The steward found Atlas still in the workroom, sleeves rolled, ink drying on the last of the river manifests. The man did not knock twice. He simply said the council was waiting and stepped aside.
Atlas set the pen down, rolled his sleeves, and took the plain coat from the peg. Formal clothes stayed where they were. He gathered the eastern dispatches and the grain ledgers, checked the seals once, and walked the short corridor to the side hall.
The four dukes were already there. Kess rose first, the careful smile already in place, the one that measured silence as carefully as speech. Renn held his seat a fraction longer than custom allowed, then stood.
Solenne and Varr offered the measured greetings that had become habit over five years of these meetings. The long table held the day's papers in neat stacks: border reports, tax summaries, a short list of provincial requests waiting for the imperial seal. No one had touched them yet.
