You are running the pre-David pass on five newly drafted scenes of th…

I'll start by reading the skill and voice references.

Findings

Part 1 — Does this sentence make sense? (facts, counts, back-references)

80 — Out of the water

1. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished. In 66 the narration is Edwin's and it is flat: *"Then something came up out of redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted was six feet away and hooked it. Peri is not a lone disputed witness, and nobody in 80 says so. Either 66's narration has to be restricted (Edwin sees it on the road, not coming up the bank), or 80 must acknowledge that Edwin's own account agreed with hers and was not asked for. As it stands the finding, the dispute, and Peri's silent vindication are all built on a fact the reader watched three people witness. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

2. "How long ago?" ... redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose It's older than the causeway." — self-contradiction inside three sentences: he disclaims knowing, then dates it. Replace the last clause with the source: *"redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

3. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose The causeway is five miles (78), the withy end comes off the peat "a mile short of the bed" (60), and Edwin has the mouth "three miles behind him" from the middle of the causeway (62). A channel running from above the withy bed to 400 yards short of the mouth is four-plus miles, not "something over a mile." Replace "something over a mile" with "the better part of four miles."

4. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted over its banks for nine days. The whole system is in flood; the pool holding water proves nothing. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

5. redacted sentence: unpublished prose The second chamber is eighty feet below the first, not eighty feet below the fen. Replace with "eighty feet under the first chamber" or "the far side of eighty feet of broken stone."

6. "redacted, who had heard him call it a cut on the tenth and wanted it said again with a witness from another house." — redacted was not there on the tenth. The letter went out on the tenth (61/82) and she "came the day after the letter" at the earliest. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

7. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

8. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted wrote it on the slate" — the method does not produce the findings. What follows is depth, silting, where it splits, whether the sides are cut — a sounding-pole survey, not a hand in mud. It also quietly hands Edwin's ground-reading (his, explicitly: "the hand's mine", 60) to a girl with Farm Magic 1. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted wrote it on the slate."*

9. "She took redacted business to redacted, and redacted brought it to Edwin." — wrong noun. What Peri took to redacted is the disputed observation of the thing out of the water; redacted is what it becomes. Replace "cut business" with "the disputed line".

10. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

11. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

redacted sentence: unpublished prose

12. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted says it at the chain). Nobody counted what came out on the fourteenth. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

13. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose Scene 61 unpublished: "Nineteen. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Three over sixty. The guildmaster and the clerk. Ten..." redacted and redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose He cannot have been carrying himself as a hand. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

14. "nine hurt, two badly" — canon has nine hurt on the fourteenth (minor.md), and 78 has three more hurt in redacted including Edwin's own arm. The letter covers both. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

15. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted says "four dogs" again in 80). Six dead dogs is two more than the parish had out. Make it "three dogs".

16. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted's advancement, it bought eleven days. Replace with "Eleven days is what it bought."

17. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted is forty miles north, Wystow fifty miles south-east (61). "East and north" is wrong for one of them. Replace with "north and south-east".

18. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, in 83) — it was not true; four of the nineteen were dead or gone. He means the book said so. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

19. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted's predecessor." The second slides from present to pluperfect inside one sentence. Put both blocks in the past: *"The Charter was a grant. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

20. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

redacted sentence: unpublished prose

21. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted cousin is alive and rostered at redacted. The scene's own margin says so: "dead. gone. dead. redacted." And in 82 the phrase sits four lines above "nobody dead" in the same letter, which makes it actively confusing. Replace both with "the four struck names" / "the four names struck at the top."

22. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, eight lines earlier ("Said them where?"). The narration itself says "It was not a question to redacted" — i.e. it was a question, addressed elsewhere. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

23. "and did not know whether it was the right decision, and was glad of it" — "it" has two live antecedents (the decision; not knowing). Replace: "and did not know whether she was right, and was glad she had."

24. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replace: "dead nine years, his chest."

25. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replace: "and never struck."

