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Finished braiding her blonde hair, Riley, or Lee as her family liked to call her, pinned it back then hid it beneath a knitted beanie fished from her dark blue riding coat. Fastidious to the point of obsessive, she then spent the next few minutes double-checking her weapons. The Sekhem fighting staff hidden in her coat, the shotgun holstered to the hip of her trouser-leg and the hunting knife tucked into one of her high-riding boots. Everything had to be easily to hand. She'd been warned about the dangers lurking in the black-market souks and wanted to be ready in case they decided to seek her out.
Still anxious, her fingers by habit reached for the comfort of her mother's signet ring looped on a necklace around her neck. All the Elders of the Torchbearers had been given one, to press into hot wax when sealing their documents. It was stamped with the Torchbearers lit torch symbol, and the words 'Live Free, or Fight On' were inscribed on the inside of the band.
Along with the wedding ring that hung around Cooper's neck, it was all the two girls had from their mother to remember her by. For this reason alone Riley never took it off.
"What are you so nervous about?" Cooper asked as she sat down next to the fire and began spooning food into a bowl.
"I'm not nervous." Riley replied a little too defensively to be believed, then she blushed. She rarely raised her voice so on those occasions when she did it was clear she was agitated.
"Why'd you think that?" She asked trying to sound calmer.
"You looked worried is all." Cooper answered with a wide-yawn, already grown tired of the conversation. Then she pointed at Riley's neck.
"And you're playing with mother's ring. You know father will be upset if he catches you doing that without your gloves on again."
Riley cursed under her breath as she hid the necklace under her shirt. Then she grabbed her gloves from her coat pocket and put them on. Away from the ranch they weren't to touch anything barehanded, especially metal. Second to touching your skin, metal was the best way for the skin-readers to steal your thoughts.
What was it their father said?
"Cover your skin and never let your mind wonder. For they are watching, and listening and hunting, always."
"You know, if you're worried about today, all you have to remember is this." Cooper pointed out with a smile. "Whatever happens, it'll still beat doing chores."
That was Cooper, outgoing, cheeky and effervescent, the rebel of the family, had been since the day she was old enough to crawl. Riley, on the other hand was much more even-keeled. Whereas Cooper was naturally carefree and could be relied upon to engage her mouth before her brain, her sister was far more cautious. They were almost like the tortoise and the hare from the bedtime tale; one slow and methodical, the other impatient and quick.
They shared other differences too, so many in fact it sometimes felt like the only common thread that bound the two girls together was their identical looks. And they were identical; looking at them you'd think no more perfect copies had ever existed.
"If you really want to know, I was wishing father didn't act so worried about us all the time." Riley finally admitted.
"But worrying about us is his favorite pastime, it'd be mean to want to take that away from him." Cooper responded with a sly grin.
"You've got a point." She chuckled. "I guess I keep thinking back to what he said about how the souk has changed. That it's grown more dangerous over the last few years. That it's now riddled with Directory spies and trappers."
She gave Cooper a worried look. "Did we make a mistake demanding father take us this time?"
Cooper sighed, this was not the first time they'd had this conversation.
"For the last time, Lee. If we let him, father will keep us hidden from the world for the rest of our lives, on that sliver of land we call home. Is that what you want or maybe, you'd like to see some of this nation before you die?"
"You know I do." Riley replied. "But what about the dangers?"
"It's just father being overly paranoid. That man could find the Directory at the bottom of his coffee cup if he looked hard enough."
There was a lot of truth to that, Riley had to admit. Their father was a wanted man – probably the most wanted man in the nation – and bore all the characteristics of a fugitive on the run; always with one eye over his shoulder.
"Hate to break this to you, Lee. He's the anomaly, he's the Great Inventor, the one everyone is looking for. If he can walk through the souks without trouble, then who do you think is going to give us a second look?
"Of course, there's always going to be that rugged, but desperately handsome, blackhat who instantly falls in love with me the moment he lays eyes on me. We may have to worry about him." Cooper mused as her eyebrows danced suggestively on her forehead.
"Pretty sure he'll instantly fall out of love with you the moment he gets to know you." Riley said.
Cooper made a mock-hurt face. "With talk like that you'll find yourself excluded from our secret wedding.
Riley gave an exasperated chuckle as she shook her head, her sister was incorrigible.
"Just promise me you won't do anything stupid while we're there." She requested.
"Define stupid?"
"Anything that's going to get us into trouble." Riley replied through clenched teeth.
Cooper put a hand on her heart. "I promise."
Then she gave a knowing wink, and held up her other hand to show her crossed fingers.
