Omnes Videntes (The Space Merchants Book 4)

by Wendie Nordgren

  “You may not want him by your ear if he is getting hungry,” Yukihyo warned him.

  We heard Neema. She was huffing as she crawled as fast as she could to investigate the new person.

  “Is this little Neema? No, it couldn’t be. The last time I saw Neema, she was a tiny baby,” Hiroshi said as he smiled down at her little face.

  I took Niklos from Hiroshi and carried him over to a chair in a quiet corner to feed. Neema clutched at Hiroshi’s pantleg and pulled herself up. She stood and wobbled for a moment before she managed to crawl up onto Hiroshi’s lap.

  “Hello, Neema. Do you remember your Uncle Hiroshi? Yukihyo, she is beautiful. She is the best of each of you.”

  “I love Neema and her mother more each day,” Yukihyo said.

  Hiroshi grunted and grinned. “I can see how that would be possible. Neema, your Uncle Hiroshi has brought you a present.” Hiroshi held Neema, stood, and walked over to a table where he had left a small bag. Then, he sat with her on the floor. “Look in here.”

  Neema reached inside of the bag. “Oh, pretty. Mommy pretty.”

  Yukihyo chuckled.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Go show Mommy,” Yukihyo said.

  Neema crawled to me with her toy. She came close enough to show me her new doll. Then, she sat at my feet while she examined it. The cloth doll had a white dress, big green eyes, and long blonde hair in tiny spider braids.

  “Really?”

  Hiroshi looked at me speculatively. “Yes, they were Ling’s idea. Tourists buy them by the box. The Arachnean girl who became the Princess of Parvac is popular among the little girls.”

  “I want one,” Galina said.

  “As you wish, my lady,” Hiroshi said to her as he winked at me. “I will be right back unless you wish to see me to my transport.”

  “Can we, Uncle Yukihyo?” Galina asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Um, Hiroshi?”

  “Yes, baby sister?”

  “This dress looks sewn on.”

  “Yes.”

  “She should have different outfits for each planet, a blaster, and a spider. I think you can do better.”

  Hiroshi and Yukihyo laughed. They took Galina down to his transport for dolls and to oversee the transfer of our cargo to Tora.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t sped away to your forest,” Nico said.

  “It’s not that easy anymore. We have two kids, nurses, a doctor, and guards about whom to worry.” I made kissy faces at Niklos.

  “Teagan, I’m stealing your best looking and most lethal bodyguard. We have our vid-screens if you need us,” Violet said.

  “Have fun,” I told her.

  “You, too!” she said as she dragged Kaoti away.

  I finished up with Niklos and gave him to Nico.

  “What would the Lady Bosh like to do?” Quaid asked.

  I closed my eyes. “What I’ve dreamed of doing is pushing my babies along in their stroller on my land. I miss the complete peace of my forest and the safety of my spiders. I know I am protected, but my spiders are ever vigilant, completely silent, and lethal to enemies. There is no truer safety than being surrounded by thousands of them.”

  “What are we? We’re all of that and more,” Rozz said with bravado.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “You can’t cling to a tree upside down or shoot silk out of your….” I looked down at Neema who smiled up at me.

  “Out of my what, Teagan?” Rozz asked.

  “Three kids,” Nico said. “I’m sure Galina will remain with us.”

  “True,” I said. “Well, first, I think we should pay a visit to Ambassador Jiri.” I smiled at Fitz.

  “Too late. He just arrived,” Eli reported.

  Fitz went down to greet his uncle. Soon, my new uncle sat with Niklos in his arms. Then, he presented me with a new ring, and I wondered what information I would find inside of it.

  One of the best things about Arachne was that since I was both an Alaric and a Montgomery, both Arachnean ruling class families, and was connected to the Chans through Hiroshi’s marriage to Ling, I didn’t have to meet with any dignitaries. On Arachne, I intended to relax. Once Galina returned with her very own doll, it didn’t take me long to get antsy. I changed into soft pants, a T-shirt, exercise shoes, and put my hair up into a ponytail.

