“Kaoti! Is Violet pregnant?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t be. I enjoy the attempts.”
My jaw dropped. Nico and Yukihyo laughed. Then, Hiroshi and Phillip came in and I gave them their presents.
“Tora feels like home again now that you are here,” Hiroshi said as he hugged me.
“I love you, too.” Phillip was behind me. “Are you scanning me?”
“Yep. Looking good, Cupcake.”
I watched Hiroshi’s face as he judged Yukihyo’s ability to visit his first home. Hiroshi nodded and said, “I will be on the bridge.” He smiled kindly at me, kissed my forehead, and let his hands slide down my arms before turning to go.
“Be good for Mommy,” Yukihyo said as he followed Hiroshi.
The light flashed above my door again. Simon smiled at me from the other side. Isidora was behind him with his hand clutched in hers. I glanced at the two chairs in front of my vid-screen, Neema’s crib, and our bed.
“Maybe we should go into the sitting room.” Nico led the way. “How long will it take us to get there?”
Phillip said, “In Tora, it will take less than an hour.”
I feared Yukihyo’s pain, and his reaction to being where Parvacs had killed most of his family and ripped the remainder away from him. My vid-screen powered on. Yukihyo looked at me through his dark grey lashes. “Do not cry, lady wife. I am prepared for this.”
Tears slipped out of my eyes anyway. “Yukihyo, I love you so much.”
He calmed my emotions from the bridge which was really just a panel away. It was a very strong panel, but inconsequential to my husband. Yukihyo directed his attention toward Nico and then shut down my vid-screen.
“Please sit and make yourselves comfortable,” Nico said. He sat near my feet on the ice bear rug with Neema. Simon and Isidora sat with me on the couch.
“Simon has been telling me about his home on Arachne,” Isidora said and paused.
“Simon has a beautiful home. Other than my room, the best room in his house is his sitting room. He has a huge warm fireplace, comfortable couches, and windows that provide views of the forest. I like watching the trees sway in the rain.”
“It sounds lovely.”
“Wait until you meet Stewart. I love his cooking. Oh, Simon has a pool. Beautiful blue flowers, Salvia, grow around it.”
“Our room overlooks the pool,” Simon said as he kissed her fingers.
“My room at your house does, too. I’ve never seen your room, Simon. Is it like Gina and Sherman’s?”
“It is similar.”
I was afraid I would never get to go home and that if I did get to, things would be different with Simon. I took a deep breath and turned my head away. I saw the picture of me with my two strong cousins and began to choke up. Then, I felt a strong blanket of calm surround me. The ache in my throat eased and vanished.
“My sweet cousin has known her families’ love for a little over a year. She keeps expecting it to all be taken away. It may take several years for her to get it through her head that we aren’t going to do anything but love her more.”
“Some of the most important lessons take the longest time to learn,” Isidora answered.
“You just did what Yukihyo’s mother does,” I said.
She blinked as though trying to hide her own tears. “It is what one family member does for another.”
With a gruff voice, Simon said, “Excuse us. I need my wife’s help with something.” He stood and Isidora laughed and let him drag her from the room.
“Oh, I guess Simon has some payback in mind. I think I’m beginning to understand why Laconians have such large families.”
“If we weren’t so worried about Yukihyo, I would gladly see to your needs,” Nico said.
“I’m fine,” I said as I patted Niklos.
A short time later, Yukihyo came back to change into warmer gear. “We are going to check it out.” He kissed Neema and me. Kaoti and Hiroshi met him in the corridor.
Chapter Fifteen
“Before you ask, Simon, Phillip, and I are your, Neema, and Isidora’s constant companions while we are here,” Nico said as he handed Neema a block.
“Are they checking to see if the hybrids followed us?”
“Kane and Eric already did that. At the moment, I believe they are checking for bears or anything else that may have broken inside looking for a warm place to sleep.”
I frowned. I decided it would be prudent to use my waste unit, change Neema’s diaper, and offer her a snack. I heard Nico communicating with Yukihyo on a small vid-screen. As I finished up with Neema, Phillip walked in and smiled down at her.
