“My head is fine,” John said stubbornly.
“Then why were you dizzy earlier?”
“Because I have a concussion.”
“I had noticed.” Her voice was smiling.
John leaned his head back against the wall. “They’re going to let us out of here tomorrow if we’re in these Games. It’s just overnight. So we might as well try to get some sleep.” If he closed his eyes he couldn’t see the dark.
“Radek is here,” Teyla said.
His eyes popped open. “What?”
“When we were being taken through the square in front of the palace I saw him,” she said. “He was across the square, and I’m sure he saw me.”
“Are you sure it was him? It was raining pretty hard.” John hadn’t seen him, but he’d been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. It would have been bad to have to puke from dizziness in front of a pile of guards.
“Yes, I am sure it was Radek,” Teyla said, but her voice didn’t sound certain. “I saw the reflection off his glasses. It might have been a man who looks like him, but we have not seen anyone in this culture with glasses. And he was watching me.”
“No Ronon?” If Zelenka and Ronon were here that was the best news he’d had in days.
“I did not see Ronon, but surely Radek could not have gotten here by himself. And he was not a prisoner. He was just standing there under an awning of a shop in the marketplace along the main city square.” Her voice was stronger now. “They must be here,” she said. “Ronon must be here too. And if they know where we are they will try to get us out.”
“Big if,” John said, but he couldn’t help but feel his spirits lift. Ronon trying to get them out was worth a good deal. And while Ronon was new to the team and he couldn’t be a hundred percent certain he’d been right about the Satedan, he was sure that Zelenka wasn’t about to give up on them. He and Teyla were good friends, and he’d shown a remarkably stubborn streak the few times John had worked with him. They might get some backup here after all.
Unless Ronon and Zelenka walked right into the Wraith.
“They will try,” Teyla said.
“The Wraith.”
“I know.” He heard her sigh in the darkness. “But Ronon has been fighting the Wraith for years. He will not underestimate them.”
Which was true. “We’ll just have to stay sharp and be ready for an opportunity when it comes,” John said.
“And for that we must sleep,” she said.
“Right.” There was a long silence.
John stretched out his legs in front of him stiffly. Ok, maybe this escape attempt wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. He’d managed to trade a comfortable room for a hole in the ground. Not an improvement. And his chances of sleeping were about nil. Somehow sitting in a cell waiting for something to happen wasn’t really relaxing.
Teyla let out a long sigh.
She wasn’t sleeping either. Probably for exactly the same reasons, possibly coupled with an inner monologue of all the things she’d like to say about what an idiot he was to stage an unsuccessful escape attempt that not only didn’t get them away, but also left them in a worse situation than they’d started with. But she wouldn’t say it. It took a great deal to get Teyla to openly criticize him.
Like the time he’d disobeyed Elizabeth’s direct order and hauled Teyla into the middle of a plague that it turned out he was immune to and she wasn’t. She’d had a sharp word about that.
But mostly when she thought he was being a total ass she’d just look at him with one eyebrow quirked, as if to say, “Is that your final answer?” That expression always gave him pause.
Of course, if he hadn’t crashed the jumper in the first place, then they wouldn’t have been captured and none of this would have happened.
“Look,” John burst out. “I’m sorry, ok?”
“For what?” Teyla sounded mystified.
“For crashing the jumper.”
“You did not intend to crash the jumper,” Teyla said reasonably.
“If I’d done a better job flying, we’d be fine,” John said.
“If you had done a worse job flying we would be dead,” Teyla said.
They sat there in the dark in silence for a long time. He wished he could see her face. He had no idea what she was thinking. Maybe she was asleep.
Teyla sighed, and he heard the sound of cloth rubbing against stone as she shifted position. Not asleep. They couldn’t sit here in silence for ten hours until morning.
“Your turn,” John said.
“My turn for what?”
“For a story.”
He heard her let out a long breath, her shoulder almost against his. “It is, isn’t it? What kind of story do you want?”
He shrugged. “Any kind of story.”
“I know lots of stories,” Teyla said. “You have to pick something.”
It came to him, the story he wanted. He wondered if it were taboo, something she shouldn’t talk about. But if it were, she’d probably just say so and he’d apologize. This was Teyla, after all. “Tell me about the dead city,” John said. “The one across the water from the Stargate, from the camp where I met you on Athos.”
She paused a long moment, and when she began again her voice was low. “There are many stories about Emege That Was.”
“Is it wrong to ask?”
“No.” He could almost see her shake her head. “But there are so many that I must decide which ones. So many stories of my people are about this city, and about those that lived there long ago.” Teyla paused again. Then she spoke again, in the formal cadences of what he had begun to think of as her storyteller’s voice.
Once and away there was a city called Emege. Once, when the Ancestors ruled, it was a city like any other. People lived in it and worked and raised families and grew old, all under the protection of the Ancestors. And the Ancestors gave to the people of Emege great treasures, and for a while some dwelled there, shedding their grace on their children.
But shadows come, as shadows always do, and the Dark Bird stirred. One by one the Ancestors went from Emege, drawn by troubles far away. “It will not affect you,” they promised. “It is only that we have a war to fight, one you cannot understand.”
You are thinking now, John, that this story is true. I did not know whether it was or not, until I came to Atlantis, but now I think it is. I think it has a seed of truth, the kernel of that long ago war between the Ancients and the Wraith, as the Ancients were pushed back and back, until all they held was Atlantis.
You see, then the Wraith came. Their cruisers swept over the planet and their vast hive ships, Culling and Culling and Culling. The people of Athos were food for the great armada that besieged Atlantis.
Emege held for a very long time. The Ancestors had given to the people of Emege a great and powerful gift, and beneath the virtue of its power many refugees crowded into the city, the last, safe place on our world. A year and a day, the poets say, Emege held against the Wraith, but at last the virtue was gone from the gift and the city fell. Queen Death stalked the streets and she slew for the love of it, men, women and children alike. Her men dined on the children of Emege, that it might never rise again.
And we cried out to the Ancestors, “Why have you abandoned us? We are your children! We are the daughters and sons of your house! Why do you not come through the Ring with your weapons and your ships? Why have you left us?”
There was no answer. There was never any answer, only the sweep of black wings as the Wraith hunted and hunted. In their wake starvation walked, abandoned markets and abandoned fields scoured by frail scarecrows in rags, gleaning half spoiled food by night. It hardly mattered that the Wraith came less and less. There was nothing left to destroy.