He could be wrong, he acknowledged--he'd been wrong before, about her and other humans too--but it seemed impossible he could be that far wrong. In his harshest moment, he couldn't truthfully call her exactly soft . . . but on the other hand, he'd never respected her for her resolve. He'd be astonished if she turned out to have the necessary toughness now--but if she did, he certainly wouldn't hesitate to make use of it. Because if she were able to pass muster as an Inquisitor at all, the Bitch would be the Systems' best--a suitable punishment for any of his men who managed a particularly bad foulup. As reports continued to come in, it became clear that she was not only excelling in her studies--Illyanov's evaluations said she was doing quite well, which for him was extravagant praise--she was apparently enjoying them, which Shannon found almost impossible to believe. This was only the theoretical work, though, he reminded himself. While he conceded that she could endure considerable pain, the question was whether she could deliberately administer it. And that answer would have to wait. In the meantime, he had a campaign to plan. * * * * * Cortin was recovering faster than Shannon liked. That she was recovering at all, of course, was unfortunate--but given that, he couldn't honestly be surprised at the speed of her recovery. It looked like her return to duty would be about the time that collection of Special Ops men--and the woman auxiliary who'd once been his "lover"--was complete. He was concerned about that; the necessary limitation of his powers made him dependent on normal systems of information, and security around the gathering was unusually tight. Since there were similar gatherings in every Kingdom, it was obvious the Sovereigns were planning something that promised no good for the Brotherhood and his plans, but he couldn't find out what without taking a risk of alerting Cortin. Since there was nothing constructive he could do about that, he let himself reminisce about the auxiliary. Eleanor Chang, since age eighteen a professed Sister of the Order of the Compassionate Mother of Succor and known as Sister Mary Piety. Shannon had a particular dislike for that order, since they specialized in caring for seriously wounded or ill Enforcement troopers, sometimes accompanying them as medics. That was Sister Piety's specialty, and she'd been handling one of its more difficult aspects when he'd encountered her almost a year ago. He'd been on St. Ignatius then, picking and training some of his subordinate raid-masters, and he'd given in to the urge for some recreation. That had taken the form of a raid on the clinic where she'd just brought a trio of wounded from her last mission, and it was a raid he remembered with considerable satisfaction.