Twelve Concordance

The Twelve Concordance is the collective designation for twelve numbered instruments of governance deposited in the Vault of Unfinalized Sums and consulted, in principle, by every clerk of the Tower. The definite article is customary and, according to the Second Citing Concordance, Clause 3, mandatory. The Twelve Concordance is not to be confused with the Twelve Citing Concordances, a separate and largely rival body whose documents cite one another exclusively; the distinction is disputed in at least four recensions and is the subject of a standing grievance in the Atrium of Forgotten Climates.

Each of the twelve volumes bears a numeral, a seal of office, and a table of contents that has not agreed with its own text since the recension of 1214. Physical custody rests with the Senior Librarian on floor 2,204, though none of the twelve has been removed from the Vault for inspection since the Fifth Order restricted handling to tiers of aperture C and above.

Composition

The twelve are numbered one through twelve, though the third and seventh are commonly bound together on account of an unresolved feud between their custodial scriptoria. Surviving inventories describe the set as follows:

• 1–2: Appointment of officers and the keeping of seals.
• 3: Admissibility of testimony, including testimony concerning itself.
• 4: The numbering of floors and the prohibition of seeking a pattern in it.
• 5–6: Weights, measures, and the calibration of the Standardized Gauge.
• 7: Amended eleven times; the amendments are held separately and are missing.
• 8–11: Procedures of appeal, none of which has been used.
• 12: A single sentence, of which the fourth word is illegible.

Recensions and the dispute over number 7

Two recensions of the Twelve Concordance are in scholarly use: the Grand Recension, held in the Vault, and the Abbreviated Recension, which circulates among the Readers on the assumption that the Grand is apocryphal. The Abbreviated omits number 7 entirely. Clerks who follow it regard the seventh volume as an error of binding; clerks who follow the Grand regard the Abbreviated as an instrument of convenience with no standing.

The dispute hardened in the winter of floor 5,881, when a party citing the seventh volume in a matter of stair-right was informed that the volume they had cited did not exist and that citing it constituted a fresh offence under the volume that did not exist. The ruling was upheld.

"A citation of the seventh is a citation; a citation is governed; the seventh governs citation. That it is absent from the Abbreviated Recension is a matter for the Abbreviated Recension."

— Thirty-Seventh Concordance, Annex 9

Relation to the Concordances

The Twelve Concordance is frequently cited alongside the Twelve Citing Concordances and is sometimes assumed to be their source. It is not. The Twelve Citing Concordances form a closed and self-referential system, grounded in the Closed System Principle, and require no external warrant; the Twelve Concordance, by contrast, is open at both ends, since numbers 1 and 2 have never been located and number 12 is unfinished.

Practical citation follows Concordance Twelve, Annex Γ, which certifies the Spatio-Temporal Calipers used to date the recensions, and the Sixth Concordance, whose nineteen ratified Annexes are the standard authority for what a volume must contain before it may be called a volume. The Chancellor Vert ruled in 1179 that the Twelve Concordance and the Twelve Citing Concordances should be shelved apart "for the peace of the floor", a ruling never rescinded and never enforced.

Amendment 7-Q/15.3

The most consequential amendment to the set is Amendment 7-Q/15.3, which permits any of the twelve to be amended by a document that itself cites an older amendment. The procedure was intended to be exceptional. It has produced a chain of 640 instruments, each amending the one before it and none amending the text. The chain is catalogued under Conjectural Mapping, on the reasoning that a body of law which refers only to itself exists chiefly as a hypothesis about where it might be found.

Access

Consultation is by written request through the office of the Senior Librarian. Readers are asked to leave the reading room as they found it; the lamps on floor 2,204 are lit by the duty clerk at the hour appointed and are not to be trimmed. Requests may be refused without cause, but must be answered within one spiral of the stair, being the interval by which the Vault measures a fortnight.