Whoever they were, they’d been checking up on him for a couple of years now and growing bolder of late. The snooping was coming almost weekly now. It irritated him that there was almost nothing he could do about it short of being fast enough to catch the secret watcher at his or her own game. So far he hadn’t managed that, though he suspected it was some disaffected youth making sure he wasn’t around while they set about their nefarious business. Certainly Argian hadn’t heard anything from his contacts about a youngster with exceptional psychic powers, at least not one who hired out his talent. So Edeard was content to play a waiting game; one day they’d make a mistake, and then they’d find out just why he was called the Waterwalker.

On the Liliala Hall’s ceiling above him, the storm clouds swirled ferociously, blocking out all sight of Gicon’s Bracelet. Three weeks, that’s all; just three weeks to the next elections. Not that he expected Trahaval to be voted out or even wanted him to be. Life was good in Makkathran and the provinces, in no small part due to Trahaval, who was a solid reliable Mayor, consolidating everything Finitan had achieved over his unprecedented six terms. It was just that he lacked any real vision of his own. Hence the refusal to expand the livestock registry. Farmers had been complaining about rustling for years, and it was definitely on the increase. Merchants and abattoirs in the city weren’t too choosy about who they bought their beasts from, a moral flexibility followed by all the big towns and provincial capitals. An expanded certificate scheme would help, especially given how difficult it was to settle such disputes. As always, pressure was put on the constables and sheriffs to sort the mess out and come down hard on the rustlers. Such expectations were a sign of the times, Edeard reflected wryly. Twenty years ago people were concerned about thugs and robberies and securing the roads against highwaymen; nowadays it was missing sheep.

But in three weeks’ time, if all went well, he might finally get out of the special Grand Council committee on organized crime that Mayor Finitan had created. After two and a half decades it had accomplished everything Edeard had ever wanted it to. The committee had begun by weeding out the leftover street gang members, of whom there were still hundreds. They’d fallen back into their old ways with the greatest of ease, as if Finitan’s election and the mass banishment had meant nothing. They weren’t organized anymore, not as they had been under Buate and Ivarl, though Ranalee and her ilk certainly exerted enough malign influence. Because they were all independent of their old gangs, the constables had to go after them one at a time, catching them in the act of some petty criminal endeavor. Then came the court case, which inevitably fined them rather than jailed them because the offenses were so petty; or if they were jailed, it was only for a few months, which solved nothing.

Edeard and Finitan had introduced a rehabilitation scheme as an alternative to fines and jail and banishment, making convicts undertake public works alongside genistar teams. It had to be done, they were determined about that; some attempt had to be made to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The cost of the scheme had kicked off a huge political struggle in the Council, absorbing all Finitan’s efforts for his entire second term. Guilds had been coerced to train the milder recidivists, taking them on as probationary apprentices so that they were offered some kind of prospects at least. Slowly and surely, the level of physical crime in the city had fallen.

That left other levels of disruption and discontent. Edeard had gone after the remaining One Nation followers, which had been far more difficult. They could never be brought before a court of law and sanctioned before undergoing rehabilitation. Instead, he applied pressure in other areas of their lives. Their businesses suffered, no bank would loan them money, their status-so important to the Grand Families-withered away as whispered rumors multiplied, and they were blackballed from clubs and events. Finally, should those methods fail to move them, there was always the formal tax investigation of their estates. Over the years they simply had packed up and left Makkathran. Edeard made sure they dispersed evenly across the provinces so that given the distances involved, they slowly fell out of contact with one another.

That just left the Grand Families, which-strictly speaking-didn’t fall under the remit of the committee. Their power came from their wealth, which was jealously and adroitly guarded. Finitan quietly had increased the number of tax clerks while Edeard removed the more corrupt members of that guild. The city’s tax revenue increased accordingly. But bringing full accountability to the Grand Families and merchant classes was a process of democratization that would probably outlast his lifetime, though the worst excesses had already been curbed.

Now, in three weeks’ time Makkathran would vote on Edeard’s candidature for Chief Constable. Please, Lady! Everyone, especially the Grand Families, saw each new crime in Makkathran as part of some vast subversive semirevolutionary network of evil. It was an inevitable result of the success that the constables and his own committee had secured over the years in cutting the overall level of crime in the city and out on the Iguru so spectacularly. Consequently, any crime that was committed these days became noteworthy, from missing crates of vegetables to the theft of cloaks from the Opera House. The perpetrators had to be organized and therefore required the immediate appointment of the Waterwalker himself to head up the investigation.

Three weeks, he thought as he walked across the Liliala Hall. That’s all I’ve got to put up with this Lady-damned rubbish for. Three weeks. And if I lose, they might even expect me to resign. It wasn’t a thought he’d shared with anyone, not even Kristabel, but it was one he’d considered a few times of late. Certainly there was precious little for the special Grand Council committee to do these days. The number of constables assigned to the committee was barely a quarter of what it had been fifteen years ago, and most of those remaining were on loan to provincial capitals or winding up cases that had dragged on for years.

One way or another, it needs to close down. I need to do something else.

Above him, a vigorous hurricane knot at the ceiling’s apex spun faster and faster. The racing bands of cloud grew darker as they thickened. At first he didn’t really notice the center; it was just another patch of darkness. Then a star shimmered within it, and he stopped and stared up. The center of the storm whorl was clearing, expanding to show the night sky beyond. He’d never seen the ceiling do that before, not in all the years he’d walked beneath it. Clouds were draining away rapidly now, abandoning the ceiling to leave a starscape in which the Void’s nebulae glimmered with robust phosphorescence. Then Gicon’s Bracelet appeared, each of the five small planets spaced neatly around the ceiling and shining with unwavering intensity, so much larger than he’d ever seen them before. The Mars Twins, both angry gleaming orbs of carmine light, still devoid of any features. Vili, the brightest of the five, with an unbroken mantle of ice reflecting sunlight right back through its thin cloudless atmosphere. Alakkad, its dead black rock threaded with beautiful orange lines of lava, pulsing like veins. And finally, Rurt, an airless gray-white desert battered by comets and asteroids since the day it formed to produce a terrain of a million jagged craters.

Edeard gaped in delight at the celestial panorama that the ceiling had so unexpectedly delivered in such wondrous detail. He took his time, familiarizing himself with each of the Gicon worldlets. It had been a long time since he’d bothered to look through a telescope-decades, back before he ever set foot in Makkathran. As he went around the sedate quintet formation, he realized that something new had appeared amid them. A patch of pale iridescent light was shimmering beside Alakkad. “What is that?” he murmured in puzzlement. It couldn’t be a nebula; it was too small, too steady. Besides, the ceiling was showing him the entire bracelet, which meant the patch was close to Querencia. There was no tail, so it wasn’t a comet. Which meant …