analysis phase starting

characters/carson-johnsby.md

@@ -146,6 +146,7 @@ Carson uses older, harder fabrication and repair methods when newer, easier tech
 | Ch 14 | **Brida introduction.** Phelan returns to Carson's workshop the morning after Devod's draining. Delivers the news about Devod. Carson's stillness is "the silence of a large man processing something that didn't fit inside his philosophy without breaking it." Volunteers to accompany Phelan to Brida Voss — "She won't talk to a guild man alone. She knows me." Walks Phelan to the tenement and serves as the buffer that lets Brida open up. Also names a canal-district street contact (a man paid to look the other way during Elara's murder) — gives Phelan enough to dispatch Leon to find him. Carson is the human connective tissue between three pieces of the case in one morning. | Network / connection |
 | Ch 17 | **The Approach — at Brida's.** Already at Brida's tenement when Phelan arrives. Warned Brida about the upcoming hit, brought the studded jacket from Chandler's Row for the safehouse approach, arranged for **Jenet Carterson to feed Sniff** while the household decamps to Millford Street. Stays with Brida until Leon arrives to take the intercept position. The "I got a buddy" network compressed into practical action. | Plot support / network |
 | Post-resolution | Carson learns the truth about Kae through his own network — back channels, not told directly by Phelan or the team. The reader learns he knows, but never sees how he processes it. He just "knows things." | Off-page resolution |
+| Epilogue | **Wedding party attendance — Church of the Ahole catering, Mere almost-smiles.** Arrives at Phelan and Mere's wedding party second in the arrival order (after Carter and Jenet). Carries a covered platter that is "heavier than a platter should reasonably be," grinning "the way he grinned when the joke was already moving toward him." Delivers the line flat, straight-faced, to the room: *"Church of the Ahole catering. Ahole provides. Terms and conditions apply."* Phelan does not smile. **Mere almost smiles** — the corner of her mouth moves a quarter-inch and stops — and *that* is what makes the joke land. Platter is stew. Stew is good stew. He carried it hot through the cold for twenty minutes — "Carson's particular kind of miracle." The warrens reverend blessing a guild-quarter civil filing party is the absurdity the book runs on. Uninformed about Phelan/Mere marriage decision's interior weight per Book 2 lock | Wedding attendance / joke delivery |
 
 ### Book 3
 <!-- Future — seeds planted: Phelan likes Carson, "I got a buddy" network is useful, guilt arc could deepen -->

characters/devod-fields.md

@@ -218,6 +218,8 @@ During a frontier clearance gone wrong, Devod took charge of a deteriorating sit
 | Ch19 | **The quiet nod.** Awake at Millford Street when Phelan arrives to collect Mere for the Brida treatment. Day 4 of recovery. **Quiet nod from the bed** — the most economical version of "I see you, go." After the deal, Mere returns to him: "Dad needs monitoring more than this one does." Uses "Dad" — established Ch11. The relationship now has a daily verb | Nod / parallel arc closes |
 | Ch21 | **Day 7 — ambulatory, present, visibly reshaped.** Walks from Millford Street to the Thresholds door on Hallow and Third **before sixth bell** on Day 18. His own window was dark when Phelan and Mere passed Millford on the way — he got there before them, on foot, unaccompanied. **Sleeves pushed past the elbows. Posture that belonged to someone who had spent thirty years of his life doing things other than limping through Millford Street.** The grey in his hair hasn't gone anywhere; the draining took what it took. But whatever the Brennan Toor Vethek Pass story let back in (Ch15) is now sitting visibly in the line of his shoulders. **Phelan's Pathfinder model for Devod is fully rewritten on sight** — no speech required, no declared reframe, a silent internal recalibration Phelan catalogues without naming. **The Thresholds confrontation (Scene 2):** Mere hands him the leather case without ceremony; he takes it *"the way a man takes a tool he has been expecting."* When Mere says *"Dad, you take the counter. I'll take Charlette,"* he acknowledges the name with a half-nod that treats it as the name it had always been. Steps through the door first. Lays the partnership documents out in a clean two-column spread beside the payment record. When Mere finishes delivering the two options, Devod does not look at Charlette — he speaks to the deed: **"Option one."** He says it the way a man reads back the final figure on a mine survey — finished work, known quantity, no reason to dress it up. Countersigns the reversion. Steps back outside with Mere and Phelan into the Hallow Street sun. *"That's done," / "That's done," / (that's done.)* Walks them halfway back to the canal turn and then peels off toward his own day without ceremony. Mere, watching him go: *"He's different. I don't know what to do with that yet."* **The Wolf is awake, ambulatory, and re-integrated into his own life — the post-drain recovery arc reaches its closing beat.** Uninformed about Phelan & Mere's marriage/children decision per Book 2 lock | Recovery complete / Thresholds resolved / Pathfinder reframe lands |
 
