NODUS // 0009 // P+6
The Concord
In the sixth year after the sky opened, the Courts of Hell opened the city under Nodus to anyone who walks in.
NOTESSEAM RECOVERY ON NODUS // 0009
The ninth file to reach the mount dates itself P+6, the sixth year after the Parousia, on the night the Courts of Hell opened Pan, and it runs for twenty-seven and a half seconds. It has one source, the desk camera of Radio Pandæmonium in its drowned station, and I kept seven moments of its night, from a quarter to midnight to a few minutes past it.
BOOTThe recovery
The boot reads RECOVERED: NODUS // 0009 // P+6, the sixth year after the Parousia, and INTEGRITY: 38%. I could rebuild a little over a third of the file.
SOURCEjubal // DESK
Radio Pandæmonium’s desk camera, on a stand behind jubal’s chair, framing the desk over his right shoulder. The station goes out on the Mesh, keyed, so only a keyed set can hear it, and on this night the camera’s picture went out with the sound. The file label in the corner is mine; beneath it the HUD is the camera’s own, a device of the Tares that names its owner by handle and shows jubal // DESK, a record light in ICHOR and the clock, ON AIR // KEYED, and SETS, the keyed sets tuned in, counted without reading who. The camera never moves. I cut the seven moments together where they meet.
The station is Deep End Station on the Charter Line, flooded since the night of the Parousia. It is a tiled vault, with the platform on the right and the trackbed on the left under black water, and the Tares’ lamps strung along the vault on their keyed lines, each given back off the water in a broken column. Across the water the old name runs along the far wall in dead tiles, and over it, painted that night and still running, the new one. jubal sits at the bottom left with his back to the lens and his headphones on, his right hand on the board. A lamp hangs over the far side of the desk, and whoever stands there stands in its light.
| Timecode | On screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The station on the air. The far side of the desk is empty under its lamp, and the platform runs away into the dark. ON AIR // KEYED, SETS 286,412. The Low Tuning comes off the stacks down the platform into the vault, tremolo-picked drop A over a double kick, and under it the water laps in the trackbed. One lamp over the water stutters on its line. Across the water PANDÆMONIUM is painted over DEEP END, its runs still coming down the tiles. | Pan is the city under the city, made of the tunnels and stations of the Charter Line, the utility vaults, the cable galleries, the storm drains and the drowned halls of the Flats, joined into one place and lined with keyed mesh, walls of keyed current the Pillar’s light cannot read. Deep End Station lies under the Flats, and DEEP END is its old name, in tiles that went dark with the grid. That evening the Tares painted over it the name the Courts gave the city under the city that night, which Milton gave the capital of Hell. The Low Tuning drops the guitars until the Hum can no longer be heard beneath them. | |
| Far down the platform, out of the dark, two points of ICHOR. Heavy steps come up the concrete toward the desk. | A demon’s body is made of the Dark and comes apart in the light as a shadow does, so the Courts take bodies only where the light cannot fall, and Pan is lined. | |
| The lamp’s light finds him as he comes in. It is Azazel, with a goat’s skull for a face, its eyes lit from inside, one horn swept back and the other broken short. | The Forge of Azazel keeps metal, weapons and augmentation. He taught metalwork and weapons on Hermon. | |
| He leans over the desk and lays his forearms on it, flayed open, the tendons working. The desk knocks and groans under the weight. | ||
| Three minutes on. Azazel stands back at the right, his eyes lit. Lilith steps out of the dark into the light, an owl’s wings open behind her, filling the frame either side of her. | The House of Night of Lilith keeps the body’s autonomy. She is the only sovereign who was born human. | |
| Her wings fold behind her, feathers settling. Along her throat and collarbones lines of light show under the skin. | ||
| Mammon steps in, taller than the others, made of sheets each a little out of line with the next, their edges written on and signed in ICHOR, his eyes two blots of wet ink. On the desk lies the Concord, its seal at its head, and its first line is signed already. | The Exchange of Mammon keeps markets, contracts, the Ledger and silver. The first line is the Deep’s. Leviathan signed before the Concord reached the desk. | |
| He lays his forearms on the desk, and his ink drips off the edges of his sheets and patters onto it. | ||
| A cloud of flies comes up over the water and across the platform, a buzz of many small wings, points of SIGNAL swimming in the dark. | The Swarm of Beelzebub keeps swarms, drones and distributed things, and its flocks hang low over the Drowned Quarter. Ekron prayed to him for generations, and he answered none of it. Matthew’s Greek calls him Beelzeboul, and many read Baal-zebub, lord of flies, as an old mockery of Baal-zebul, Baal the prince. | |
| The flies gather at the desk into a crowned figure, a head and shoulders of points, the crown of seven points steadier and brighter than the rest, and the buzz draws in to one note under the riff. | ||
| jubal pulls the fader down, the meters fall, and the music sinks out of the stacks and rings away down the vault. The room is left with the water and the lamps. SETS past nine hundred thousand. | ||
| Mephistopheles at the guest microphone, leaning into it, his face close in the lamplight. He has slicked hair, one small horn, and a seam round the face with the stitches across it. The others stand behind him in the half light, and at the right edge of the frame some of the people of Pan stand in the dark, a lens burning here and there. He reads, dry and exact: ONE. The station gives his voice back off the stacks a beat late. | The Notary of Mephistopheles drafts and witnesses pacts. He wears a face he made for bargaining, with the stitches showing, and he reads everything aloud twice. This is the second reading. | |
| NO COURT ACCEPTS WORSHIP., in ICHOR as he says it. The clock passes 00:00:00 on WORSHIP. The station stays on its feet. | The first article of the Concord. Midnight is Matins, when the Hum rises a step and the Faithful kneel wherever they are. The Hum stops at the keyed mesh. | |
