“It’s been passed down through my family for generations. The star is from a distant relative. Perhaps the last of the gods touched in our bloodline, but since the General can’t confirm that I’m gods touched without killing me, and because I’m the last person in Bedrock with knowledge of the Old World language, he holds out hope that my bloodline may have been touched by the gods again. That a star could burn within me. Just as he had hoped with my father.” She swallows heavily. “What about here? See these repeating waves?” She points to the center of the map, where three vertical lines have been etched. Unlike the vertical line of the E, these wiggle, like the path a snake makes when slithering across sand.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. They’re not another letter?”

She shakes her head. “No. Aside from the two Es, nothing on this entire map is a letter—at least not one that I know. There was a time when our ancestors spoke multiple languages. Maybe the map is written in one of those.”

“There must be someone else who can help, someone who knows these other languages.”

“No one here can read as I do, let alone read a second language. I am not allowed to teach letters, and neither was my father. He taught me when I was a child, long before we came to Bedrock and the General began overseeing our lives. Even the children in our nursery, who represent a better future, are not permitted to learn from me. If they one day wake up able to read, or to prophesize the weather, or to handle Old World tech without instruction, that will be proof that the gods have blessed a mortal again.”

“This nursery,” I say, my voice almost cracking. “Where is it?”

“You care for one of them?”

I blink rapidly, silently cursing the water that builds in my eyes. “I was brought here with her. She’s just a baby.”

“The pups receive some of the best care in Bedrock,” she says reassuringly. “They could be our future gods touched, after all. I visit them with each full moon, speak with the older ones and administer tests. If they aren’t showing signs of being gods touched, I sort them into the working staff or Loyalist army, but not until they turn seven. Yours will be fine for many years, so long as you don’t let him see your fondness for the girl. He will use it against you.”

I let out a gasp that is part relief, part agony. Seven years in this place. Seven years of a childhood that isn’t a childhood before Bay is sorted like a piece of Old World tech at market. “She’s not mine,” I manage.

“Oh,” the Oracle says, her eyes heavy with sadness. “I think she is.”