"What will you do with three shadows?" – the Lamplighter-General, granting an allowance
FIELD REPORT – Ferdinand Lusk REPORT 4 OF 14 SUBJECT: The night quarter; the lamp right; an allowance of three hours By day the Thousand Lamps is shuttered and nearly empty, a quarter of arcaded streets with a brass lamp on every pillar and nobody under them. At dusk the Lamplighters come out with their pole-hooks, in order, street by street, and light it, and then it is the richest place I have seen in any shard, measured in the only thing Gnomon counts: shadows per head. I had not understood the sixth article until I stood under the lamps. A person in sunlight has one shadow. A person under three lamps has three, going out from the heels at three angles, each one paler than the true one, and each one, by the Orders, a lesser self: it lasts until dawn or until its lamp goes out, it can be let, and it remembers the night. Under the thousand lamps of the quarter a man walking home is a fan of himself. The rich live here and are, every night, many. The Dark Rows below the old town have...
From the lore of The Ledger of Shadows.