84 — Seconded, not resigned

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

27. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Canon and scene 75 unpublished both have the tide mark measured in Frostmonth; the spring is redacted's separate debt. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

28. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

29. redacted sentence: unpublished prose it was") and "this time" points at nothing the reader can name. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

30. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

31. redacted sentence: unpublished prose the biscuit-tin ruling). redacted sentence: unpublished prose

81 — What specifically goes wrong

32. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose it begins after the three things and covers Peri's kills. The three wrong things happened before the count started. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

33. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

34. "I've stopped every time. In the shed, on the causeway, at the gatepost, in the hill." — "on the causeway" has no event behind it; nothing came at them on the causeway (62 is an argument, not an incident). redacted sentence: unpublished prose

35. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

36. redacted sentence: unpublished prose "I stop" is the thing Edwin has never articulated to anyone; 62 has him at "everything I know is slow" and "a large obstacle with a stick." It also deflates redacted's own excavation by revealing the answer was already in someone's pocket. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

37. "redacted thought about that for as long as she thought about anything, which was not long" — asserted, and contradicted by the page: she looks at the flattened sedge "for a good while" (60), at the drain hole "for a while" (75), at the pool "north-east" in silence (80). Cut the clause; leave *"redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

38. Timeline collision: redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Part 2 — Gestures at meaning

39. 80: "It's alive. All of it's alive. redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished's line reused as a refrain rather than a claim. Say the mechanism: *"It's alive. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

40. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

41. 83: "redacted ... redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut from "in the manner of" onward.

42. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut back to the act: *"It was not a question to redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

43. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Part 3 / Part 4 — World, and why this character says this

44. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Do not shuffle it; give redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

45. 80: a redacted running to within four hundred yards of the mouth of Holm Deep, unrecorded, on ground redacted says she has "walked beside every month for nine years" (60), is a Part 3 problem in a world that writes everything down. Give it a reason it was never walked to its head: one line from redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

46. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

47. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, and had not said why, and redacted had looked at him and had not asked" — a thread raised and never picked up; nothing in the scene tells the reader what insisting on a negotiation bought. Either let the reason land in the room (redacted asks the cost before the favour, and gets to) or cut "and had not said why, and redacted had looked at him and had not asked."

Part 5 / Part 6 — redacted's voice (binding: redacted.md` §§6–9, 11)

48. 81: `"I'm no good at fighting is what a man says who doesn't want to be asked the next thing." — rule 7a/7b: a definitional two-half sentence stating a rule about how people behave. This is Edwin's construction, in the scene the prompt flags as her heaviest. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose I'm asking the next thing. What specifically goes wrong?"*

49. 81: "It isn't *no good in a fight*. It's a man who stops." — rule 7a again, and the second in the same scene. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

50. 81: "That's an answer. That's the first one I've had off you that was." — the "That's X" definitional, listed under Not hers. Replace with an anchored count: *"That's an answer. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

51. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Covered by the replacement in 49.

52. 81: "and that's right for him" — a verdict tail; strip-the-last-clause test says the speech is better without it. Cut.

53. 81: "Say more than that." and "Then don't." — bare imperatives with neither a name nor an attested count: rule 6c revised says these belong to nobody. Anchor one and cut the other: *"Say more than that. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

54. redacted sentence: unpublished prose It is also Peri's exact exchange from 76 ("That's it?" / "That's it.") two scenes back. Replace: "Is there a fourth thing?"

55. 80: "Write both," said redacted. — anchorless bare imperative (6c), and the identical construction appears two scenes later in redacted's mouth ("Put both in," said redacted). Give hers the name: "Write both, redacted. It's two lines."

56. 80/81: italicised phrases inside narration and dialogue — "*I'm no good at fighting*", "*I'm slow*", "*I stop*", "*no good in a fight*" — four in one short scene; he has already objected that "the italicisation feels like it's in a weird place." Set them as quoted speech or plain, and keep at most one italic.

57. 80: "his good hand", "her good hand", "his good hand" in one scene — two characters both having a "good hand" turns a fact into a tic. Vary the second: "she went in with her right".

The devices a second round would be about

The disputed observation (80). As written the device does not work, because Edwin and redacted both saw the thing come out of the water in scene 66 unpublished and the scene needs them not to have. To make it work, 66 must restrict what Edwin sees — the thing is already on the road when his lamp finds it — and 80 must say aloud that his account did not settle it either, so what vindicates Peri is the survey and not the witnesses. Rephrasing 80 will not do it; the fix is in 66.

redacted's excavation of Edwin (81). The scene's shape is sound and its answer is the best thing in the stretch, but it is currently carried by two Edwin-shaped definitional sentences in her mouth and undercut at the end by Peri having predicted the answer. Fixed by 48/49/50 and 36 together; if the Peri prediction is kept in any form, the scene is a device that spends its own discovery, and no wording repairs that.