the Summing

The Summing is the gathering of all Maveren, to vote on matters that concern them all. This is the highest form of government, or at least of decision-making, in Malfa. It happens in Summing House, the closest thing in Malfa to a government building. All Maveren vote equally; there is technically no hierarchy amongst the Maveren, though in practice some people tend to make more decisions than others. The Summing sits in judgment on crimes by Maveren, on agreements such as the trade pact with the Hewellen, and so forth.
The Summing meets as required; there is no regular schedule. In theory, any Maver can call for a Summing, but representatives at least half of the Maveren Houses need to agree for the Summing to happen. Before Valdas House had a presence once more in Malfa, agreement from four Houses was needed to call a Summing; since Valdas Nykomin arrived in Malfa last year, there are now nine Houses in Malfa, so a Summing needs to be agreed upon by five of them.
By tradition, the seniormost member of a House who is present when the Summing is called, is the one who decides whether to agree to the Summing. For instance, if two teenage members of Grimmvatten House witness a Maver committing a crime, the elder of the two juniors can call for a Summing. They needn't wait and report back to anyone else in their House. Of course, then they need to persuade other Houses to agree to the Summing, which they might or might not be able to do.

How the Summing works

• When a Summing is called, all Maveren must attend if they can. If it's possible for an individual Maver to attend the Summing, but they don't, they pay a penalty—sometimes a paying a fine (a very large one), sometimes performing a service for Malfa or the Maveren as a whole.


• All decisions made by the Maveren, of all kinds and importance, are made by the same process: simple in-person majority vote by all the Maveren present. Abstention, or voting "none of the above," is not an option; it is treated as not attending at all, and punished the same way.


• Once the vote has been called, any Maver who disagrees with the result has the right to call for the vote to be repeated. If Maveren from at least two other Houses support the re-vote, then there is a twenty-four hour period for argument (and, in the good old days, violence). At the end of that time, the Maveren repeat the vote.


• If the results of the second vote are the same as the first—that is, the same number of people for and against—it's binding. If it varies from the first vote, then an individual Maver can call for a third vote, with the same process. The third vote is always binding.

The Summing hasn't met in over a year. This is a long time even for the notoriously laissez-faire Maveren, to whom governance is something that happens to other people. There is widely rumoured to be some obstruction at work, possibly due to the fact that the newcomer Valdas Nykomin called for a Summing some months ago in order to bear witness to the crimes of her thrall Hirroka Fisk. She is not allowed to punish him until the Summing agrees to the crimes; since everyone knows Fisk was an embezzler, the word amongst the hoi polloi is that the other Maveren just don't want Valdas to have a hearing at all.