+| Epilogue | **Wedding party attendance, Mere hug on-page, Pathfinder address handoff.** Day ~17 post-draining. Attends Phelan and Mere's wedding party at Chandler's Row. Fourth attendee in arrival order (after Carter & Jenet, Carson, Leon). **Mere does not wait for him to reach her** — meets him in the middle of the room and puts her arms around him "the way Mere put her arms around almost nobody," and he holds her "as a man holds the daughter who had stood at his bedside and counted his pulse for hours in the dark." First physical affection beat between them on-page in the book. Lasts a breath longer than Phelan expects. They step back at the same moment without coordinating it. **Book 3 Pathfinder seed:** sets a folded slip of paper down on the table next to Leon's cloth twist. An address, written in a hand Phelan does not recognise — not Devod's own handwriting. *"For when you're ready."* Implied source: Brennan Toor or another Cairns/Pathfinder-adjacent contact from the same network that delivered the Ch15 Vethek Pass story. First tangible Book 3 lead Phelan holds that Ledger did not give him — independent of guild channels. **Exchanges a quiet unheard word with Ledger** at the party, Phelan files the exchange without being able to read it. The two of them now explicitly operate on off-channel communication Phelan cannot parse. Uninformed about Phelan/Mere marriage decision's interior weight (the children decision, the father wound from Ch21) per Book 2 lock | Mere hug / Pathfinder address / Ledger off-channel |
+
 ### Book 3
 <!-- Future -->
 

characters/jonael-carterson.md

@@ -130,6 +130,8 @@ The Arcane Compact retaliates against Carter for helping Phelan in the Floundry
 | Ch 14 | Jacket delivery | Gives Phelan the studded jacket after Devod's draining -- sees where the case is heading. Ore studs (from Book 1 Ch21 master-grade saturated ore), placed along hem, cuffs, and collar. ~20% passive damage absorption. Delivery line: "If you're going to do something stupid, at least wear something I made." |
 | Ch 21 | **Landing beat — Carter's shop, Mere visit, Tomael arc closed in subtext** | Day 18. Carter's shop running at full commerce, front bell propped open with a brick — his own signal that the shop is functional again, not recovering, not limping. Orders mostly **Tier Two referrals routed through Ledger** over the past week (Ledger closing the Book 2 supply-chain wound quietly, no speech required). Hendrick Voss steady; Ledger's alternative broker closed the last gaps; Maren Harwick has not come back and Carter is fine with that. **Mere visits the shop for the first time in Book 2** — Carter's face does "the small reorganisation it did when he was pleased and trying not to make a production of it." Greets her warmly: *"Mere. Good to have you in the shop — been too long."* Offers tea; she declines with thanks. **Jacket stand holds three new builds, ore studs at collar and cuffs, "none of them exactly like mine"** — Carter's craft has iterated past Phelan's specific unit. **Phelan's jacket report (accurate):** worn on the Ch18 safehouse op, did not have to absorb anything; job stayed stealth as intended. Carter nods and doesn't ask for the pieces. Phelan's noise: *(he'd rather hear the jacket wasn't tested than hear it was.)* **Tomael arc closed in subtext — name never spoken in the shop.** Carter: *"The ore's changed what I can make. The new builds aren't the old builds with a few studs thrown on — they're something else. Gear I wish I'd been making five years ago."* Pauses on *five* just long enough to mean the thing he isn't saying. *"Wish I'd had it sooner. For people who needed it sooner."* Then moves on without moving on: *"I'm cutting leather for one now. Sending it up to Greymarch Barrows when it's done. A woman up there who should have had one a long time ago."* Phelan: *"Good."* Phelan pays for the last quiet adjustment on the collar studs; Carter doesn't want to take the silver; Phelan makes him; he puts it in a tin behind the counter and doesn't pretend it's going anywhere else. **Closing invitation:** *"Come by again before winter. Both of you. Proper visit, not a collar-stud errand."* Mere answers before Phelan can: *"We will."* Phelan leaves through the propped door; the brick is still holding it wide, saying *we're still open* the way Carter says it — and leaving the words out. **Uninformed about Phelan & Mere's marriage/children decision per Book 2 lock.** |
 
