Yevir sat down in his chair, looking past the jevonite statue at the woman. “With what?”

“I believe— webelieve that Colonel Kira Nerys has been done a great injustice by the Vedek Assembly. In your own address to the Bajoran people, you said that we needed to reevaluate the old ways and seek new answers to old questions. To keep our minds open. Kira is guilty of nothing but allowing the Bajoran people the chance to question their faith. To decide on their own which answers they will accept…whether those answers come from the Prophets or from themselves.”

Yevir was sorely tempted to interrupt her again, but forced himself to sit quietly and allow her to continue. “As you may recall, it was Kira who saved my life, my husband’s life, and the life of my child. And all the others who had followed Gul Dukat to Empok Nor. Afterward she provided us with more knowledge—and helped us all reevaluate our decisions of faith. Nowshe has merely done the same thing for Bajor as a whole.”

“Comparing your decision to abandon the Pahwraiths to the questioning of the Prophets isn’tlikely to win me over,” Yevir said, unable to keep the frost from his tone.

“One learns only by asking questions,” Mika said, almost serene. Yevir recognized the words as one of Solis’s most oft-quoted aphorisms. “One only grows by seeking answers. Some of those who have read the prophecies of Ohalu have rejected them; Ohalu’s answers did not suit them, and their faith in the Prophets became strongeras a result. But others have found that they want to continue their spiritual explorations.” She paused for a moment, appearing to search for the right words. “Even the Emissary questioned openly who and what the Prophets are, and what Their role in Bajor’s past, present, and future really might be.”

Wearying of the debate, Yevir rubbed his forefinger and thumb over his nose ridge, closing his eyes for a moment. Finally, he said, “I will notrescind Kira’s Attainder. Whether or not the questions Ohalu poses are valid is not a factor in the Assembly’s decision. And Kira’s decision to disseminate Ohalu’s heresies without regard to their effect on Bajor’s religious community—especially now—is unforgivable.”

Mika frowned. “You must hate her very much, Vedek Yevir. I am disappointed.”

“No, child,” he said. Ever since Kira’s act of betrayal, Yevir had searched his soul carefully for such unworthy motivations. He had found none. Indeed, he had agonized over the Attainder decision. “Though I can understand how it might appear that way. I know the Attainder must be personally devastating to her.”

“Then surely you can find it in your heart to forgive her.”

“Actions such as hers are beyond my authority to forgive. Kira has taken it upon herself to affect Bajor’s spiritual well-being—without training, without warning, and without official sanction. To be blunt, this makes her simply too dangerous to keep within the faith.”

He expected Mika to react angrily to his plainspoken argument, as the Emissary’s wife had done when he had rebuffed her attempt to discuss lifting Kira’s Attainder. But instead, Mika merely seemed more resolute. “I understand,” she said. “I had to try. Still, there are others in the Assembly who may be less…inflexible about their Attainder votes.” She stood, readying herself and her sleeping child to leave. “Vedek Yevir, I hope that one day the Prophets will lead you to the forgiveness of Kira, and to Ohalu’s truth.”

Before he could react, Mika’s child began to fuss, pushing a small hand out of the robes in which it had been wrapped. The hand was chubby and slightly gray in color, its skin rough and leathery. From where Yevir sat, an absurd juxtaposition of the jevonite figure with the child made the baby’s arm appear to be growing out of the statue’s side.

Yevir stood bolt upright. “May I see your child, Mika?”

Mika’s eyes narrowed in response to his swift action, but she obliged him by stepping closer and sweeping the robes away from the child’s sleep-crinkled face. Yevir could see that the boy seemed larger than before, a toddler who looked to be about a year old, rather than an infant.

Yevir stepped to the side of his desk and reached out to touch the boy’s face. His skin had the same grayish cast as his limbs, as well as another, somewhat unexpected trait. On the slumbering boy’s nose was a fully developed set of Bajoran ridges, while his brow and forehead were framed by the raised scales of a Cardassian. An elevated oval on his forehead held a depression in its center, in the shape of an elegantly crafted spoon. The boy’s eyes, which had just opened, were of a crystalline black and seemed to watch the vedek with an intensity that matched Yevir’s own.

The vedek’s hand traced the ridges on the child’s forehead, and the boy grasped his finger, chattering happily. Yevir found himself smiling in wonder. Looking up, he saw that Mika was smiling as well.

The child is at peace. He has erased the tension we both felt, bridged our two worlds.

Yevir’s mind raced. He stepped back, gesturing toward the door. “Thank you, Mika. Your son is beautiful. I will consider your words. If you will consider mineas well.”

As the young woman turned to leave, she said, “I consider the words of many, Vedek Yevir. Wisdom and freedom can be fully gained only by opening one’s mind.”

She was quoting her uncle again. He smiled. “Walk with the Prophets.”

“And you,” she said. And then she was gone.

Yevir sat down behind his desk and immediately reached for the gold-hued jevonite statue. The figurine had come from the ongoing excavations at B’hala, brought to the Emissary’s wife by one of the prylars working at the site. Yevir wasn’t sure why he felt so strongly connected to the artifact. The figure was peculiar, bearing little resemblance to the more primitive art found elsewhere at the dig. It was a humanoid shape swathed in robes. Its eyes, though mere carvings, still managed to appear as though they watched anything in view. Its nose was ridged like a Bajoran’s, but its forehead also bore raised, scaly scar patterns. Its neck was long and gracefully sloping, held up in pride and unbowed by adversity. When Yevir had first laid eyes on the figure, he had wondered if it represented some millennia-dead Bajoran martyr or holy man, whose facial disfigurements bore testament to the trials he had endured in the name of the Prophets. But almost immediately he saw that it held a deeper, subtler meaning.

Using the same hand with which he had touched Mika’s child, Yevir now caressed the face of the small statue, and he became utterly certain, at last, what the object represented—the melding of a Bajoran and a Cardassian. The blending of the Bajoran nose ridge with the forehead scales of a Cardassian was unmistakable. And why hadn’t he noticed the subtle ridges running down both sides of the figure’s neck before? The statue was obviously the image of a mixed-heritage child like Mika’s, though it was carved millennia before the two planets could possibly have produced such a union. Before, in fact, either people had met or even known of one another’s existence.

Like the hybrid child he had just touched—and like Tora Ziyal, whose memory the Cardassians had resurrected in their overtures of peace—the statue represented a commingling of related species.

It is a symbol of unity.

Hope surged within Yevir’s breast, and his earlier feelings of despair vanished like mist over the fire caves. Replacing them were a cacophony of thoughts and plans, an epiphany of what he must now do.

He tapped at his comm panel, then remembered that Flin had gone for the day. That was fine. What he had to do was perhaps better done alone. Yevir called the spaceport most regularly used by the Vedek Assembly; although it mainly transported civilians, a few of its ships were always at the preferential disposal of the clergy. Using the after-hours automated system, he booked passage to Deep Space 9 on the next available transport, three hours hence.