The Lantern of the Low Roads

For a hundred years, Lanterners have kept the low roads lit — the cart tracks, the drovers' paths, the small ways between places that matter. Tamsin Quill, the youngest Lanterner in memory, has been given the stretch that starts at a crooked milestone and ends at the Bonehill. It is, everyone agrees, a terrible posting. It is also hers. Along the way she meets a peddler who sells weather by the bottle, a family of hedge-priests who have lost their god's address, a bridge that is only sometimes a bridge, and a fox who is very insistent about being a cursed prince. Then the lamps begin to go out — one by one, working inward. If the low roads go dark, the great roads forget their way, and then the world does. There is no monster at the end of Tamsin's road. There is only a grief, four hundred years lonely. She lights it anyway.