Neither Finisterre nor I moved. I could feel my head clearing, and my hands were a little less numb. In five minutes I’d be merely useless, not utterly useless as I was at present.

“Listen,” said Jack, taking a pair of cutters from his pocket, “it’s very, very, simple. I’ll remove your fingers one joint at a time until I get what I want. How many fingers and how much pain do you think a Zvlkx codex is worth?”

He was right, in an odd sort of way. Brothels of Dorset on Sixpence a Day was not rare; it could be bought in any antiquarian bookstore for about five hundred pounds, more if it had salacious margin notes and “interesting” staining.

“Take it,” I said, “and leave.”

“I’m so glad you’re seeing it my way at last,” he said. “Mr. Finisterre, lead us to it.”

We walked over to the other side of the room, where the books awaited cataloging. The Brotherhood of Perpetual Defenestration’s small collection was lying in a cardboard box on one side of the copying table, and as soon as Jack saw this, his mood changed abruptly.

“What is this?” he demanded, indicating a flatbed scanner.

“We copy all books,” said Finisterre while rummaging in the cardboard box. He found it eventually—a sad, tired and very well-thumbed book, the racier pages darkened with seven centuries of surreptitious titillation. This would be a copy that would barely make two hundred pounds, even on eBay.

“Has it been copied?” asked Jack, and I looked at the records.

“Yes,” I replied, “this morning.”

“Where would the copy be?” he asked angrily.

“Uploaded to our server, two floors down.”

“Anywhere else?”

“Zurich,” I replied. “Our servers are backed up every hour.”

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “That was a waste of time.” He took a deep breath. “Then again,” he added, “I could kill the pair of you—at least then the morning won’t be a total loss.”

I think he would have done it, too, but just as he raised his gun arm, there was a sound like a melon exploding, and James and I were spattered with the contents of the Day Player’s head.

We stood in silence for some moments, and I picked off a scrap of bone fragment that had landed on my upper lip.

“That,” said Phoebe, who had appeared at the other end of the vault, “was for Judith Trask.”

She walked up and tapped the headless corpse. Those old top-break revolvers carry a fearsome punch. She handed me her gun and badge.

“Arrest me, Thursday—I should stand trial for murder.”

“You didn’t murder anyone,” I told her. “It’ll take more than that to avenge Trask. But I’ll tell you this now, I’m grateful you did what you did.”