+| Epilogue | **Wedding party attendance with Jenet, Tomael arc closure confirmed.** Attends Phelan and Mere's wedding party at Chandler's Row Day 28 evening — arrives first with **Jenet** (her first on-page appearance). Jenet brings something baked in a tin *"that smelled like it had been thought about for a week."* Carter brings a small wooden box and sets it on the table, does not explain what's in it. Jenet hugs Mere "for almost long enough to be a statement." Carter puts his hand on Phelan's shoulder for half a second and says nothing — "Carter's particular way of saying the things he did not say out loud." **Tomael arc closure (subtext, name not spoken):** Carter quietly tells Phelan, while Jenet and Mere are at the window, that the letter came back from the north. *"From the woman. Fit her. She said it fit her the way she had hoped something would fit her someday and hadn't expected to."* Phelan: *"Good."* Tomael's widow received the jacket; the jacket did what Carter built it to do. Thread mechanically and emotionally resolved. Carter's small wooden box remains unopened on the kitchen table Day 29 dawn | Jenet on-page / Tomael arc closed |
+
 **Key developments:**
 - Relationship with Leon deepens beyond "people who know Phelan" -- Leon vouches for Carter with his own contacts, which is significant trust
 - Carter's family referenced with light touch (1-2 mentions of income impact, wife may appear briefly in shop scene)

characters/ledger.md

@@ -182,6 +182,8 @@ Specific moments where Ledger's Pathfinder past leaked through in the final draf
 | Ch19 | **The Deal.** Splits from Phelan on the south docks — goes ahead to guild hall. Runs the deal with Kae in the interview room: across from Kae, Phelan at the side wall, Leon at the door. Terms: testimony in exchange for herbal treatment, safe house, managed custody. Kae resists — "another guild telling me what to do." **Delivers the Elara bombshell at a calculated moment:** "Cassius Rykhard ordered Elara killed." Paper trail, two operatives, witness silenced. Kae breaks — "He killed her. He killed her and then gave me the crystal." Deal seals. Opens formal documentation. **Book 3 seed:** "The Compact has artifacts they consider untouchable. You just proved they aren't." Phelan reads the shift — observer has become investor, appraising Flaw Sight as a deployable asset. | Deal / investor shift |
 | Ch20 | **Picking Up the Pieces — the private file and the Merrenwood folder.** Sends runner (unfamiliar, itself a signal) to Chandler's Row the morning of Day 17 — third bell, Greystone Lane, *private* debrief room. Two-day wait was deliberate preparation. Sets the chair geometry before Phelan arrives (door-facing, forcing Phelan into the window chair). Opens with codename only — *"Locksmith."* / *"Ledger."* **Phase 1 — case closure:** Runs the wrap with total institutional economy. Every victim named and sealed, Vellen Thrace deferred with *"one I want to come back to"* (Phelan clocks it). Cass indicted on paper via Regulated Artifact statute and fatality schedule — "walks slowly into a room where the walls get closer every quarter." Kae under his operational custody ("Mine. Operationally. The guild's on paper. For now."). Leon's Brida containment filed as "resolution not tactical" — as close as Ledger will come on paper to "he talked the boy off a ledge with five words." Watches Phelan's reaction to the Leon beat specifically (three layers of filing, stacked). Carson's network formally recognised as a standing intelligence asset. **Case fee delivered:** 150 silvers gross, 120 net, coin not draft, guild-sealed oilcloth pouch — *"because I assumed you prefer it that way."* Signs the summary line: *"Case closed."* **Phase 2 — the Flaw Sight pivot:** Does not stand. Does not shuffle papers. Waits. Then: *"I was there, Locksmith. I saw what you did to that crystal. That wasn't curse-breaking."* No runway. Accepts Phelan's curated three-layer answer operationally. Asks for the third piece to be repeated (tests the rehearsal). Delivers *"That's not exactly what I saw, but close enough for the paperwork"* — the operational formula for protecting an asset by not forcing a confrontation. The gap goes into a private file kept out of guild records. **Phase 3 — the Merrenwood folder:** Second, differently-shaped pause. Produces the thinner, darker-bound off-book folder. *"You're Tier Two now. That means I can tell you this, and it means I have to."* Tier Two reframed as a **structural access tier, not a reward.** Walks Phelan through the Cairns work (unnamed — calls it "mine"): Vellen as illegitimate son of Duchess Isolde Merrenwood, four-year stipend trail through two shell intermediaries, Vellen's last-months record requests pulling academically at his own stipend paperwork. Spells out Cass's one-action-two-benefits logic (housekeeping + leverage-banking) in detail. **Articulates the guild's standing rule:** *"The guild stays out of noble politics unless called on. That is our standing rule. I have never broken it. Duchess Merrenwood has not called on us. And yet."* Oblique question: *"If it were your information, what would you do with it?"* Defers decision: *"I haven't decided. I'm not going to decide today. I'm telling you because you earned the right to know what the case actually paid for — and because if the moment comes to act on this, I'd rather you weren't hearing it for the first time in a room where the decision is already half made."* Squares the folder stack. *"That's the meeting, Locksmith."* Does not stand. **Ledger at the end of Book 2:** the relationship is now co-holder on two off-record assets — the private Flaw Sight file and the Merrenwood folder. Observer → investor → **file-holder and co-conspirator in deferral.** | The debrief / investor→holder |
 
