Kell nodded. “Indeed there is. The jagul informed me that an investigation has begun into the incidents with the Oralians on Cardassia. Apparently, Central Command now suspects that these disturbances were prearranged by senior figures in the church. Suspects are being gathered to be put to the question. Tribunals are already being convened.”

“Hadlo?” Dukat hesitated. Masterminding urban disorder and open conflict? Such behavior seemed out of character for the staid old cleric, but then there was a part of him that didn’t care, a part of him that wanted someone to blame.

“Correct,”said Kell. “Isolate and detain him. I want him back on board theKornaire immediately. See to it personally, Dalin.”

“Sir,” he replied, but Kell had already cut the signal.

Pa’Dar glared at Bennek, his arms folded over his chest. “How can you deny that you know nothing of the actions of your cohorts?”

The priest frowned, trying to find a way to explain the situation to the scientist without patronizing him. “You have to understand, I can no more know the thoughts of my fellows than you could tell me the workings of someone in the Ministry for Public Health! We are one faith, yes, but beneath the gaze of Oralius there are many branches of the church.” He could see Pa’Dar was not listening to him. “One faith, many voices. Do you not follow me?”

The other man sneered, and his voice carried down the length of the cutter’s central bay. “What I followis reason and rationality, not some masked shadow-theater that encourages dissension and unrest!”

Bennek glanced around nervously. He was regretting his offer to Dukat; while the dalin was sealed in the cockpit beyond them, the cleric was alone with the glinn, Pa’Dar, and a couple of men from the enlisted ranks. The two gils in particular hovered at the edge of his vision, intimidating him with their hard glares and the set of their jaws. Bennek’s fingers clutched at the baggy cuffs of his pastel-colored robes and bunched them. “If my brothers have done these things, then there must be a good reason for it!” He blurted out the words with more bravado than he felt, too late realizing that the others might take them for defiance and strike him.

The glinn eyed the priest. “My grandmother went to your temples,” she told him. “She died from blood poisoning, even though she gave the clerics every last lek she had so that they would recite for her. She thought they would save her.”

Bennek blinked, his jaw working. “I’m…I’m sure they did their best to make sure her last days were peaceful ones.”

“Money better spent on medical care,” Pa’Dar grated.

“That’s the problem with you people. You’re all backward-looking.” He pressed a thick finger into Bennek’s chest.

“Prayers and mythology won’t make Cardassia strong again.”

The young priest tried to frame an answer that wouldn’t raise the ire of the others, but before he could speak, the cockpit hatch hissed open and there was Dalin Dukat on the threshold, his eyes hooded and flinty. His gaze locked on Bennek and he took two quick steps toward him. Reflexively, the youth backed away and bumped into a curved support stanchion. The cleric nearly stumbled, the larger of the two gils looming over him, blocking his retreat.

“Where is he?” demanded Dukat. Bennek’s throat went dry as the officer’s hand fell to his belt, dithering over the holstered pistol at his hip. “Hadlo?”

Like a striking snake, the enlisted man’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of Bennek’s robes, pushing him to the wall of the compartment.

Bennek glanced at Pa’Dar, hoping that the civilian might come to his aid, but the scientist said nothing, watching. “Please,” he began, “I am so sorry for the conduct of my brethren on Cardassia, but you must understand we knew nothing of it!”

“I will not ask you again,” Dukat growled. “Where is Hadlo?”

The cleric wanted to be strong; he was willing himself to say nothing, but the terror washed through his veins in a cold flood and he stuttered out the answer. “Th-the keep. In the rooms the Bajorans granted us.”

Dukat gave the gil an almost imperceptible nod, and the trooper jerked his wrist, pushing Bennek away so that he stumbled to the deck in a heap. The dalin went to the airlock and stabbed the control pad. “Keep him here,” he told the pilot. “See that he doesn’t speak to anyone.”

Bennek looked up to find that nobody was offering to help him to his feet. “Dukat!” he called. “We’re not to blame!”

Without looking back at him, the officer hesitated on the airlock ramp. “I don’t blame you, Bennek,” he said, with an icy calm that was more frightening than his earlier moments of fury. “You think you are a good man. Perhaps you are right. It’s misguided beliefs that allow good men like you to do terrible things. That’s where the blame lies.”

Dukat took care to moderate his stride and his outward mien so that the aliens he passed in the corridor would not realize that something was amiss. He found his way quickly to the east tower and paced into the area where the Oralians were staying. The other clerics, the minor functionaries who rarely seemed to speak in Dukat’s presence, came to their feet at he stalked past them toward the door of Hadlo’s room.

One of them reached out to touch his arm, the other bringing a hand to his lips in a gesture calling for quiet; in return Dukat shot the priest a steely glare and tore his pistol from its holster, ripping the peace bond ribbon around it with a tight snap. With a single sharp blow from the heel of his hand, Dukat forced open the electromechanical lock on the door and entered, slamming it shut behind him. He kept the disruptor at his side, his finger an inch from the trigger plate.

Hadlo was kneeling in the center of the room. The old man had moved all the furniture to the walls, the table and the wooden chairs pushed out of the way so that he had a spread of open floor to work on. There were sheets of paper everywhere, arranged in a ragged halo around the cleric, and Dukat recognized some of them as scrolls like the one that Bennek had used in his recitation for the dead. Hadlo was scratching at them with a stylus, writing in the margins and adding spidery lines of text in every blank space he could find. He shot a watery look at Dukat and paused. “I have to complete this,” he said vaguely. “Come back later.”

“Get up,” Dukat snarled, angry at the priest’s defiance.

“If you wish to do this with some dignity, then stand up!”

The old man looked at him again, and it seemed to Dukat as if Hadlo were seeing him for the first time. Hadlo did as he had been told to, padding forward on bare feet, hands outstretched. “Do you know this?” He waved at the papers. “Have you seen the vipers, my brother? Ashes and the future.” The cleric shook his head as if he were trying to clear it. “It’s difficult to marshal all the images. There’s a code, I think. A code. Yes.”

Dukat raised the pistol. “I’m placing you under detention by the order of Cardassian Central Command. Attempt to resist me and you will be shot.”

He expected the cleric to fold and panic just as Bennek had, but instead a cool smile emerged on the old man’s lips. “Who ordered this? Gul Kell?” He nodded before Dukat could answer. “Yes. Very well. Take me to him.”

Dukat tapped the communicator bracelet on his wrist. “Kornaire,this is Dukat. Lock on and transfer two to shipboard, immediately.”

Hadlo kept on smiling, even as the transporter beam enveloped him and swept him away.

As Gul Kell reached the security compartment, his lip curled in cold amusement to find Rhan Ico standing at the heavy hatchway before Dukat. The dalin’s expression was all chained anger and repression, while the woman wore the same default mien of watchful neutrality. Everywhere he turned on this mission, Ico was there. It was getting to be comical, in its own sinister way.