The council's vote arithmetic (Haudh-Gwenn)
Eight seats and nine votes: the High Councilman holds two of them and breaks every tie himself, so four against four is a win for the chair
Eight people sit on the council of Haudh-Gwenn and nine votes are counted, because the High Councilman holds two of them. He also breaks every tie, personally. The two together decide more than either does alone: four against four cannot be carried against the chair, since the chair is one of the four and owns the tiebreak besides. Anyone opposing Traxian Grayeras needs a fifth body in the room, not a fourth, and Alyphe votes where her husband votes near enough every time.
That arithmetic is what Johanka Materai was working when she proposed that four of them vote as a permanent bloc and then work the market and the city to swing a fifth. It is also why she went after the council’s rules rather than its seats.
Unseating anyone is harder than outvoting them. Removing a councilor takes six or seven of the nine. Voting a High Councilman down out of the high seat is a separate action from removing him, and a lesser one. Neither can be reached for on the day: both require a formal trigger, a trial and a vote, and any change to the council’s own rules requires a supermajority on top of that.
Nothing of it is done in the open. Unlike Loshev’s council, the Haudh-Gwenn chamber does not vote publicly, so how any given councilor came down on any given motion cannot be established from outside the room.