Kethry and Jadrek sat at the head of the tableâand equal distribution of teachers ensured that mayhem at supper was kept to a minimum. Since they'd come “off the road” and settled down here, on the estate that King Stefanson had bestowed upon them for their service in getting back his throne, Kethry had allowed her hair to grow, as had Tarma. Kethry's had grown faster though, and it had already been much longer than Tarma's when they retired. Now, if she let it loose from the single plait she wore it in during the day, it would just brush the floor, a glorious waterfall of dark amber with red highlights. There was no sign of gray in it yet, although there were the faint beginnings of crow's feet at the corners of her eyes.
Jadrek's hair had gone completely to silver-gilt, but all of the lines in his face now were those most often associated with pleasure rather than pain. He was both a handsome and a distinguished man, and between them, he and Kethry had produced some incredibly handsome children. Though he still suffered a bit in the winter from his old troubles, Estrel and Kethry kept the worst symptoms of his bad joints at bay.
And meâ
:And you, mindmate. You arestill as thin and tough as a whip, though a bit creaky in the joints yourself. There's a trace of white in your hair, but no sign of age on your face, and no sign of it in the ring, provided you don't do anything intolerably stupid. And no one would ever mistake you for anything but Shinâa'in, blood and bone. Great beak of a nose, golden skin, blue eyes, black hair, just like every other Clansib I've ever seen.:
She grinned, hiding it behind her cup.
Thank you, Furball, for deflating any vestige of vanity I might have had.
Yes, the years had been very kind to all of them. About the only thing she could have wished for was that Ikan would settle down himself. Preferably with a spouse with true Healing talent; that was the one thing the school lacked, was a resident Healer.
:Be careful what you wish for,: Warrl cautioned, with a laugh behind his mental voice.
Oh? You know something?
:There's going to be a new Healing Priestess arriving tomorrow in the village. Same Order as Tresti wasâso there will be no difficulty at all if she decides to get married. I hear she's very pretty and very, very clever.
What else did you hear?
Tarma asked, sensing that Warrl was much more amused than his simple description would warrant.
:Only this; Father Mayhew has been warning the boys to mind their manners and keep their hands to themselves. He told his housekeeper that her Superior warned him that as a Novice she knocked a man unconscious with a piece of firewood for trying to take liberties. I'd say she isn't going to be the easy conquest the village girls have been.:
Tarma almost choked, and took a quick swallow to hide it. Well, well, well, so Ikan was finally going to meet his match!
:She'll either infuriate him or captivate him.:
Huh. Probably both.
Warrl yawned hugely and winked at her, then turned to the fire to warm his belly.
“Jadrek, have you got any word on when their escorts come to get the children?” she called into the next break in conversation. “We ought to tell them at bedtime.”
“Your three oldest boys will be leaving in three days; their escort is due to arrive then. Three of Keth's children will be staying here over the holidays, and all of the rest with the exception of Kira and Merili will go out with a caravan coming in tomorrow and leaving the day after. Kira and Merili's escort will be here in four days.” Jadrek sounded quite sure of himself, as well he should be; he had messengers traveling between himself and the escorts every day from the time they left the students' homes. He was taking no chances on a “false escort” presenting himself and making off with one of the children, for all of them were highborn enough to command significant ransoms.
“That'll cheer Kira up; she was afraid the weather would keep her here over Midwinter,” Tarma said with satisfaction.
“Oh, but Jadrie will be devastated,” Kethry replied. “Would you believe my little hoyden was looking forward to having Kira do her hair and Merili help her with a
dress
for the Midwinter feast?”
Tarma felt her jaw go slack with surprise. “Jadrie? A
dress?
Next thing you'll tell me is that she's trying to snare herself a boyfriend!”
Jadrek laughed. “Just wait until summer, Tarma, I think she's got her eye on that stripling shamanâ” he paused for a moment, and his capacious memory supplied the name before Tarma could think of it. “âAhâkela, that's it. Ah'kela shena Lihaâirden. The one two years older than she is.”
