The Threshold

The Threshold apprenticed to a threshold-keeper, an old discipline that holds station at ritual gates, the places where one phase of a transit ends and another begins. The central body absorbed the function into a general funerary office two generations ago and retired the surviving keepers. Her master, Aurelis, declined retirement and was allowed to continue unofficially until he died, on the understanding that his apprentice would not inherit.

He died. She inherited anyway, on his ring and his unaltered will. The Dominion declined to recognize the inheritance and also declined to enforce the refusal. They have left her at the post and stopped writing. By her account the door is still in use. She will take outside work on the understanding that the door comes first, and that a contract which interferes with it ends without refund.