"Well, clearly," says Ness about the forgery, "it's far too pristine to have come from the Storm Age, much less the Exalted. If it were that old she'd never even have let me look at it, never mind touch it."

The book in her hands is, by all accounts, a weathered, mouldering thing—but you don't grow up in the greatest library in your plane and not be able to tell the difference between artificial aging and the real grip of time. She couldn't tell him how she knows it's not a real account of the life and death of Garahel, hero of the Fourth Blight, couldn't voice the specific way the book smells and creaks in her hand that says so definitively on purpose, not real—but she knows.

She sets the book down dismissively, and returns to the bookshelves in front of them, lips pursed and eyes narrowed.

"Sometimes shops like this have the real thing hidden around somewhere," she peers closer at a book, then sighs and moves on, "you just have to be diligent, and hope the owner doesn't know what they have."