Karys took his hand. “What’s on your scroll this year?” she asked him.

Mace fingered the ceremonial paper in his pocket. “Ah. The usual. I’m asking the Prophets to make sure my children don’t age me too early, to see that anyone who shoots at me has lousy aim, to make my debts go away…”

She lowered her voice. “You know, Mother made the offer again.”

He put a finger on her lips. “We’re not taking her money, Karys. We’ve been through this. I don’t care how many sculptures she’s sold, I’m not going to owe her.”

For a second, he thought she was going to argue, but then his wife sighed. “Let’s not fight about this again. Not tonight. Can we talk about it some other time?”

“All right,” Mace agreed, but even as he said it he resolved not to be shifted on the issue.

She tilted her head back to let her gaze range up the sides of the spire, and Mace did the same. Streamers in red and gold hung down from the stone obelisk and fluttered in the cool evening breeze. Carved from stone blocks that were so finely crafted that they locked together without need of cement or mortar, the bantacawas said to mark the place of a settlement in relationship to the rest of the universe. Darrah saw that the stars were coming out overhead, and he wondered if that could be true. If what Lonnic and Gar had told him about the Cardassians was accurate, then very soon Korto would indeed be marked as an important place, known out there as well as down here. The thought of the aliens coming to Bajor, of them standing where he stood now, sent a chill snaking down Mace’s back. Things will change,he told himself, but I’m not sure how.

Karys squeezed his hand, sensing that something was troubling him. “I’m glad that you came tonight.”

“Me too,” he admitted, and kissed her gently on the cheek.

“Ah, young love,” said Lonnic as she approached. “It’s a delight to see.”

Mace’s wife broke into a grin and gave the other woman a brief hug of greeting. “Good to see you, Tomo.” She gestured at her formal dress. “You’re as elegant as ever.”

“Too kind,” Lonnic demurred.

“Thank you for letting my husband off his duties early,” she added. “It’s very generous of Minister Jas.”

“Generous, yes.” Tomo eyed Mace, who maintained an air of blank innocence. “That’s one way to look at it.” She leaned closer to Darrah and lowered her voice. “You owe Proka a drink, I would say. He covered for you at the keep.”

Mace nodded slightly. “I appreciate it.”

Tomo smiled thinly. “Don’t worry. After spending thirty seconds in the same room as Kubus Oak, I don’t think I would have wanted to ferry him around either. He’s gone back to Qui’al, thank the Prophets.”

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him, though,” Darrah opined. “Where’s the minister?”

She pointed along the bantaca’s steps to where a temporary podium had been set up. Jas Holza was behind it, waving to the crowds and beaming into the lenses of a dozen camera drones. “Right there. If you’ll excuse me, duty calls.”

Mace turned back to his wife as the children came swarming around them, faces sticky with icing. “Did you bring us buns?” he asked Bajin.

Licking powdered sugar off his lips, the boy gave him the same innocent look Darrah had shown Lonnic only moments earlier. “Oh. Did you want some too?”

Jas Holza placed the padd containing his speech on the lectern in front of him and waved as the illuminators came up to full strength. A blink of indicators on the drifting orbs of the camera drones showed him that he was now being broadcast across the city and the district, and it pleased him to hear Korto quieted as he started his address. For all his problems in the greater political arena, at least in the city of his birth his people still respected him.

“Peldor Joi,my friends,” he began. “It gives me great pleasure to stand before you today as Presider of Korto’s Gratitude Festival. Ours is a city of proud and hardworking people, an example of Bajoran endeavor that shines like a jewel in Kendra’s beautiful countryside.” He smiled slightly. “But we all know, whatever circumstances our D’jarras saw us born to, from the lowliest man to the most noble, that no life goes on without regrets. No great city like ours is built without hardship.” A swell of polite agreement crossed the crowd, and Jas scanned their faces, gauging their emotions. “All of us have worked hard this year, and tonight we come together to do two things.” He took an ornate scroll trimmed with latinum leafing from his pocket. “We cast our troubles to the air by writing them upon our renewal scrolls and letting the fires consume them; and then we give thanks to the Prophets for watching over us for all the good fortune we have had in the year passed by, and in hopes for all the promise yet to come.”

Jas stepped down from the podium and walked to the giant brazier, pausing to take a stone flask from Vedek Cotor. The camera drones moved with him in a slow, humming halo. He paused at the lip of the cauldron and spoke in a firm, confident voice, the sensor pickups in the drones amplifying his words for the whole city to hear. “Tesra peldo, impatri bren,”Jas began, speaking the words of the benediction in Old High Bajoran. “Bentel vetan, ullon sten.”With a confident flick of his thumb, Jas popped open the stopper on the flask of consecrated oil and swirled the liquid around. Exposed to oxygen, it immediately puffed into smoky orange flame. Keeping his hand steady, the minister let the fluid stream out over the lip of the great brazier, and with a thump of displaced air the nyawood and straw inside caught alight. Sparks jumped and curled into the evening, and applause streamed behind it. All across Bajor, other Presiders in other cities would be doing the same thing—but now Jas did something different.

In previous years, the Presider would step forward and toss the first scroll into the fire to symbolize the proper start of the festivities; Jas did not. He hesitated, enjoying the moment of mild surprise he engendered. “My friends,” he called out, “we write our dilemmas upon the scrolls and as they turn to ashes in these sanctified flames, so do our troubles. But tonight, before I throw my scroll into the fire, I have something important to add to it.” From a pouch in his belt, Jas produced a stylus and unrolled his paper. The crowd was watching him intently now; this was a break with tradition, and to many it would be considered a breach of privacy. The words on each person’s scroll were a personal thing, to be known only to the one who wrote them and the Prophets who looked on from the Celestial Temple. Yet, here was Korto’s minister, openly showing what he was to write. With care, so that the camera drones could see what he was doing, Jas drew the character for “isolation” in thick, deliberate lines and presented it to the air. Then, with a twist of his wrist, he tossed the paper into the rumbling brazier, and the scroll was flashed into ashes.

“Tonight, I cast Bajor’s isolation to the fires, and I urge you all to join me and do the same.” He met the cameras with a strong smile. “In two days, Korto will take back some of her sons who were lost in the depths of space, and it will welcome those who bring their remains home to us. These people are not of our world. Some of us are afraid of them, of what they represent. Some feel they come with avarice.” He shook his head. There was silence all around him now, save for the low crackle of the burning nyawood. The doubts Holza had felt speaking before Verin and again with Kubus were gone. His jaw stiffened. First it had been the old leader of the council attempting to push Holza from the center of these important events; and then Kubus, parlaying his business connections to the aliens in order to strengthen his own position. He had no doubt that each of them thought Jas to be unsuited to the challenges ahead, that they were the better men to take the helm. That will not be allowed to happen.Korto would be the fulcrum point for change on Bajor, he would see to it. The thought made Holza feel potent and strong, the certainty and confidence propelling him forward. “Some have nothing but distrust for outsiders. But I believe otherwise. I have seen that these visitors have their own path, just as we have ours granted by the Prophets. I believe that we can learn from them and forge a new friendship. I will welcome them. Korto will welcome them. And if the Prophets will it, then so Bajor will welcome the people of Cardassia to our shores.”