With the name came the face, and Tarma couldn't help but grin with acute satisfaction. Ahâkela was a handsome, and unaccountably shy adolescent, in training with Liha'irden's Chief Shaman. And if Jadrie did manage to snare himâwell, that solved the problem of where the new Clan Taleâsedrin was going to get its new shaman when the time came to form it up. Jadrek the younger certainly wasn't going to be old enough in time.
Ah, but that will give us a shaman-in-training under Ahâkela. Shamans are always in demand as spouses, and the twins will have no difficulty finding mates, not with every Liha'irden girl over the age of ten petting them and admiring their golden hair and green eyes ... Jadrie was the one that might have been too much for most boys, just as I was. Hah! I should have known she'd solve her own problems!
Justin burst out laughing, interrupting her reverie. “Tarma, you look like the most self-satisfied match-maker I ever saw in my life!”
“It can't hurt to think about these things, can it?” she protested.
“Yes, but you look like a cat who's stolen an entire pitcher of cream,” Ikan teased. “You should see yourself!”
“Piff,” she scoffed, and glared at Justin. “Just you wait until
your
babies are grown! If you don't turn out worse than me, I'll be greatly surprised!”
Estrel giggled, and Justin turned beet-red. “He already is, Tarma. He already is!”
She didn't elaborate, much to Justin's obvious relief, but Tarma could well guess. Like every male with strong bonds to his children, he was probably planning who was and was not a “worthy” prospective mate for his little boy, and worrying about the possible consequences. “Well, unless you want to lose your son and heir to the barbarians, better not plan on a betrothal to Jadrieâor any other girl-child Keth may conjure up,” she teased.
“And have you as an in-law?” he shuddered. “Perish the thought!”
She mimed throwing a dagger at him, and the evening broke up in laughter.
Â
After the official “lights out” time, Kira waited until the last sounds of the grown-ups checking on all of the students faded, then for good measure, waited another one hundred breaths, before reaching up with her foot and poking the bottom of her twin's bunk. Merili had been waiting for that signal; she slipped out of bed and slid down to the floor as silently as a kitten, and the two of them wrapped warm robes around themselves and slid their feet into sheepskin slippers, using only the light of the embers in their fireplace to see by. The pockets of both their robes bulged, hinting at something interesting inside. As Merili rummaged a carefully-hidden package out of her wardrobe, wrapped in paper she had saved from lessons and patterned with berry-juice ink, Kira got a similar package from under her bed. With Kira in the lead, scouting every step of the way, they made their way down the dark hallway each with one hand trailing along the wall to guide her. Both of them had made this journey innumerable times before, and they slid their feet soundlessly along the smooth wooden floor.
When Kira's hand encountered empty air, she knew she had come to the staircase, and she warned her twin with the merest thread of a hiss. She bent to pull off her slippers, picked them up, and felt her way down with her bare toes a step at a time, pausing on the landing to put her slippers back on and hiss the “all clear” for Merili. She was glad to get her slippers back on; the floor was icy-cold and she wriggled her toes in the warm fleece while she waited for Merili.
When her twin's hand touched her arm in the dark, Kira led the way out into the second-floor hall, and onto the corridor where Jadrie and her twin brothers had their own rooms. Keeping to the left side of the hall, she felt her way along the wall. When her hand brushed the third door, she stopped and gave three very soft taps.
The door opened, swiftly and silently, and Jadrie grabbed both their hands and pulled them inside.
She had built up her fire to a cheerful blaze, had cleverly shrouded the window in a rug so that no light betrayed her, and had lit a single candle. As Kira and Merili took their places on sheepskin-covered cushions beside the fire, suppressing giggles, Jadrie rolled up a towel and stuffed it against the door sill, sealing off the crack at the bottom so that no light would leak out there either, to show that there was a cozy little clandestine party going on.
Only then did the older girl joined them, taking her own cushion and plumping herself down on it.
“There!” she whispered, looking very proud of herself. “We should be safe as long as the boys don't wake up.” Then her face fell a little. “But this is probably the last chance we'll get to be together before you go home.”
“Yes, but we'll be back soon enough! Look what I brought for our partyâ” Merili replied cheerfully, and began pulling handfuls of chestnuts out of the bulging pockets of her robe.
