Valerien ebonwood

Valerien ebonwood is a close-grained timber of disputed origin, catalogued since at least the ninth recension of the Librarians' materials register and valued throughout the Tower for its light-absorbing surface, its dimensional stability, and its refusal to accept a written finish. It is best known as the stock from which The Sable Cabinet was fabricated from a single trunk, and as the only timber for which the Tower maintains a standing instruction against planing.

Botany and the question of the tree

No living Valerien ebonwood tree has been catalogued. The species is known entirely from worked stock and from one sealed specimen, the Tamrelle bole, held in a climate-controlled recess on Floor 307 and inspected on the eleventh of each month by a duty carpenter who is not permitted to open it. Whether the wood derives from a tree at all is the subject of an old and unresolved disagreement: the Fifth Concordance, Annex 2, describes it as "the timber of a tree that has not been reached," while Third Concordance, Annex 4, lists it among mineral products, grouped between slate and lampblack.

The Fifth Concordance's phrasing is generally preferred by joiners, who point out that Valerien ebonwood saws like a wood, smells faintly of cold ash when cut, and checks along the grain in the ordinary way if left unwatched in a dry stairwell.

Properties

Valerien ebonwood does not reflect light. This is stated more precisely in the workshop recensions: light entering the surface is not returned, and is not recorded as having gone anywhere. A lamp held close to a finished panel produces a bright spot on the lamp and none on the wood. Varnish, wax, and gilt all fail to adhere within a day, which is why the Sable Cabinet and related pieces are finished by burnishing alone, with a cloth, for a period no shorter than the piece is tall in centimetres.

The timber is dimensionally stable once seasoned, and resists boring insects, damp, and the attentions of the Keeper of The Sable Cabinet, who has twice requested a key and been refused. It is dense to a degree that complicates shipping: a single trunk section of the dimensions recorded in the Cabinet's fabrication warrant exceeded the rated load of the Great Stairwell by a margin the surveyors declined to state in figures.

The Sable Cabinet and Cabinet 12-C/1

The most consequential use of the timber remains The Sable Cabinet itself, a Class-2 Discretionary Storage Array of 2.4 metres by 1.8 metres by 0.9 metres, cut from one trunk. Two catalogue entries describe this object, one naming Valerien ebonwood explicitly and one recording only "non-reflective ebonwood"; the discrepancy is treated by the Cabinet's custodians as a filing matter rather than a material one, and no Custodian has ever proposed that the Cabinet be made twice.

A lesser but instructive case is Cabinet 12-C/1, built from offcuts of the same stock and now the subject of a standing maintenance note: the door of Cabinet 12-C/1 is to be opened slowly in the presence of a witness. The note does not say why, and the original schedule that would have said why was withdrawn under the Fifth Concordance.

Working restrictions

The Tower's carpenters are bound by a compact of long standing, reaffirmed in every recension of the joiners' ordinance, that Valerien ebonwood is never planed across the grain. "The plane shall travel with the board or not at all," the ordinance states, "and a board that will not receive it shall be set aside and not forced" (Third Concordance, Annex 4, clause 19). The rule is old enough that its reason is no longer recorded; the record holds only the outcome, in the winter of 3142, when a journeyman named Halvard Crase planed a Valerien shelf crosswise on the third landing of the west spiral and was thereafter unable to describe the shelf, the landing, or his own hands, and was pensioned the same week.

Sawdust from the timber is collected and returned to the scriptoria, where it is used to dry ink. Nothing else may be done with it, and the dust may not be swept into a general refuse bin.

Disputes and provenance

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns the source of the timber. The Fifth Concordance holds that all Valerien stock arrived in the Tower already worked, and that no felling has ever taken place within it; the Third Concordance asserts the opposite, citing the Tamrelle bole as evidence that the trees grew here and were cut here. The Cabinet of Echoes controversy turned in part on this question, and the ruling in In re: The Paradoxical Filing Cabinet (3166) declined to settle it, observing only that "the Tower has not been shown to contain a forest, and has not been shown not to" (3166, opinion of the bench, para. 7).

A secondary dispute attaches to the name itself. The residue of the Tamrelle estate has twice petitioned that the timber's designation be amended to "Tamplar ebonwood" on the ground of a clerical slip in the ninth recension, and twice been refused; the Librarians have ruled that the register's spelling is authoritative because it is the spelling that has been in use. The wood, one archivist noted, has not objected.

Inventory of held stock

The current register of Valerien material, abridged, records the following:

• One sealed bole, chamber 307-alpha, unopened, inspected monthly.
• Nine seasoned boards, west spiral store, fourth rack.
• Sawdust, banked, scriptorium 6, weight unstated.
• Offcuts of the Cabinet stock, retained by the Custodian, purpose recorded as "contingency."

Requests for samples are heard on the first working day of each quarter by the Keeper of the Timber Roll, who no longer receives applicants in person but will accept a written request slipped beneath the door of the fourth rack room. Applicants are asked not to knock.