The Threefold

Three governments that agree on nothing else operate the only standing joint jurisdiction in the system, and they built it because not one of them trusts the other two to hold the line alone. Each licenses Eclipsers on its own terms and to its own standard. All three prosecute together, on the reasoning that a single government can be worked around and three at once cannot, and the Standing Council supplied the form the arrangement still uses.

Inside its reach it works beautifully. Licensed Eclipsers on all three moons are models of respectability, keep papers a magistrate may read, take engagements that can be produced on request, and are markedly careful about the company they keep while working, since the penalty for concert is joint and the three share whatever they turn up. A practitioner who accepts an unwise contract on Kharad is answering for it on Othryn inside the month.

The reach is the trouble. The steppe lies outside it, a Rhovani house keeps Eclipsers on retainer year after year and has kept it off every minute at Orasai, a Koravelan court names its own openly in the order of battle, and the principalities that would hang a man at home for the same thing have not raised it with that court. The Circle has condemned the practice four times without finding a way to end it.

So the three have built an excellent instrument and pointed it at the people who were never going to be the difficulty. They know this perfectly well. Each has decided that a jurisdiction covering three moons beats none at all, and that saying so aloud would cost more than the gap does.