The Shape of Justice

The vault door stood open. That was the first thing Odo noticed, not because it was unusual, but because Vedek Lapor had spent the first three minutes of their conversation insisting it had never been opened.

"I sealed it myself after evening prayers." The old Bajoran's hands shook, not from age but from the particular tremor of a man who has just discovered his faith did not protect him from paperwork. "The security log confirms it. Twenty-one hundred hours. Nobody entered after that."

Odo stepped past him into the vault. The air inside was still and dry, regulated to preserve the ancient textiles and crumbling scrolls the Vedek Assembly had spent three years persuading the station to host. A traveling exhibition of the Eleventh Emissary's personal effects, robes, a ceremonial chalice, five pages of handwritten prophecy that the Bajoran Museum of Art refused to insure for less than the annual energy output of the entire Renethal system.

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