Work with the House is divided according to what a practitioner can notice and change. Collators read the compatibility of people and lines before admission, marriage, or the unification of Houses. Correctors intervene in the masonry and internal structure of a House that has already taken shape. Masters of Wind watch the movement of what is held and how a change will reverberate through rooms, courtyards, and neighbouring lines.
Working with the House
These are not ranks within a single profession. An experienced corrector cannot replace a collator before a dangerous admission, and a collator does not decide which seam can be opened without causing a Shift. In complex work, their conclusions are layered: one determines the risk to the line, another chooses the intervention, and the third checks its consequences. The final decision still belongs to the residents and the House, so a practitioner may refuse the work but cannot guarantee its outcome.
Knowledge is passed on chiefly through shared work rather than explanations of rules. A held lesson may use the House's response, while cold practice tests skills without it; a living measure is a local comparison, not a universal standard. These practices belong to craft lineages, apprentices’ rounds, and broken schools, gathered under succession.
Related Practices
Training may alternate between a held lesson, in which a House's retained cadence is part of the exercise, and cold practice, which checks skill without it. A living measure is a local comparison, not a universal standard.
Three Signatures on an Intervention
A major intervention usually bears three signatures. The collator confirms which connection is being altered; the corrector records exactly what was done to the masonry or line; the Master of Wind records where the released tension went. A missing signature does not always prohibit the work, but it leaves the Archive record incomplete.
After the House of the Copper Circle was rebuilt, the signatures of the collator and corrector survived, but the Master of Wind disappeared before the courtyard was inspected. Seven years later, a neighbouring House presented an old crack as a consequence of that work. Causation could not be proved, but the incomplete record compelled the corrector’s school to take part in the repairs.
A signature therefore signifies neither authorship nor approval of the result. It is a promise to answer for one’s own form of discernment should the consequences emerge later.
A Practitioner’s Error and a School’s Responsibility
A craft error is not always immediately visible. A correction may strengthen a seam while connecting the rooms incorrectly; a collation may bring the papers into agreement while concealing the incompatibility of the people; a movement of the Wind may leave one courtyard safely only to pass into another. Responsibility therefore continues after the work has ended.
The obligation passes in this order:
- the practitioner who performed the work answers first;
- if the practitioner has died, disappeared, or lost the right to practise, the school answers—not through inherited guilt, but through the duty to explain the method and remedy its consequence;
- if the school has dissolved, the students’ decisions are examined by an outside lineage and a second witness.
The gravest violation is not an unsuccessful outcome but a refusal to state the limits of one’s knowledge. A practitioner may be mistaken about an ambiguous answer from the House; they may not record an assumption as an observed fact.