On the night the rain sealed the ferry crossing, a boat with no one at the pole came upstream and returned to shore. Its lantern had not gone out, and there was no one aboard, yet wet footprints crossed the dead man's old house and stopped at the door of someone still alive. An unknown monk had only meant to cross the river, but became entangled in an old case where everyone was lying: the dead in the water were looking for someone to take their place, and the living on the shore had already chosen their victim. From waterside ferry towns to mountain villages, county funeral homes, eerie academies, opera troupe docks, and frontier garrisons, he encounters ghosts along the way while tracing the clues his master left behind many years ago. But little by little, he realizes that the hardest things to deliver from suffering are not always ghosts, but people trapped by debts, reputation, desire, and silence.