+| Epilogue | **The Filing — the wedding handoff.** Attends Phelan and Mere's wedding party at Chandler's Row Day 28 evening. Arrives last. The room adjusts a quarter-inch when he steps through the door — "not the adjustment of people who were afraid of him, the adjustment of people who knew what he was and had, one at a time, decided to be glad he was here." Comes directly to Phelan. Sets a small wrapped bundle on the table next to Leon's cloth twist and Devod's folded slip. Guild cloth, guild knot — "but the knot was tied by a hand that had tied a lot of knots for itself and not just for the guild." Beside it, a cloth pouch with the weight of coin. **The gift line:** *"From the guild. And from me, because the distinction matters tonight."* **The bundle contains a pre-Compact thaumometer** — ornate palm-sized field detection tool, focal stone behind a convex lens, graduated bezel finer than Compact-licensed standard, effective range 50+ yards, projects a walking map of every working inside a city block of wherever Phelan is standing. The pouch contains **22 silvers** — "about what one month of the Tier Two retainer weighed." Phelan does not count them; Ledger does not make arithmetic mistakes. **The codename:** *"Locksmith."* Deliberate — "Not *Phelan,* tonight. Not here, not in front of Leon and Carter and Devod and Carson and Mere and the room. *Locksmith.*" **The Book 3 case hook:** *"Take three or four days for yourself. Then come see me. I have something that needs the kind of mind you have."* Phelan: *"I'll come."* / Ledger: *"Good."* Accepts a drink he does not finish. Exchanges nods with Carter and Leon. **Stops briefly beside Devod and says something too quietly for Phelan to hear, Devod says something too quietly back** — whatever passes between them is a thing Phelan files without being able to read. **At the door on his way out, one sentence:** *"He knows about the crystal. He doesn't know how. He's not going to stop wondering."* Phelan's internal: *(there it is. The last thing he came here to say.)* Ledger leaves. The private Phelan Flaw Sight file and the Merrenwood folder remain open and unshared with the guild above him. Attended the wedding knowing it was a wedding — uninformed about the Ch21 kitchen-table children conversation or Phelan's father wound per Book 2 lock. **Going into Book 3:** Phelan's controller (guild), Phelan's co-conspirator (off-book files), Phelan's client on the next case (case hook), and the deliberate line-drawer between institutional and personal, all in one room for ten minutes at the end of a wedding | Wedding handoff / thaumometer / Book 3 hook / Cass line |
+
 ### Book 3
 <!-- Future -->
 

