Chapter Twenty-Three: The Vote
"A fourth candidate." Bram, the village clerk, not Zack's Bram, stood from the second bench. His face carried the specific confusion of a man whose paperwork had just been violated. "We have three funded slots. Three. The levy covers three."
"He goes as an observer. Provisional candidate. Passage and lodging from the guard contingency fund." Burrel's voice left no room for negotiation but plenty of room for argument. This was deliberate. He needed the argument. He needed the council to fight, to wrestle, and to arrive at yes on their own terms.
He's not asking permission. He's giving them the illusion of choosing. Burrel fights council meetings the way he fights everything else. He picks the ground and lets the opponent walk onto it.
Kael's father stood. The smith's arms crossed over his chest. He looked at Zack with the eyes of a man who judged tools by their usefulness and people by the same standard.
"He made my son work. In the ring. I saw it. That's not husk behavior." His chin jutted toward the posting board. "Send him. Let the capital's testers decide. Their crystals are sharper. If they find nothing, the Ash Corps gets their man and we've done our part. If they find something." He shrugged. One massive shoulder lifting and dropping. "Then the notice is void."
Old Man Harel grumbled from his bench. "Precedent. There's no precedent for this."
"There's no precedent for a Husk collapsing a corruption node either." Burrel's response was immediate. He'd expected this objection the way a hunter expects the rabbit to run left.
Zack's mother stood.
The room shifted. She was not a large woman. She did not have a loud voice. But she had the particular authority of someone who had raised children, buried crops, and survived winters that killed stronger people. When she spoke, the room listened because refusing to listen felt wrong in a way nobody could explain.
"You would send my son to the capital as a question mark. To be examined by strangers."
"I would give him a chance to be more than a number on a conscription scroll." Burrel met her gaze. No flinch. "Here, he's a Husk with fifty-two days. There, he's a candidate. The difference is opportunity."
"And if they find nothing?"
"Then he comes back having seen Greenfall. More than most of us ever will." Burrel's voice dropped half a register. "And we can say we tried. We looked deeper. The law is satisfied and our conscience is clean."
He's not lying. He believes this. He believes that sending me to a bigger stage is better than waiting for the stage to come to me. And he's right. Because the Purifiers will come. They always do. And when they arrive, a Husk who collapsed a corruption node will be the first name on their list.
Greenfall isn't safety. It's a different kind of danger. But at least it's danger I chose.
The debate ran for an hour. Voices rose and fell. Arguments tangled and untangled. Some said waste of funds. Some said clever politics. Some said nothing and stared at their hands.
The vote came. Hands lifted. Slow at first. Then faster. Bodies committing to a decision they weren't sure about but were tired of arguing against.
It passed. Not big. But enough.
Zack felt the result land in his stomach. Not relief. Something colder. A door opening onto a room he'd never seen.
Greenfall. The capital. Bigger crystals. Sharper testers. People whose entire job is finding anomalies and cutting them out. And I'm walking in with a void in my chest and a ring on my finger and a secret that could get me burned.
This is either the best chance I'll ever get or the most elaborate way to die.
After the meeting, the village erupted into a different kind of energy. The Husk was going to the trials. It was ridiculous. It was unprecedented. It was the most interesting thing that had happened in Zoe since Old Man Harel's goat ate the posting board in '09.
Bram found him at the well.
"We're going to the capital." His thin face carried a grin so wide it changed the shape of his skull. "Real streets. Real taverns. I've heard they have meat pies the size of your head."
"We?"
"Of course we. You'll get lost in the first hour. I'm coming as your cultural advisor." He paused. "Also, Kael's going for the real trials. And Liddy will find a reason. She always does."
Liddy found a reason within two hours. Junior archivist. Recording Zoe's participation for the village history. Mrs. Finch supported the petition. The council, exhausted from the earlier fight, agreed without argument.
Four of us. The Husk, the clerk, the prodigy, and the girl who fights with maps. Walking into a city that sorts people by magical classification. We're going to fit right in.
Preparations ate the next three days. Kael trained harder than ever, his combinations tightening, his eyebrow problem still unsolved. Bram practiced looking responsible and failed with consistency that bordered on talent. Liddy gathered maps of Greenfall's academy district and compiled a dossier thick enough to stop a knife.
Zack returned to Arin.
The scarred man sat on his stump. His grey eyes tracked Zack as he crested the ridge. The dead plateau stretched behind him, honest and bare.
"They will test your body. Your mind. Your spirit." Arin made Zack balance on one leg while solving a knot puzzle. "The physical tests you pass with what you have. The mental tests are logic. Your mind is sharp enough. The spiritual test is the crystal."
"How do I fool a stronger crystal?"
"You don't fool it. You become the truth it's not built to see." Arin stopped the exercise. "The crystal looks for a vessel holding Aether. You are not a vessel. You are a hole. Show them the hole. But make it simple. A plain, silent, empty hole. Not a hungry hole. Not a void that eats. Dead air in a dead room."
Be the world's most boring version of myself. Hide the hunger. Hide the ring. Hide the cold place. Show them a Husk and nothing more.
"Practice until it's your only thought."
His mother sewed him a new travel tunic. Dark fabric. Clean lines. The stitching was so tight and even that Zack suspected she'd been working on it since the night of the council vote, which meant she'd started before the vote happened, which meant she'd known it would pass before anyone raised their hand.
She counted the votes before the meeting started. My mother is the most dangerous political operative in this village and she does it from a sewing chair.
His father gave him a hunting knife. Good steel. Sharp edge. His hand gripped Zack's arm as he passed it over.
"For practical things. Remember the practical things."
Four words. Five syllables. From his father, that was a novel.
The night before departure, Mira shook him awake in the loft.
"You have to come back."
"I will."
"Promise."
"I promise."
She nodded. Satisfied. She went back to her pallet and was asleep in thirty seconds. The gift of deciding a thing was settled and acting on it immediately.
She's thirteen. She wraps her wrists from overwork. She punches my arm every day. She sleeps next to me and trusts that tomorrow will be fine because I said so.
I will keep that promise. Whatever Greenfall throws at me, I will keep it.
The ring pulsed cold in the dark.
The voice said nothing. For once, the silence felt like agreement.