"I've been looking for ways to get into the fortress. Turns out there's only one, unless you're one of the guys in those big houses along the street to the city gate."
"You have to be a guard," she guessed.
"Not just any guard, either. You need friends in high places to pull that detail. Lucky for us."
"Why is that lucky?"
"Because my friend of last night had a brother-in-law in the fortress guards"
"Had?" She knew what had happened before she heard the answer, didn't like it.
"He… had an accident." Ronon squirmed uncomfortably. "There was no other choice. Anyway, if we get back to Atlantis and put a stop to Charybdis before Ikaros turns it on, it won't matter, will it?"
"You don't know that "
"Is that what you told that friend of yours, Pirna, and her little girl?"
His voice sounded rough with resentment, and she could feel him tense. The mood matched her own anger. He had no right to throw this back at her… As little right as she had to blame him for dealing the best way he could with an impossible situation. And in truth, she didn't believe that he had killed the guard lightly.
"I'm sorry. I'm the last person who should judge. I set all this in motion." She blew out a breath. "So, this uniform will get you into the fortress?"
"Already has."
He told her how he'd snuck into the guardroom last night, hoping to find out about schedules, watch changes, any intelligence that could be exploited. It had been almost too easy. Nobody had challenged him, in fact they'd barely looked past the uniform and the insignia. It was partly indifference, partly excitement about the impending execution. Dozens of men, most of them off-duty, had been milling in and out, heading up to the battlements to take a look at the delinquent in the cage. Ronon had heard guards take bets on how loudly the crook would scream after he was dropped and how long it would take until he disappeared from view.
After spending a good hour in the stuffy, smoke-clogged guardroom, listening to the chitchat, he had accompanied a couple of other men for a trip to the battlements. On the way up, they'd stopped at a small window carved into solid rock. It opened just above the cage and offered an excellent view of the prisoner.
"Did you see Rodney?"
There was no answer.
"Ronon?"
"I heard you… I don't know if McKay's even alive. The cage is exposed and it's colder up there. All I can tell you is that he wasn't moving. But it was dark, and there was no way of making out every little twitch." Ronon tried to sound positive, but the act couldn't have convinced anybody. Eventually he contin ued. "Good news is that there are no guards up there-nobody could escape from that thing. There's constant traffic, though, with people sneaking up to take a look. Guards would be better, `cos at least they're predictable…"
As she listened to Ronon describe the arrangements up at the fortress, Teyla's heart sank. How could anybody reach the cage unobserved, let alone get Rodney up to the parapet and safely out of the fortress-especially when they had to act on their own? Even if Ronon somehow managed to smuggle her into the fortress, she'd be more hindrance than help, because everything that needed to be done required sight. Teyla supposed that up until now she'd somehow believed that there would be some loophole magically presenting itself. Crazy, of course, because experience should have taught her that such a thing never happened.
Unless you made your own loophole…
"You'll need a diversion," she said slowly, an idea tugging at the back of her mind.
"A big one. How about an earthquake?"
"Something a little easier. There are all these braziers everywhere, aren't there?"
"Yes."
"You'd have thought people would be more careful around such fire hazards…"
He leaned back a little, mulling it over. "One fire won't be enough," he said at last. "We'd need three or four at once, in the city and the fortress; we'd need incendiary devices, and you won't find any in this place."
"They've got what we need, but we have to start now. Take me back into the market. I'm sure I smelled it there."
"Smelled what?"
"Just take me to the market." Sensing his impatience, she smiled. Served him right if he had to wait a little. Payback for scaring the life out of her this morning. "You'll see."
Muttering under his breath, he eased her off his lap and guided her back among the bustle of the market. The noise and the labyrinthine arrangement of the stalls were disorienting, and she had difficulty remembering where exactly she'd noticed that smell before. After a while she stopped, frustrated.
"This is pointless. I can't find it like that," she growled. "Can we retrace our steps from where we slept last night?"
Wordlessly, he guided her back along the earlier route. The only sign of his annoyance was the force of his grip on her arm. Traffic had increased, so had the chatter, and the main subject of conversation was the upcoming execution. Teyla tried to tune it out as best she could, focusing solely on her sense of smell. Finally, she caught it, faint, almost like a ghost, but it was there, and she pulled Ronon along with her, colliding with shoppers, apologizing, and staying on the scent.
"There!" she said at last.
The stall sat at the fringes of the market, and there were few other shoppers around. Hardly surprising. The wares sold here were less universally demanded than bread and soup.
"Oil?" Ronon murmured a little skeptically.
"Yes," she whispered back. To the vendor she said, "Would you mind if I sniffed your oils? I can't recall the name of what I'm looking for." A lie, but she didn't want to give herself away by using a name the locals wouldn't recognize.
"If you wish," the woman in the stall grunted, almost as skeptical as Ronon, though she had enough business sense to hold out the various ceramic jars for Teyla's convenience.
The oil in the sixth jar had the peculiar musty, almost rancid aroma Teyla had been looking for. She smiled. "That's it."
"That? That's flax oil," the woman said as though she couldn't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to forget the name.
"How much of it have you got?"
"Three skins." Suddenly the vendor sounded hopeful.
"We'll take them all. My husband will pay and carry them."
Ronon spent ten minutes haggling the exorbitant first quote down to a price that was acceptable. After which Teyla demanded to be taken to a stall-any stall-that sold wool or linens or both. An easier job, as there were at least a dozen of those. Finally they returned to their perch by the parapet, armed with the flax oil and three large strings of handspun wool and a bundle of linen.
"Now what?" Ronon asked curiously.
"Wait and see " She tore off a fistful of wool, poured oil on it, wrapped in a strip of linen, and set the little parcel on the paving, making sure that the spot where she put it was protected from the rain. "It'll take a while," she cautioned him, "but we need to time it anyway, if we want the fires to start more or less simultaneously."
It took about half an hour until she could smell it. The aroma of the oil intensified. Within seconds of her noticing, Ronon let out a low whistle.
"It's smoking. How-?"
"Linseed oil. When it dries, it starts a chemical reaction that bums oxygen. Enough of it to ignite."
He laughed softly. "How did you know?"
"Back on Athos our neighbor accidentally burned down his tent. He'd been oiling wooden tool handles and left the rags in a corner…" She grinned at the memory. "What do you think? Will it do?"
"It'll do. Let's go to work."
Wake up! Hey.' Wake up. We need to talk!
Wake up? Who on God's green Earth would be able to sleep in this? He hadn't slept since they'd put him up here.