“Oh.” The man’s voice. “Actually, there was one extremely interesting thing I did learn, but it’s just a rumor at the moment, so I’m not really counting it. It does make a strange kind of sense, though. . . .”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Allora. Okay. You will already be aware of the rumor that says that the missing book was put back recently.”

“Indeed . . . And?”

“Well, it turns out that the missing book may have been a history of the Diberi.”

There was a pause. Effie glanced over—she couldn’t help herself. The woman looked surprised as Effie felt. She raised both eyebrows.

“A history of the Diberi? But—”

“I know.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Yes. But if it’s true it gives a new complexion to the whole thing, and explains why there are suddenly a lot more Diberi around, particularly from the ancient orders dealt with in the book. No books can be removed from the Great Library without the ritual, supposedly. But what if you managed it somehow? What if you found a way to remove the book that made your enemies real? What if you could defeat them by simply taking away the book that says they exist?”

“Would it even work?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe it did. For a time. It now looks as if that’s what the island Truelove did. The effect of it probably killed her. I imagine it’s not a small matter to illegally take a book from the Great Library.”

“But then . . . ?”

“Someone put the book back, and the Diberi returned.”

“But . . .”

“That’s the rumor.”

“My God.”

“And it might actually help us, in a roundabout sort of way.”

“How?”

“We need chaos, don’t we? And a sense of things getting worse.”

Effie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Of course, she was the one who had put the book back. But . . . surely she was not responsible for a great increase in the number of Diberi at large? She thought back to what she had learned about the Great Library. Its books were records, or statements, of reality, and whatever was in the Great Library was real. There were books on physics and astronomy and music theory and geometry: all the things that made the world work. New theories went into the Great Library when they had been proven or discovered.

Effie’s mind was swirling. She hadn’t thought that the brown book not being in the Great Library would have influenced any part of reality, but of course it had. It must have. But everyone had been happy when she’d brought the book back, though, hadn’t they? And she’d risked her life to do it. She’d almost died. And all to save a history of the Diberi? The group that had murdered her grandfather (in this world, at least), and who were set on terrible plans to rule the whole universe somehow. . . ?