"Leave him be."
Rhea Ash paused with a boot buried in the mud.The cemetery had been empty for an hour, save the occasional sound of the rain.Now, a dead man was speaking to her.
She set the shovel down and let the water drip from her hood over the fresh grave.Beyond the wall, Gravehaven was settling in for another cold winter night.Smoke curled from countless chimneys while lanterns glowed in the narrow streets.The Black River ground broken ice over the stones of the old bridge.
Rhea looked down at the grave.The coffin was already in the hole, and she knew that she had placed it there. The dead man was telling her not to bury him.
"I'm tired," she muttered.
"Rhea."
Her fingers tightened around the shovel.She knew that voice.
Old Tomas Bell had lived in the eastern quarter for sixty-eight years, patching boots and swearing at the rowdy children who dared to gather near his shop.He'd grumbled about the city wasting good snow clearing money every winter.He'd died in his sleep, and she'd washed him and closed his eyes and listened to his daughter weep over his simple coffin.
He was dead, then. She could hear his voice coming from the grave, nonetheless.
She took a step back from the hole. "No."
The ground gave a low noise like a sigh, and Rhea dropped the shovel and stumbled backward. "Stay down," she told the hole.
The dirt erupted in a geyser of mud, and pale fingers clawed their way up the hole.Strong hands broke through the surface, pulling a face up and out of the earth.Tomas Bell emerged from his grave, his coat stained with mud, his silver hair matted to his skull.His eyes were open, but they were not the same eyes she remembered.They held the look of a man who had seen far too many winters.
"They said to leave him be," Tomas muttered. "Don't bury him."
"Who?" she asked.
The old man turned toward the royal palace. "The king."
Rhea's mouth went dry. "King Elias is not dead."
Tomas's lips parted in something like a smile. "Not yet." He pitched forward, and she caught his shoulder before he hit the ground.
She stood alone in the rain as the bells began to ring.
It was not the church bells. It was the palace bells.She turned toward the towering building as the sound echoed over the cemetery.All the windows in the uppermost tower were dark. A second bell joined the first, and then a third.Everyone in Gravehaven knew the meaning of that.Three bells tolled for danger, four for war, and five for the Alpha to order the gates to be sealed.
She counted six.
There was no warning for six bells.
The ringing stopped, and for a moment, there was only the sound of the rain.Then the earth began to shake, and the first graves began to open.Rhea flattened herself against the wall as the Silent Fields erupted around her.Dozens of graves burst open at once, and hands shot out of the holes like pale spiders' legs.Some of the dead rose slowly, their bodies folding like old paper, while others launched themselves from their graves in great tearing movements.Ancient warriors climbed out of their burial sites, their rusted armor clinking, and long dead soldiers dragged their broken blades across the wet ground.A woman in a rotted burial gown rose from a grave just to the left of Rhea and turned toward the palace.A child's body, no older than five, wriggled out from under a tree.
She could hear them breathing.Not because they needed to, but because it was a sound she remembered.
She pressed her back to the wall. "Why are you doing this?"
The dead did not answer.One of the soldiers who had risen from the earth turned toward her, his uniform still bearing the insignia of the royal guard.He stopped several feet from her, and she noticed the iron knife at his belt.
His head tilted. "Return," he said.
"Return what?"
The whisper of the dead was like a wind at her back. "The crown."
"What crown?"
The dead raised their heads as one, and Rhea felt the weight of a thousand stares. "The crown," they said as one, as if she could not possibly misunderstand.
Something snapped at the back of her head, and she looked down to see a thin line of silver light running from her palm.She scrubbed at it, but the mark did not fade.It grew brighter, and the dead lowered their heads.She stumbled back. "No, I don't know what you're talking about."
Beyond the wall, a horseman cried out in alarm.The sound of galloping horses followed, and Rhea turned her head to see the black-cloaked riders of the palace guard charging into the cemetery.One man nearly fell off his horse at the sight of the kneeling dead, but the commander recovered quickly and turned his gaze to Rhea.He took in the sight of the graves and the thousands of dead soldiers rising from them before his eyes came to rest on her.
"Who did this?" he demanded.
"I didn't do this," she said, raising her hands.