The tracing house is grey morning. Plaster. Your 3-4-5 pegs, if you set them, still honest. You run string from the drawn crown to a mark, then up in your head, then actually up with a rod and a shout to Ned.

A number on a voussoir is wrong. 8 dressed as 9, or a template taken from Gareth’s almost-curve. The floor tells on the sky.

Maud’s charcoal is in your hand like a sword that writes.

You can carry the correction to the set—swap, redress, wait an hour that saves a year.

If the catch is clean enough that the set can proceed honest, you are already in the good country.

String from plaster to a rod to a shout: a triangle of people instead of 3-4-5, but the same idea—truth traveling along a line. The wrong number shows like a pulled thread. Maud’s charcoal circle around it is a small coronation of a mistake.