I counted the black spines, read the fine silver lettering, took in the gradual alteration in the style of the script, from curving to blocky and back to curving again. He had twenty editions of the Book of Worlds, going back much earlier than any I’d ever seen before.

I reached out a hand – then pulled it back like I’d been about to reach for the wrong knife at the table.

Rackamore smiled. ‘Go ahead.’

I took out the earliest one, the worn binding feeling leathery and fragile under my fingertips. It was still a heavy volume, but there were far fewer pages in it than in the edition at home. I turned the thin pages carefully, scared that I might tear them from the binding. The lettering was old-fashioned, the words sometimes unfamiliar, the phrasing archaic where I could make sense of it at all. I also fancied that there were fewer entries in the whole book, and that the space given to each was more generous than in our own volume.

I searched for Mazarile, but it wasn’t in there.