  Nico grinned knowingly at me. “Our transport is ready to go,” he said. I clapped. After making sure that the children were comfortable, I took my seat. Nico was driving. “I gave Pierce and Lorca the day off. Four husbands and a wife should be able to take care of three kids.”

  “I’m almost a grown-up,” Galina said.

  “Galina, you’re twelve. You’re not a grown-up for six more years in the Galaxic Expanse. Anyway, if I don’t take good care of you, what will your mother do to me?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t want her getting mad at you,” Galina said.

  “Thanks,” I told her. “Zared, where are Eli and the others?”

  Instead of answering me, Zared sent me what felt like a mental hug. Then he said, “They have decided to be like spiders. You will not see them, but they will see you. They took your words as a challenge and intend to hide from you.”

  “I’ll still be able to feel them. I don’t want them to think that I don’t want them around.”

  “They don’t think that. Consider it as more of a training activity.”

  An hour later, Nico began driving down a familiar road, the sight of which filled me with elation. The path through my land which we usually took on rollers had been paved.

  “That’s new,” I said with my face pressed to the window. I was trying to get out of the transport before Nico had completely stopped it. “Oh.” The door finally opened. “Oh.” Overwhelmed, I held my hands over my mouth and nose. “It’s so beautiful,” was what I attempted to say, but it was unintelligible. “They made me my own log house.”

  “We knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away until tomorrow,” Sherman said as he walked down the steps, picked me up, and hugged me. “I think she likes it,” he said. I braced my hands on his shoulders.

  “She appears to like the outside. What she thinks of the inside remains to be seen,” Ethan said from beneath the covered drive.

  Sherman put me down so that I could walk up the grey stone steps. The front doors had been hewn from wood and carved with decorative web designs. They opened as soon as I reached the porch. Simon stood to one side of the foyer and Elliot to the other. Glossy wood floors like those of the Alaric house reflected my blurry image back to me. A sitting room was the first thing that I saw. A large painting of Thalassa’s pink and orange sky with waves rolling onto a beach strewn with red blossoms hung on the stone wall. It was above a tan couch accented by pink, orange, and red throw pillows. Matching couches were angled to either side of it along with a couple of small round wooden tables. To either side of the painting were timber framed doorways. There were also doorways opposite each other to the left and right.

  The room to the right was an office. Yukihyo sat behind a large desk, and Hiroshi sat in one of the tan chairs in front of it. They grinned at me. Hanging on the wall behind Yukihyo was a large vid-screen. A couch was against the far-right wall. A small half-bath was in the corner. I walked from the office, across the sitting room, and into the room to the left.

  A massive vid-screen took up the back wall. Phillip lounged on one of the large, square, tan, reclining couches that were like the ones in Yukihyo’s fortress on Chione. Two were at angles to each other on each side with a fifth one in the center back of the room. Red Arachnean Silk blankets were folded and ready on three of them. Phillip winked at me and pointed for me to go through the timber framed opening to the left of the huge vid-screen. I ran my hand over the polished wood of the doorway.

  “Oh!” I started to cry with renewed vigor.

  Nico stood in the center of a beautiful kitchen. It was almost identical to our kitchen on Apellan. The dishes were ev
en a gorgeous cobalt blue with a gold design. Nico wiped my tears away with his thumbs and kissed me. Eventually, I noticed a lift in the back-left corner that shared the movie room wall. Nico pointed me in the opposite direction toward the back corner of the house where a framed doorway led into a back room and another led off to the right which would be behind the sitting room. That was the direction in which Nico led me.

  Quaid stood inside. A sob escaped me. It was beautiful and very similar to my favorite room at the Bosh compound, the family dining room. The long rectangular wooden dining table was centered vertically in the room. Smaller square tables were to either side of it. Large bouquets of the same tropical red flowers that were in the painting of Thalassa from the sitting room were on each table filling the space with their intoxicating beauty.

  “Seating for thirty-two, Lady Bosh,” Quaid said.

  Behind us on the sitting room wall, timber framed doorways led back to where I had started my tour. On the walls to each side of them in the corners were lifts. However, Quaid wanted me to walk through either of the doorways on the wall opposite them and at the back of the house.

