The Ballot Box Sat Outside the Gate, Not in the Warm Hall

The ballot box sat outside the gate, not in the warm meeting hall. The first ballot read, "Give the child back." The second read, "Our house's night wages, first." Noah wrote his name on neither.

On the morning of the sixteenth day, Doran checked first how deep the ballot box's legs had sunk into the snow.

Overnight the wind outside the gate had turned colder. Even so, they did not move the polling site indoors. Outlying households needed to be able to cast their votes without crossing the threshold of the manor's meeting hall. Three sides of the wooden box stood open, and four different markers had been prepared for anyone who could not read a ballot.

The hourglass meant the trial period. The coin meant paid shifts. The bell meant anyone could halt it. The two-house wooden tile meant full verification through the night.

Doran's eleven guild members gathered to one side. When he unfolded the wood distribution sheet, everyone's eyes followed. He was the one who had decided which district got the skilled carpenters and repairmen.

"If the distributed plan continues, the guild needs priority on fuel."

Serena asked.

"Which fuel?"

"Firewood for heating the workshop and drying resin. If we send the equipment out for repair and let the lumber freeze, the supports crack before the nails do."

Sana, from the outlying south gate village, stepped forward.

"My house still has only one shutter. If you heat the guild workshop first, that's just fixing the places closest to the manor again."

Doran scraped his thumbnail across the corner of the distribution sheet twice.

"If the workshop goes cold, we can't make your shutter at all."

"There's no date for when it'll be made."

"Because there aren't enough hands."

"Because you're the only one holding that labor sheet, Guildmaster."

The guild members murmured. Doran started to unfold the distribution sheet, then stopped. If his own vote broke apart in an open meeting, the guild's authority could shrink along with it.

Cassian spoke from the steps by the gate.

"What we decide today is simple. Whether to test the distributed furnaces for ten more days, or return to the centralized system..."

"No." Serena cut him off.

The meeting ground went quiet.

"Putting Noah back on the hearth stone is not up for a vote. A child's right to survive and his right to refuse don't disappear because there are more yes votes."

The man who had written the first ballot raised his voice.

"Then what are we choosing? If the child doesn't go up, people could freeze to death."

"You're choosing the length, the wages, the right to halt, and the temperature standard for running the distributed system without the child. You can vote against the plan, but that vote doesn't grant anyone the authority to reassign Noah's body."

"That's just wordplay."

Doran cut in.

"No, it isn't. You can vote not to fix the roof, but you can't vote to use the neighbor's child as a rafter."

The man glared at Doran.

"Easy for the guildmaster to say, taking the manor's money."

"I'll make public what I've received and what wages are missing."

Doran gripped his distribution sheet harder after saying it. Making it public meant his guild members' shares could be scattered too.

Serena set up two columns beside the ballot box. What could not be voted on. What could be voted on with conditions attached.

The first column held forcing Noah's return, stripping the right to halt, and unpaid night shifts. The second held the trial period, the wage amount, the temperature standard, the order of materials, and the date for reconsideration.

Noah sat at a small table behind the polling site. In front of him lay the two-house wooden tile, but no ballot.

Sana asked.

"Why doesn't the heir get a ballot?"

Noah answered.

"I don't vote on whether I go up. I write my own opinion on the equipment's conditions."

"Then that's different from us."

"My body going in is different. Deciding how to use the fuel, we decide together."

He read the conditions for the two houses. Noah is not at the hearth stone. Two or more houses hold the standard temperature through the night. The child does not personally supply extra heat. Anyone can halt it.

"Last time, one room went cold," Noah said. "So it's not a success yet."

That wasn't a speech meant to help the distributed plan. He handed the failure to the other side first.

Doran took out the bundled sheet he had brought for the guild members. The guild's conditions were tied together as one. Workshop firewood first, night pay for the eleven carpenters, and the authority to decide repair order kept with the guild. He tried to get them signed with a single line under the guild members' names.

Mari pushed the box of rest tokens toward the ballot box.

"You asked who pays the cost, didn't you?"

She opened the box. Among the tokens issued in chapter eleven, the used ones and the remaining ones were divided by column.

"Yoren, three days. Ilma, three days. Jina, one shift. That's actual rest days taken and the substitute's wages. To run the distributed plan for ten more days, we need twenty more night monitor shifts, six more kitchen shifts, and four more equipment repair shifts."

Doran said.

"Guild repairs are eight shifts."

"Then name it as eight and put it out in the open. Don't hide it inside the firewood priority."

Mari wiped the damp from her hands on her apron and lined up the empty tokens.

"But there's a condition. You write the substitute's name and training hours on the token together. If someone gets called in on their day off, it's repaid with two tokens."

Sana picked up a token.

"Is checking the outlying temperature also paid work?"

"If you go outside your house at night to read someone else's temperature marker, that's work."

