Sign inWe are cut off from the Aionians, and they are cut off from the Giver. Levaszk my friend and Archon speaks law, and he has spoken this.
But Rhys the apprentice-Splicer is my friend too. I breathe only lightly of the Gift-Ether as I make my way to the Human settlement. But I must breathe a little. It fogs my mind, I think—or is that only the worry of a weak and disrespectful Dreg?
I know where my friend, the Splicer-apprentice, lives. His door is not locked.
I tap at the Human-sized door. I open it, folding myself to enter. Rhys looks up from his work. He is Reviewer Three for a cousin's dissertation, he told me. It is an honor for one not yet a master himself.
"There is something wrong," I sing to him. "The Gift-Ether has twisted Levaszk's mind. He is sick. If I tell you the symptoms, will you tell an apothecary?"
My friend is brave. He nods to me and opens a new file on his pad.
Is it bravery to betray Levaszk so?
"He imagines the Giver speaks to him. He imagines himself a priest of a new god, and us his acolytes."
Rhys beckons me to say more. My mandibles ache with muscle tension and the cold of the Gift-Ether. Some painful thing rises in my throat.
"The Prime Archon Levaszk is the savior of his people," I say, and when I speak it is in Levaszk's voice.
I clap a hand to my mouth to stop the voice. The edge of my rebreather slams into my jaw.
"Azeryks, my Housemate, my trusted hand," I croon through my palm. "Are you so quickly given over to cowardice? This is our true fate. This is the path given to us. I will lead us there, our House glad, powerful, singing hymns to the Giver."
My friend Rhys's eyes are huge in his head, so bright with fear I would have thought him breathing Ether. This is what I have given him, this fear is Exile's host-gift.
My tongue is my own for a bare moment. "Do not trust me again," I tell Rhys.
His door bangs loudly against its frame as I leave.
And where else do I have left to go but back to Levaszk—my Archon, my friend?
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