The Vigil

The Vigil apprenticed to a grave-keeper named Orestus, whose duty was a sealed tomb-station of a dynasty that had been formally pronounced extinct. Orestus died in the eighty-third year of the watch. The apprentice was eighteen. By custom the watch passed the same evening, with the same paperwork and the same lantern. She has held it since.

The dynasty is still extinct. The tomb is still sealed. She keeps the lights, refuels the lantern, and reads the funerary register aloud once a cycle, as if anyone remained to hear it. Two years ago an adjutant arrived to say the watch had been administratively concluded. She declined. The paperwork, she said, had not been countersigned by the deceased. She will take a contract from outside the Dominion because outsiders do not pretend the dead can be filed away.