Auxiliary Bellows System

The Auxiliary Bellows System is the collective designation for the twenty-six hand-operated pressure assemblies that service the upper registries of the Major Stairs and the ceremonial installations of the Spire. It is governed by Third Concordance Annex 9 (air supply) and, since the events described below, by Directive 55.1.3, which assigns its ceremonial operation to the High Cardiarch. The System is not to be confused with the Auxiliary Plumbing Guild, which has sought on four occasions to absorb it and been refused on each.

Composition

The System comprises nineteen working bellows, four in refitting at any given time, two sealed pending inquest, and one—the so-called Ninth Pair—whose existence is recorded in the inventory but which no expedition has located. Each working bellows is rated to a delivery of two hundred and forty cubic feet per minute at the lever, falling to one hundred and ten at the manifold where the leather has been relined. Relining is performed by the Cartographers' Auxiliary on the grounds that bellows leather is a drafting supply; the Auxiliary Plumbing Guild disputes this reading annually and annually loses.

Operation is by pairs. A bellows pair is worked by two attendants at four-minute intervals, relieved in rotation from a Stairwell muster station. Relief is not permitted to overlap with the recitation of the floor's closing inventory.

The Ninth Pair

Attestations to the Ninth Pair date from the winter of T.Y. 3089, when a relief party on the upper landings returned with an inventory sheet bearing a ninth aperture stamp and no corresponding bellows. Three subsequent Cartographers’ Auxiliary Deep-Descent Expeditions confirmed the stamp and failed to confirm the bellows. The Register of Unfulfilled Introductions holds eleven entries pertaining to the matter, the earliest in the hand of a clerk identified only as Factotum-Nine.

In T.Y. 3111 the Intermittent Auxiliary proposed that the Ninth Pair be struck from the inventory as a scribal error of the 3089 relief. The proposal was defeated after a counter-reading of Third Concordance Annex 9, Clause 4, which forbids the deletion of any air-supply entry while a sealed inquest remains open. Six inquests remain open. The Ninth Pair accordingly remains on the books, drawing its quarterly allowance of tallow and cord, both of which are received and stored.

"An entry that draws stores is an entry that exists. Whether it draws air is a separate question and not one this office is empowered to put."

— High Curator Elara, ruling of T.Y. 3112

Directive 55.1.3 and the High Cardiarch

For three centuries the ceremonial inflation of the Spire's great air-vessel at the opening of the assizes was performed by the senior bellows-master of the System. High Curator Elara transferred the duty to the High Cardiarch by Directive 55.1.3, on the reasoning that the ceremony is a matter of the vessel and the vessel a matter of the chest. The bellows-masters did not contest the transfer of the honour but did contest the transfer of the liability, since the great vessel burst at the assizes of T.Y. 3116 and the question of whose seal appeared on the relining certificate took two years to settle.

The settlement, recorded in the Twelfth Adjustment as a collateral note, places the liability on the office that holds the lever at the moment of delivery. The High Cardiarch has since declined to hold the lever in person, and the duty is discharged by a deputy whose name is entered in the day-book and struck out the following morning.

Dispute over administration

Administration of the System rotates on the same biannual cycle as the 44-7.B auxiliary filing system, by the terms of the Truce of the Silent Corridor. The Scrivener’s Auxiliary therefore holds the System for two quarters, and the Intermittent Auxiliary for the next two, and neither has ever completed a full relining cycle before handing over. The result, noted without comment in the Spiral Decimal System maintenance ledger, is that the leather is older at the end of each administration than it was at the beginning.

Scholars disagree on the root of the dispute. The received view, following the Indexing Guild's marginalia, holds that the Auxiliary Plumbing Guild's claim is jurisdictional and turns on the definition of a conduit. A minority reading, advanced in the annotated Eleventh Concordance and never formally refuted, holds that the Scrivener's Auxiliary has opposed the transfer simply because the Intermittent Auxiliary proposed it, and would have opposed its own succession if the calendar had fallen differently. The Factotum-Third is on record as finding the minority reading "unprovable and entirely consistent with the minutes."

Maintenance notes

Relining requests are lodged at the Auxiliary Stacks desk and require two signatures, neither of which may be the requester's. Left-hand bellows are relined on the odd-numbered landings and right-hand on the even; the Eastern Auxiliary Ladder is used for both, and attendants are reminded that the ladder does not count as a signature. Spilled tallow is to be reported to the Stairwell station before it is cleaned. The Ninth Pair is not to be relined.