89th Concordance

The 89th Concordance is the collective designation given to a body of instruments enacted on Floor 2041 over a period of eleven years and never formally closed. Unlike the numbered Concordances before and after it, the 89th was not issued as a single document but accumulated by accretion: a founding text of nine clauses, followed by annexes, schedules, and supplements that were appended as occasion demanded and, in at least one case, as occasion did not demand. It is the only Concordance in the archive whose table of contents is longer than its operative text, and the only one whose final clause was drafted after its author's retirement.

The 89th governs matters of provisional authority — the standing of clerks acting in the absence of their superiors, the validity of seals impressed in error, and the custody of documents during the interval between a Librarian's death and the appointment of a successor. Its provisions remain in force wherever no later Concordance has explicitly displaced them, which is to say on most floors, most of the time.

Origin and the Question of the Ninth Clause

The founding text was sealed in the winter of the year the Tower records as 3412, in the scriptorium adjoining the north stairwell of Floor 2041. Its first eight clauses are unremarkable and have never been litigated. The ninth clause reads in full:

"Where an instrument is sealed by a hand not competent to seal it, the instrument shall nonetheless bind, provided that the incompetence is recorded in the margin within the hour."

— Eighty-Ninth Concordance, founding text, clause 9

No margin of the original survives, and the hour in question is not specified as beginning when the seal is impressed or when the incompetence is discovered. The Concordance Reconciliation desk has ruled on the question four times and reached four different answers, each of which it has since declined to withdraw. The desk's standing position, printed on its correspondence, is that "the hour is the hour" — a phrase traced to Clerk Amaranth Vey, who is recorded as having written it in exasperation and who later attempted to have the phrase struck from her own correspondence. The request was refused on the grounds that it had become authoritative.

The Annexes and the Schedule of Lapsed Instruments

Eleven annexes were appended between 3413 and 3424. Annexes 1 through 6 are procedural and concern the registration of provisional appointments. Annexes 7 and 8 concern the custody of seals during interregna and have never been applied, as no interregnum of the kind they describe has occurred since their enactment. Annex 9 concerns the disposal of documents that have been sealed twice, and Annex 10 was appended to correct Annex 9, which had misdescribed the disposal procedure in a way that would have required the destruction of the originals. Annex 11 confirms that Annex 10 applies retrospectively, "as though Annex 9 had always said what Annex 10 says it should have said," which is the formulation the drafting office has used in every corrective instrument since.

The Schedule of Lapsed Instruments, bound at the rear of the 89th, lists forty-two instruments whose authority expired before the founding text was sealed. The schedule was appended in error and has been retained because removing it would require a Concordance Update, and no Librarian has been willing to spend one on a schedule. It is consulted more often than the founding text.

Dispute with the Metrological Accord

The 89th's most persistent difficulty is its relationship with the Metrological Accord, which fixes the dimensions of the Tower's standard measuring rods. Clause 6 of the 89th provides that "documents shall be transferred in a container of adequate size," without defining adequacy. The ninth Concordance had defined adequacy by reference to the Metrological Accord's rod; the 89th neither adopts nor repeals that definition, and the Reconciliation desk has treated its silence as both an endorsement and an omission, depending on the year.

The matter came to a head in 3419, when a consignment of instruments was transferred between floors in a container one measure short of the rod and the receiving clerk refused delivery. The delivering clerk cited the 89th; the receiving clerk cited the Accord; both were correct. The consignment remained on the landing for nine days and was ultimately catalogued as a fixture, which it remains.

Relationship to the Numbered Concordances

The 89th is frequently confused with the ninth Concordance on account of the numeral, and with the twenty-second on account of its habit of self-amendment. Neither confusion has been corrected in the general catalogue. It bears no relation to the Fifth, which was superseded in its entirety by later instruments, nor to the Seventh, which the Concordance Update Y54315445 retroactively reconciled with the Fifth and which the 89th does not mention.

The 89th's status relative to the First is contested. The First is held to be prior to all numbering, and the 89th to be subsequent to all numbering but prior to all correction. The Concordance Amendment Tracking office maintains a register of the 89th's amendments that has never been reconciled with the 89th itself, and the register's keeper has stated in writing that this is deliberate. "The register records what was done," she wrote in 3421, "and the Concordance records what should have been done. They are kept apart so that neither is obliged to answer for the other."

Use and Standing

The 89th is cited most often in disputes over seals impressed by clerks who were, at the time, uncertain whether they were clerks. It has been cited in eleven hundred and six recorded proceedings and has determined the outcome of nine. Its authority is not questioned, only its meaning. Readers consulting it are reminded that the founding text is held on Floor 2041 and may be examined by appointment; the annexes are held on Floor 2041 as well, in a different cabinet; the schedule is held wherever it was last seen. Visitors are asked to sign the register in ink and not to remove the pen.