The ceremony's formal proceedings ran for three hours.
The presiding entities moved through the acknowledgment sequence with the efficient precision of a tradition that had run this ceremony many times across the Tower's operational history. Each attendee's standing was formally recognized in the ceremony's register, the acknowledgment phrased in the ceremonial language that embedded political information in the tradition's formal structure — ranking, affiliation, the nature of each entity's presence in the Tower's upper architecture communicated through the specific words the presiding entities used rather than through any direct statement.
He attended to the proceedings with the full surface attention they required.
Beneath that attention, the star was running its structural read at full depth.
