Lanterns

There are two hundred and eleven lanterns on the Emberwood road and the Warden lights every one of them before dark, and has done for sixty years, and has never once been thanked for it.

This is not a complaint. Thanks would imply a choice.

On the ninth of the month the eleventh lantern would not take a flame, and by the time she had walked back to it a second time the tenth had gone out as well.