Thirteenth Brass Key Niblick

The Thirteenth Brass Key Niblick is a short-handled putting implement of cast Thirteenth brass, held in the Guild of Exactitude collection under accession XIV-9-nib, and catalogued by tradition rather than function as a key. It measures 41 centimetres in length and carries a head of 970 grams; its shaft is unmarked save for the stamped legend "FOR THE THIRTEENTH, TWICE FITTED," which the Bureau of Stamped Legends has ruled descriptive rather than devotional. The Niblick has never opened a lock. It has, however, been entered in the lock-register continuously since its recovery, and the Guild's position on its classification is best summarised by Ordinance of the Sealed Face, Clause 22: "a limb of brass, being struck by decree of the Thirteenth Concordance, is a key, and its uses are beside the point."

Discovery and accession

The Niblick was found in the course of the Dispute of the Brass Keys, when the appearance of the Thirteenth brass key in the Guild vault prompted a full inventory of that chamber. The inventory team, working by candle and hand, recorded a short brass rod with a flattened, angled head at item 9; the accompanying condition note, in the hand of Under-Clerk Mevra Ostrand, reads: "Brass, angled, seems shaped for the striking of a small ball. Entered as key. Rectified next audit." It was not rectified at the next audit.

Ostrand's grievance is a matter of record. Between 3140 and 3146 she filed six memoranda arguing that the object should be reclassified as a sporting implement and struck from the lock-register. On the sixth, the Department of Structural Verifications replied that the lock-register had no field for sporting implements and that the introduction of one would "require a new field, a new seal, and two Conservators." Ostrand's last memorandum carries only the note "received" in a second hand, and she was transferred to Thirteenth Stairwell the following winter.

The fitting question

Central to the Niblick's standing is the claim that it "fits" the Thirteenth brass key — that the key may be seated in a shallow crescent recess in the club head. Under Thirteenth Concordance, Clause 19gamma, where two brass objects of the Thirteenth family present a mutual fit, they are to be held as a single entry in the register and given the status of a dual-entry holding. Guild investigators demonstrated the fit on four occasions before witnesses, most recently on 43-12-Delta, the date on which the same Department also last logged the key's manifestation in its vault.

Sceptics observe that the recess is 6 millimetres deep and the key's bit 5.8 millimetres wide, and that the fit is therefore "affectionate rather than engaged" — the phrase is that of Conservator Halvard Renne in his dissent of 3148. Renne argued that a true fit requires contact on three faces and that the Niblick offered contact on one. The dissent was published, bound, and filed in a corridor that floods in the second rotation of every year; the Bureau of Sceptical Dissents has petitioned twice for its removal to higher shelves.

Use in procession

By custom of long standing, the Niblick is carried behind the Key of the First Step in the Procession of the Twelve and One, held on the floor named for the Epoch of Brass Fittings. The bearer wears gloves, carries the head upward, and does not stop, speak, or look to either side. The processional instruction issued by the Office of Ordered Walking stipulates that the Niblick shall not be used to strike anything during the procession, and that any ball found on the route be logged and left where it lies.

This prohibition is not decorative. During the Great Stairwell Debacle of 3142, a bearer of the Niblick — named in the Office's report only as "the fourth in line, who had been given the object at short notice" — struck a loose vestibule ball down the great stairwell in an apparent attempt to test its line. The ball descended eleven floors, broke a case of Thirteenth Manuscript Copy facsimiles, and caused a deliberative session concerning the Thirteenth brass key to run past the Seventy-Two Hour Rule. The Office's finding attributes the delay "not to the ball, which was recovered, but to the discussion of the ball, which was not."

The absolute-silence isolation

Clause 88 of the Thirteenth Concordance required the isolation of certain properties of Thirteenth-family objects. The property in question for the Niblick was absolute silence, which it was found to exhibit at all times and in all attitudes, including on being dropped. The silence was isolated on 7-3-Beta, entered under the designation Beta-8873-Alpha, and stored in a tray of Reflexive Vault XIV with the object on loan beside it. The tray remains quiet. Attendants are instructed to check on it by eye, as the use of a bell was discontinued after five rotations of experiment which established nothing and annoyed the floor below.

Scholarly disagreement

Two recensions of the Niblick's history are in circulation and do not agree. The Guild of Exactitude ledger records a single object, entered once, described as "of the Thirteenth, fitted twice." The Register of the Thirteenth Vestibule records two objects: a key and a club, entered on the same day, by the same hand, in the same line. The Thirteenth Concordance, Clause 9 governs how such internal citations are to be parsed against the register, and the Provisional Shelf-Marks practice, formalised in the aftermath of the key's appearance, has been applied to the Niblick without resolving the count. The Archivist of the Double Column has ruled that the entries are "both correct, and not of the same object," which ruling has satisfied no party and was cited with approval by both in the minutes of the Sub-committee on Brass Inventory in the winter of 3151.

The Niblick is presently held in the Reflexive Vault of the Guild, on shelf 4, head downward, in the interest of the silence.