“I got apples,” Kira supplied, pulling three luscious fruits from her previously-loaded pockets, as Jadrie arranged the chestnuts close to the fire to roast.
“Oh, good! I've got spiced cider, and I swiped some honeycakes from the kitchen before study,” Jadrie said with satisfaction, pointing to the foot of her bed, where a jug with water beading up on its sides hid just behind the outer leg, and a plateful of slightly squashed honeycakes resided beside it. “And I've got Midwinter presents for both of you.”
“Oh, but you open yours first!” Merili cried, ever generous, although Kira ached to see what
hers
was.
“Hereâ” she thrust the bulky package at Jadrie, who needed no second urging to tear off the paper.
But Jadrie's reaction more than made up for the impatience Kira felt, and she giggled along with her twin at Jadrie's round eyes.
“Oh!” Jadrie squealed, shaking out the folds of silk and leaping up to try the dress against herself. “Oh! It's
wonderful,
Meri! How did you do it?”
The dress probably would have been scandalous by some standards, with its split skirt for riding astride. Merili had used Jadrie's Shinâa'in costumes and her own festival-dresses as patterns, and come up with a dress that combined recognizable facets of both. It was sewn of the pastel-colored silks thought appropriate for young girls in Rethwellan, but the embroidery on the bodice and hems, though executed in pale hues of blue, pink, green and soft yellow, was recognizably Shinâa'in in pattern and execution. The split skirt was a reasonable substitute for Shinâa'in breeches, the huge, fluttery butterfly sleeves were pure Rethwellan, but the sleeves could be pulled up and held out of the way by an embroidered band passed through them and along the inside of the back of the dress, and the “skirt” could be gathered at each ankle with separate embroidered bands. The bodice was low enough to satisfy the cravings of a girl wanting to be thought grown-up without being so revealing that it would arouse the ire of her mother.
“Here's mine,” Kira said with satisfaction, handing her a neater, smaller package. And Jadrie exclaimed again, to find it contained a pair of soft, sueded ankle-boots, and a belt and sheath for her knife, all beaded with tiny crystal beads and freshwater pearls in the same Shinâa'in patterns as the embroidery of the dress.
“IâI don't know what to say!” Jadrie said, sitting down abruptly, still holding the dress to herself, with the belt and boots in her free hand.
“It was all Kira's idea,” Merili offered, her eyes sparkling with happiness. “I wanted to do the dress, but she told me it would be stupid to make something you couldn't be yourself in, so Estrel helped me do something that was like your Shinâa'in clothes, and when Kira saw the colors I was doing it in, she got the boots and the belt and did the beading to match.”
“I'm glad you like it,” Kira added softly.
“Like
it? I love it! I can't believe you did all this just for me!” Jadrie's face shone with happiness, and she put the dress down long enough in her lap to reach behind her and bring out two packages of her own. Hers were wrapped in the thin paper normally used for embroidery patterns, and Kira knew it was meant for Meri when the packages were opened.
“This one is yours, Kira, and this is yours, Meri. I hope you like your presents half as much as I like mine!”
Meri looked significantly at her twin, and motioned for Kira to open hers first. Nothing loath, Kira removed the paper from her package to disclose a carved box. She opened the lid to find, nestled into the velvet lining, a very different sort of present in the shape of shining steel.
She gasped, hardly able to believe her eyes. Identical except for decoration to a set that Jadrie owned and Kira had lusted after ever since she saw them, it was a set of matching knives. A long-knife, just a scant thumblength from qualifying as a sword, a belt-knife for less lethal use, a set of throwing-knives and arm-sheaths to hold them, and a tiny boot-knife that slipped invisibly into the side of a riding boot. Jadrie's weapons were undecorated except for the Taleâ sedrin emblem of a stooping hawk carved into the hilts, but Kira's were ornamented with inlaid silver wire in an intricate spiral on the hilt, and had garnets inlaid in the pommel-nuts. Kira's throat knotted up, and tears sprang into her eyes, and when she looked up at Jadrie, she was completely unable to say anything.