Many-Hearted Dog and Heron Who Stepped Past Time
ShortStory 5,869 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
Two top-notch time-travelling assassins get an assignment to expose a corrupt aristocrat by killing a magistrate and later bringing her back from the land of the dead.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Strange Horizons, where the author gets the click.