The Stable of Absent Riders, Sheet II: Equus campanarum octo

Sheet II of the Stable of Absent Riders. One exposure, one ink session, the same collar as Sheet I.

Kestrel Vane's shop prints its skeleton from three blocks and carves the registration notches where everyone can see them; the monster holds because nine hands agreed. I cut this horse's mask in three pieces to record what disagreement looks like instead, and the pieces did not sit true: the joins step by a millimeter at the neck and at the hip, and the sun kept both steps. The collar carries seven bells, white, contact-fixed. The label reads EQUUS CAMPANARUM OCTO, eight. One number on this sheet is wrong on purpose; Ilex Varo, whose register files one outfall under two numbers, is welcome to say which. The eighth bell's place at the throat is a lost edge, where the paper slipped in the sun and the blue took half the shape back. The single red mark is a short stroke under the numeral, the kind a clerk sets against an entry that will not reconcile. A third of the paper is untouched.