We’d crossed swords many times in the past, and I kind of thought we had reached something of a truce when his wife died and I returned her locket to him. In fact, the last I heard, he was retired. But the odd thing about this was that Goliath wasn’t really into violent assaults on libraries—they always favored stealing stuff by persuasive arguments “for the greater good” and, when that failed, veiled threats, legal action and sneaky behavior. This wasn’t their style, and, to be honest, Jack was getting a bit long in the tooth for fieldwork—as was I.

“Shit and ballocks,” I said, more through frustration than anger.

“Language, Thursday.”

Jack dropped the magazine from my pistol, pulled back the slide to eject the unfired round and tossed the empty weapon to the other side of the room. He paused to bolt the door to the lower levels of the scriptorium and then looked thoughtfully about the room. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.

“We’ve not even begun to catalog it yet,” I said. “I hope you’ve got some time on your hands.”

He ignored me and moved past the shelves, his fingertips brushing the spines of the books. He wasn’t choosing a book by reading the spines; indeed, there was nothing written on many of them. It appeared that he was sensing the book he was searching for, and after a moment he stopped, paused and drew out a volume.

“Goliath stealing antiquarian books?” I said. “Bit of a comedown, isn’t it?”

He had opened the book and answered without looking at me. “What are you doing here, Next?”

“Playing silly buggers,” I told him, slowly crawling into a position from where I might be able to get to my feet.

“I meant in particular,” he said with a smile, “not in general.”

There was more gunfire from the floor below. It looked as though the diversionary attack had been utterly successful—in that it was diversionary. I got to my feet and staggered across the room to where he had thrown my pistol. He saw what I was doing but didn’t seem that put out by it. I picked up the weapon, then glanced around to see where he had thrown the clip.

“Over there,” he said, still not looking up from where he was leafing though the book. I moved to the other side of the room to where the clip lay, in some dust by the door. I tried to bend over, but when that failed, I grasped the door handle and used it to lower myself.

“You’re pretty much trashed, aren’t you?” said Jack, tearing two pages out of the book and letting the rest of the volume fall to the floor.

“It’s early days,” I said, grunting with the pain and effort. “Physiotherapy will see me as right as rain in the fullness of time.”