Ahmed squinted. "Looks like a code. Numbers, letters... 'verified' at the end. Whoever sent it wanted us to know it's real."

She called Ahmed. "Someone wants me to find something," she said, "but I can't read it."

They never discovered who "verified" the parcel or why "Antil" cared. What mattered was that a string of inscrutable characters had led them to a story — a story of travelers who recorded routes across deserts, recipes for water, and names of friends lost to time. The diaries contained instructions to hide knowledge, to teach only those who could decipher a line scrawled in a marketplace.