry.

Tiy. A plump brunette with laughing eyes. No wonder he’d bedded her.

He brooded on it until he broke warp over Ilempir.

“Home, sweet home,” he said aloud, and thought of Kerry, and winced. More work to do. He landed at the first village, and unloaded food and roshna into the storehouse with the men of the village.

The sun was setting as he landed outside the second village, and his home.

Aadi was among the men on guard, waiting to see if this tel’tak was flown by friend or foe. He grinned to see his son, standing with a weapon, confident. The use of the sarcophagus in Sebek’s abandoned ha’tak had made him healthy, taking the choking dust of the mines out of his lungs, filling his mouth with even white teeth. Regular meals were taking the pinched and thin look from him. Aadi might yet grow as tall as he, and was already almost as broad through the shoulders.

“Father,” Aadi greeted him, as they put up their weapons, and the boy stepped close and bowed his head. Aris put a hand on his neck, and touched his forehead to his son’s.

“I’ve food and roshna that can wait for the morning to unload. Did I miss the late meal?”

Aadi grinned, and became a boy again, and they walked to their house, Aadi chattering proudly about all he’d done since his father had last been home.

Aris had a bit of bread and cheese to keep him company while he ate, and saw him to bed, promising to be there in the morning, and stepped out of the house to look at the village.

A longhouse, and several smaller cabins just newly built for families. The storehouse for food and roshna, and a fire-pit in the center of the village. Down by the lake there would be several small boats for fishing.

“We built starships once,” he told the night sky softly as the first of the stars came out. “Maybe some day we will again.”

“You and I won’t live to see it, so why not just steal them from the worms?” Hamel called out, walking over with two tankards. Their own brewing, and not a bad beer at that. One more tiny taste of pride. “How goes the great technology hunt?”

“Would you see us go down that path, imitating the Goa’uld?” Aris shot back. “We’ve seen where it leads. I’ll take what we need and no more.”

Hamel looked at the younger man, surprised by this outburst. “Easy, t’was only said in jest.” He studied Aris for a long moment.

Aris took a deep drink from his cup. “No. I’m in a foul mood.”

“The trading?”

“The weapons satellite was dead, half destroyed, useless. All I brought back was food and roshna.”

“The Earther men might find some use for it.”

Aris looked up, bleakly. “And I don’t know if I should give it to them.”

“Ah.”

“They…may be from Earth, but they aren’t like SG-1.”

“Are they a danger to us?”

“No, just a danger to me. I’ve done things that shame me, Hamel. For the people, all for the people, and let the ends justify the means. But this…. Kerry. The child of the Nitori they brought to me doesn’t even know she’s a slave. Or somehow doesn’t let it touch her. How? I was there when they dragged her kicking and screaming through the chappa’ai. And now she walks through that dark place with her head held high. For us. And I…feel like a Goa’uld.”

“Aris,”

“You know what that thing in the Library does to them. Our gravity. The fumes from the smelting plant. It’s killing her by inches. And send my soul to Netu, Hamel, she’s proud. She knows the things I find from her readings might save us all, and she’s proud to serve. What am I to ask it of her? If I’d even asked, and not sent hirelings to snatch her from her bed at night and drag her from her home. She pours her life out at my feet, laughing, and I let her, and what does that make me?”

“Choiceless.” Aris laughed with no humor in it, and Hamel continued, “A man who walks the heroes’ road, and the hardest. A man who saved us, though it cost him everything. A man in love.”

Aris gave him a startled look. “Love,” he sneered, and didn’t deny it.

Hamel slapped his shoulder. “Aristeo, I asked you about the Earther men and you told me about her, and that you despair of your honor and her loss. I’ve asked you about your hunt for the gifts of the Nitori and you tell me how ill the Library makes her and how you must force her to rest, and repeat the jokes she makes over some of the findings, and explain the jokes to me. I know the color of her hair, the words of the songs she sings in the mornings, which of the MREs she likes best to eat. Quiz you on any subject, since she came to the City, and you will end up speaking of her virtues. I’ve only known you to speak so of a woman once.”

“Barocna,” Aris spoke the name of his late wife wistfully, glancing back at the house where their son slept.

“Although with Barocna, I believe it was her physical charms you listed endlessly.”

“Ah, I was thirteen, and callow then. And I try not to pay attention to Miss Quinn’s abundant physical charms. That makes me feel like the Jaffa,” he said darkly, trying not to think of hollow-eyed girls stumbling back into their huts after laughing captors let them go. Trying not to remember his brother Ky cutting their sister Brenneka’s face to scar her so the guard who had been watching her would find a prettier toy. “And arousal is too damned uncomfortable in this armor.” Let all his sins be confessed.

“How old were you,” Hamel asked suddenly, “When Sokar came here?”

“Nine.”

“And with that as our master, is it any wonder you fear to wield power over a woman you desire? You fret too much, Aris, and you are a good man, not a worm.”

“I can’t see the way around it, yet. We need roshna to live. We need weapons, technology, to protect ourselves from the next evil overlord to set up shop. So we need someone who can read the memories stored in the Library, a child of the Nitori, with the Ancient Technology Activating gene. And the best place to find them is Earth.” He shook his head. “We need her too much to let her go, and I can’t bear to keep her against her will.”

He thought of the Goa’uld he’d traded with, and her pampered pets that were slaves still.

“So what will you do?”

Aris snorted sardonically and knocked back the dregs of his beer. “Think. Spend a day with my son before I have to leave again. Waste away pining for the unrequited love of Kerry Quinn. It’ll make a good fire-tale one day.” He handed back the tankard and turned to go inside.

“Tragedies always do,” Hamel called after him.

Aris turned back, and bowed, and went in to a sleepless night.