Run the pre-David pass exactly as specified in [redacted]/.claude/ski…

I'll start by reading the skill and the required context files.

I read the skill in full, VOICE.md, SCENES.md's act-three binding list, the canon files (redacted, edwin, sorrel, peri, redacted, minor for redacted/redacted/Ossett), and scenes 105–106. No file was edited. I did not open chapters/, rewrite/, rejected-act2/, summaries/ or plans/book-01/arc-0*.md, unpublished or their history.

Part 1 — sense, counts, facts

1. 109. "wrote five sentences on it" / "Tell them it's five sentences" — the letter that follows contains three sentences plus a heading and a signature. Fails Part 1's count check, and it is a count said twice, so it will be counted. Fix: either make it three ("wrote three sentences", "Tell them it's three sentences") or add two real sentences to the letter — I'd take three, since redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

2. 109. "It's four sentences. She'll want the fourth more than the fifth." — Two problems. redacted sentence: unpublished prose (b) There is no fifth sentence anywhere in the Sorrel letter — the only five-count in the scene belongs to the committee letter, so the reader reaches for the wrong document. Fix: "Finish it tomorrow. You've got three. The one you've not written is the frost list," and let Peri's last speech carry the rest.

3. 108. "Four nights in six she had warned at a day's notice, and the warning had been right four times in six" — two different four-in-sixes in one sentence, and neither restates flat: is the denominator frost nights or warnings? Edwin then re-uses it a third way ("she's had it right four nights in six on her own"), and Peri a fourth in 109. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

4. 108. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Fix: "for three days" → "from the first to the third"; "three days deciding" → "two days deciding".

5. 108. "The frosts had come... in the last week of Fallowmonth" in a letter that arrives 1 Saltmonth — Appleford is seventy-odd miles off and the Fenholt bag in 109 takes eight days. A letter reporting the last week of Fallowmonth cannot be in his hand on the first of Saltmonth. Fix: "in the third week of Fallowmonth", and have her frost record run to the twentieth.

6. 107. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
7. 107. "Nine houses, which were the parishes and guild houses that had written to him... Three guilds: the Charter, redacted, the Fellowship." — the nine are defined as parishes and guild houses, and then three guilds are listed separately: does nine include three, or is it twelve? Also redacted is a wardens' house, not a guild (minor.md). Fix: "Nine parishes. Three houses: the Charter, the redacted Wardens, the Fellowship."

8. 107. "Four sites, which he lettered A to D and did not name." — the column's head is Who the paper goes to; sites are not recipients. The item is real (the lettering matters) but it is in the wrong column, and the paragraph reads as a list that has lost its rule. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

9. 109. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
10. 109. "the first column's whip control... on page three of redacted"** — the proof is "two columns to a page" (108), so the first column cannot be on page three. Fix: make it consistent — either the whip control sits at the foot of the first column running over onto page three (say so: "where the first column ran on to page three") or move the committee's change to the column, not the page.

**11. 107. "He said why. It took two more lines." — redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose Fix: supply the two lines, e.g. — "A blessing holds a thing that's trying to go wrong. There's nothing here trying to go wrong. The ground isn't sick. It's quiet, and a hold on quiet does nothing but cost you the mana."

Part 2 — gesture at meaning, announcing fragments, glosses

12. 107 opening. "Four columns. He ruled them on the twenty-eighth..." — the announcing fragment the skill names explicitly ("lands stronger as just..."). Fix: cut the fragment. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

13. 107. "because the heads were the argument and the columns were only the evidence" — a narrator gloss that tells the reader the writing is significant; it is also a balanced verdict in the narration. Fix: cut; the four heads follow immediately and make the point themselves.

14. 107. "which she did now in libraries as well as kitchens" — a callback tail, cleverness attached to a stage direction. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

15. 107. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Fix: cut "which was the only reading he wanted".
16. 107. "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted came to things:" — narrator flourish of the "weird and unnecessary line" family, followed by a resume dump (age, chair, grievance, fifty-two years) before he has said anything. Fix: "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

17. 108. "and the whole of the vale was now certain" — "the whole of it" is explicitly named as a banned recurring phrase. Fix: "and the vale was now certain".

