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Halvard Renn had lit the ninth lantern every evening for nineteen years, and in all that time it had never once refused him. It refused him now. He struck the flint twice, watched the spark die in the oil, and stood a moment in the wet dark of the gantry with his hand still raised.

Below him the estuary went about its business. The tide was two hours from the turn and the mudflats lay open all the way to the channel, glistening, seamed with little rivers that would be gone by midnight.

“It’s the oil,” said Tomas from the ladder, because Tomas was nineteen and had an answer for everything.

“It isn’t the oil.” Halvard crouched, put two fingers into the reservoir and rubbed them together. Clean. Cold. Faintly sweet, the way good whale oil ought to be, with none of the gritty afterfeel that meant a lampwright had been watering his stock.

Not guttered. Not blown. Out, the way a candle goes out when someone pinches it, and the smoke that came off it afterwards went straight up and did not move at all.