Tithe

A Tithe is someone who serves the Coterie in return for protection and access to resources. Through Lock and Ezra, the arrangement appears not simply as a demand for labor but as a bargain on which vulnerable supernaturals and their dependents may rely; Ava’s offer to protect them herself, however, challenges the assumption that the Coterie must be their only source of safety.

Definition and Exchange

Lock explains the Tithe system while arguing that the Coterie does not treat every supernatural being as powerful or valuable in the same way. Some are weak, he says, and need protection and resources they could not otherwise afford or obtain. His account makes service and security the exchange at the heart of a Tithe: people give their time to the Coterie, and that service is presented as helping secure the safety and practical support of others.

The scene does not specify a universal term of service, a standard set of duties, or how the Coterie distributes its resources. Lock does, however, describe his own contribution as putting in his time. That phrasing gives the arrangement a personal cost, while his example of an entire forest of Dryads being left alone makes its claimed benefit collective: his service protects a community beyond himself.

Lock and Ezra as Examples

Lock asks Ava why he is Coterie, and she answers that he is a Tithe. When he asks what Ezra is, she recognizes that Ezra is one as well. The exchange matters because the term is not merely an abstract label: two people close to Ava are bound up in the institution’s system of service, and her answer shows that she knows this about them even if she has not fully reckoned with what it means.

Lock describes the consequences of Ezra’s service in terms of his younger sisters. Ezra is there so they can attend school, live normally, and be protected. The benefit therefore reaches people who are not themselves identified as Tithes: one person’s service is connected to the security and ordinary opportunities of his family. Lock’s example presents the Coterie as a provider of practical shelter as well as protection, though the scene offers his explanation rather than an independent account of how consistently the organization delivers it.

Lock also credits the Coterie with the training and skills he and Ezra now possess. Ezra immediately qualifies that claim with humor, distinguishing his lock-picking and general sneaking abilities as skills from his fox side. Their exchange gives the system a more complicated shape than a simple transfer of labor for shelter: in Lock’s view, service has also brought training, while Ezra insists that some of what makes him capable belongs to him, not the institution.

Leverage, Dependence, and Disagreement

Lock contrasts Ava’s position with that of less powerful supernaturals. He acknowledges that she has not had an easy life, but argues that she has leverage and is not as disposable as some others he knows. His point is that the same bargain does not carry the same weight for everyone: those with less power may depend on the Coterie’s protection, while Ava has abilities that give her a measure of influence. The scene does not establish that this leverage frees her from obligation; it does show why Lock sees her judgment of the Tithe system as incomplete.

Ava responds that she would protect Lock and Ezra herself. Her offer is quiet and physically guarded, with her arms crossed over her stomach, but it directly answers the question Lock has raised about who will protect people without the Coterie. Rather than disputing that his examples involve real needs, she proposes a personal alternative: their safety might come from loyalty between friends instead of service to an institution. The difference remains unresolved in the exchange. Lock points to a whole forest and Ezra’s sisters, needs larger than Ava’s brief promise can be shown to meet; Ava, in turn, refuses to treat institutional dependence as the only imaginable form of care.

Significance

The Tithe is presented as both protection and obligation. Lock’s examples make the bargain difficult to dismiss as empty exploitation: his time is associated with the safety of Dryads, and Ezra’s service with his sisters’ education, ordinary life, and protection. At the same time, the need for such service reveals how much vulnerable people depend on the Coterie for things they cannot otherwise access. The system can therefore offer meaningful security while still making that security contingent on what its members give.

The disagreement also sharpens the difference between leverage and need. Lock asks Ava to see those with less power than herself; Ava answers from attachment to the two people in front of her. Neither response erases the other’s concern. The scene leaves the Tithe morally unsettled: the arrangement may protect people who would otherwise be exposed, yet Ava’s counteroffer insists that care need not belong exclusively to the organization that claims to provide it.