Our first stop was the political registrar. Lira was happy to tell us all about it, but what it amounted to was a room full of lists.

“It takes a lot of work to keep it up to date,” she told us. “But every time an Elder wants to reassign their proxy, they need to come here with the other Elders involved.”

Her youthful enthusiasm made it seem that all three Elders would just show up out of a pure desire to make sure that every village got the representation they wanted. I didn’t have the heart to ask what would happen if an Elder didn’t want to give up their proxy. I’m sure there must be some procedure but it wasn’t relevant to today.

What was relevant was what we’d come for, the name of the Elder representing Hidden Hollow. I let Lira do the honours. She seemed familiar with what books to look up, though her reading speed left a lot to be desired. It was barely super-human. I got the answer a second before she did, looking over her shoulder once she’d found the right page, but I let her make the announcement.

“It’s Vesper Frostpaw of Snowfall's Embrace,” she told us. “That’s to the west, up in the mountains,” she added.

“One of the Nine,” I said mildly. “We met her yesterday. What faction would she be in, do you know?”

Both of her ears drooped. “I’m not supposed to talk about factions,” she said guiltily. “And she’s… I’m especially not supposed to talk about her faction.”

“That’s fine,” I told her. “I’m getting the picture anyway. She was opposed to the Isolationist faction—”

“How do you know—” Lira interjected, before snapping her mouth shut. She must have realised that she was giving too much away.

“Tinidan let it slip,” I explained, and she sniffed in exasperation.

“How am I supposed to keep quiet if Master can’t?” she protested.

“It’s completely unfair,” I agreed. It was more than a little unfair for Tinidan to expect her to keep secrets from me. The girl was an easily opened book to skills like [Persuasion] and [Intrigue] and the two skills were itching for a chance to crack her open. She liked me, and she was assigned to help me. Give me five minutes and a cup of coffee and she’d be spilling her deepest, darkest secrets.

There were two reasons I didn’t. Three if you counted a lack of coffee to bond over. The first was that it was rude. Tinidan and Lira were my allies, hopefully for the longer term. There wasn’t anything to gain by antagonising them.

The second reason was that Tinidan must have known I had that capacity. He didn’t want me to understand the local politics, but he can’t have been that concerned about it. Not if he was leaving his apprentice in my hands. The other possibility was that he’d fed her some misleading information to poison anything I got from her. She was new to this, she probably didn’t know enough on her own to verify what she’d been told.

The other other reason was that I didn’t need to.

“—she was also quite hostile to Tinidan,” I continued. “Who, let us say, seems to belong to the Trading faction.”

The look on Lira’s face told me I hadn’t gotten the name right, but it was close enough.

“Now, opposed to both isolation and trade and connected to a distinctly hostile village makes me think that we’ve found the faction that wants war. Shall we call them the Militant faction?”

Lira’s nose twitched. If that was a tell, it was adorable.

“Did—did you want to watch a Council session?” she asked, desperately changing the subject.

“Sure,” I said. That was three of the four factions I’d seen identified. It was hard to imagine what position the final faction held. Perhaps it was just concerned with maintaining the status quo?

There was a hushed quiet even before we got near the grove. Lira cautioned us to maintain a respectful bearing.

“It’s a holy place, as well as our most important institution,” she said. We all nodded in agreement. This time I had the whole gang with me—I think in hopes that we’d run into Borys again.

As we approached, I noted several priests. At least, they were wearing the same robes that Tonet wore.

“There’s not normally this many priests,” Lira said, “But we’re on alert because of the mind magic.”

The grove was a large clearing around a truly massive tree. Its branches must have blocked the light for a hundred meters around its trunk, leaving a space where no other trees could grow. I didn’t know the species, but [Identify] was on the case.

[Identification]: - Blessed Oak - Properties: Protection, Blessing, Immortal

I raised an eyebrow. That was a short but quite spectacular set of benefits. Must be on Ashmor’s hit list, I speculated. But then, it must also get special attention from Naldyna, so I guess it evened out.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Around the massive trunk was a raised platform, supporting several posts with placards and baskets. I looked at Lira for an explanation.

“When a proposition is put before Council,” she murmured. “It goes up on a post and members can put a token in the basket to register their disapproval.”

“Is this one of their proxy tokens, or is this a different token?” I asked softly.

“A different one, it basically just has their name carved in it,” she said. “So that those in favour of the proposal know who they need to convince to let it go forward.”

“Can’t you just take someone’s name out?” Cloridan asked.

“Well, you can, but it doesn’t mean anything,” Lira replied. “Once the basket is empty, you can take your proposal to the floor, and everyone votes on it. That’s the vote that counts, not the basket.”

“The basket is just to coordinate the negotiations,” I said. I looked out over the rest of the grove. It was dotted with comfortable chairs and tables, in small groups mostly arranged to give them a view of the tree. Various beastkin were sitting in the chairs, wandering between groups or walking up to the tree to examine the baskets.

“What happens when it rains,” I asked, looking at all of the expensive chairs.

“Oh, it doesn’t,” Lira replied. “Rain, wind, snow, fire, insects or beasts, none of them can disturb the grove.”

