Annika sat cross legged in her cell listening to the peaceful choral music of the Sanctuary Aeon choir. Though not a powerful sect like the Orthodox or the Temple Avestii, the healers of the Universal Church enjoyed a power based on their sheer ubiquity. The stretched across the Known Worlds with enclaves in every city large enough to have the name. Their house here was on the outskirts of the city, on the other side to that which the Vuldrok had attacked as fortune, or the Pancreator willed it. It was an impresive building of soaring marble arches surrounded on all sides by acres of neatly manicured gardens tended daily by the dozen or so novices in residence. As a member of the clergy Annika had been granted special treatment, her own cell in the living wing rather than in the more crowded wings in which the sick lay on cots while the Sisters worked their Theury over them.

The wounds Annika had sustained had been healed over the past two days, though the marks of Engel's attack had not been completely erridcated by prayer of the chemical unguents the Sisters had plied her with. Long spiralling burns ran from her elbows down over her breasts. The difference in shade from her normal skin was slight, only visible under the right lighting conditions but precise enough to cause a stir. Every sister from novice to mother superior had contrived to take a look at her and all were equally baffled. Whether they were a dark mark or a holy stigmata Annika couldn't say. She didn't feel any different, impatient and eager perhaps, but not soiled or exalted. She had asked several times to see Orion, but had been resolutely told that he was busy at the palace and would be able to visit as soon as the rites of purification were complete. Annika herself had not yet been judged fit for release, although the exact reason for this remained mystifyingly vague. Given what she had seen in her vision she was willing to wait for the Pancreator to judge the moment right, and she was unwilling to violate cannon law, a charge which Bishop Cranmer, once he learned that neither of them had yet been killed or burned as heretics, was likely to seize upon.

"You are a hard woman to find," a gravely voice said from behind her. Annika pivoted smoothly and dropped into a fighting stance, hands held before her defensively and her mind slipping into the mental disciplines of Prana Bindu before she could think. A scruffy looking man sat on her bed, looking for all the world as though he had been there all morning. Logan Christopher was dressed in a smart business suit which clashed horribly with his unkempt beard. How he had managed to find her, much less cross most of the way around the world was anybodies guess.

"What are you doing here," she asked her voice dropping as she glanced around fearful of what the sisters might do if they found a man invading their private quarters. Logan stretched out on her pallet, resting his head on one palm and looking extraordinarily pleased with himself.

"You said you had a job for me," he prompted.

"I said it was an interview," she corrected, hastily pulling the curtain to ward off casual observers.

"Well? Did I pass?" the thief asked with an arched eyebrow. The curtain was pulled back with a sudden swoosh of fabric.

"Sister Annika you have a..." the Mother Superior stood in full robes flanked by Orion and Ragnar both dressed in fine new clothes.

"... a visitor," she trailed off with a disapproving scowl.