He turned to meet the straight-edged push-dagger that had appeared in Gar’s left hand. The blade went right through the gap between his ventral ribs and into his heart muscle. Bennek attempted to speak, but all that emerged was a choking rattle. He fell to the floor, hard, first to his knees and then into an untidy heap. His breath came in wheezing, razor-edged gulps. “Osen…” He forced the word from his lips in bubbles of bloody foam.

The priest bent and spoke quietly, so only Bennek could hear him. “Osen? He’s dead, Bennek. Nothing is left of him. Do you remember the storm, Bennek? The storm?”

He nodded. It was painful.

“He died then. I’ve been him ever since.”

“Who…”

The priest smiled again. The man’s voice shifted slightly, the pitch rising. “Don’t you know me? I’m so upset.”

“Pasir!”

The agent smiled and showed him the mask and the scrolls; then, with a callous toss, he threw them into the fire pit. The ancient wood and brangwahide crackled and popped as the flames bit into them. “Oralius is dead, Bennek. Like you.”

“No. No.” Each word was agony to speak. “Oralius…will live. She will…return!” He coughed up thick, coppery bile, the darkness clouding in around him. “One day.”

But the other man had walked away. “Glinn,” he heard the voice say, a voice that sounded exactly like Gar Osen’s, “dispose of that.”

When the men had gone, he made a face at the patch of dark blood on the wooden floor. He cleaned it with a hand towel, then threw that into the fire along with the ashen remains of the mask and the ridiculous scrolls. The burning animal hide had given the room a musty air, and he opened the window to let it clear.

With care, he recovered a slim black rod from the spine of an old book, which bent in two to reveal a microcommunicator device. He activated it and spoke a code phrase. In a few moments, it vibrated once to show that the connection was secure.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he began, “I know you have a lot to deal with at this juncture.”

“Make it quick,”said Ico.

First, he gave her the names of the glinn and the two troopers. They had become aware of his deep-cover assignment, and at this stage there could be no possibility of compromise. Ico assured him the men would be dead before nightfall. Then, as he rubbed the pink, dull skin of his face, he told her about the tricorder. “I’m seeing a marked recession in my biometric masking. This will need to be addressed immediately. If it goes on too long, elements of my original physiology will start to reassert themselves.”

He heard her sigh. “That was an expected side effect. The swiftness of the xenoplasty we performed on you had its disadvantages. But it’s a minor problem, and it can be corrected. I’ll see to it.”

He thought about that night in the storm, when Pasir Letin became a ghost. The face he now owned was on Gar Osen as the flyer dove toward the lake, carrying the priest to a watery grave. He remembered the transporter beam snatching him away, depositing him in the operating theater, and Ico there, smiling at him. Promising him that all the pain would be worth it. Normally, the process of biometric alteration was lengthy and arduous, but they had accompished it in hours. He recalled one of the Obsidian Order clinicians telling him how his heart had stopped three times during the process, from the sheer agony of having his body remade. “How?” he asked. “How will you see to it?”

“I’ll arrange for you to come to us. We’ll spread the treatments over a longer period this time.”She paused. “Was that all?”

He was looking out the window again. “It’s really happening today, isn’t it?” He felt a twinge of excitement, like a child presented with an ascension gift. “After so long.”

“Indeed.”He detected the slightest hint of pride in her voice. “And we have you to thank for setting us on our way. We have begun tracking down the rest of the Orbs. In time we’ll have them all, alongside the gift you sent me from Kendra.”

“The information about the memory core, the Ferengi…”

“Those issues are being addressed at this moment. Don’t concern yourself over them.”

“And the next phase of my assignment?”

“All in good time.”

He switched off the device, placed it back in its place of concealment, and then returned to the business of being Gar Osen, vedek of the Temple of the Prophets.

Dukat advanced along the corridors of the Derna outpost, scowling at any man who got in his way, scowling at the walls and the low ceilings, at the rodent-warren of prefabricated tunnels. The facility had Danig Kell’s stamp on it—all brute force and bluntness, without a single measure of grace or intelligence. The jagul imagined himself in the mold of the Bajoran city-lords of history, watching from the high castle keep over the people he ruled; and the Derna moon was the highest castle of them all, a pale disk visible in Bajor’s sky in the weak morning light. Kell waited up there, impotent and disconnected from the rabble below, from the real potential of Bajor, waiting for the day when Cardassia Prime would name him Prefect, and governor of the planet.

Dukat found the symbolism of the Derna Base to be beneath him. It was not Cardassian enough. Skulking in the near-lifeless craters of a ball of rock? The Union deserved a more impressive seat of power, something that could stand aloof but be forever watching. Something that was Cardassian in its blood and bone. A new satellite,he considered, something stark and barbed, something that would let the Bajorans know their world had changed.He wanted the aliens to look up into their sky and see a bright new star, and know it was the eye of Cardassia.

The glinns at either side of the hatch snapped to attention, and Dukat dismissed the thought. The door slid open and he entered Jagul Kell’s chambers.

He stepped into the middle of an argument, the moment and tension of it still in the air, suspended only by his arrival. Kell turned an acidic glower from Rhan Ico where the woman sat in a wide chair, and trained it on Dukat. For her part, Ico seemed, as ever, to be entirely composed.

“Gul Dukat. You finally see fit to grace me with your presence.”

Dukat folded his arms. If I had but one dagger, which of them would I kill with it?He allowed himself to enjoy the fantasy of their murders for a brief interval. There was nearly equal loathing in him for the pair of them.

Kell took his silence for the insolence it was and banged his fist on his desk, making the padds on it jump. “You!” he spat. “Both of you! Does this rank mean nothing?” The jagul drummed his fingers on the status tabs of his armor. “Why am I the last to learn of events taking place beneath me? How dare you operate with autonomy! I am in command here, and I will grant you only the freedom that I deem suitable!”

Ico made herself more comfortable and maintained a bland neutrality. Kell took up a padd and threw it at Dukat, who caught it easily. The faces of the two Federation fugitives looked back at him from the screen. “Spies? Why was I not informed immediately that our operations here could have been compromised?”

“Time was quite short, and circumstances on Bajor became fluid,” ventured Ico. “Perhaps the jagul is not aware of the complexity of—”

“I am aware!” he barked. “Despite your best efforts, Ico, I am fully aware!” Kell pointed a finger at Dukat. “Perhaps I would be more forgiving of this lapse if you had not let these females escape alive, free to take all they know to the Federation Council.”

Ico made a derisive noise. “I will be the first to admit that this is a failure on the part of the gul, but we must think in terms of damage limitation. What can the Federation do?” She curled her lip. “They will wring their hands. They will have a debate. Then another and another, then shake their heads and do nothing, all the while nursing their guilt at doing so.” The woman leaned back in the chair. “It’s too late now. Bajor has been ours for years. What we are doing now is bringing that fact into the light. And by the end of the week, we will make it legal, as if it had always been so.”