After that remark, the polling site grew noisier with arithmetic more than with yes or no. Households placed markers on their own condition sheets. Some houses set the hourglass and the coin together, some only the bell, some drew a line through all four markers.

The first count that morning showed seventeen in favor and twenty against.

The distributed plan failed by three votes.

Cassian spoke at once.

"It's decided. We move to another alternative system..."

"The condition sheets haven't been counted yet," Serena said.

"The yes and no votes are already finished."

Doran looked at the pile of condition sheets. Three of his own guild members had voted no, but had circled the coin and bell markers. Sana's vote was also no, but beside the ten day hourglass she had written, "ask again after that."

"There are votes that would change if conditions are attached," Doran said.

Cassian looked at him.

"Did you think the guild's proposal would pass?"

"My proposal losing and the vote being finished are two different things."

Doran tore up the guild's bundled sheet. He handed back the paper with the eleven signatures, one sheet to each guild member.

"Write your own. I won't bundle them for you anymore."

One of the apprentice carpenters asked.

"What about the repair order?"

"Write it on your own condition sheet. Base it on whichever house will collapse first, not on the guildmaster."

That statement cut down Doran's own authority. It meant admitting that someone who knew wood grain well and someone who endured the cold in their own house held different truths.

Four overlapping demands remained on the afternoon agreement board.

First, run the trial for only ten days, then hold a revote on the eleventh.

Second, pay for all night, repair, and temperature check labor, attaching a name and substitute training to each.

Third, whatever the method, whether bell, word, or rope removal, anyone can halt it immediately, and the reason is confirmed only after safety.

Fourth, move to the next stage only once two houses maintain a full night without Noah.

Fuel and lumber order would be made public on a separate distribution sheet, and the guild workshop's firewood would be paid out only in proportion to actual repair shifts worked. Neither the guild's blanket priority nor the manor's first claim survived.

Cassian read the four conditions.

"There are too many conditions. Even one snowfall within ten days could halt everything."

"Then it should be halted," Mari said.

"The royal deadline won't wait."

Noah stood up the two-house tile.

"If we call something a success because we wrote it down wrong to meet a deadline, that's the same as yesterday's sleep ledger."

Eda heard that from behind the polling site, but did not answer in his place.

The revote used the same box. This time, pictures of the four conditions were posted beside the yes and no options. For those who could not read, two different residents explained the same content, and their names as explainers were recorded on the back of the ballot.

Doran cast his own ballot last. With the guild's blanket priority gone, it was a worse deal than the first proposal. Even so, he drew a nail shape in the yes column.

The count came to twenty one in favor and sixteen against.

Four votes had shifted. Not everyone had changed their mind. The reasons for voting no remained the same: a shortage of firewood in the outlying areas, distrust of a barrier without a child, lost records of tax refunds, and the guild's lack of skilled hands.

Serena did not flip the no votes over. She grouped them by reason and posted them on the right side of the agreement board.

Sana stayed a no vote to the end.

"I still don't believe it."

Doran asked.

"Then will you still hold to the condition about fixing the south gate shutters first?"

"Of course. If you push my house back just because I voted no, is that even a vote?"

"No, it isn't."

Doran wrote Sana's south gate household on the first line of the public distribution sheet. The house most likely to collapse first. He assigned one guild member and one non guild apprentice to it.

Sana looked at the empty night monitor slot at the bottom of the agreement board.

"Can I ring the halt bell too?"

"Anyone can," Serena said.

"I'm asking because I worry you'll say only the ones who voted yes can be trusted."

"You can check it while still keeping your reason for voting no."

Sana wrote her name in the first day's dawn shift slot. She wrote the pay and the substitute in the next column. She did not remove her no vote.

Doran did not put the guild's bundled sheet back in the ballot box. Instead he had the eleven sheets kept separately, and nailed down the remaining lumber and repair order on the public distribution sheet.

"What I'll fix is the south gate shutters and the workshop's supports. I'll give a separate estimate for each."

Mari said.

"What I'll check is whether the rest tokens actually got used. But I still can't hand off the laundry pot's night shift."

Her own contradiction stayed under the condition board too.

Noah searched the final charter draft for his own name. He read the line, "Noah Riban's return is forbidden," and shook his head.

"Don't write my name. Write 'the child bearing the burden' instead, so the next child doesn't get voted on either."

Serena revised it to, "The forced return of a child bearing the burden is not subject to a vote."

"Even after ten days, this line still won't go to a vote?"

"It won't."

Noah set the two-house tile down beneath that answer. He did not give it a vote, but he left behind a standard for verification.

By the time the sun leaned low, the ballot box's legs had sunk deeper into the snow. Twenty one yes votes, sixteen no votes, four bundles of objections, and the name of the first night monitor all went into the same ledger.

There was no complete harmony. Only a ten day permit.

On that permit's first shift was written the name of someone who had voted no.