“Uncle Phillip is going to dress you up in your coat, Creampuff.”
“Creampuff?” I asked. Phillip winked at me.
“She’s smaller than a cupcake.”
Nico helped me into thick socks, boots, gloves, and my coat. He and Phillip dressed in their hunting clothes from Naxa. Simon and Isidora met us in the corridor. Tora’s ramp was down in the bay. Cold air filled the first deck. Phillip ushered us into the large land transport. From what I could see, snow covered everything. I thought about making snow spiders with Violet. Eight fighter ships surrounded Tora.
Phillip halted the transport a short time later. Gary opened the transport door and waited while Nico helped Neema and me out. Yukihyo waited for us on a wide set of deeply set stone steps that led up to a massive door of wooden beams. Thick high stone walls enclosed the steps and entrance. Grooves had been carved into the tops of each stone wall for the tree trunks whose ends had been fitted into them. The trunks’ other ends met above to form a strong roof over the steps. The walls to each side had guard stations. Yukihyo’s clan home had been a fortress.
The entrance was the only sign of a structure. It had been built against a mountain. All around towering mountains filled the landscape. They were cold and white. Neema gazed about in wonder. I carried her up the steps to Yukihyo. He smiled at us.
“Ladies this is your home when we visit Chione. This has been our home and our land for generations. The Ponidi’s were once a large and powerful clan and will be once again.” He held open the door for us. Stone racks with grooves below them lined the walls a few feet inside. Pegs were on the walls above them. “Those are for wet boots and coats.”
A door topped with antlers was in the center back wall. Yukihyo led us through it and into a room twice as wide. In each of the far corners of the room, large semi-circular stone fireplaces rose to the ceiling. Fires blazed in each. Four big padded leather chairs surrounded each fireplace.
“Sit here for a moment. I will help you to remove your coat and gloves,” Yukihyo said.
I sat in one of the comfortable chairs. Looking around, I said, “This isn’t at all what I expected. It looks like someone lives here.”
“Years ago, I hired a neighboring clan to maintain it. I asked them to prepare for our visit.” He took my coat and hung it on a peg on the wall near the door we had used to enter the room. My gloves went on one of the tables that were to either side of the door. Nico and the others did the same with their gear. Yukihyo and I freed Neema from her coat. “Come.” Yukihyo took Neema into his arms and held his hand out to me.
He showed me into a room to the left. The fireplace continued around into this room forming another curved corner fireplace. Two chairs were before it. A wooden storage cabinet encompassed the back wall. Looking inside, I saw all manner of heavy guns and traps. Yukihyo led us back into the main room and into an identical room on the right. The weapons in its cabinet were different.
Nico gestured toward a few knives and bows. “These look very old.”
“Those belonged to a clan father three hundred years ago.”
We followed Yukihyo back into the main room and through the next door which was in the center of its back wall.
“Wow!” I said.
The room was the length of the three rooms we ha
d just seen. On each side of the room, were the longest tables that I had ever seen. Benches were on each of the tables’ sides.
“Each table comfortably seats fifty adults,” Yukihyo said.
Other than the tables, a half circle fireplace was centered in the wall across from the middle of each table. “Wait. Are there really just two fireplaces being shared by the four rooms?”
“Yes, they are cylindrical in shape and very old. Over time, the rooms were built around them.”
To the right was a large old-fashioned kitchen where fire was used to cook. Next to it was a storage room that the mountain kept cold. To the other side of the dining room for a hundred was a restroom. The wall across from the bathroom door had four sinks. The walls to either side had five stalls.
“Is this for men or women?” I asked.
Yukihyo laughed. “It is shared by the family.”
“There is water in the waste units!”
“You pull this lever to flush the water out. Melted snow collects and is used to fill the tanks through these pipes. Don’t put diapers or trash in them, or they will clog.”
