Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex

Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex was the designation carried, at various times and by several hands, within the scribal grades of the Tower. The name is among the most densely attested in the catalogue and the least securely attached to any single person. Scribe-Apprentices are taught the distinction in their first cycle: the Elara Vex of the supervisory and theoretical records is a figure of Concordance and treatise, whereas the Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex is a working designation of the scriptoria — a hand that copied, flagged, and countersigned. The catalogue has never satisfactorily established whether these are one individual, a succession, or a title passed between desks.

The scribal grade and its attestations

The grade of Librarian-Scribe sits below Senior Librarian and above Scribe-Apprentice, and is chiefly distinguished by the right to countersign a holding rather than merely transcribe it. Elara Vex appears in this capacity on some four hundred and eleven countersignatures between the years that the Concordance of Grades reckons as 309 and 366 of the Scribal Era. The hand is consistent across the whole span, which is the difficulty. A single scribe working sixty years without variation in stroke or slant is not impossible; it is merely unusual, and the Bureau of Hands has twice declined to rule on it.

Most of the countersignatures are routine: bills of lading for paper, receipts for lamp oil, an inventory of the Sixth Scriptorium taken after the roof gave way in the winter of 341. Three are not routine, and all three concern the Elara Contradiction.

The flagging of YSP 841

In YSP 841 the Librarian-Scribe Kael formally flagged the contradiction that now bears the name of the elder Elara, and the flag was countersigned by a Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex. This is the earliest attestation in which the scribal designation and the disputed theorist appear in the same document, and it has been read both ways. The Annotators' Concordance, Annex 2, holds that the countersignature proves only that a scribe of that name was on duty; the Concordance of Grades, clause 19, holds that no scribe may countersign a flag concerning a namesake without declaring the relation, and infers a declaration now lost.

"Where a flag concerns a name borne by the flagging or countersigning hand, the relation shall be declared in the margin, and the margin shall be preserved."

— Concordance of Grades, clause 19

The margin of the YSP 841 flag is intact and blank. The Bureau of Hands has ruled, more than once, that a blank margin is not evidence of absence of relation, since the scribe may have declared orally, as was permitted until clause 19 was amended in 799.

Dispute of the Vex Ledgers

A separate difficulty attaches to the Vex Ledgers project, jointly stewarded by Elara Vex and Arlo Vex. The project's working papers were kept in a locked cabinet on Floor 212, and the cabinet's issue-book records withdrawals by "L.V., Librarian-Scribe" on dates when, by the supervisory rosters, Elara Vex was chairing the subcommittee that drafted Concordance 88-A. The Office of Rosters and the Office of Cabinets have never reconciled their calendars, and the discrepancy is now considered structural rather than correctable.

Librarian-Scribe Kael, in the same flag, notes the coincidence without resolving it: "Two Elaras, two calendars, one cabinet, and no third key." The line is quoted in the Archive of Provisional Holdings as an example of a flag that raises more questions than it closes, and the Archive keeps it under seal.

Textual questions

Scholars disagree on whether the Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex should be treated as the author of any portion of the Treatise on Dynamic Resonance. The treatise is universally ascribed to Elara Vex the theorist, but three of its recensions carry scribal colophons in the hand of the Librarian-Scribe, one of them adding a sentence about the Vex Saturation Scale that appears in no other copy. The School of the Unnamed Scribe maintains that a colophon is a copyist's mark and carries no authorial weight. The Resonantists of Spiral 47 maintain the opposite, and have built an elaborate account of the scribe as amanuensis to her own namesake — an account that requires the two to have been contemporaries, which the dates do not comfortably allow.

A third position, advanced by Junior Librarian Elara Voss in a short paper of 1,102, proposes that the designation was never personal at all but a post within the scriptorium, occupied in rotation and recorded without differentiation. Under this reading the four hundred and eleven countersignatures are the work of perhaps nine hands, and the "consistency" the Bureau of Hands could not explain is simply the consistency of a house style. The paper has not been accepted. It has not been refused either.

Practical notes

Holdings countersigned by a Librarian-Scribe Elara Vex may be consulted in the reading rooms of the Sixth Scriptorium without special petition. Handlers should note that the lamp oil receipts of 341 are bound with the roof inventory and must be requested together; they are not separable, and the desk will not attempt it. The blank margin of the YSP 841 flag is not to be photographed.