It makes sense, finally—the General’s obsession with the map. I don’t doubt that he believes in the gods, but he is worried they won’t return in time, and the Verdant is his backup plan. I hate that I have something in common with him, that I can understand how he is torn between faith and practicality. I have always felt that same tug, self-preservation telling me to move the pack to Powder Town, gods be damned.

“Does anyone else know? Or at least suspect?”

She shakes her head. “Not outside the General and his Four. They are his closest advisers. They wear masks to mark themselves as such, and they communicate by falcon. Not with the Old Language, but with a short code they’ve developed.”

That solves one mystery about Reed. I picture the leather pouch he’d passed to his falcon that day in the Barrel, how the bird had flown ahead to Bedrock, surely carrying some type of message to the General. It makes me consider what the Oracle said the other day about forgotten languages. These short codes used by the General and his Four are a language, in a way. Could something similar mark my back? A code that my pack doesn’t know how to read, but someone, somewhere on the wastes, does?

“How can you sit on this secret about the water?” I ask the Oracle.

“Do not shame me. And keep your voice low. If I were to speak of this openly, the General would execute me for blasphemy.”

I wonder briefly why she’s being so honest with me—a complete stranger. Maybe it’s a calculated risk; she shares secrets with me in hopes that I’ll share a secret about my brand.

“If he executes you, he’d have no one to read the map,” I point out.

“I can’t seem to read it as it is.” She sighs heavily. “And the truth is, he’d rather maintain the illusion that he is all-knowing, all-powerful—and that the gods are returning because of what he’s done for this land—than admit that Bedrock is failing and the gods are as absent as ever.” She wipes her dirt clean and stares again at the map. “He needs me, but only because I’m convenient. If I betray him, if I make him look weak, he will dispose of me swiftly, just as he did my father. Besides, his Loyalist army is substantial. He’d send them into the wastes in search of another Oracle. The skill to read is rare, but they’d find someone. Just as he found you.”

Or Asher. Taken at nine, his world shattered.

“Your father helped a map-bearer like me once. Didn’t he?”