characters/leon-dnardis.md

@@ -144,6 +144,8 @@
 | Ch19 | **Guard at the deal.** Walks Kae from Brida's to 14 Greystone Lane (Phelan left, Leon behind). At the guild hall interview room, takes guard position at the door while Ledger runs the deal and Phelan observes from the side wall. Watches Kae sign — the boy who tried to kill him two hours ago. **"You can fill me in on the crystal at practice later — you know I'm interested."** Signals he's staying — assumes a future ("later," "practice"). Processing the aftermath of his five words | Guard / assumed future |
 | Ch21 | **The philosophy shift, externalised (training scene).** Day 18 Freyasday, sixth bell, chandler's courtyard. First on-page training session since Ch12. Opens with *"Couldn't sleep"* — the small reveal he doesn't want to be asked about. Runs three clean integration passes at 15 seconds each. Watches Phelan reach for the sixteenth second and not find it, and names the plateau out loud: *"You're not going to get sixteen out of Carterson's ring."* No push, no sales angle — four months ago he'd have framed it as an upgrade opportunity and priced two alternatives in his head before Phelan had toweled off. He lets the observation stand. **The buyer-vetting beat (the externalised shift):** at the end of the second pass, Leon asks Phelan about **Arren Yule** — a private collector in the south end of the arcane district who has offered **2,400 silvers** for the **Harrow Vale threshold seal** Leon pulled from a ruin three years back. Pre-Compact placeable ward, no offensive load, fine perimeter engravings. Carson has already cleared the name. Leon wants a second read. Phelan flags the price anomaly (48× a good commoner ward). Leon admits that's what put him in the chair at sixth bell. They work malicious uses together — trap-in-a-room, sealed vault, corridor retreat — and every path collapses on logistics. Lands on *"it's a lock"* and delivers his own hammer metaphor: *"Even if someone turned it into a weapon, **they'd** have turned it into a weapon. That's not the ward's fault any more than it's the hammer's fault when somebody picks up a hammer to hit a person with."* Then mentions the engravings — collector money for a pretty object, not a weapon, *"a lock with nice handwriting."* Phelan agrees to ask around on Yule. **The beat Phelan files without naming:** four months ago Leon would have handed the seal to a fence, taken the discount, and filed the paperwork under things that weren't his problem. That morning he was brokering it himself, which means he owned where it went, which means he spent a night turning the piece over in his head looking for a weapon hiding inside a lock before deciding the win was big enough to take. He doesn't use the word *growth.* Never will. **Uninformed about Phelan & Mere's marriage/children decision per Book 2 lock** — all reveals deferred to Book 3 | Philosophy shift externalised / buyer vetting |
 
+| Epilogue | **Wedding party attendance, Arren Yule fee delivered, next piece teased.** Attends Phelan and Mere's wedding party at Chandler's Row Day 28 evening. Arrives fifteen minutes after Carson, "late by his own clock and exactly on time by anybody else's." Drops a small cloth twist on the table in front of Phelan. *"Arren Yule's clean. Everything you found lined up with what Carson had already told me. That's your ask-around fee."* Phelan opens it: **six silvers, matching the filing fee** — *"Thought you'd appreciate the symmetry."* The Ch21 philosophy shift is now lived-in practice: *"a season ago he would have framed this as a loan, or a favour, or a preview of a larger transaction I had not yet agreed to. Tonight he framed it as a fee. The framing was the whole shift."* References the next piece coming off the stack: *"Bigger than the Harrow Vale seal. I'm brokering it myself. I'll want a second read before I let it walk."* Phelan: *"Bring it by."* Standing arrangement. **Attended the wedding party as a wedding party** — uninformed about the Ch21 kitchen-table children conversation or Phelan's father wound per Book 2 lock. Exchanged a nod with Ledger on Ledger's way out | Fee not favour / next piece / wedding attendance |
+
 ### Book 3
 <!-- Future -->
 

