"Yes."
"And Davn gets the far end."
Davn lifted a hand in a wave without turning around. He pressed his palm to the lock and stepped inside. The door closed behind him. He did not comment on the arrangement.
Davn never did. It was one reason they had functioned together for ten years — the Kleotrian understood the architecture of vigilance without requiring it to be explained or justified. He simply noted where Rhaezon positioned himself and adjusted accordingly. Today that meant taking the farthest berth, the one with the least strategic value, because Rhaezon had already claimed the point between November's door and anything that might come down that corridor.
"Three days?" November ran her fingers along the doorframe, studying it the way she studied everything — with a calm, cataloging attention that reminded him uncomfortably of how she'd looked at him in the hold of the slaver ship. Like a problem she was interested in rather than one she feared.
"Three days."
"Is there food on this thing, or did you pack rations? Because I should tell you now, my ability to be pleasant deteriorates significantly without regular meals."
The corner of his mouth moved. He corrected it. "There is a galley on the upper deck. Meals are served on a common schedule. But until it's vetted, I will bring food to the cabin."
"You'll bring it."
"You should not be wandering the ship alone."
"Because someone might recognize me?"
"Because someone might recognizeme."
That landed. He watched her process it — the recalculation behind her eyes as she reframed the danger. Not just hers. His. The scarred Drakon lord who had spent a decade building an underground rescue network did not travel anonymously. His face, the face that made most captives recoil, was also the face catalogued in Crimson Ledger databases with a bounty notation beside it.
"Right." She nodded once, and something shifted in her expression that he could not read. "Food delivery it is. I'll write you a list of my dietary requirements. I'm very particular."
"Are you?"
"No. I eat anything. I just wanted to see if you'd make that face."
He had, apparently, made a face.
November smiled and stepped through the cabin door. It closed between them.
He stood in the corridor for four seconds longer than necessary. Then he entered his own cabin, set his pack on the berth he would not sleep in, and began his sweep.
She talked.
Not constantly. Not the way some people talked, filling silence because silence frightened them. November talked the way water moved through limestone — finding the channels, wearing the stone smooth, patient and persistent and impossible to redirect once she had found her path.
It started over the meal he brought to the small common area between their cabins. Protein packs and a dense grain bread that was standard tasteless transport fare. November ate without complaint, sitting cross-legged on the low bench with her boots tucked under her, and she asked Davn about the markings on his face.
"They're not tattoos," she said.
Davn looked up from his food. His white skin and black stripes caught the corridor light in stark relief. He studied November for a long moment — evaluating whether the question was curiosity or something else. Whatever he found in her expression must have satisfied him, because he said: "No."
"Born with them?"
"Yes."
"They're beautiful. The patterning around your eyes especially — it follows the orbital bone. Almost deliberate."
Davn blinked. The silence lasted long enough that Rhaezon glanced over, expecting the Kleotrian's usual deflection — a change of subject, a departure from the room, the particular blankness Davn deployed when people got too close to the questions he did not answer. Instead, Davn said: "Most Kleotrians have orange skin. Black stripes."
"And yours is inverted."
"Yes."