18. 108 ending. "because a man who has been made a hero by his own ten o'clock class had better find out from the woman who told them otherwise" — a resolving button: an epigram in the third person about himself, closing the scene like a bow. Ending on the decision is fine (VOICE §2); the epigram is not. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Part 3 / Part 5 — devices, register, reuse

19. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Four maxims in three scenes, two in one scene, and three of them share one grammatical mould. edwin.md 13 rules one aphorism a scene and forbids the contrastive pair from being it. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

20. 107. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Column two survives because redacted interrupts it; the others have no second voice. Fix: cut the first and third columns to the material that is new — Mattie's amendment with her name, and the boy's question answered in print — and put the third column's content in Peri's mouth as an objection (she wrote the attempts page; she is the one who can ask whether the five wrong versions should carry her name too).
21. 107. redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose I taught it in the better manner. You have written it in the worse." — a composed antithesis; canon has him as a man with an inherited grievance, not a phrasemaker, and the balanced two-half verdict is Edwin's shape. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
22. 107. redacted: "The order was well made. It took seven of us thirty years. redacted sentence: unpublished prose 027). Per VOICE §3.7 a canon-quoted groundwork line is a fact, never a line to reuse. Fix: keep the fact (he concedes the seventh was well made, on the strength of the no-harm sentence) in new words: "The order was well made. It took seven of us thirty years. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
23. 107. redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
24. 109. redacted: "That's a count I can read... That's the four things doing what the four things were for, and I'd like that written somewhere that isn't my book." — three faults against redacted.md. (a) "That's a count I can read" opens on a definitional verdict — 7a, Edwin's. (b) "That's the four things doing what the four things were for" closes the speech on a summary that returns to the top — rule 1, which she does not do. (c) "somewhere that isn't my book" argues for the record on behalf of a stranger, which rule 2 gives to Edwin; redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose The pile that precedes it ("redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted wrote it. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

25. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Individually fine, as a run it is a tic. Fix: keep redacted's "would not sit down" (canon) and redacted's exit; change "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

26. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Rulings the caller asked for explicitly

• "Writing it down" motif. The three scenes are legitimately documentary and that is not the fault; the fault is that the narration glosses the act six times (findings 13, 15, 16, and 105's "a space a man had decided to leave" is the ancestor). Cut the glosses; keep the subject.
• 108 ending on a plan, not an act. Not a fault per VOICE §2 — a scene may end on a decision. The fault is the epigram wrapped round it (finding 18).
• 109 ending on Peri's frost-list line. Earned, not a bow: it is information Edwin missed, she has the standing to say it, and it points forward. Keep it — but fix the count it sits on (findings 2, 26).
• Openings. 107 fails (finding 12). 108 (the letter under a stone) passes: object, event, no trailer. 109 is borderline — "The Charter's post-bag came up from the Fellowship's house on the fourth of Saltmonth at nine in the morning, eight days out of Fenholt, and redacted carried it, because..." is object + time + trailer + because in one breath. Suggest: "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
• Counted templates. Four columns: the scene's business, keep (drop the announcing fragment). Three things in the bag (109): keep — it is the scene's structure and redacted's ordering does work. Five sentences: fails on count (finding 1).
• "because" density. 107: 9 in 1,400 words; 108: 7 in 1,123; 109: 3 in 1,240. 109 is where you want to be. The worst cluster is 107's opening sentence (two in one sentence) and the reasons stacked in the fourth-column paragraph. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted finished and redacted wanted two more days, and because there were things in the letter that wanted longer than that" — drop the second "because" and start a new sentence ("Some of what was in it wanted longer than two days.").
• Em dashes: none in body text in any of the three (only the title lines). Clean.
• Dialect: none. No "I'll not", no "wants [gerund]", no "nought".
  redacted sentence: unpublished prose The frost list's "four nights in six" is not fine (finding 3).
• Clocks: all three use called hours, no clock-reading. Clean.

Two lines on the device

The device a second round of comments would be about is the maxim mould — four "an X that Ys is an X that Z" lines in three consecutive scenes, in Edwin's mouth, at the exact moments the scenes want to land. Trimming to one a scene (finding 19) is the repair; if it recurs in 110–113 the answer is not rephrasing but giving the load to the other person in the room, as 106 does when Peri, not Edwin, says what presumed is worth.

The second is the four-column recitation (finding 20): a document summarised by the narrator in the order of its own headings. It works once. If 113's circular-taught-to-five scene summarises the sheet again, the reader is reading the same list a third time.