Ebon Legions

The Ebon Legions are the standing military formations of the Stratocracy of the Silent Citadel, comprising nine legions of the Citadel's lower tiers and a residual tenth, the Tenth Legion, whose legal status has been disputed since 411. The name is administrative rather than descriptive: legionaries are issued no black, and have not been since Concordance 707-Alpha restricted the wearing of ebon dye to the Librarians and their delegates. The colour survives in the name alone, a fact the High Curator's office has declined to correct on the grounds that "the correction would require a further name, and names are dearer than colours" (Letter of the High Curator to the Stratocracy, 4 Ember, an. 388).

Formation and the Silent Banner

The Legions were raised in the aftermath of the Ascent of the First Archon, when the Archon required of the Castes of the Citadel a levy that could be counted, moved, and — the phrasing of the founding instrument recurs — "put somewhere other than the Citadel." Each legion is sworn to the Silent Banner of the Whispering Galleries, carried at the head of the column but unwrapped in camp and examined only by the legion's own standard-bearer and the Citadel's quartermaster. The Legions march under the Banner without ever having seen it entire; the standard-bearers report annually to the High Curator that the Banner is "present and undamaged," a formula preserved from the earliest returns.

Numbering of the nine active legions runs I to IX, but in no established order. The Third Legion predates the First by some forty years; the Sixth was renumbered twice and is entered in the rolls under a notation that the archive has never clarified. The Stratocracy's position is that a legion's number records its place in the line of precedence, "which is not a line of time and should not be read as one" (Concordance 501-Omega, Annex 12).

Recruitment and the Caste Levy

Legionaries are drawn from the Castes of the Citadel in proportions fixed by the Obsidian Decree and audited every quarter. The levy is not large; the Legions' function is understood to be presence rather than force, and the last recorded instance of the Ebon Legions engaging anything occurred in the winter of 337, when the Fourth was deployed against an inventory clerk named Corvin Hesk, who had disputed the muster of a supply column and was, in the event, correct. Hesk was returned to his desk within the season. The Legions' field record for the year reads "engaged; sustained; concluded." The Stratocracy has never elaborated on the entry, and Lysander the Circumspect cites it as the model instance of "a victory that need not be described in order to be complete" (Commentaries on the Decrees, XXII.4).

Command and the War of the Two Annexes

The Legions answer to the Stratocracy of the Silent Citadel, but their musters, rations, and billeting are administered by the Citadel's own quartermaster, an office that reports to the Librarians in the person of the High Curator. The arrangement produced the War of the Two Annexes (an. 402–409), a dispute between two contradictory annexes of Concordance 501-Omega concerning who may order a legion to move. Annex 6 empowers the Stratocracy; Annex 9 reserves to the High Curator "the disposition of any body of the Legions exceeding two in number." The Legions spent seven years unable to move in files of three and, by all accounts, the arrangement suited them. It was settled — the records say "clarified," which in the Citadel is a word of great finality — by Concordance 707-Alpha in its closing clause, which authorises the Stratocracy to move up to four legions and the High Curator to object in writing. Objections are filed. The Legions have not moved since.

Dispute over the Tenth Legion

The tenth legion was struck from the rolls in 411 following an accounting irregularity in its stores that no one has since explained, though the Obsidian Decree and an amendment in Concordance 501-Omega together appear to permit its reinstatement. The Tenth Legion maintains musters, files returns, and draws rations on the strength of that permission. The Stratocracy does not recognise it. The High Curator does, in writing, and only that. The Tenth's standard-bearer carries a folded bundle, unwrapped by no one, and the archive records its annual report as "present and undamaged," the same formula used for the the Banner — a coincidence that has caused considerable inconvenience in the rolls.

Uniform, routine, and stores

Legionaries are issued grey, with a shoulder marking in the legion's own numeral. The legions on the eastern stairs wear a second marking, a narrow white bar, indicating that they have completed the stair inspection required of all bodies stationed above the fourth landing; the bar is sewn on the sleeve and not the breast, so that it is visible when the legionary is climbing and invisible when they are standing at ease. This is the only distinction of colour in the Legions' dress, and the only one they are permitted to manufacture themselves.

Few routine prohibitions attach to the Ebon Legions. One is worth recording because it recurs in every quartermaster's instruction and in every recension of the muster forms: no legion may be billeted on Floor 501 during the audit of that floor's registers, which is conducted each year and lasts as long as it lasts. The Third Legion, billeted there in 388, spent eleven months on the landing outside. It did not complain, and the quartermaster's return for that year notes only that the supplies had been "delivered to the stairs."

Contemporary standing

The Legions remain the largest organised body in the lower Citadel and the least employed. Their returns are filed with the High Curator, copied to the Stratocracy, and — no one is certain by whom — entered in the registers of Floor 707 and Floor 821, where they are bound in order of receipt rather than of legion. The archive's holdings for the Ebon Legions are consequently spread across fourteen volumes and cannot be consulted as a whole. A reader seeking a complete account is directed to take the volumes in hand, note the numeral on each shoulder of each return, and sort them — a labour the Librarians have reviewed and declined to perform, recording in the margin that "the Legions are already numbered, and it is not the archive's office to number them again."

"The Ebon Legions are present. They are undamaged. No further return is required this season."

— High Curator, Annual Return of the Muster, an. 439