"Then that's settled," he said, sighing.  Trying to lighten the mood: "I guess that makes you my bitch?"  He slapped her backside under the blanket, and he found it surprisingly easy to put aside the habits of a lifetime.  No one had ever given him a cause to put them aside, though, but he was amazed at how he stopped thinking about<i> I</i>and thought about<i>we</i>.<br/><br/>He thought about her question.  "I... I don't know.  I didn't see you or even smell you before I started the interrogation.  I knew how I was going to handle it.  Not because I am worried about hurting people - I'm not - but because it doesn't work if you're looking to get some information.  I mean, I got the idea from this book I have over there somewhere.  It talks about this ruler of this land called Russia.  Peter the Great, they call him.  Well, some of his men tried to kill him, and his secret police force rounded them up and did this mass torture thing.  There was this one guy who didn't break, no matter what they did, and Peter took a hand in interrogating the man.  Except he didn't hurt him.  He just talked to him about his incredible pain tolerance.  The guy belonged to a 'torture club.'  They practiced torture on each other for situations like this one.  But Peter was just nice to the guy and he broke down, totally fell apart, crying and naming names and all that, not because Peter hurt him but because Peter<i>didn't</i>.  I think in this world, a lot of us live in torture clubs - there's a lot of pain out there and you learn to cope with it.  So, next time I wanted something, I tried being nice and it worked.<br/><br/>"Would I have let you go or the rest?  I don't know.  In my mind, even now, it seems... in character.  I had to take a chance with your trust to get you to get me into Blackvayne's place.  It was worth some risk to have a local help me scout the area.  And after... I was hoping you could help me get into the castle itself, learn about whatever machines he was working on, maybe even get him in a spot to kill him.  I had reasons to do it all, but I could have done it in a different way - trusted you less, been more cautious, more demanding.  So, I dunno."