Assassin's Heart by Sarah Ahiers

But their two main duties as priests of Safraella were to play the role of cleaners on the dead plains—finding any bodies and returning them to their families if possible—and to pray for the angry ghosts.
    At night, the priests would gather at the gates and pray for the angry dead, pray for their torment to end, for Safraella to offer them a rebirth so they could stop their endless searching for a body. No one knew if it worked, but the priests had faith.
    â€œI have to say, I never expected a clipper to ride here in the middle of the night seeking safety.” Faraday took the driver’s seat and adjusted his own hat. I sat on the bench beside him. “You certainly brought much excitement with you.”
    â€œI apologize.”
    He smiled. “It has been liberating. A nice change of pace. Sometimes, things can get boring.”
    I yawned and regretted my lost rest. “What? At a monastery in the middle of the dead plains, surrounded by angry ghosts?”
    â€œYes, well. As you may have noticed, the ghosts aren’t very good conversationalists.”
    He flicked the reins and we moved forward, leaving the monastery behind. “Where is it you’re headed?”
    I paused. Faraday had only helped me. And he was a priest. Of course, I’d trusted Val, and look where that had ended.
    But there was no point in lying, not if I wanted to reach my destination and find my uncle. He was the key to the Da Vias and my revenge. “Yvain,” I finally admitted.
    â€œThen we’d better move a little faster.” He clucked his tongue and the horse sped up.

eleven
    YVAIN WAS A CITY AS DIFFERENT FROM RAVENNA AS the dead plains monastery was from the palace in Genoni. Where Ravenna was a city of nightlife, masquerades, and carnivals, Yvain was tiny and quiet, more provincial, with fresh flowers in the window boxes of every house, and fragrant red mosses growing between the cobblestone streets.
    I hated it immediately. There was no life to the people. No sea air and the sweet smell of the lantern oil. No fashion and pride in what they wore. In Yvain, the women didn’t even cover their hair, and beneath the cloying smell of the flowers, the warm stench of sewage from the canals drifted everywhere.
    Walls divided the city from the dead plains, since Rennes was not a country that bowed to Safraella. Ghosts could not pass through walls, and the city walls kept the dead plains ghosts out, but anyone who died within the city, behind the walls, and became an angry ghost would be trapped insidethe city with everyone else. So like the old days of Lovero, people stayed inside their homes once the sun set.
    â€œWhy doesn’t their regent simply bow to Safraella?” I complained as the wagon slowly made its way into town behind a line of people entering the city before the sun set.
    Faraday shrugged. “It’s a question of geography. Lovero is pushed against the sea on the south and west, and bordered by the dead plains on the north and east. When the Sapienzas took the throne, the people supported a royal line that would bow to Safraella and free the country from the menace of the ghosts. But Yvain is the only city in Rennes pressed against the border of the dead plains. It’s more easily managed with the walls, and any ghosts inside Yvain can’t get farther into the country because of the canals. To the ghosts it’s a labyrinth of waterways.”
    â€œIt still seems it would be a good idea to follow Safraella.”
    â€œThe people of Yvain, and Rennes as a whole, find our devotion to a goddess who deals in death and murder to be macabre at best.” Faraday chuckled.
    â€œShe offers resurrection.”
    â€œYvain’s patron is Acacius, a minor god of crops and debts. It’s why they have flowers everywhere. And you will find honorable people here. If they accrue a debt, they will do anything to repay it. If they are devout, Acacius gives them their own