Priad spent his time fixing and logging faces. His optic gaze wandered through the thickets of the crowd, blink-recording and tagging each face and figure he saw and adding them to his suit's internal memory. Not only persons, but the structure and dimension of the hall, the number and site of the exits, the position of the band. A warrior of the phratry was taught to assess and catalogue his location for tactical purposes wherever possible, usually a quick matter of key points. Now he had time to waste.
The number of valves or strings on each instrument. The number of frets. The number of buttons on a jacket or gemstones on a gown train. The number of facets on a wine glass. The number of beads on the chandeliers.
He logged and identified the robust commander of the local PDF, flamboyant in red satin robes. Five subsector governors and their staffs. Lord Militant Farnsey, two Navy commodores and a cluster of Guard officers who, like Damocles, had been sent to the coronation to represent their institutions. The Princess Royal of Cartomax, a beautiful young woman with a surgically perfect face framed by the gauzy fields of a personal force-veil, and perfect breasts pushed up and out in a balcony of diamonds. The Imperial Hierarch, Bishop Osokomo, his bulk supported on grav plates, his extravagant mitre three metres tall. A ranking emissary of the Navis Nobilite wearing a holographic face to hide his unseemly third eye. Nine senior adepts of the Guild Astropathicus. The chief clerk of the Administratum Iorgu, with sixteen higher recollectors. Six merchant princes.

Brothers of the Snake pg. 218