  I did. In the back room, the first thing I saw was an ice bear rug and left of it against the wall were two wooden toy boxes. Two rocking chairs like the ones I had on Tora were in front of the rug. The back, stone wall had five large picture windows separated by polished timbers. I turned to my right to find another large tan couch. A playpen was beside it nearest to where I stood. On the other end of the couch against the wall was a baby bed. At angles to each side of the couch were chairs. A larger ice bear rug was in the space between.

  “Oh!”

  The wall opposite from the toy side was where I found Thunderdrop. Watching me from the back-right corner, he sat in an elaborate tree sculpture. The carefully sculpted branches drifted over the top of a rectangular fish tank that took up most of the wall. Inside of it, Sue explored her secure and spacious new home just as I did. I wondered how they had managed to sneak her into it without me noticing. In front of one of the large windows in front of Thunderdrop’s tree was a round breakfast table, adorned with red flowers, and similar to the one on my patio at the Palace. Two high chairs joined the other chairs around it.

  I went to the couch, but sat on the ice bear rug in front of it and looked out of the window at a tree and the spider crawling through its limbs. Yukihyo had snuck up on me. He sat down beside me on the rug he’d made of one of his kills.

  “It’s perfect. I love it so much,” is what I said, but it sounded more like the whale calls I had heard in a documentary.

  Yukihyo grinned at me and proudly puffed out his chest. “Come, my lady wife.” He led me through the kitchen and into the corner backroom which turned out to be the all necessary infirmary.

  “Tavere insisted,” Nico said.

  Finally, they took me into one of the lifts. It opened on a long, rectangular room. Three hallways led away from it. Three tan couches with flower adorned tables between them were to my right. To my immediate left was a long hallway, lined with rooms on only the left side, that spanned the length of the second floor.

  Kaoti spoke. “The room to the right of the lift is Eli’s. The room to the other side of the lift is Xavier’s. A hidden room between their rooms and behind the lift is a weapons vault. The room at the very end and above the infirmary is Phillip’s. The opposite side of the floor is identical. Violet and I are in the first room, and Jazon has the room on the other side of my weapons vault.”

  “This floor plan reminds me of the Ponidi home on Chione,” I said.

  “Yes, it is efficient and safe. However, each room has its own bathroom. Your apartments are in the center,” Kaoti said.

  Sherman and Ethan gestured to a hall in the middle of the square central portion of the second story. Three rooms were along each side of it. Standing in their doorways, Quaid bowed to me from the room to the right, and Pierce bowed to me from the left. Next, Zared bowed to me from the room next to Quaid’s, and Lorca bowed to me from the left in the room across from him. Then, Fitz bowed to me from the room next to Zared’s. No one bowed to me from the room across from Fitz’s. I looked inside and started crying again. It was a nursery that had been designed to look like the one on Coronis in the house Grandmother had given to me. I looked from the red lacquered cribs up to the solar system ceiling.

  “Lady Jiri,” Fitz said as he gestured me forward.

  I entered my room. My big white bed was to the left with tables to either side of it. A floor to ceiling picture window covered most of the stone wall across from it. In the far-right corners were cushioned white chairs. I turned my head and saw the bathroom.

  “Yes!”

  The bathroom was huge. The bathtub in the far-right corner was almost identical to Gina’s tub. It had a faucet and was not as deep.

  “It has safety features because of the children,” Gina said from the side of the room as she smiled at me.

  “Oh, Gina. I love it.”

  “Teagan,” Sydney said.

  I forced my eyes away from the tub and large picture window centered in the wall beside it. Across from the tub was a shower, a walk-in closet, and two small rooms with doors. I opened one of them.

  “His and her waste units. Great idea,” I said. Next, I walked into the closet that was full of colorful clothing. “Wow! I hope I’m here long enough to wear each and every thing!”

  “Do you think you will be?” Sydney asked.

  “Maybe. Yukihyo and Hiroshi want to make a run to Earth. Papa doesn’t want me going there.”

  “Well, with twelve rooms some of which have two beds, and a close duplicate of your Palace suites for your immediate family, you should have plenty of room,” Gina said.

