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“If I take you, they know they had an insider and they start changing the security you stole.”

“Yes.”

“What survives?”

“The tower. The public process. Most of the physical architecture. And people.” She nodded toward the slate.

“You copied the bulk archive, but it’s still locked. Once I’m off this ship, I open it. After that, the files tell you what the Spire is supposed to do. I tell you what the people inside actually do, and which changes matter.”

That was the choice. Leave her here and the audit took the only person who could unlock and interpret the archive. Take her, and the intelligence started aging the moment the Virelle reported her gone.

I closed the slate.

“Follow me. We’re leaving now.”

LIKA

He didn’t check whether I was keeping up. That was the first thing.

Six years of Conclave men had taught me the choreography of escort: the guiding hand, the half-step lead, the glance back that measures your obedience and calls it courtesy. Rylos walked out of that ballroom like a man leaving a meeting that ran long, set a pace, and trusted me to hold it. I held it.

We came down the guest lift into service corridor nine. My heels came off at the first junction; heels are for lying in, not running in. He watched me hook them off without breaking stride and said nothing.

I liked that more than I should have.

The threat reports had catalogued gray skin, red eyes, horns, strength. They had not mentioned how large he felt in a narrow corridor, or the heat coming off him when I ran close enough to feel it. My body noticed both. I kept running.

I’d caught it up on the deck. The slip. The kill order opened and, for one unguarded instant, the controlled stranger holding the slate was gone. His thumb stopped over the display. Nothing else moved. With a man that controlled, stillness was a reaction.

I did not have time to decide why that interested me. I ran.

The docking level was one lift and two junctions away when the corridor lighting shifted amber and the bulkhead speakers came alive.

“Security posts, level notice. Locate Strategist Darven and escort to the executive lounge. Guest Vessik, Vinduthi delegation, to be detained for verification at the docking checkpoint. This is a courtesy protocol.”

“Courtesy protocol,” Rylos said.

“My strategist credential just crossed into a restricted service corridor with a guest tag beside it.” My voice came out level. Under it my stomach had dropped through the deck.

“The Virelle logs that as a welfare exception. Courtesy first. It becomes something else the moment anyone opens my pin.”

“Then no one opens your pin.” He turned us out of the main corridor without slowing. “Bay eleven. Your packet puts four on the checkpoint this hour.”

“Four at the checkpoint. Two roamers. The roamers converge on any courtesy call.” The Virelle’s deck map, memorized before boarding, unrolled behind my eyes. “And a blast partition drops across junction four on any security notice. It’s dropping now.”

It was. Fifty meters ahead, the blast partition descended, amber light stuttering along the seal edge.

“Left,” I said. “Galley service passage. It runs under the partition line; the builders never told the security contractors everything.” He went left. He didn’t ask whether I was sure.

Relief caught me unprepared. He had put both our lives on my answer. I wanted to get him out as fiercely as I wanted to get out myself.

The galley passage was steam and steel and one very young steward flattened against the racking with a tray of empty glasses. His eyes went straight to Rylos’s horns and stayed there. I put a director’s-aide crispness into my voice.

“Security exercise. Clear the passage and hold your station until the all-clear.” I was past him before the sentence ended.

We came out one junction from bay eleven. The first pair of guards rounded the cargo lock at a jog, stun batons up, calling my name in the polite tone men use when they’ve been told you’re valuable. Then they saw the Vinduthi. The polite tone vanished.

I’d read the threat assessments. Enhanced strength, enhanced reflexes, do not engage under parity. Rylos crossed four meters before the lead guard’s baton finished rising. One strike put each man down. He was already moving before either hit the floor.