At twenty minutes past midnight, the bells of St. Jude-in-the-Fens didn’t ring the quarter-hour across Lowbank, because the parish vestry had sold the bronze clapper during the flour shortage three winters back to pay for roof slates. Instead, the night watchman down at the Timber Wharves struck two dull blows on a suspended length of iron rail with a wooden mallet. The flat, wintry clang drifted over the slate roofs, muffled by the river mist and the steady, rhythmic hiss of the exposed mudflats draining into the main channel.
In the back kitchen of the washhouse, Foreman Eren Tal trimmed the braided cotton wick of a heavy brass watch lantern with a pair of blunt sheep-shears. The lantern was not glazed with common horn or clear soda glass. Its four bevelled panes were cast from thick, bottle-green bullseye glass that Hal Rook had salvaged from a starboard running light on a wrecked coal brigantine.
“Turn the wick down until the yellow tip just disappears into the blue cone,” Eren said, his voice a low rumble that barely stirred the quiet air of the kitchen. He slid the brass burner assembly back into the lantern housing until the spring-latch clicked. “A clear lantern throws a white halo fifty yards down a wet cobble lane. Every College court guard sitting in the warm guardhouse at the High Tor tollgate can spot a white animal fat light moving along the water gate wall. Green glass cuts the glare in the river fog. From…