“Is that what Protection does?” I asked. “It’s pretty powerful, too bad it doesn’t protect against Mind Magic.”

“Um… it might? I’m not sure about the rarer protections. I know it doesn’t stop violence, but other things I’m not sure about.”

Other things? I reached out with my [Shadow Magic] senses, since trying to lob a water ball might be taken the wrong way. Sure enough, just ahead of me was a region where, despite all of the shaded areas, my senses told me that there were no shadows. Ironically, the grove that anyone could walk into was protected from Shadow walking.

“It’s not very exciting,” Felica complained.

“Sometimes there are speeches,” Lira said defensively. “But most of the time they’re just talking.”

“When democracy gets exciting, something has gone very wrong,” I said. This was a democracy, even if it was a form I hadn’t heard of before. I supposed there were worse forms of government, though none of them sprang to mind.

A thought occurred to me.

“What happens if an Elder isn’t present for a vote,” I asked. “If they show up late to vote against, does that break the consensus?”

Lira shook her head, “Overturning a vote requires a new vote,” she said. “If you miss it, or if your proxy holder votes against your interest and you take your proxy away, you have to call a new vote and get it overturned. It doesn’t happen often.”

I nodded in understanding. There would have to be exceptional circumstances for every Councillor to change their vote at the request of a single voter. It underscored the importance of attending votes and cast fresh light on the proxy system. I’d been thinking of it as a hierarchy, but there might also be groups of Elders that trusted each other, taking turns attending so that no single one of them was unduly inconvenienced.

Having more than one vote didn’t mean that much when it only took one vote to derail a proposal.

“Is Tinidan here now?” I asked.

Lira nodded. “He should be canvassing opinions about how to word your request,” she said, looking around the grove. After a moment, she pointed. “There!”

My instinct told me that I shouldn’t be able to recognise Tinidan, more than a hundred meters away in the dappled shade of the grove. Instinct was wrong, and I picked him out easily. He had apparently noticed us as well, and soon started heading our way.

“Good news,” he said, as he approached closely enough to address us in the hushed tone that everyone seemed to use around the grove. “The Nine have agreed to post your request for a vote.”

“Is it really my request when I haven’t even seen the wording of it?” I asked skepticly.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter, the request has no chance of passing.”

“Is that why Elder Vesper let it through?” I asked. “I can’t imagine the militant faction is ever going to let it succeed.”

Tinidan glared disapprovingly at Lira.

“I didn’t tell her!” she protested. “You were the one who told her about the Isolationists!”

He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Yes, well, you are broadly correct.”

“So how does this help us?” I asked.

“This opens negotiations,” Tinidan explained. “You don’t actually want a resolution from the Council.”

“I don’t?”

“No, you want to find your rogue Captain. Now, a Council resolution is one way of achieving that, but as long as he has the support of a single village, you will never get that resolution.” Tinidan leaned in, warming to his pitch.

“But there are other ways,” I said.

“Yes! You see, I—” Tinidan broke off suddenly. “Actually, we shouldn’t be having this conversation in the open.”

I shrugged and cast [Privacy]. “Is this better?”

He jumped as the rustling of leaves and the murmur of other people’s conversations was suddenly cut off.

“It’s… a little unconventional, but I really shouldn’t be leaving the grove right now. I’m sure it will be fine.”

“So the other way… or ways?”

“Yes! As I was saying… if a village, or better yet a coalition of villages, chooses to go after this Hector and deliver him to you, then this would be simply a conflict between villages.”

I frowned. “I thought that you— that everyone in the Wild— forbade inter-Tribal conflict.”

“It’s discouraged, certainly,” Tinidan allowed, “But it can never be eliminated entirely. The Council mechanism doesn’t work well for disputes between villages.”

I looked at him speculatively, and he quickly clarified. “That said, my faction isn’t well placed to threaten Hidden Hollow. We don’t have the numbers or the warlike inclination.”

“So if you’re not going to threaten them…”

He smiled. “There are many council members who want something done about this demon issue, and many of them think that the best person to do it is a Champion.”

“So if we make clear that Hector is our price for intervening…”

“Then they become interested in acquiring him as a bargaining chip, and start to form a coalition, stretching across the main factions, to do so.”

“I see,” I said slowly. It seemed that the Tribes did use majority rule for some things after all. “So all I have to do now is wait for an offer from someone. It won’t come through the Council?”

“No,” Tinidan said. “It may come through me, or they may approach you directly. Accept the Council mission in return for having Hector handed over.”

“Huh. And how does Borys fit into this?”

“I’m not sure,” Tinidan admitted. “Most likely, Elder Thorne had the same idea that we did and just wants something of his own. I doubt it is at all connected to you. Assuming that his goal isn’t in direct opposition to ours, we’ll be pushing for the Council to send you both, and pay both rewards. Two Champions are better than one, after all.”

“Will Borys be posting his own request then?”

“He may do, we’ll certainly be looking out for it.” Tinidan looked thoughtful. “Or he may send it through other channels. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“All right,” I said. “I guess I’d better let you get back to work.”

“Ask Lira to show you around,” he suggested. “There are many fine sights to see.”