We 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?