The southern governance contacts arrived on a Tuesday.
Two of them — representatives rather than principals, which told me something about how the southern governance structure had assessed the meeting. They had sent observers rather than decision-makers, which meant the Tuesday meeting was intelligence gathering before the substantive engagement.
I had expected this.
Their names were Aldous Crane and Petra Vane — not the Petra of the letter, a different one — both mid-level governance administrators with the particular careful presentation of people who had been briefed extensively before arriving and were now trying to read the situation against the briefing.
They arrived at Ironveil's gate at mid-morning and were received by Cael, who brought them to the secondary council room — not