  “We put two beds in half of the rooms. I put Neema’s first baby crib in Violet’s room. I hope that’s okay,” Sydney said.

  “It’s perfect. Everything is perfect.”

  “I should hope so. They have been planning out this house since you were pregnant with Neema,” Sydney said.

  “It’s a beautiful integration of all of my favorite rooms from all of the places we have been. Each room reminds me of a place where I feel safe and loved.”

  I started crying again. Gina and Sydney patted me. Red flower petals floated on the water’s surface in the tub.

  Later, I noticed a door to the left of the foot of my bed. It led straight across the hall to Phillip’s room. There was a lift in Phillip’s room that led straight down to his infirmary. Of the twelve guest rooms, each of which had a bathroom and closet, six of them had two beds. Everyone got settled. Fitz even managed to convince his uncle not to throw a ball in my honor. However, that night we did have a huge dinner party catered by the Sun Palace.

  I had been correct in my assumption that Hiroshi and Yukihyo would want to go on a jaunt in Tora. I was surprised that Phillip would be going with them. He moved Dr. Savelli into his room and moved Drex into the infirmary. Yukihyo and I had never been apart for such an extended period of time. They were going to Scipio and Earth and would be gone for roughly seven weeks. They were taking Wyatt, Vic, and Zack Ponidi with them.

  “It is a long time for us to be parted. However, you, Neema, and Niklos will be safe here. Also, it will be good for Hiroshi, Phillip, and me.” Yukihyo’s goodbye had been a passionate one.

  Relieved his daughter and grandchildren were not going anywhere near Earth, Papa had given Yukihyo an undisclosed sum toward purchases for Ponidi Propulsions. Fitz, Nico, Quaid, Zared, the children, and I saw Tora and her crew off. A pang of sadness hit me once the ship was out of sight, and I twisted my meteor ring around on my finger. Zared ran his hand from my elbow down to my hand and linked our fingers together. He didn’t hide my feelings from me completely, but he made them more manageable.

  I settled into a routine. Each morning, the children and I went for a walk through the forest along smoothed dirt paths that Simon and Eliot had made for me. After watching a few of them playing their
harps, Galina had mostly gotten over her fear of what she called “wild spiders” and had started joining us. After our walks, we had breakfast. Then, we got cleaned up and dressed for the day. We spent the next two hours in the sunroom studying. Adini checked over Galina’s lessons each day. Either Pierce or I read to Neema. I began a new course about the sociological impact of the Warrior Caste on Parvac. Nico and Fitz helped by checking over my lessons. My missing background made the course a challenge. We had lunch each day at the Alaric Estate. Little Evan had his Uncle Eric under his command. Every other night, we had dinner at the Montgomery house. Then, we would return home and call Daddy. Nico and I slept alone in our big bed each night. His snoring didn’t bother me. Actually, I found it to be comforting. Once a week, the ladies and I left the children at home and went out shopping and to lunch.

  After the fourth week of being home, I felt secure enough to go out shopping with only my husbands to guard me. We went to my favorite place to shop. Fitz was intrigued by the wooden bridges and platforms that connected the stores. I stocked up on shampoo, and then went to have my hair done. I let my husbands wait. I smiled at her work when she had finished and sent Papa a picture.

  “You are beautiful,” Zared said from behind me. I saw his reflection in the mirror.

  “You like it?”

  “I do. These past few days on Arachne, you have found yourself again.”

  “Thank you. Being a mommy can be all consuming. It’s nice to integrate myself back into the mix.”

  Zared paid the lady. My professionally created thin braids had shortened my hair. The braids reached the middle of my back. I treated my patient husbands to lunch in the café where I had first met Simon. Then, it was time to return to Niklos.

  Drex continued to grow stronger. He was able to walk and care for himself, but his arm remained in a sling. He was only supposed to use his hand under a doctor’s supervision for the time being. I had moved him into the room next to Phillip’s. Drex sat comfortably on the couch in the sunroom with his vid-screen while I played with Neema on the ice bear rug in front of it.