Master-Inkmaker

Master-Inkmaker is the lifetime office charged with the custody, formulation, and recension of all inks admitted to the permanent catalogue of the Tower. The Master-Inkmaker is the only person, together with three appointed deputies, permitted entry to the inner sanctum of the Annex Scriptorium, where the undiluted base inks are kept under seal. The office is recognised in the Master Folio as anterior to the Master Scribes and is enumerated among the immovable offices in the Master Roll of Operational Dictates.

Appointment and Custodianship

The Master-Inkmaker is chosen by the Provenance Master from among the senior Master Mixers, following a closed weighing of the Master Ledger of Inks. The selection is ratified by a sealed minute entered into the Master Log of Amendments, after which the new holder is conducted to the inner sanctum by the Master Index (person) and invested with the Black Quill of the Eighth Spiral. Provenance Master Kael, who oversaw the creation of the Master Copy of Clause 19, is recorded in the Master Roll of Primary Registrants as having appointed four Master-Inkmakers across a single uninterrupted winter, owing to a dispute then current between the Master Chronometer and the Master Orthographic Table Document over the dating of pigment arrivals.

"No ink shall be admitted to the catalogue whose provenance cannot be recited by the Master-Inkmaker from memory, without recourse to the ledgers, on the third bell of the deep watch."

— Second Concordance, Clause 11, Annex 2

The Inner Sanctum of the Annex Scriptorium

The inner sanctum is described in the Master Folio as extending inward rather than upward, a condition the Master Chrono-Refractors have never reconciled with the Tower's otherwise vertical taxonomy. Only the Master-Inkmaker and the three deputies may cross the Aperture of Delta there. The deputies are nominated by the Master-Inkmaker and recorded in the Master Index for Provisional Holdings until such time as the Master Index Document confirms their standing. A visitor found beyond the Aperture without the Master-Inkmaker's token is subject to erasure from the Master Floor Index, a penalty last enacted on Floor 4471-B during the Warm Silence.

It is forbidden to bring a consumed meal into the inner sanctum; the crumbs were found to alter the settling rate of the violet recensions.

Disputes over the Master Ledger of Inks

The Master Mixers maintain the Master Ledger of Inks in perpetuity, yet the Third Concordance holds that the Master-Inkmaker's seasonal recension supersedes the Ledger where the two disagree, while the Master Index asserts the reverse under a clause the Master Indices have been unable to locate in the present recension. The Master Amendment Log records fourteen such contradictions, of which only three were resolved by the Master Log of Amendments.

In the year of the Long Draft, the Master-Inkmaker declared a blue then carried in the Ledger as "Winter External" to be instead "Winter Interior," a change the Master Scribes refused to copy. The resulting fracture was settled by the Master Chronometer, which ruled that the ink's name should follow the reading of the Master Ticker Tape at the hour of its manufacture, a document the Master Chronometer legally references but which the Master Orthographic Table Document does not acknowledge.

Scholarly Disagreement on the Office's Antiquity

A point of continuing disagreement concerns whether the Master-Inkmaker precedes the Master Index (person) or derives from it. The Master Index (document) implies the office was instituted to supply the Master Index Object with a permanent medium, and thus is subordinate to the Master Index (person). The Second Concordance, however, states plainly that "the ink was before the page, and the Maker before the Keeper," a phrasing the Master Scribes (person) have never amended despite a petition from the Master Mixers for emeritus status lodged through the Master Scribes. The Master Roll of Operational Dictates preserves both readings without reconciliation.

Incidents and Anomalies

On Floor 8892, during the census of the grey washes, the Master-Inkmaker's deputy for the eastern seals was discovered to have substituted a catalogue ink with one not entered in the Master Ledger of Inks. The Provenance Master ordered the deputy's name struck from the Master Roll of Primary Registrants, and the ink itself was archived under the Master Index for Provisional Holdings as "Unrecited." The incident is cited in the Master Amendment Log as precedent for the requirement that all three deputies countersign the seasonal recension held in the Annex Scriptorium.

The present Master-Inkmaker has held the office since the closing of the Master Copy of Clause 19 and is, by the Master Chronometer, in the thirty-first year of the recension cycle governed by the Master Ticker Tape.