“Sit.” She nods at the chair. “Let’s break this down together.”
Reed leaves us to the task. I lose track of time as the Oracle scribbles in her dirt tray and wipes it clear and scribbles again. She mumbles and studies and asks me to repeat the rule multiple times, but throughout it all, her brow remains creased. Eventually she adds a few drops of water to her tray to keep the dirt from drying out. I watch the soil suck up the liquid, my mouth watering. I almost ask the Oracle for a drink—it seems unlikely that water she uses in this manner would be drugged—but I am afraid the question will look suspicious. I don’t want her to mention anything to Reed, so I bite my lip and try to ignore the scratching in my throat.
“Why do you help him—the General?” I ask, finally breaking the silence.
She glances at me sternly. She can’t be far into her twenties, but I feel like a child under her scrutinizing gaze. “Know this, Delta: we are all prisoners here in Bedrock. It is not lost on me that my imprisonment brings more privilege and comfort than those who work the fields. But everyone who was brought to Bedrock has been robbed of their choices. I was brought here as a child. My father stayed because he saw shelter and water and food.”
“And you?”
She glances at the curtained door and drops her voice to a whisper. “I stay because I see that the General’s resources are fading. I am provided with less water than I was years ago. The rations have grown smaller. Most may not have noticed, but I see the truth, especially in the water that flows over the Backbone. It was wider in my childhood, the falls broad and beautiful. Now its volume has lessened, and not merely because of the upper dam. His paradise is truly on borrowed time. If I cannot read this map, if the gods are not timely in their return and we do not find the Verdant soon, we will all perish. Everyone within Bedrock. And only a few men here deserve that fate. I refuse to doom everyone for the sins of a handful.”
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?”
Something pained graces the Oracle’s features. Regret, perhaps. “I didn’t understand at the time. He helped that boy escape when he never once tried to save me from this prison. My father couldn’t read the map, and he believed all his work to be in vain. He set that fire as a diversion while the boy fled.” She glances at me briefly, hurt in her eyes. “But I can’t help you, Delta, not the way he did for that boy. The map is too important now. I must protect it in order to protect Bedrock’s people. At least I must try.”
The curtain parts, and Reed enters. His mouth is thin, his expression unreadable. “The General would like to see you.”
Dread coils in my stomach. He wants an answer I still don’t have.
“Be strong, Delta of Dead River,” the Oracle says. “Even knowing what comes next will not lessen the pain.”
* * *
Reed brings me to the nursery, where light shines through the room’s three windows.
Babies sleep in cradles, toddlers play with wooden blocks on the floor, and young children scurry between them, chasing and laughing and being children. The space feels separate from the rest of Bedrock, a room filled with hope and innocence and purity. Several caregivers drift around, handing out snacks of cornbread and honey. Another stoops over a cradle to comfort a crying babe.
Bay must be here. My heart beats faster just knowing it. I can speak to her in person, not rely on the Oracle to deliver a message.
Even still, I don’t look for her among the children. I can’t seem to look anywhere but at the General once I spot him. He stands before the room’s central window, his posture rigid and his eyes unfeeling. Two men flank him. Like Reed, they both wear ram-skull masks. Advisers. Two more of his Four.
“Delta of Dead River,” the General says, motioning for me to join him. Reed has to nudge between my shoulder blades to get my feet moving. Once I’m at the window, the General’s two guards step back, giving us space. “It’s beautiful, yes? The only room with a better view is my own, a floor above us.”
The General’s falcon screeches outside the window. Shadows move on the sill when she flaps her wings, but I can’t bring myself to look anywhere but at him, afraid of what I might find outside.
“Go on. Look.” He pinches my chin and angles my head. I can see all of Bedrock, but my eyes find her immediately, as if they don’t know where else to settle. She’s been forced to her knees atop the dam, arms bound behind her back. Several Loyalists surround her, but only one holds a blade to my mother’s throat. It glints in the afternoon sun.
I hadn’t understood what the Oracle meant about knowing not lessening the pain. I do now.
“You said I had three days,” I gasp. “It hasn’t been three days.”
“You were brought to Bedrock in the morning. By noon the brand had been copied, and three evenings have passed since then. I was very clear with my words. Three days. Not three and a half. Now tell me what I want to hear.”