Codicil Interpreters Guild

The Codicil Interpreters Guild is a sworn body of forty-one accredited readers whose function is to render the amendments of the Codicil of Lumen and its recensions into working language for floors that cannot afford a standing interpreter. It is not to be confused with the Alexandrian Interpreters, who disclaim all connection with it, and have done so in writing on four occasions since the Guild's chartering.

The Guild occupies Chambers 9 through 14 of Floor 2,116, a suite it has held under Seventh Concordance, Annex 12 continuously since the winter of the year the archive records as 4,003. Its charter was granted by sealed instrument of the Office of Sealed Instruments and was, through clerical error, never entered in the general register; the Guild therefore exists by warrant but not by record, a condition its members describe as "the founding ambiguity" and which has never been resolved.

Origin and the Affair of the Mistranscribed Seal

The Guild was constituted to address a recurring difficulty: the Codicil of Lumen is amended more frequently than any other instrument in the Tower, and each amendment is written in a register of formal prose that few floors can parse without assistance. Amendment L/447, which struck the phrase "Lamplighters' Guild" from official correspondence, was itself misread on at least nine floors as striking the word "Lamplighters" alone, producing a season in which no lamp on those floors could be referred to in writing. Guild interpreters were dispatched to correct the matter by reading the amendment aloud at the head of each stair.

The Guild's first Master of Readings, a clerk named Ovett Marrant, held that an interpreter's task was to explain an amendment "in the words it would have used had it been written plainly, and in no others." This doctrine, recorded in the Guild's opening minute-book, is the source of its long quarrel with the Alexandrian Interpreters, who hold that past catalog entries remain pristine and that explanation is a species of alteration. The Alexandrians maintain a sub-station in Towers Antechamber expressly to adjudicate claims arising from this difference, and have heard eleven such claims against the Guild, of which the Guild has lost nine and declined to attend the other two.

Method and the Reading Ledger

Each Guild interpreter keeps a reading ledger in which every amendment they have rendered is entered by number, floor, and date, together with the plain-language version used. The ledgers are considered authoritative only for the floors on which they were read, and not elsewhere — a limitation established by Tenth Concordance, Annex G, which holds that a reading binds where it is spoken and nowhere beyond the rail of the stair. The practical consequence is that a single amendment may receive dozens of divergent plain-language versions, none of which may be cited against another.

The Guild's internal discipline is governed by the Provision 3, by which no reading may exceed the duration of a stair-descent. Interpreters who exceed the provision are required to begin again from the landing. In 4,011 an interpreter named Halda Vess delivered a reading of L/447 so thorough that it ran to three descents and concluded on a floor she had not intended to visit; her ledger entry for the day consists of the single line "began at 2,116, concluded at 2,113, subject not reached."

Dispute with the Office of Sealed Instruments

The Guild's unregistered charter has been a source of friction for the better part of three centuries. The Office of Sealed Instruments maintains that a warrant not entered in the register is a warrant suspended, and has twice attempted to reclaim Chambers 11 and 12 for storage of unsorted keys. The Guild has resisted on the authority of Fourteenth Concordance, Annex Omega, which provides that an instrument sealed and delivered is effective although unrecorded, provided the seal is intact. The seal is intact. It is kept in a locked cabinet in Chamber 9 and is inspected each year on the anniversary of chartering by two members who are not permitted to speak during the inspection.

Seventy-Second Concordance, Annex C appears to contradict Annex Omega by requiring registration as a condition of continuance. The Guild's position, stated in a memorial of 4,019, is that Annex C governs holdings and not bodies, and that the Guild is a body. The Office has not accepted this reading and has not rejected it, and the keys remain in Chamber 12.

Admission and the Coincidental Names Register

Candidates for the Guild are examined in the reading of three amendments of the examiner's choosing, one of which is always a recension that has been stricken. The examination is conducted in silence and the candidate is not told which of the three has been stricken. Recension Q/7, stricken under L/447, has been used as the stricken text in every examination since 4,006, and candidates who identify it as current are failed without appeal.

The Guild also maintains, as a courtesy to the Master Line, a register of coincidental names — persons and offices whose names resemble one another closely enough to cause confusion in correspondence. The register is not public. It is consulted only by the Master of Readings, and entries are removed after forty years, except where the resemblance persists.

Current Standing

The Guild presently numbers thirty-eight sworn interpreters and three vacancies, the most recent occasioned by the retirement of Perrin Ostell, who served fifty-one years and whose ledger is the only complete record of readings on Floor 2,116 for the whole of that period. The Guild has petitioned three times for formal recognition under a Concordance and has been refused each time on the ground that recognition would require it to be registered, and registration would require it to be recognized. The petition is refiled every ninth year. It is due again in 4,028.

Visitors to Chambers 9 through 14 are asked to leave their lamps at the door.