"I'm not the one who'll get punished if father has to use his powers." Riley said looking stern.
"Thanks for reminding me, Mom." Cooper rolled her eyes.
"It's important, Coop. If the souk suspects him of being an anomaly he won't ever be able to return. Which means we won't ever be able to return."
"Because, if they think he's a crink, they'll think we are too." Cooper replied, giving her sister the wink-and-gun as she recited the lecture their father had given them a hundred times. "See, I remember."
"It's not a game." Riley almost snapped. "The men in those places know the reward the Directory pays for anomalies. They'll come after us."
"Then won't they feel foolish when they learn that we're nothing but a bunch of basics."
Though their father and mother were powerful anomalies, Cooper and Riley had no abilities of any kind. It happened, they'd been told by their father. It was a fact that Riley had come to terms with years ago, but knew Cooper never had.
"What is this?" Cooper asked, changing the subject and finally inspecting what was in her bowl.
"It smells like a houndsman." She gagged.
"I don't think Red would like to hear you say that." Riley said referring to their ranch-hand, a red-haired houndsman by the name of Redtail. They'd left him and Goose behind to guard the livestock.
"No way, he'd take it as a compliment." Cooper joked as she tossed the bowl aside, then reached for her boots.
Slipping them on, she worked out the stiffened black leather through a routine of pirouettes, hi-kicks, and the quick-steps of a shadow boxer before morphing it all into a fun dancing jig she'd learned from Redtail.
"How do I look?" With a carefree smile on her face, Cooper held her arms aloft and pivoted around on her toes.
Loose, blue cotton shirt rolled up at the sleeves and tucked into dark trouser pants that were held up by a thick gun-belt. Dark grey jacket, black gloves, and a dark worn-in wide-brimmed hat. She looked like a boy and Riley said as much.
"Well, I hadn't realized we'd been invited to a beauty parade." Cooper scoffed and stuck out her tongue. Yet, both girls knew Cooper liked the tomboy look, favored being in jeans and having her hair cut short.
"Besides", she continued. "You know father wants us to look as different as possible. So me looking like a boy is a good thing."
What they'd been told by Acadia was that the Directory knew their mother had been carrying twin girls before she'd escaped on the night Sancisco fell. They'd have told their spies and informers to be on the lookout for a man traveling with identical looking daughters of their age, so it was important to make them look different. Cutting Cooper's hair and dying it dark brown was just the start. They'd also put an extra step in the heel of her boots too, to give the impression she was taller.
"Not a very good looking boy though." Riley teased.
"Hey?" Cooper protested and looked like she was going to say something, but instead, she went quiet as her whole body stiffened.
"You weren't watching your back." A voice whispered and Riley suddenly noticed the Sekhem standing behind her sister with a knife to the back of her throat.
Cooper replied dryly. "In my defense, I thought Riley was watching it."
It still never failed to surprise them how quiet Mayat could be. It shouldn't have though, the felisian was a Sekhem, the name given to their order of highly skilled warriors. No other soldier in the nation was as lethal as them and both twins had felt the cold steel of her blade against their necks more than once.
"She was too busy enjoying the sound of her voice to notice anything." Mayat quietly spoke through the cloth mask covering her face.
"That's not fair." Riley gave a wounded look. "I knew you were out there checking for danger."
"What did I say about relying on other people with your life?" Though soft, Mayat's voice was thick with a guttural accent, a sign that the common tongue wasn't her first language. There was also something about the way she moved, acted and looked at things that suggested the world she lived in was very different from the one she'd once known.
"Your father is coming back to the camp. He is expecting you to be ready to leave when he gets here." The Sekhem added before Riley could reply. Then she left them and returned to the woods where she quickly blended in with the trees.
The twins had grown used to the fact that Mayat liked to appear from the shadows and disappear back into them just as quickly, so they paid her little mind when she left their sight. It was comfort enough to know she was always close by if they needed her. Instead, they focused on packing away the last items from breakfast and were sitting in their saddles when their father arrived five minutes later.
He made them wait another quarter hour as he silently completed his own inspection of the horses and wagon. Then, saddled himself, he addressed them one last time.
"Remember", he said, looking at them seriously. "If you believe for a second we've been discovered, you run! Even if I've been captured."
"Understood." Riley replied dutifully.
Quill looked at his other daughter.
"Sure." She said flippantly until her father's face hardened. "Understood."
"Don't worry, father. It'll be okay." Riley offered reassuringly.
He nodded and tried to smile his agreement but the look in his eyes echoed the warning he'd given them a few days before: bad things always happen at the black markets.