Their father shared an eye roll with Ashyn. While it was true that the girls served the ancestral spirits, it was an excuse Moria used too often.
"Waiting so long for weapons isn't reasonable," Moria continued. "We need a smith. I'm sure there's a strong young man who could take up the task, for the greater good." She chewed. "How about that Kitsune boy?"
"What's Gavril done now that you're volunteering him for smithing?" Ashyn asked.
"It was merely a suggestion. He's young. He's strong. He's in need of a trade."
Ashyn sputtered a laugh. "He's a warrior, Moria, from a line of warriors stretching back to the First Age."
"Then his ancestors have forgotten him, because he isn't very good at it."
Ashyn shook her head.
&nb
sp; "Since I won't have my dagger by morning, I'll need a knife," Moria said, her voice deceptively casual. "I'm going lizard hunting."
"Are you?" Father mused. "Perhaps I'll come along."
"You scare the lizards."
"No," he said. "I'll scare you--away from the forest. Which is where you truly plan to go."
Moria made a face. "Why would I want to go into the forest?"
Neither Ashyn nor their father replied to that. They both knew what Moria had in mind. Tomorrow was the Seeking. Ashyn was the Seeker. Having passed her sixteenth summer, she would enter the Forest of the Dead for the first time, where she would find the bodies of the damned and put their spirits to rest.
"I don't see why I can't go," Moria continued when no one answered. "I'm the Keeper. I protect the empire from unsettled spirits, so it should be my duty to help with the Seeking."
"No," Ashyn said. "It's your duty to stay here and guard the village during the Seeking." She lowered her voice and whispered to Moria. "I don't need my little sister to protect me."
Moria grumbled. Ashyn knew she hated the reminder that she'd been born a half day later. Twins were so rare that their mother had gone that long before realizing the ongoing labor pains weren't merely the aftereffects of Ashyn's birth.
"I'm trained with a blade," Ashyn continued evenly. "Besides, I have Tova. He wouldn't let anything happen to me."
On cue, the hound laid his head on her knee.
"I still don't like it," Moria said.
Ashyn leaned against her twin. "I know."
Tomorrow Ashyn would conduct the Seeking--her primary role as Seeker of Edgewood. There were four pairs of Seekers and Keepers in the empire. Two traveled where they were needed, and one stayed at court. The last pair was permanently stationed at the most spiritually dangerous place in the empire--Edgewood--where they guarded the only break in the box-canyon wall that surrounded the Forest of the Dead.
Their forest had always been thick with spiritual energy, from the old practice of elder abandonment. After that ended, the empire began exiling its criminals here, and the ancestral spirits had fled to the village at its mouth. That was what made Edgewood so dangerous that it needed its own Keeper and Seeker. The village was filled with ancestral spirits in constant need of appeasement, and the forest was filled with angry spirits in constant need of restraint.
Before the Seeking, there was a full day of rituals to be conducted. As they followed the rocky lane to the sanctuary, Ashyn looked at her twin sister. Two of the village children walked backward in front of Moria. A half dozen more followed behind her. The children were not coming along for the ritual, of course, but merely tagging along after Moria. If they got too close or grabbed at her cloak, she'd snap and Daigo would growl. They'd dance away, grinning, only to come right back, chattering like Healer Mabill's pet magpie. Tell us a story, Moria. Show us a trick. Teach us something.
Moria would scowl at the younger children and lob insults at the older ones. They still adored her, still followed her through the village like stray dogs, knowing a scrap would eventually come. They'd get a story or they'd get a trick or they'd get a lesson, and they'd get smiles, too, and kind words, if they earned them.
"Better run home," Moria called as they continued down the lane. "You know what happens if you get too close to the sanctuary and see the rituals."
"Our eyes will pop!" a boy shouted.
"Yes. They'll explode like dried corn in a fire, and you'll be left with holes in your head for your brains to leak out."
"Eww!" one of the girls said. "And then what?"
"Then you'll be walking around with only half your wits, drooling and gaping." She pointed at the oldest boy. "In other words, you'll end up just like Niles over there."