Behind the Backdoor is a place that appears on no survey and in no deed. In the old tongue it is the lace sewn between two pieces of cloth. Archie Plume on the golden rooms, what he has measured there, the one closed door, and what to do if he does not come back.

Archie Plume calls them gifts because he has no record of paying for them. The glove, the Imprint, the Gleaning, and the golden rooms that open in the air whenever he uses them.

It looks like a pocket watch, and strangers ask it the time. Archie Plume on the instrument behind the pressings in his files, the seconds it costs, and the things that show up in them uninvited.

The taverns of Orienne are perfectly legal. The moondens beneath them are not. Archie Plume on moonbright, the only liquor in the Sable Charter that is a crime to pour, and the staircase six strangers have seen after the third glass.

One autumn night the ink vanished from three centuries of Orienne's records. In the spring it began to come back, in a hand no one recognizes. Case unexplained.