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.“Why?”“To show you their power,” she said matter-of-factly.Since they were finished eating, she gathered up the utensils and took them over to place them in a drawer, pressing one corner as she shut it.Daniel thought he heard a hum coming from the drawer.“They do not do so often, but sometimes those who come here are very foolish.”“Really?” O’Neill said with a wolflike grin.“How foolish are they?”She looked down at him, a slender waiflike figure with old, old eyes.Cleopatra, Daniel realized abruptly.She reminded him of a younger version of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, with those enormous violet eyes and the glossy black hair.“Sometimes,” she said deliberately, “there are those who think that they can use the Gate to escape the Great Ones.Or they think the Great Ones can be harmed.Those who think this are very foolish, and they always die.They take a very long time dying.”“But others come and always try, don’t they?” O’Neill said softly, the look of the wolf still in his eyes.“Yes,” Mafret admitted reluctantly.“But only because they don’t know how useless it is.There are the ones who have not been told, and then there are the stupid ones who have been told and don’t believe.”O’Neill smiled, acknowledging.“So only an ignorant or a stupid man could ever succeed.”Her lips curved as she smiled back despite herself.“Even so.” Her hair swept back and forth as she shook her head abruptly, as if shaking off a spell.“If you try you will fail.No one succeeds.“Besides,” she went on, as another thought occurred to her, “are you not sacrifices from M’kwethet? Those from M’kwethet come willingly.Why would you want to leave, now that you’re here?”The sublime logic of this was unanswerable.O’Neill tried—at least, his jaw dropped—but he was unable to come up with a response.“Mafret,” Daniel stepped in, “have you ever wanted to be possessed by a Goa’uld?”The look of loathing she gave him was answer enough.“Well,” he said, “we feel the same way.And don’t tell anybody, but we’re not really from M’kwethet.We’d like to get back home, in fact, but we have a couple of things we have to do first.So you see it’s important for us to know some things.“Like that bracelet of Nekhmet’s.It can open a Gate, can’t it? We need to find it.Soon.”“As soon as possible, in fact,” O’Neill put in.Mafret stared from one to the other.“I see,” she said slowly.“You want me to help you find a Jaffa’s Key and escape from Saqqara.”“Exactly,” O’Neill said, with a winning smile.Daniel’s heart sank.Sure enough, Mafret laughed at them.Rising from the table, she shook her head.“Go back to your room and sleep,” she said with a kind of fondness.“Tomorrow you’ll be called out by Ahmose and given your first duties in service of the Great Ones.You need to be rested for it.”“You’re not going to help us,” O’Neill clarified.“Of course I’m not going to help you,” she snapped, finally letting exasperation show.“Am I a fool? No.I am the housekeeper of the servant house.If you wish to find a Key, or to leave this world, you will do it without help from me.”O’Neill studied her for a long moment.“And without hindrance?” he asked softly.She stared back, for a long, silent moment.Then, finally, she said, “I keep this house.What occurs outside of it is not my concern.”“Good enough,” the colonel replied.He paused once more.“So you never go out of this house? How long have you served the Goa’uld, Mafret?”She raised her head with pride, the indirect lighting glistening in her hair.“I have served Ahmose since my birth,” she said.“He is my father.It is right that I should do so.”“You serve the Goa’uld,” O’Neill said flatly.“Whether you say so or not.And you know what they are.”Mafret stepped back from the table, as if creating more than physical distance between herself and O’Neill’s words.“Go back to your room,” she snapped, “before I call the Jaffa to discipline you.”O’Neill rose to his feet and looked down at her.“I’d like to assume you just don’t know any better,” he said, his voice still soft.“But I think you do.And that makes you even worse than they are.”She opened her mouth to make outraged protest, and he raised one hand to forestall her.“Oh, we’ll go.”Daniel stood up hastily behind him.“But you know the truth, Mafret, and you know that being the daughter of Ahmose won’t be enough to save you if Apophis decides to take you.So you make sure you stay safe, and never go outside.Because the monster’s gonna get you otherwise.”The two of them left her staring after them.CHAPTER THIRTEENSamantha Carter knelt beside the pallet, her hands on her thighs, and wished she’d studied medicine instead of astrophysics
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