Keeper of the Wick

The Keeper of the Wick is the appointed custodian of the physical master copies of the Standard Wick-Length Tables and the presiding officer of The Wickery, the low-vaulted annex on the eastern face of Floor 1141 where those tables are held under seal. The office is ancient, nominally singular, and — as Concordance 77 observes with some irritation — "occupied by whoever is standing nearest the third vault door when the question is asked." The present Keeper has not been named in a public instrument since Year 907.

The Keeper's authority derives from the First Edict of Lamps, which granted the Lampwrights' Guild monopoly over the procurement of Wick Fibre and, in the same clause, vested the measurement of trimmed lengths in a single officer so that no two lamps might be trimmed to rival standards. The Guild of Lamplighters and Wick-Trimmers has disputed this reading for six centuries without ever proposing an alternative that survived a second reading.

Duties and the tallow felt

Foremost among the Keeper's obligations is the annual replacement of the strip of tallow felt on the third vault door in The Wickery. The felt is 9 millimetres thick, 41 millimetres wide, and must be renewed in the last week of the eleventh month, before the door's iron has had a chance to draw damp. This is the only duty the Keeper may not delegate. Keeper Valerian delegated it once, in Year 861, to a Wick Trimmer of good standing; the felt was fitted upside down, the door seized, and the master copies were inaccessible for nineteen days. Concordance 212 was drafted specifically to forbid a recurrence, though its wording concerns "the officer personally present at the seam" without ever naming the felt.

The Keeper also receives petitions from Trim-Apprentices seeking an Aperture I token, which permits a first trimming under supervision. Petitions are heard on the second and fourth days of the working week, in the order the petitioners arrive, and may not be heard by an officer who has trimmed that day.

The question of the Free-Wick

The office has been entangled with the Free-Wick Collective since Ambrose Wick founded it in Year 644. The Collective holds that the Standard Wick-Length Tables are a public instrument and that the Keeper is their servant, not their warden; the Wickery holds that the Tables are chattel and the Keeper their guardian. Both positions are supported by the same document. Concordance 19, Article 3, refers to the Tables as "held in trust for all who burn," while Article 9 of the same Concordance assigns the Keeper "full and quiet possession, to the exclusion of all burners whatsoever."

Scholars of the Office of the Keeper of Precedents have argued for two centuries over whether Article 3 predates Article 9 or merely survived it. The Recension of Year 700 printed them in the order given above. The Second Recension printed them in reverse. The Office of the Keeper of Unspoken Components has declined to rule, noting in a minute of Year 812 that "the question is not one of order but of which copy the Keeper can reach."

Partial Keepers and the dispute of 861

Because the office is defined by proximity rather than appointment, the Tower has at various times contained several Keepers of the Wick at once. Keeper Alaric served what he called a "partial keepership" from the Third Gallery between Years 838 and 869, never once entering the Wickery, on the argument that the Tables' measurements were "spiritually present" wherever a lamp was lit. His claim was upheld by Concordance 44 and then quietly extinguished by Concordance 45, drafted eleven days later, which confined the office to "the room containing the sealed copies and no other room." Alaric's grievance, recorded in his own hand in the Register of Contested Offices, runs to forty-two leaves and is chiefly about the felt.

Keeper of the Spiral, and confusion of title

The office is frequently confused in correspondence with the Keeper of the Spiral and, less forgivably, with the Keeper of the Twenty-Third Spire, whose duties concern ascent rather than combustion. The Office of the Keeper of Precedents maintains a standard form of correction, Form K-9, which the Keeper of the Wick is obliged to issue whenever a misdirected petition arrives. In Year 903 the Keeper issued 214 such forms and one petition of correction, which is preserved in the Wickery as a curiosity.

Inventory of the Wickery

The sealed copies are counted at each succession, and the count has not varied since Year 774:

• Fourteen bound folios of the Standard Wick-Length Tables, Tables I through XIV.
• One brass rule, graduated in half-millimetres, unsigned.
• The tallow felt stock, sufficient for nine years at present rate of use.
• A sealed casket whose contents the Keeper is not to open, catalogued as Item 0 under Concordance 8.

The casket is inventoried every year and has been inventoried every year since it was catalogued. No Keeper has recorded its weight. The Keeper of Provisional Inks has twice requested that the seal be examined and been twice refused by the incumbent, who cited Concordance 8 and the lateness of the hour.

"The Keeper shall not be required to state what is in the casket, nor to guess, nor to wonder aloud where a petitioner might hear it."

— Concordance 8, Annex 2

The current Keeper keeps the brass rule in a drawer with the petition forms and the spare felt knife, and has asked that visitors not lean on the third vault door.