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Chapter Twelve
‘In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.’
CHARLES DICKENS, Great Expectations
They were well into Hilary term before Griffin resurfaced. So many months had passed by then that Robin had stopped checking his window with his usual rigour, and he would have missed the note if he had not spotted a magpie trying in vain to retrieve it from under the pane.
The note instructed Robin to show up at the Twisted Root at half past two the next day, but Griffin was nearly an hour late. When he did arrive, Robin was astounded by his haggard appearance. The sheer act of walking through the pub seemed to exhaust him; by the time he sat down, he was breathing as hard as if he’d just run the length of Parks. He’d clearly not had a change of clothes in days; his smell wafted, attracting glares. He moved with a slight limp, and Robin glimpsed bandages under his shirt every time he raised his arm.
Robin was not sure what to do with this. He’d had a rant prepared for this meeting, but the words died at the sight of his brother’s obvious misery.
Instead, he sat silently as Griffin ordered shepherd’s pie and two glasses of
ale. ‘Term going all right?’ Griffin asked. ‘It’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘I’m, uh, working on an independent project now.’ ‘With whom?’ Robin scratched at his shirt collar. He felt stupid bringing it up at all. ‘Chakravarti.’ ‘That’s nice.’ The ale arrived. Griffin drained his glass, set it down, and winced. ‘That’s lovely.’
‘The rest of my cohort’s not too happy with their assignments, though.’ ‘Of course they aren’t.’ Griffin snorted. ‘Babel’s never going to let you do the research you ought to be doing. Only the research that fills the coffers.’ A long silence passed. Robin felt vaguely guilty, though he had no good reason to be; still, a worm of discomfort ate further into his gut with every passing second. Food came. The plate was steaming hot, but Griffin wolfed his down like a man starved. And he just might have been, too; when he bent over his place, his collarbones protruded in a way that hurt to look at. ‘Say . . .’ Robin cleared his throat, unsure how to ask. ‘Griffin, is everything—’ ‘Sorry.’ Griffin put his fork down. ‘I’m just – I only got back to Oxford last night, and I’m exhausted.’ Robin sighed. ‘Sure.’ ‘Anyhow, here’s a list of texts I need out from the library.’ Griffin reached into his front pocket and pulled out a crumpled note. ‘You might have some trouble finding the Arabic volumes – I’ve transliterated the titles for you, which will get you to the right shelf, but then you’ll have to identify them on your own. But they’re in the Bodleian, not the tower, so you won’t have to worry about someone wondering what you’re up to.’
Robin took the note. ‘That’s it?’ ‘That’s it.’ ‘Really?’ Robin couldn’t suppress it anymore. He expected callousness from Griffin, but not this blank pretence of ignorance. His sympathy evaporated, along with his patience; now the resentment, which he’d kept simmering for a year, rushed to the fore. ‘You’re sure?’ Griffin cast him a wary look. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘We’re not going to talk about last time?’ Robin demanded. ‘Last time?’ ‘When the alarm went off. We sprang a trap, we sprang a gun—’ ‘You were fine.’ ‘I was shot,’ Robin hissed. ‘What happened? Someone messed up, and I know it wasn’t me, because I was right where I was supposed to be, meaning you were wrong about the alarms—’ ‘These things happen.’ Griffin shrugged. ‘The good thing is that no one
got caught—’ ‘I was shot in the arm.’
‘So I heard.’ Griffin peered over the table, as if he could see Robin’s wound through his shirt sleeve. ‘You seem quite all right, though.’ ‘I had to stitch myself together—’ ‘Well done, you. Smarter than going to the college nurse. You didn’t, did
you?’
‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Griffin. ‘Keep my—’ ‘I don’t see why we are labouring the point. I made a mistake, you got away, it won’t happen again. We’re going to stop sending people in with you.
Instead you’ll drop off the contraband outside on your own—’ ‘That’s not the point,’ Robin hissed once more. ‘You let me get hurt. Then you left me out in the cold.’ ‘Please don’t be so dramatic.’ Griffin sighed. ‘Accidents happen. And you’re fine.’ He paused, considering, and then said more quietly, ‘Look, if this will make you feel better, there’s a safe house on St Aldate’s we use when we need to hide out for a bit. There’s a basement door by the church – it looks rusted shut, but you’ve only got to look for where the bar’s installed and say the words. It leads to a tunnel end that got overlooked when they did the renovations—’ Robin shook his arm at Griffin. ‘A safe house doesn’t fix this.’ ‘We’ll be better next time,’ Griffin insisted. ‘That was a slip-up, that was my fault, we’re adjusting for it. So calm down before someone overhears.’ He settled back in his chair. ‘Now. I’ve been out of town for months, so I need to hear what’s been going on at the tower, and I’d like you to be efficient about it, please.’ Robin could have hit him then. He would have, if it would not have attracted stares, if Griffin were not so clearly already in pain.
