Chapter 3: The Investiture of Caelen Maulhardt, Co-Regent of the Covenant

The ceremony was scheduled for the ninth hour of the capital's administrative morning, which meant it was prepared for by the sixth.

Caelen knew this because the aide — a different one from the reception, younger, more practiced in the specific art of not appearing to hurry — arrived at his chamber door at five forty-three with a breakfast tray, a final uniform adjustment team, and a schedule printed on the same Covenant bond paper as the appointment decree, every item timed to the quarter hour. He had slept four hours. He had not mentioned this to anyone, and no one had asked.

The uniform was new. Not the same one from the reception, which had been, in some technical sense, ceremonial dress — this was something else, something that had clearly been commissioned weeks in advance of his arrival, constructed with the same inferential precision as the previous one but with more attention paid to what the cameras would do to dark fabric under high ceremonial light. There were insignia he did not recognize on the left shoulder board, new designations for a rank that had not existed yesterday. He stood in front of the mirror in his chamber while the adjustment team moved around him with measuring instruments and said nothing, and he studied the insignia with the focused attention of a man reading a contract for the second time.