"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.
* * *
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 party-" 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. "Here-" 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 Shin'a'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 Shin'a'in in pattern and execution. The split skirt was a reasonable substitute for Shin'a'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 tooo 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 Shin'a'in patterns as the embroidery of the dress.
"I-I 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 Shin'a'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 Tale'-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.
Jadrie seemed to understand, and chuckled. "I asked Tarma if I could -- she said you'd earned them. I designed the decoration."