Concordance 16

Concordance 16 is a numbered instrument of the Concordance series, promulgated on Floor 2214 and held in the ordinary circulation of the Concordance Amendment Tracking office. It is best known not for its text, which is short, but for its status: Concordance 16 is the only instrument in the surviving series that has been ruled to have never taken effect, while simultaneously being cited as governing authority in no fewer than forty-one later amendments. It runs to four clauses and a schedule, and is bound in the standard grey boards of the middle series.

Contents

The whole of Concordance 16 concerns the disposition of a single disputed stairhead on Floor 2215, one landing above its place of promulgation. The first clause establishes that the stairhead is to be regarded as belonging to the lower floor; the second establishes that it is to be regarded as belonging to the upper floor; the third establishes that both preceding clauses are to be read together; and the fourth, in its entirety, reads: "Where clauses 1 and 2 admit of no joint reading, the Schedule shall be read in their place." The Schedule is blank. It has been blank since promulgation, and the Quill of Concordance is recorded as having been returned to its case the same evening.

Clause 3 was appended by hand at a later date and in a different ink. The drafting hand has never been identified, though the Third Concordance, Annex VII permits the inference that the annotator held some office on the upper floor, since the ink is of a stock issued only above Floor 2200.

Coming into force

Concordance 16 was submitted for entry into force under the procedure of the Second Concordance, and would have been valid under it. Before the entry could be sealed, the Third Concordance superseded the Second Concordance in its entirety, and did so in terms that voided any instrument "pending but not sealed at the hour of supersession." Concordance 16 was pending at that hour. It has, by consequence, never been in force.

The difficulty is that the entry clerk, one Hesper Alve, sealed it anyway. Alve's own note in the day-book for 14 Frost, Y54315388, reads: "Sealed against the supersession, on the ground that the stairhead would otherwise be ungoverned over the winter." The stairhead was not, in fact, ungoverned, being already covered by the Fourth Concordance; Alve's note is the earliest known instance of a clerk resolving a Concordance question by reference to the weather.

The Alve dispute

Whether Alve's seal gave Concordance 16 effect has divided the Concordance Reconciliation office for over a century. The majority position, set out by the reconciliation clerk Marn Vey in the recension of Y54400210, holds that a void instrument cannot be revived by the act of the officer whose seal it required, on the principle that "the seal follows the instrument and does not lead it" (Concordance 23, as amended). The minority, argued most fully by the annotator of 892, holds that since the stairhead has been administered under Concordance 16 without interruption since Alve's seal, the instrument has acquired force by exercise, and cites Concordance 7 in support — though Concordance 33 cross-references Concordance 7 for a different purpose altogether, and the citation is thought to be an error.

"The instrument was void, the seal was void, and the winter was cold. Of the three, only the third has any bearing on the stairhead, which remains on the lower floor."

— Marn Vey, Recension of Y54400210, Concordance Reconciliation

The dispute is not academic. Concordance 22 superseded Concordance 23 in its entirety, which removed the very clause Vey relied upon; the reconciliation office has since continued to cite it, on the ground that a clause used to void an instrument cannot itself be voided without unsettling every instrument voided under it. No ruling has been issued. A notice on the office door asks visitors not to raise the stairhead.

Interaction with the later series

Concordance 16 is expressly preserved, notwithstanding its void status, by Concordance 3, which lists it among instruments "to be read where convenient." Concordance 91.5.02 was appended to that family of instruments by Concordance Update Y54315445, and the Update's nullification of the Lost Concordance Faction's reclassification efforts did not extend to Concordance 16; the Faction had sought to place it in the void series and failed, partly because Alve's seal had been entered in the register twice, in two different hands, neither of which was Alve's.

The Fifteenth Concordance refers in passing to "the instrument of the stairhead," without number. Concordance IX is silent on the matter, and the Fifth Concordance — which suggests Concordance IX may have been promulgated between the Third Concordance and the Seventh Concordance — offers no guidance, though it is frequently quoted as though it did. Concordance Zero is not relevant.

Physical record and current holding

The original of Concordance 16 is held in the middle-series press on Floor 2214, in grey boards, with the seal of Alve affixed at the lower margin and a second, unidentified seal beneath it. The second seal bears no office mark and is described in the press inventory only as "smaller." The instrument may be consulted by any Librarian of the third grade or above, on presentation of the ordinary chit. The stairhead itself is closed for repair and has been since the winter in question.

Concordance 16 is not to be confused with the Sixteenth Recension, which concerns it at length and which no one has read.