PROLOGUE
The high-pitched chime reached the village gate, death’s waves ringing toward the shores of the living. Mothers swept their children from the windows into their beds, locking the shutters. Overworked farmers hurried home like rabbits dashing for the safety of their burrows. Even the night sentries abandoned their posts, leaving only a flickering torch to greet their inauspicious guests.
From the shadows of the main road, a tall figure emerged, carrying a staff of peach wood with dangling iron chimes. He wore the crossed-collar cotton robes of a priest, the teal fabric ghostly pale in the moonlight. A square black cap sat atop his head.
Clinging to his side was a girl no older than ten years, her plump face unusually stoic for a child so young.
What followed behind them was what frightened the hiding villagers most: a line of stiff corpses, arms outstretched for balance. Ashen skin peeked out from dust-covered clothes. The scent of sickly-sweet rot hovered over their frames. TheFu talismans taped to their heads like long yellow paper veils compelled them to lumber slowly, wordlessly, after the priest.
As the group approached the quiet village, the priest turned to the girl and said, “Do you know why we must always ring the bells, Siying?”
“To guide the deceased home?” she replied. This was the first time her father had allowed her to accompany him on his journey, and she was eager to impress.
“Correct.” The priest motioned at the village’s empty streets, the mala beads wrapped around his wrist flashing against the torch’s glow. “But there’s another reason as well—we must ring the bells loudly to warn the living. It’s incredibly unlucky for mortals to look upon the walking dead.”
“But what about us, Baba?” asked Siying. “Are we not also living?”
Her father smiled. “As servants of the gods, we walk a fine line between life and death. If you are wise and protect yourself, the dead cannot bring misfortune upon you—nor can they physically harm you.”
Siying glanced at their undead flock. Their gray faces were stark against the dark silhouette of the forest behind them.
“Why should the dead harm me?” Siying stared back at her father. He’d secured a living out of serving the dead, but it seemed to have only made him kinder. His brown eyes were patient, almost amused, as she pressed, “We’re shepherds who lead them home and gift them with the proper burial rites. What reason have they to hurt us?”
They’d crossed the village gate, the road narrowing to make space for the homes and establishments that had been built over the years. Not a sound, not even a breath, could be heard through the closed windows and doors. Still, Siying couldimagine the villagers praying silently at their shrines, scattering glutinous rice to keep away bad fortune.
Her father led them past the inn without stopping. They never stopped where humans dwelled.
“Not everyone is grateful,” said her father, the bells tinkling with the staff’s movement. “Among the dead, there are bound to be some who carry lingering ill will. When the evil is strong enough, it can even turn the dead against a well-meaning priest or priestess.”
Siying shivered, looking back at the corpses again. The talismans reanimated their lifeless forms and halted their bodies’ decay, but their faces were blank and soulless, their mouths unmoving. No longer able to think or feel as they once had, they were about as threatening as her younger sister’s straw dolls.
“Have you ever faced such a corpse?” Siying asked.
“Once.” Catching her expression, her father reassumed his smile and placed a protective hand on her head. “Worry not, daughter. With your strong, handsome father around, you’ll always be safe.”
Siying’s laugh broke apart the momentary fear. Familiar as she was with death, she was still a child and not entirely immune to nightmares. She clutched her father’s hand, cheerful despite the somber work they were carrying out. “Promise me, Baba? Promise you’ll stay by my side for a hundred years—no, a thousand.”
He squeezed her tiny fingers, chuckling. “I promise. Alongside your mother and your younger sister—we will always be with you.”
Siying clung to his words, unaware it was the promise of a softhearted father, as easily broken as it was made.
CHAPTER 1
As always, I smelled death before I saw it. The odor was gut-deep, a blend of sickly-sweet and putrid rot. Most humans rushed away from such a scent, not toward it.
But I was a ganshi priestess, a shepherd of the dead, and I’d been offered forty thousand silvers to retrieve a corpse from enemy territory.
I approached the abandoned battleground, a large, rugged field. The yellowed grass had been trampled by heavy boots and horse hooves, human waste mixing with mud made from past rain.
People always assumed the iron tang of blood would be strongest, if blood was present at all in death. But it was the stench of excrement, released after the body’s muscles failed, that prompted me to wrap a scarf around my nose and mouth.
Accustomed to death as I was, I couldn’t help but shudder as I took in the field. Roughly a hundred dead Sian soldiers littered the cursed ground. Arrows and spears jutted from theearth like snapped bones. Even the trees framing one side of the land looked forlorn, their branches bent in reverence toward the broken dead. Though it was early morning, the deep-orange sun looked as if it should be setting, not rising.
I took in the lineup of corpses and knew I had my work cut out for me.
But it was work that needed to be done.
As I stepped up to the nearest body, theclip-clopof horse hooves drew my attention backward. It was a Wen soldier, dressed in full armor, with his face obscured by an iron mask. I watched his eyes sweep over me, taking in my teal pao robe and peach staff.
