Law of Survival by Kristine Smith Page A

through the grid opening and vaporized in a flash of blue. Jani brushed her hand against her jacket and disappeared into the darkness of the embassy.
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    They heard the commotion well before they saw the cause: the babble of voices from around the next corner, Anais Ulanova’s piping above them all.
    â€œI told you, Colonel. Isn’t it lovely!”
    Jani looked back over her shoulder at Tsecha, then quickened her pace. Tsecha hurried, too. He recalled only too well the rooms located down that hallway, the clatter of renovation that perpetually sounded from them. The buzz of drills. The hum of sealers.
    The shatter of old tile.
    â€œI haven’t seen work of this quality since I toured the Pathen Mosaica on Nèae. Flowers so well detailed, they looked real. The shadings! The hues!”
    Tsecha broke into an unseemly trot, catching up with Jani just as she rounded the corner.
    The crowd stood packed around the doorway of one of the rooms undergoing refurbishing. A secondary altar room, Tsecha recalled, the same one in which he had prayed with his Jani prior to her very first à lérine . The embassy workers had installed a small laving area for the washing of blessed vessels and cloths, but the final decorations had yet to be applied.
    Jani pushed through the crowd. Tsecha shoved after her, his eyes locking on the anger-bowed back of Suborn Oligarch Shai, who stood just inside the doorway next to Anais Ulanova.
    â€œIt would not be seemly, nìaRauta.” Shai gestured stiffly, her hands clenching when they should not have, her voice catching when it should have flowed.
    â€œBut it could serve as a gesture of good faith during a tense time.” Anais nodded to Lescaux, who nudged to her side. “We would be most happy to arrange some sort of exchange. One of our finest craftsman could design something suitable for your embassy.” She said something to Lescaux,who shook his head. “We must admit, though, that we will be hard-pressed to compete with this.” She crossed her hands over her chest, glittery-eyed rapture softening the harsh planes of her face.
    Tsecha looked past her into the altar room, where an Haárin male dressed in dull blue work garments wiped the surface of the freshly tiled wall that served as the backsplash for the altar sink. He wore a leaf-patterned wrap around his head to keep the grime out of his hair. He also kept his back turned toward the crowd so none could see his face or his attitude.
    Tsecha looked at the wall on which the Haárin worked. The cava shell was only half-completed—the head and the horn-like flare of the opening had yet to be tiled, and shown in lead-sketched simplicity beside the finished portion. Nature scenes were common décor in Vynshàrau rooms—at first, the shell did not appear at all remarkable.
    Then Tsecha studied the work more carefully. The lower half—the sand-colored body striped with darker brown, the pink-tinged curve where the shell opening began—at first seemed painted. Upon closer examination, the shell would devolve into precisely cut triangles and curved slivers of carefully colored ceramic. But for now, graced by distance, the fragments seemed to form a glorious whole, an emerging perfection, as though the shell itself had been buried within the wall and was now being slowly uncovered. A wondrous work, assembled by an artist of godly skill.
    The Haárin continued his polishing, oblivious to the commotion behind his back.
    Tsecha flinched as an elbow jostled him in the side. “Dathim Naré,” Sànalàn hissed in his ear, her Low Vynshàrau roughened by anger so that it sounded harsh as Haárin dialect. “I told you of him. I told you to speak to him! Now look what he has done!”
    Tsecha glanced over the heads of the crowd, and sighted his Jani on the opposite side of the gathering. She stood between Lucien and Treasury Suborn Kern Standish, her arms folded, watching