“Look what you’ve done.” The boy’s pinched face grew longer and even more pinched. He dug his fingernail into the white material, digging at the mark. “The words are here.” He rattled the parchment. “Here. On the parchment. This—these letters”—he pointed near the top edge—“these say oracle. These, this cluster, apprentice. This, what you ruined, did say, Word has come to us this evening… now it merely says this evening.”

Alba looked from her fingertips to the parchment. “This evening?”

“These”—the boy’s voice had filled with exasperation—“are letters. T. H. I. S. E. V. E. N. I. N. G. They represent sounds. This evening. All of these marks are letters. The priests taught me how to put them together, how to understand them. I can read them.”

“Like the oracle reads signs? Do these signs”—she tried to tap the parchment, but the boy pulled away—“tell the future?”

“No, not like that at all. Only the oracle… and you… can read signs, make prophecies. These, for example, these marks say, Word has come to us this evening that the king has announced the period of mourning over, so it tells, actually, of what happened before. And since this parchment is several years old—it’s several years before.”

“The king!” Alba started. “What else? What else does it say about the king?”

The boy grimaced. “I’m not sure you are meant to know. I think words, written words, are for the priests only.”

Alba leaned over the marks, desperate to understand. “Tell me. Please. If you tell me… I’ll leave the pool. I’ll go back to my chamber. You needn’t follow me.”

The boy glanced skeptically at her.

“I promise. I’ve been looking for a sign. Something I have to know. But nothing I’ve seen has ever answered… perhaps these scratches are an answer.”

The boy considered. “Well, there isn’t much more,” he said at last. “It simply says, The king has announced the period of mourning over for the loss of the heir, his mother’s stillborn babe, and celebrations for—”

“But that isn’t true,” Alba said. “The babes were not stillborn.”

“The babe was stillborn. For months, this was in all the news brought to us. Even I heard of it. Despite the careful attention of Governor-Advisor and despite his great knowledge in the mysteries of the body’s inner forms, the babe was stillborn. Another misfortune—the loss of the heir.”

“No.” Alba felt hot. Light-headed. “No, that’s not true. The babes were alive. They were carried away.”

“The chroniclers have recorded the words of the king. Of his governor-advisor. Of course the babe died.”

“Babes,” Alba said faintly.

“What’s that?”

“Babes. Two. Twins. I saw them.”

“No.” The boy flapped dismissively. “Only one. Stillborn.”

Alba stared at the boy-priest. He was bending again over the parchment, marking another insect-elbow over the smudge he’d scraped. He was murmuring, “Oh, they won’t like it,” complaining over the mistake. Alba had never known words could be marked like that, scratched in black, beetle-bodied, skittering over a pale expanse, shaping a story that was—and was not—true. Here, ant-legs bearing the oracle’s steady prophecies—an upright colony marching with her words of fortune and fair winds. Here, beetles carrying, pushing, rolling an untruth… something heavy and rank and ill formed… shaping something new, something that was not true.