Only momentarily, as he very quickly recognized her from his records and numerous Council meetings. There was no heat signature in the room because there was no human in the room. An Agent was, by design, much harder to detect than the humans they mimicked, unless it chose to mimic a human’s warmth, or project an X-ray skeleton onto a panel in a mockery of the way one would have shown there if they weren’t thoroughly impervious to them.

“Good evening, Lana. How are you?”

She smiled thinly, “Let us not use these plebian names, I grow so tired of them. You will address me by my appropriate title, my noble Hamprect cousin.”

“I thought we were under strict instructions to use only our Agents’ names, even in our Council meetings. Something about the fallibility of our frail personality overl …”

“Enough, Lord Mantil!” she did not shout, but force and venom soaked her words as she spat them at him. “Save the petty irrelevancies for the Council and an AI that cares for such things. You will address me by my title!”

Even though she had no power over him here, even though she was just a copy of the monumental bitch that was the Princess Regent of Balachai, a lifetime of accordance with the strictures of his standing made him comply.

“My apologies, your majesty.” inadvertently he even bowed a little.

She bristled, the man’s obsequiousness like a drug to her spoiled veins.

“Good. Now, let us speak openly, Lord Mantil. The Hamprect Empire has long been in the good graces of the Emperor Balachai, even before the peace that this noble enterprise imposed on Mobilius. I hope you feel the same fraternity of purpose that we enjoy toward you?”

“Of course, your majesty.” it was surprising to him how quickly the old ways came back, how natural they were. His home of Hamprect had indeed long been a semi-servile ally of Balachai, the wealthiest and most powerful of the great empires. But it had not been a marriage of equals, and he, like his countrymen, had long resented the superiority of the Balachans.

This Princess Lamati had been the worst of them. She clearly believed in her own divinity, and her personality’s election to the eight Agents had been mourned by many, including Lord Mantil; though in silence, of course. But she was here now, or at least, the substrate of her personality was. And he had attended at her father’s court enough times to feel the weight of her inherited power upon his back.