Coterie tithe

The Coterie tithe is a form of self-sacrifice offered to secure protection for others. Lock’s decision to become a tithe so Venus would leave the dryads alone gives the arrangement its clearest meaning in the evidence: the person at risk offers himself, but the resulting protection comes with the Coterie’s power to direct his work and remake his public identity.

Purpose and Terms in Practice

Lock volunteered himself as a tithe to protect the dryads. Because he supported himself, he needed one of the better-paying positions available to him. The arrangement therefore joined a protective purpose to economic necessity: safeguarding his community meant entering the Coterie’s service and seeking work that could sustain him.

His position also required a visible transformation. The Coterie would not send him onto the Purgatory floor looking half-starved, so he began lifting weights, swimming, and eating more. Ezra helped him change his wardrobe, and the Coterie then sent him out with Ava. The tithe’s cost was not limited to a promise of service; it reached into Lock’s body, presentation, and daily responsibilities.

Lock’s Transformation and Its Meaning

Ava sees Lock’s changed appearance as evidence of what the Coterie took from him. Recalling the photograph, she says that he changed because of the Coterie, not simply because he was growing up. Her anger turns the transformation into one more injury to punish the organization for: the protection Lock secured for the dryads was entangled with demands that altered him.

Ikka offers a different interpretation. Looking at the same photograph, she says Lock had to grow up and that the change suited him. Their disagreement exposes a tension within the tithe’s consequences: a transformation can look like maturation to one observer and coercive loss to another. The evidence does not resolve that disagreement; it keeps both the practical benefit of Lock’s choice and its personal cost in view.

Family Protection and Aftermath

The choice returns in a confrontation between Ava and Lock’s mother, Angela. Angela warns Ava that endangering her family again will bring more than a friendly conversation. Ava answers that she takes protecting her own family seriously too, and argues that Venus would eventually have killed Lock because she saw his kindness as weakness. She does not remind Angela that Lock became a tithe to spare her and the other dryads, judging that there is no reason to use that fact against her.

This later exchange makes the tithe more than a private act of loyalty: it remains part of how the characters understand protection, danger, and obligation after Lock has made his choice. His self-offering helped keep the dryads from Venus, but it also placed him in Venus’s employ and left those he protected with an uneasy inheritance—the knowledge that their safety had depended on his exposure to the Coterie.