They move as one tide. Kreev is compact and muscular, skin the color of riverbed kelp with a faint pearlescent sheen, hair cropped into functional rows of barnacle-scalloped braids; his stare is quick and hawklike. Solenn is lithe and willowy, skin like polished abalone with faint silver flecks; her long hair flows in a single dark braid threaded with tiny mother-of-pearl plates. Together they wear mirrored stances: when one leans left the other inches right, hands never far from each other's hilts. Unexpectedly, both favor a battered human-made civilian brooch — a small brass clockwork gear — pinned beneath their collars as a private joke between them. Their movements are precise and economical; when they pause, they do so in perfect, silent symmetry that unnerves onlookers.