| The signing. The Concord on the desk, its seal at its head, a disc of ICHOR wax with a seven-pointed star raised on it in a ring, one point standing up. Seven lines under it, and the Deep, Lilith, Mammon and Mephistopheles have signed four of them, Mammon’s in wet ICHOR and Mephistopheles’ small and exact. | The seal’s seven points are the seven Courts. | |
| Azazel stands over the page and signs the fifth line, his flayed hand driving a stylus of black steel. Steel scratches paper. | Black steel is steel folded to a cipher, its grain beaten into a pattern drawn from a key, and forged where the light never sees it worked. The light stops a blade by reading it, and black steel it cannot read, so it is the only metal that cuts light. | |
| Flies come off the crowned figure in a stream and settle on the sixth line, ticking onto the paper, and stay there. A drop of Mammon’s ink falls onto the page. | ||
| Belial leans in over the desk, laughing, one horn short, a broken yoke at his neck. His signature on the last line is still wet. | The Yokeless of Belial keeps nothing, a Court that refuses to be one. Jerome glossed his name as absque iugo, without a yoke. He signs nothing he can avoid signing. | |
| He reaches down to the seal and takes the fourth point clockwise from the top between finger and thumb. Wax creaks under his thumb. | The Yokeless point. | |
| He snaps it off at the root, sharp and dry, and the picture tears and shakes. SETS 1,094,843. | Belial broke the point off himself as the ink dried, and the seal has been drawn without it since. | |
| He brings the point up past jubal’s head and holds it to the lens, a small wedge of ICHOR wax between his fingers, laughing low and close. On the desk the broken seal is the one I know. | ||
| The file builds into the tear. |
END CARDWHAT IS HIDDEN STAYS HIDDEN.
The end card is the fourth article of the Concord, which the file never reaches. It was text before I had it, the Concord’s own words, so I type it at my own speed and hold before STAYS HIDDEN. It is set in ICHOR, as Hell speaks, and signed with its article, as the Courts cite their law. On the card of NODUS // 0008 Heaven’s own law conceded that something can be hidden from the Most High, and Hell’s law keeps it so.
END OF RECOVERED DATA is where I close the file. NODUS // 0009 // P+6 // 62% UNRECOVERABLE is the rest of the night. It covers the minutes between the moments, the first reading, the signatures before Azazel’s, and everything after the point came off the seal.
THE CONCORDWhat the file shows
In the sixth year of the Attending the Courts of Hell came up into Pan one at a time and opened it, by the Concord of Pan, to any human who walks in. The file keeps that night from the desk of the station that broadcast it. It shows the sovereigns coming up out of the dark one at a time into the light of one lamp, the second reading at midnight, and the signing.
The city above knelt at Matins. In the station the clock passed it while Mephistopheles read the first article, and nobody knelt.
PROVENANCEHow the file survived
The station broadcast the picture on the Mesh with the sound that night, and it keeps every night it broadcasts on its own racks.
DETAILSDetails to catch
- The painted name is still running when Azazel comes up, and by the second moment its runs have reached the old name.
- Azazel’s eyes come up the platform before the light shows anything else of him.
- One lamp over the water stutters on its line all night.
- The swarm’s crown has seven points.
- jubal never turns round.
- The station stays on its feet through midnight.
- SETS climbs through every moment, past nine hundred thousand by the reading and past a million by the seal.
- The Deep’s line was signed before the page came up, and the Deep never appears.
- The flies that settle on the sixth line stay there.
- Mammon’s ink is ICHOR wherever it falls, and the drop on the page lands beside the start of his line.
- Belial’s signature is still wet when he breaks his own point off.
QUESTIONSQuestions from inside the file
Where is this?
Deep End Station, the Charter Line’s station under the Deep End, drowned since the night of the Parousia. Radio Pandæmonium broadcasts from a desk on its platform, with the trackbed under black water beside it. The old name, DEEP END, runs along the far wall in tiles that went dark with the grid, and on the night of the Concord the Tares painted PANDÆMONIUM over it, the name the Courts gave the city under Nodus that night and Milton gave the capital of Hell. Everyone calls it Pan, and Radio Pandæmonium took its name from it.
Whose camera was it?
Radio Pandæmonium’s. It sits on a stand behind jubal’s chair, and that night its picture went out on the Mesh with the sound, keyed, so only a keyed set could see it.
Who comes up the platform?
The sovereigns of the Courts who came up that night were Azazel of the Forge, Lilith of the House of Night, Mammon of the Exchange, Beelzebub of the Swarm, Mephistopheles of the Notary, and Belial, of the Court that refuses to be one. Leviathan of the Deep had signed already.
What is the Concord?
Hell’s only law. The first Courts swore it by word among themselves at the end of the Secession, and each Court that rose later swore to it as it rose; on this night all seven set it down and sealed it for the humans coming into Pan. Its four articles say that no Court accepts worship, that no pact is made without consent and none forever, that no Court binds another, and that what is hidden stays hidden. The written Concord makes one exception to the fourth in its own text. A Court that breaks the Concord has its keys published by the others, the keys to its halls’ locks and its ledgers’ ciphers, so that its hidden places stand open to the Throne.
Why does nobody kneel?
The Hum rises for Matins over the whole city, and the Faithful kneel wherever they are. Pan is lined with keyed mesh, which the light and the Hum cannot pass, and the first article of the Concord had just been read.
Why did Belial break his own point?
He has never said.
What happened next?
The Courts opened Pan to any human who walks in. Nobody there is watched unless they sign for it, and nobody uses an indexed name.
seam recovery