Isidora was the only one of us who wasn’t surprised by the ancient restroom. From the dining room, Yukihyo took us into a room that was just as large. It only had one large corner fireplace, but it was still warm. Hides covered the floors. Chairs and tables had been placed around the room. The furniture I found most intriguing were the four large leather reclining beds. Yukihyo sat on one by the fire with Neema. He placed her upon it. Neema laid down and rolled over. Laughing, I sat with them. Nico, Hiroshi, Phillip, and Quaid joined us. Then, so did Isidora and Simon.
“My sisters and I used to sit here and play every night after dinner. Mother would sit there and knit while father napped.” He pointed to an identical seat across the room. Other than the fire, modern lamps with power cells provided illumination.
The next room shared the fireplace with the previous one in its left corner. A hide rug, couch, chairs, and small table were near it. Halls led away down the center and sides from the room.
“There are restrooms at the ends of each side hall. Each door in the halls leads to another hall with four doors. Each door leads to a room. There are twenty. Ours is the back left section. Before you explore, let me show you the communal tub.” Yukihyo grinned.
A door to the left of the fireplace led into a long room the size of the dining room. The half circle made by the third circular fireplace took up most of the middle of the wall near the door. The stone floor led down to a pool of warm water with a sandy bottom that stretched the length of the room. The walls were stone, and when I reached down to feel the water, a gentle ripple ran from my fingers. The bottom half of the stone of the back wall had darkened from years of being submerged.
“The water feeds up into the pool from underground.” Yukihyo’s words had a slight echo in the tranquil bathing chamber.
Neema shrieked and wanted to get in it. The clear water and sandy bottom when combined with the large warm crackling fire gave the room an almost yellow hue, and I knew with certainty why Yukihyo had an affinity for yellow and orange. The colors reminded him of home.
We went out and down the hall, through the last door on the right, and into the first one on the left. A bed big enough for a family of eight was against the wall. Wooden chests lined the other walls.
“This is our room now. It belonged to mother and father. I don’t wish to think of him or the others who were lost.”
He tried to hide his pain from me. “Of course, don’t. When you’re ready, you will.”
I wished I could kiss all of his sadness away as Gram and Grandmother seemed to magically do for me. I ran my hands up his chest to his shoulders and kissed his bottom lip. I smiled up into his white eyes with their twinges of color. Yukihyo stroked the fingers of his left hand down the side of my face. Neema had finally stopped fussing about the pool and her desire to be in it.
“Simon, you and Isidora are welcome to the room next to this one. It is yours in our home. Hiroshi and Phillip, the two rooms across from ours are yours. They belonged to my uncles.”
Yukihyo never spoke of the family that had been taken from him by the Parvacs. I needed to distract him quickly.
“Where was your room?” I asked.
Yukihyo took my hand and walked with me to the hall nearest the bathing chamber where there were four more doors leading into bedrooms of the same size. He showed me into his childhood room.
“The four rooms in this hall belonged to Aya, Adini, Ashura, their husbands and me. This was my room from my fifth birthday until Hiroshi and Phillip rescued me.” I looked around at the bed trunks and antlers. Several antlers decorated the walls. “I gave our personal possessions to the clan who cares for our home. My family had no need of them. They left all of my things alone.”
Yukihyo opened a trunk and found his old clothing and a few mementos. I heard movement in the hall. Nico and Quaid were directing their soldiers to rooms for the night.
“Thank you for bringing me here. I feel closer to you now for having seen it, and for seeing you here where you belong. You have a beautiful home. It’s amazing. I thought Nico’s house was a castle, but your home truly is one. Just think. Our daughter is in a home that has housed her ancestors for hundreds of years.”
“We, lady wife. We have a beautiful home. You are the clan mother of my home. I never dared dream I would one day return here with my wife, daughter, clan brothers, co-husbands, and cousins. When you boarded Tora, my life changed. It had become fighting and making money. Now, my days are about looking into the beautiful eyes of my wife and daughter and filling them with happiness.”
“You are everything we need to be happy.”
