"I don't doubt it, sir." It didn't seem quite proper to have Ordination without public acknowledgement, but Mike's must have been that way too, and since it obviously didn't bother him, she couldn't let it upset her. "I'm at your disposal." The brief ceremony over, Bradford returned to the Palace while Cortin, Odeon and Illyanov made their way to the suite where her prisoner waited. It might have been a brief, basic ceremony, Cortin thought, but it was one she would remember for the rest of her life, from the unprecedented sight of an armed Bishop in Enforcement uniform and stole to the anointing of her hands. She rubbed the oil that was still on them. It was hard to believe she was really a priest now, far harder than it had been to believe she was an Inquisitor when she saw the badge in her ID folder--but of course she'd had some preparation for that, where half an hour ago it had never occurred to her that she'd be a priest. As she'd told Mike, though, if she had to be a priest to be a Strike Force team's Inquisitor, so be it. What surprised her was Bradford's acceptance of her necessity; the only explanation she could think of was that the Strike Force needed Priest-Inquisitors badly enough they'd ordain anyone who claimed both vocations. That was unsettling in its own way, but since it served her purpose, she wasn't inclined to argue. The three entered the suite and went through the routine of getting into coveralls. Odeon wasn't sure why he was there, except that Joanie hadn't asked him to leave and he'd never seen a third-stage interrogation--though he'd both seen and helped in several second-stage ones. He said as much, then continued, "So if you need me to do anything, you'll have to tell me." "I will," Cortin promised. "I didn't send you away because it didn't occur to me, but I'm certain to need help in the field from time to time, and there's no one I'd rather have backing me. So if you're willing, you should get used to both third-stage and my methods." "I'm willing--especially," he opened the door to the third-stage room where the prisoner was shackled, waiting, "when the subject's someone like this plaguer. Renegades and Brothers deserve anything an Inquisitor does to them." "Keep thinkin' that, cull," the prisoner sneered. "You ain't worth the effort it'd take to spit on you. You or that other bastard, or the Bitch." Cortin looked him over, cooly. He was naked, spreadeagled between chains in the ceiling and eyebolts in the floor, and must know he was completely at the Inquisitor's mercy--but he probably didn't know she was the Inquisitor. With all three of them in coveralls, he had no way of knowing who was who, just that he was faced with two men and a woman.