working very nicely
indeed. "Have you decided to cooperate yet?"

"Damn you, Bitch!" The renegade tried to spit at her, without success.
"Do your damndest--you won't get nothin' from me!"

Cortin smiled. He was still defiant, true, but Illyanov agreed with
her assessment that he was the type who would remain defiant until he
broke abruptly, and the same sense that told her when he was lying now
told her he was close to that abrupt break. Give him the proper
physical and psychological stimuli, and he should go from defiance to
surrender in seconds.

She had already planned what to do, a continuation of her primary
tactic--but a little bit of insurance wouldn't hurt. She turned to the
other two. "Would either of you gentlemen care to avail yourselves of
our guest while he still has enough spirit to be interesting? I fear I
am being greedy, keeping him to myself."

Illyanov smiled, bowing to her. She hadn't been avoiding an extremely
useful technique, as he had been half afraid she was, because it had
been done to her; she had merely postponed it until the optimum time.
"It is generous of you to share, Inquisitor. It has been some time
since I have had the opportunity to indulge myself in another's
subject. I will not interrupt your work?"

Both ignored the renegade's protests and insults as Cortin returned the
bow. "Not at all--your enjoyment of him should make the removal of his
genital skin even more effective." And enjoyable . . . "Particularly
if you can make him move enough that it is he who pulls himself free of
it."

"That should pose no particular difficulty."

If it hadn't been his Joanie doing the work, his Joanie who might need
his help, Odeon would have taken advantage of his non-Inquisitor status
to leave. He'd taken part in some second-stage interrogations, on
occasion enjoyed them if the recipient had done something particularly
revolting--but even the most methodical of those beatings seemed more
human, cleaner, than the cool, meticulous infliction of pain both
Inquisitors so obviously enjoyed. At first he'd thought Joanie's
enjoyment a pretense intended to make her subject's torment harder to
endure, but he couldn't convince himself of that any longer. Joanie
was enjoying her subject's anguish, taking a delight in his screams and
writhings that Odeon found sickening. But it was Joanie; after what
had been done to her, surely she had a right to whatever pleasures she
could find .