He had the map before, only to lose it. The Oracle’s father had helped the bearer escape.

Asher.

“Where’s your father now?” I ask.

“Dead. The General had him proved a fraud and executed.” The Oracle is stoic, seemingly unbothered by this tale of lost family. Her eyes search mine. “Are you sure you can’t read it?”

“It means nothing to me.” I take in the strange markings, lingering on the letters she says are Es.

“Maybe there’s a cipher or a key,” she says. “Some way to unlock it.” My confusion must show on my face because she adds, “Those would be ways to make a message appear, to change something from scrambled to legible. Think, Delta. Please. Is there anything you were told when receiving the map, anything that might unlock its truth?”

“Just to keep it hidden. Always.”

“Always,” the Oracle muses, and scribbles something into her damp dirt. I watch her work for a moment, writing additional lines and symbols, her brow furrowed.

“How was he a fraud?”

“Hmm?”

“Your father.”

“He wasn’t gods touched.”

“But I thought anyone who could read was gods touched. Isn’t that alone proof that—”

“After his execution, they opened his skull. There was no star, no sign of the gods’ blessing.”

Opened his skull . . . stars on a chain . . . gods touched.

I think of Astra and Cobel, their crushed skulls. The graveyard to the north, where all the skeletons bore the same fate. The blood on Old Fang’s crown, as though he’d been struck before the General’s men abruptly dispersed.

I swallow slowly, feeling ill.

The General has been searching for physical proof that marks one as blessed by the gods.

“His chain,” I say softly. “That means that . . . each of those pendants . . .”

The Oracle nods. “He’s collected them over the years. From graves and salvages, from traders who don’t know what they’ve found. They are a thing of the past, I fear, though many believe that a man with so many stars must be gods touched himself, or at least close to the gods. The star chain marks the General as mighty—as someone worth following.”

My eyes drift to the Oracle’s necklace. “And your chain?”