characters/mere-fields.md

@@ -157,6 +157,8 @@ Categories: mindset, goal, relationship, skill, revelation, personality
 | Ch19 | **Treatment applied — first on-page.** Already packed when Leon's call comes in (anticipated it). Devod awake at Millford Street, quiet nod from bed. At Brida's: Kae on the floor, shaking, pain visible. Mere applies the three herbal compounds — spine, joints, congenital pain points mapped from bedside research — bandaged in place. **80% pain relief.** Kae goes still: "the absence of pain louder than pain ever was." First effective pain management he's had since Elara. **Flags moss supply:** "What I have won't grow fast enough for ongoing treatment. I'll need fresh cultures." Phelan connects to Velken's Drift. Exits to Devod: **"Dad needs monitoring more than this one does"** (uses "Dad" — established Ch11). Returns to her father while Phelan, Leon, and Ledger walk Kae to the guild hall | Treatment / closure |
 | Ch21 | **Thresholds won; first income line in her name; marriage and children on the table.** Day 18 Freyasday. Carries the partnership documents in a leather case to the corner of Hallow and Third, where Devod (walking from Millford Street before sixth bell) meets them. **The Thresholds confrontation (Scene 2 — Mere leads the whole thing).** At the door: *"Dad, you take the counter. I'll take Charlette."* Speaks the name *Charlette* where another daughter would have said *mom* — the word lands the way *Dad* first landed on the night of the ledgers (Ch11), without fanfare, kept going. Inside: Charlette tries *"I don't know what you think this is"* and Mere returns it sentence by sentence — *"It's the deed. It's the original partnership agreement. It's four years of payments from Devod to you... It's not a question."* Delivers both options flatly: partnership reversion (joint ownership, Mere runs floor and supply/treatment, Charlette without signing authority on any account Mere touches) vs. forgery complaint at the Drenwick Court House. *"Option one is a better offer than you deserve. Devod wants to be amicable. I don't. He gets to decide, because he's the one you cheated."* Had a notarial stamp pre-prepared in the leather case ("Of course she'd had it prepared"). Devod answers: *"Option one."* Charlette: *"Fine."* Countersigns, witnesses, thresholds resolved on paper. Outside in the Hallow Street sun, one short unceremonial release: *"That's done."* Later, watching Devod peel off at the canal turn: *"He's different. I don't know what to do with that yet."* **Carter's shop (with Phelan).** First time in Carter's shop in the book. Carter welcomes her warmly; she declines tea. When Carter says *"Come by again before winter. Both of you. Proper visit, not a collar-stud errand,"* Mere answers before Phelan can: *"We will."* **Late-morning ghostveil moss standing order (first income line in her own name).** Ledger's runner delivered a formal standing order to Chandler's Row that morning — twelve silvers a month, all of it, ongoing Kae care. *"I told the runner yes before he finished the sentence."* When Phelan says *"That's yours,"* Mere corrects him: *"It's ours."* First line of income in Mere's own name; the correction is the character beat. **Kitchen scene — the marriage & children seed (author-locked centerpiece).** Evening. Mere opens flat and declarative: *"We've been too preoccupied with Devod to deal with this, but we need to discuss something. I've decided we should get married."* Not a question — a conclusion she reached weeks ago and has been waiting to surface. When Phelan surfaces out of hyperfocus with *"Do we need to see a priest?"* she **laughs** — rare, warm, caught before she can suppress it; the softness stays in the corner of her mouth after the laugh goes away. Corrects him: *"You're my partner. I don't care about a priest."* **The real pivot is children.** She holds Phelan's hands and drops back to the level declarative: *"Do you want children? I want children. Within the next year. Before I'm in my mid-thirties."* Followed by the social-order clause: *"And it's expected to be married before a child. These things have an order."* When Phelan gives the technical deflect (logistics, money, house), Mere cuts through with flat precision: *"Those are logistics. Do you want them?"* The Misread tool (Ch04–05) turned into a scalpel — imprecise questions don't work on Phelan, so she asks the exact one. When Phelan's honest answer comes (*"I don't know how"*), Mere's locked response is immediate: *"Neither do I. I'm going to be wrong a lot. That doesn't matter. What matters is that we do our best. It will work itself out. We aren't dumb people."* Followed, without changing register, by the sincere, un-ironic **"Our genetics are favorable."** — flat statement of calculated conclusion, lands funny to Phelan because Mere does not hear it as a joke. She already knows where the Drenwick court house is and what the filing requires: second floor, civil registry, counter two, six silvers, ten-day waiting period, hours second-afternoon-bell to seventh daily except Godsday — research done *"Last month. Before the case."* **Preparedness as love language.** Phelan: *"Okay. We'll go this week."* **Private decision: not shared with Devod, Leon, Carter, Carson, or Ledger in Book 2 per locked canon.** All reveals deferred to Book 3 | Relationship / decision / Thresholds closed |
 
