In the salt town of Tovask, the dead speak once before they're buried — a single word or sentence, drawn out by nine days packed in salt. Sixteen-year-old keeper's boy Aren sits vigils for hire, carrying the last words of strangers back to families too rich or too ashamed to listen themselves. It's a trade, not a miracle. Until a nameless corpse opens its eyes, calls him by the true name only three living people know, and tells him: your father salted me the first time, too. Aren's father walked into the salt flats six years ago and never came back. Now the boy has to find out what word his father carried that destroyed him — and whether the dead in Tovask have only ever been saying what someone lets them say.