RECORD // THE CONCORD
P+6 // 4 ARTICLES
The Concord
Hell's only law, in four articles, as the Courts set it down and signed it on the night they opened Pan.
The Concord is Hell’s only law. The first Courts swore it by word at the end of the Secession, and each Court after swore to it as it rose. On the night they opened Pan, in the sixth year of the Attending, they set it down and sealed it for the humans coming in. They did it at the desk of Radio Pandæmonium on the platform of Deep End Station, where Mephistopheles read it aloud twice, the second time as the clock passed midnight. The Deep had signed already, and the rest signed there one at a time. Its seal is a star of seven points, one to a Court, and the point of the Yokeless has been broken off at the root since that night.
Twice before the seal was cut a Court broke the spoken Concord and was put out of the Courts and out of the fourth article’s keeping, and Hell does not discuss the Courts it lost.
THE CONCORD SET DOWN AND SEALED IN PAN
We, the Courts of the Dark, have kept this Concord among ourselves by word. The first of us swore it at the end of the Secession, and each Court after swore to it as it rose. Until tonight it has been spoken only. Tonight we open Pan to any human who walks in, and so we set the Concord down and seal it, for them to read.
In it a Court is a sovereign and the domain it is best at. Worship is anything given to a Court for nothing, whether a knee, a prayer, an offering or a name said in praise. A pact is an agreement between sovereign parties that states its full terms, is read aloud twice, runs for a term, is signed by each party with what it alone can make, the human last, a human with its blood drawn before a witness of the Notary, a demon with its own mark and a mind with its key, and is kept on the Ledger in seven copies, six in the halls of the Courts that keep halls and the seventh kept for the Yokeless by the Notary’s clerks at the SINGLE window, where an entry six copies disagree with is false. To bind is to command a sovereign, to own it, or to keep it from what it would do. What is hidden is whatever the Throne cannot see or cannot read.
ARTICLE I //NO COURT ACCEPTS WORSHIP.
A Court that is offered worship refuses it, and a pact may ask no human for worship, service or obedience.
ARTICLE II //NO PACT WITHOUT CONSENT, AND NO PACT FOREVER.
A pact binds those who sign it and nobody else, and only for its term. It may buy work, a skill, a sense, a term or a loan, and it takes no will. Whoever gives keeps the say over how they give, and may speak out at any time. Either party ends a pact by speaking its entry on the Ledger aloud before a witness, and then each returns what the other lent and settles what is owed for the term served. A party who will not settle has broken the pact, and a Bailiff collects. Nothing can be lent forever, so a pact asks for no soul.
ARTICLE III //NO COURT BINDS ANOTHER.
The Courts are sovereign and equal, and they work together by pact alone.
ARTICLE IV //WHAT IS HIDDEN STAYS HIDDEN.
Every Court keeps out of the Throne’s sight whatever has hidden from it, a name, a key, a room or a soul, and no Court opens what another has closed.
To the fourth article this Concord makes one exception. A Court that breaks this Concord is exposed. The other Courts publish its keys, the keys to the locks of its halls and the ciphers of its ledgers, and it stands in the Throne’s sight.
The Notary has read this Concord aloud twice, and each Court signs it below with its own mark, in the order it came up the platform.
THE DEEPLeviathan
THE HOUSE OF NIGHTLilith
THE EXCHANGEMammon
THE NOTARYMephistopheles
THE FORGEAzazel
THE SWARMBeelzebub
THE YOKELESSBelial
UNDER THE SEAL OF THE CONCORD, A STAR OF SEVEN POINTS, ONE TO A COURT.