Isaac laughed. ‘That’s unfair, I guess. I don’t know if he would actually have killed me. But my master sent me to get something he wanted, and Evander’s new master sent him for the same thing, and we . . . fought. In the end I ran away. My master was very angry with me.

‘But the next time we met, we were working together. My master and his had made an alliance with a couple of the others, and they sent a bunch of us to some awful jungle world to try and find . . . well, it doesn’t matter. We didn’t find it, in the end. But I got a chance to talk to Evander, and he explained everything.’

Isaac leaned forward. ‘The old Readers fight each other in a hundred little ways, and one of them is always sending his apprentice to steal this or defend that. None of us has any choice, you see? For us it’s like a . . . a game, or something. You try your hardest, because you don’t want to be punished, but there’s no use in taking it personally. The person fighting you today might be on your side tomorrow, and stealing from you the day after.’

Alice shook her head. ‘But that’s awful.’

‘It’s who we are. It’s who you are. All we can do is try to make the best of it, and live long enough to become old Readers with apprentices of our own.’ Isaac shook his head. ‘Then maybe we can treat them a little differently.’

He brushed some of the dust off his coat and got to his feet, flexing the fingers of his injured hand.

‘Anyway, my job here is finished,’ Isaac said. ‘You can believe what you like, but you’ll learn soon enough.’ He gave her a thin smile. ‘Who knows? Next time, maybe we’ll be on the same side again.’

He turned to leave, in a swirl of dust. Alice took a step towards him and said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Isaac looked back at her, over his shoulder. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m Geryon’s apprentice,’ she said coldly. ‘I can’t just let you walk out of here with the book, can I? Give it back, and I’ll let you leave. Just to show that it isn’t personal.’

There was a long, fragile moment of silence. Slowly, Isaac turned back to face her, long coat dragging in the dust.

‘Or what?’ he said.

Alice wanted to say ‘Or else’ in the manner of a pulp radio action-hero, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She found herself unaccountably blushing instead, and shook her head violently.

Isaac snorted. ‘Go back to bed,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a while before everyone wakes up, you’ll have plenty of time. Then you won’t get in trouble for letting me go, if that’s what you’re worried about.’