Yukihyo leaned down to kiss me. Neema took it as an invitation to grab a fistful of my hair. We laughed at her. It was easier for me to take her than to free my hair.
“I plan to give you plenty of myself this evening, wife.”
“Oh, that’s what you mean by filling me with happiness.”
He grinned at me. With the way Nico and Quaid had set up the guard duty rotation, there were plenty of beds for the soldiers to share. Anyway, the beds were all so large that two people could share one without there being any danger of them meeting in the middle. Gary wasn’t keen on sharing a bed with another soldier unless the soldier happened to be female.
“You act as though you never shared a bed with a sibling while growing up,” Kaoti said.
“I was an only child,” Gary responded.
Yukihyo whispered to me, “Perhaps I should assist our guests.”
“Neema and I are going to look at the kitchen.”
We left the room, turned right, and found ourselves in the center hallway. We stepped into the large living room and from there walked across into the dining room. I carried Neema the length of the room and into the kitchen. To the right was a large stone oven with a second open oven on top of it. Against the far wall were two deep sinks that were built into the stone counter. The counter went from the stove all the way around to the door to the storage room on the other side of the kitchen. A pipe went from the ceiling down to each sink. The wall space above the counters and to the sides of the sinks had shelves full of plates, bowls, cups, and glasses. Utensils were in drawers under the counters to the sides of each sink. A center island held pans and trays for the ovens.
Nowhere did I see a beverage dispenser or a cold storage unit. I carried Neema with me into the storage room. It was as cold as cold storage units and contained a supply of nonperishable food items.
“Teagan? Are you in here?”
“Yes!” I said loudly enough to be heard. I walked back out and into the kitchen to find Simon and Isidora. “Simon, there’s no coffee maker. I mean beverage dispenser.”
Isidora smiled and began looking around. She filled a kettle with water from one of the pipes above the sink and took it into the dining room where she sat it on a flat stone just inside of the fireplace. I w
atched from the kitchen doorway.
“Each stone can be used for heating a dish or kettle.” She returned to the kitchen, and I moved to give her room. She went into the storage room, found what she said was a coffee pouch, dropped it into a carafe, and took it back to the kettle. When the kettle began to make a high pitched whistling noise, she poured the water inside of it into the carafe. Isidora returned to the kitchen where she placed cups on a tray which she carried to the dining table.
“How did you learn to do that?” I asked.
“This is how we make coffee and tea on Leucon. Many of our homes are remote, and we rely on the old ways.” She filled our cups.
The coffee smelled perfect. Unfortunately, I had to wait a moment for it to cool. I occupied myself with watching Simon as he watched Isidora. Her long dove grey hair brushed against the small of her back with each of her movements. I sipped at my coffee. An image of Isidora’s unclothed backside filled my mind. I choked and sputtered on my coffee.
“Are you alright?” Simon asked.
“Yes, Simon. I’m fine.” Feeling vindictive, I pictured Nico’s naked backside in my imagination and pushed the thought toward Simon. Simon’s face looked as though he had just smelled sour milk. I pursed my lips and stared pointedly at him. Simon began laughing.
“Are the two of you enjoying your game? You realize that you are both projecting, right?” Isidora asked. Our dumb expressions must have answered for us because she continued. “When you send mental images, those of us who are strong enough pick them up. It’s like if two people are having a conversation, but they are talking loudly enough to be overheard.”
“Oh, well, how do we prevent ourselves from projecting?” I asked.
“You would need to be isolated from other Laconians. Everyone has different levels of ability.”
I lifted the cup and took another sip of the rich coffee that was now the perfect temperature. Gazing at the cup, I wondered if Yukihyo had ever drunk from it at this very table where I now sat with our daughter in my lap. I pictured a younger Yukihyo surrounded by a close loving family. I would give him all of the love in my heart every day for all of my life. I placed the cup on the table and moved it out of Neema’s reach. Isidora and Simon watched me. I traced my finger down the green and grey swirls in the cup.
The Parvac Emperor's Daughter (The Space Merchants Book 3) Page 26