Breathing hard, I turned to face my rescuer, the one who’d been bold enough to break the jiangshi’s arm with a rock. “Thank y—”
The gratitude died on my lips as I recognized the soldier I’d come to find, my reanimation talisman still glued to his head. To my growing alarm, the soldier lifted the end of the paper, enough to reveal his eyes, and smiled. In a slightly shaken voice, he said, “That was rather terrifying, wouldn’t you say?”
I shot to my feet and ripped the talisman from the soldier’s forehead. He instantly collapsed to the ground, leaving me standing alone and bewildered in a gradually darkening field. I bit back a squeal, tasting iron.What in heaven’s name?
Reanimated corpses were just that—reanimated. They had no minds of their own, no emotions, and certainly no voice.
And yet the soldier had spoken to me. He’d rescued me from the jiangshi and smiled while expressing his fear. Living, human fear.
I should’ve been the one who was more afraid. Not only had I faced a jiangshi, but now I was dealing with a talking corpse. Though the first was rare, I knew what it was. The second was unheard of.
What I did know was that the soldier needed to be brought to Hulin, the capital of Sian, where Official Yi was expecting us. Cognizant or not, he remained a job I had to complete.
I considered the boy crumpled at my feet. How was I to guide him without a reanimation spell? Our destination was too far—I couldn’t drag him, unconscious, the entire way. But the last thing I needed was a reanimated corpse making decisions on his own.
I decided to first resolve the issue of his awareness. Was he some kind of jiangshi, albeit an unusually friendly one? Or had I simply been wrong when checking his pulse? But no—I was never so careless.
Whatever the case, only when I was sure he was a normal—lifeless—corpse could I figure out how to bring him to the capital.
I peered across the field at the pink-flushed horizon, anticipating the burial workers on their way. I couldn’t let them see the soldier.
Then I remembered a nearby town—Ninghe. A client of mine lived there, a wisewoman I’d developed a close friendship with. Perhaps she could help. She had to.
Because whatever was going on with the soldier, I needed to complete this job.
My father’s life depended on it.
CHAPTER 2
The wisewoman of Ninghe lived not within the town gates but on the outskirts, in a modest hut cradled inside a bamboo forest. I’d met her a little over a year ago, shortly after my mother died from the fainting fever. While carrying out a job in Wen during the most biting part of winter, I had, rather clumsily, slipped on ice and sprained my ankle. Mistress Ming, as the residents called her, had discovered me limping pathetically through the forest with a swaying corpse at my heels.
Likely pitying my stupidity, Mistress Ming brought us back to her hut, where shetsked over my swollen ankle like the grandmother I didn’t have. When I attempted to thank her, she brushed off my gratitude with a request that I bring her sweets from Sian the next time I came to Wen. I was, of course, happy to oblige. After my first delivery, Mistress Ming insisted on paying me for additional requests—although she was never above haggling.
And that was how I began my side job as a smuggler, secretlygrowing my clientele to include wealthy buyers in both nations who were desperate for things they couldn’t find in their own land.
For the persuasive price of fifty silvers, I convinced a passing farmer to make room on his wagon for me and the dead soldier and bring us to Mistress Ming’s hut. Our driver, obviously unnerved by the corpse behind him, spoke little as we rolled onto a path that wound into the bamboo forest. I didn’t mind the silence.
A late-afternoon breeze danced through the trees. Peach-soft sunlight illuminated the branches and leaves overhead, turning them a fiery red. I breathed in the earthy air, already feeling more relaxed, despite the soldier lying beside me on the cart bed.
My eyes flitted to his face, watching for signs of life. He remained still and quiet. Had I imagined the whole thing? I held a finger under his nostrils, then jerked my hand away. No, I’d definitely felt breath against my skin, faint but warm. Not a jiangshi, then; they had no need for air. He was also no longer emitting any sort of emotion, strangely enough. I leaned back against the wagon, staring at the soldier with a mixture of curiosity and caution.
The moment we pulled into the clearing of Mistress Ming’s home, the farmer motioned for me to drag myself and my cargo off his cart. Then he was gone, theclip-clopof his horse’s hooves fading into the forest.
I was considering how to move the soldier when he tilted over from his sideways position and landed face down in the dirt. With a startled gasp, I tried to flip him, but his bulky armor made it tricky. Besides, he hadn’t stirred.
“Bear with me for just a moment,” I whispered beforegrabbing the soldier by his wrists and tugging. My muscles strained against his weight as I firmly but gently pulled him across the ground, careful to avoid sharp rocks. He was much heavier than he looked. It must’ve been his cursed height. My shoulders burned as I slowly lugged him past Mistress Ming’s garden, a small plot roped off with twine, and toward the wooden hut. There, I hauled him up the low stoop onto the front porch and finally, with a huff, laid him down to knock on the door.
The wisewoman must’ve been especially busy not to have heard my heavy breathing or the soldier’s boots hitting the steps. For a moment, I worried she wasn’t home at all.
Then I detected shuffling from the other side of the door. It flew open to reveal Mistress Ming’s puffy-eyed red face.
“Dajie,” I greeted. I’d learned early on that the wisewoman preferred to be called older sister rather than aunt. In truth, I had no idea just how old she was. Sometimes she looked hardly ten years my senior. Other times she looked as old as my father.
Mistress Ming appeared more worn than usual, having clearly been disturbed from a nap. A loose knot hung at the end of her unraveling hair. The tunic of her pale-green ruqun was rumpled, and she made no move to straighten it.
But despite her tired appearance, her eyes were bright and intelligent as she scrutinized me. A smirk touched her lips. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite criminal priestess come to visit. I wasn’t expecting a delivery this week; I only saw you last month.”
“I apologize for showing up without warning,” I said, dipping my head in respect. “But I need your help.”
