Every city keeps a few men whose whole profession is putting things out. Ours used to be the lamplighters. Since C.Y. 427, Orienne has kept a second sort, who come round at night with a brass pole and a cart waiting in the street.

Every public building in Orienne has one desk where the difficult people are sent. At the Registry of Title it’s the Ward desk, and the clerk behind it wants your whole name, spelled right, and your hat off.

Every office in Orienne comes with something underneath it. Archie Plume's comes with a pharmacy, a coffee pot that is not for customers, and a man named Henri (ON-ree, not HEN-ree) who never asks what is in the files.

One month before Remembrance Day, Orienne begins to smell of lime. A man's name has vanished off of his marble tomb, and a widow who the Registry says was never married climbs my stairs. Part 1 of One Name Fewer is out now!

Once a year, all of Orienne goes down to the Quiet Blocks to whitewash the tombs and say the names of its dead out loud. Archie Plume on the lime, the everlastings, the Naming at sundown, and what the Ward believes happens to a name nobody says.

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.

The official dates of the Sable Charter, as every schoolchild learns them, with the archivist's corrections in the margins. Where the two disagree, trust the margins.

No council ever named her a saint. The Ward did. Archie Plume on the ferrywoman of the Bend, her lantern, and the chapel on Cistern Street that is never locked.

Where is everyone's armor? Archie Plume on the people of Orienne: their hats, their manners, why you can spot one anywhere in the Meridian, and their unshakable opinions about supper.

Cold crates in August, silver that turns to lead, a tomb with one name fewer. Unverified reports from Orienne, kept in pencil until they become one thing or the other.

The Four O'Clock Rain, the Long Walk, marshroot coffee, moonbright in the back parlor, and the wardwrights' marks above old doors. The unwritten rules of Orienne.

The principal port of the Sable Charter, built on ground never entirely persuaded to be solid. A tour of its seven districts, from the Landing to the Quiet Blocks, by the investigator who lives above the pharmacy.

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.