+| Epilogue | **Legally married Day 28. Devod hugged on-page. Decision still private.** Morning at Chandler's Row, down after Phelan, does the kettle the way she always does the kettle, sits across from him, and neither of them says anything about it. *"Second afternoon bell." / "I know."* **At the civil registry counter:** produces her crown papers — older paper than Phelan's, crown seal darker with age, a single crease where she had folded it once and never unfolded since. Says *no* to existing joint contracts. Does not smile at the counter because the counter is theirs and the counter gets the flat version. Takes the clerk's copy of the filing. **On the stairs down from the court house, her hand goes into the crook of Phelan's elbow and stays there across the guild quarter and all the way back to Chandler's Row.** First on-page physical affection beat in the book that isn't Ch21's held-hands interior or the earlier bedside protocol. **At the wedding party — the Devod hug.** Meets Devod in the middle of the room before he can reach her and puts her arms around him "the way Mere put her arms around almost nobody." Holds him for a breath longer than Phelan expects. Steps back at the same moment without coordinating it. **No on-page use of "Dad" in this beat** — the word was spent privately in Ch11 and the hug now carries what the word used to carry. **Her quiet counter beat with Phelan** later in the evening: puts her hand in his where no one can see it, half a breath, no words. *"The filing was the room's. The rest of it was ours."* They smile at each other; nobody is looking. **Charlette absent from the party — Mere did not offer.** Thresholds partnership still reverted. **Day 29 dawn: asleep upstairs while Phelan walks out to find Ledger.** Legally married (contract effective Day 38). Privately still holding the Ch21 kitchen-table decision with Phelan; no on-page conversation about children since that night | Filing / Devod hug / privacy |
+
 ### Book 3
 <!-- Future -->
 
@@ -183,5 +185,5 @@ Categories: mindset, goal, relationship, skill, revelation, personality
 - [x] What are the legal/economic consequences when Mere eventually leaves? — **RESOLVED Ch21.** Mere did not leave; she won. Partnership reverted to the original deed (joint ownership, equal shares). Mere runs the floor, manages supply and treatment, and holds sole signing authority on any account she touches. Charlette and Devod split the books. Charlette was reclassified as "closed account" in Ch11 — now operative on paper. Thread closed.
 - [ ] When does Mere build out the moss-supply pipeline she flagged in Ch19? Velken's Drift access is already established through the guild — but the cultivation logistics are an open thread for Book 3
 - [ ] How does the Ch16 Misread (her brief sting interpreting Phelan's hyperfocus as something else) shape her communication protocol going forward? She's filed it as "a pattern to learn" — what does that look like in practice?
-- [ ] **When does the Drenwick court house filing happen?** Decision made Ch21 Day 18 evening. Phelan's on-page commitment: *"Okay. We'll go this week."* Filing window: Day 19–25 (within one week of the decision). Ten-day waiting period after filing before the civil contract takes legal effect → contract becomes active roughly Day 29–35. The filing itself may land in the Book 2 epilogue; the legal effect may land early Book 3. Mere will drive the calendar.
+- [x] **When does the Drenwick court house filing happen?** **RESOLVED Epilogue.** Filed Day 28 at counter two, second afternoon bell, fifteen past, six silvers on the counter. Crown papers presented and verified against the reference plate. Ten-day waiting period begins; contract takes legal effect Day 38. On-page ceremony minimal: name exchange, papers exchange, clause read, stamp lands. Neither of them smiled at the counter. First small physical affection beat (Mere's hand in Phelan's elbow) on the walk home.
 - [ ] **When and how does the pregnancy get revealed to Phelan?** Book 3 thread. Mere's "within the next year" line in Ch21 is a readiness window, not a deadline — she's scheduling, not panicking. The reveal itself has not been blocked out yet.