He was getting nothing out of his brother, he knew. Griffin, like Professor Lovell, could be astonishingly single-minded; if something did not suit them, they simply failed to acknowledge it, and indeed any attempt to procure acknowledgment would only end in more frustration. He had the fleeting impulse to simply stand up and walk away, if only to see Griffin’s expression. But that would grant no lasting satisfaction. If he turned back around, Griffin would mock him; if he kept walking out, he would only have severed his own ties to Hermes. So he did what he did best, with father and
brother both – he swallowed his frustrations and resigned himself to letting Griffin set the terms of the conversation. ‘Not much,’ he said after a calming breath. ‘The professors haven’t been travelling abroad recently, and I don’t think the wards have changed since last time either. Oh – something terrible happened. A graduate fellow– Anthony Ribben—’ ‘Sure, I know Anthony,’ Griffin said, then cleared his throat. ‘Knew, I
mean. Same cohort.’
‘So you’ve heard?’ Robin asked.
‘Heard what?’ ‘That he’s dead.’ ‘What? No.’ Griffin’s voice was oddly flat. ‘No, I just meant – I knew him before I left. He’s dead?’ ‘Lost at sea sailing back from the West Indies, apparently,’ said Robin. ‘Terrible,’ Griffin said blandly. ‘Just awful.’
‘That’s all?’ Robin asked.
‘What do you want me to say?’ ‘He was your classmate!’ ‘I hate to tell you, but these incidents aren’t uncommon. Voyages are dangerous. Someone goes missing every few years.’ ‘But it’s just . . . it feels wrong. That they won’t even give him a memorial. They’re just carrying on like it never happened. It’s . . .’ Robin trailed off. Suddenly he wanted to cry. He felt foolish for bringing this up. He didn’t know what he had wanted – some kind of validation, perhaps, that Anthony’s life had mattered and that he could not be so easily forgotten. But Griffin, he should have known, was the worst person from whom to seek comfort.
Griffin was silent for a long time. He stared out of the window, brows furrowed in concentration as if he was pondering something. He didn’t seem to be listening to Robin at all. Then he cocked his head, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. ‘You know, that’s not a surprise. The way Babel treats its students, particularly those they recruit from abroad. You’re an asset to them, but that’s all you are. A translation machine. And once you
fail them, you’re out.’ ‘But he didn’t fail, he died.’
‘Same thing.’ Griffin stood up and grabbed his coat. ‘Anyhow. I want those texts within the week; I’ll leave you instructions on where to drop them.’ ‘We’re done?’ Robin asked, startled. He felt a fresh wave of disappointment. He didn’t know what he wanted from Griffin, or indeed if Griffin was capable of giving it, but still he’d hoped for more than this. ‘I’ve places to be,’ Griffin said without turning round. He was already on his way out. ‘Watch your window.’
It was, by every measure, a very bad year.
Something had poisoned Oxford, had sucked out everything about the university that gave Robin joy. The nights felt colder, the rains heavier. The tower no longer felt like a paradise but a prison. Coursework was torture. He and his friends took no pleasure in their studies; they felt neither the thrilling discovery of their first year nor the satisfaction of actually working with silver that might one day come with their fourth.
The older cohorts assured them that this always happened, that the third- year slump was normal and inevitable. But that year seemed a markedly bad year in several other respects. For one, the number of assaults on the tower rose alarmingly. Before, Babel could expect two to three attempted break-ins per year, all of which were the subject of great spectacle as the students crowded around the doors to see what cruel effect Playfair’s wards had wrought that time. But by February of that year, the attempted thefts started happening nearly every week, and the students began to grow sick of the sight of policemen dragging maimed perpetrators down the cobblestones.
They weren’t only targeted by thieves. The base of the tower was constantly being defiled, usually with urine, broken bottles, and spilt booze.
Twice they discovered graffiti painted overnight in large, crooked scarlet letters. TONGUES OF SATAN read the one on the back wall; DEVIL’S SILVER read the one beneath the first-floor window.
Another morning, Robin and his cohort arrived to find dozens of townsmen assembled on the green, shouting viciously at the scholars going in and out of the front door. They approached cautiously. The crowd was a bit frightening, but not so dense that they couldn’t weave their way through.
Perhaps it said something that they were willing to risk a mob rather than miss class, but it really looked like they might get by without harassment until
a large man stepped in front of Victoire and began snarling something in a rough and incomprehensible northern accent. ‘I don’t know you,’ Victoire gasped. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’ ‘Christ!’ Ramy lurched forward like he’d been shot. Victoire yelped.
Robin’s heart stopped. But it was only an egg, he saw; it was aimed at Victoire, and Ramy had lurched because he’d stepped forward to protect her.
Victoire flinched back, arms shielding her face; Ramy put an arm around her shoulder and ushered her up the front steps. ‘What is wrong with you?’ Letty screamed.
The man who’d thrown the egg shouted something unintelligible in return.
Hastily Robin clenched Letty’s hand and dragged her through the door behind
Ramy and Victoire. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Victoire was trembling so hard she could barely speak. ‘Fine, I’m fine – oh, Ramy, let me, I’ve got a handkerchief . . .’ ‘Don’t worry.’ Ramy shrugged off his jacket. ‘It’s a lost cause, I’ll buy a new one.’ Inside the lobby, students and clients alike were clustered at the wall, watching the crowd through the windows. Robin’s first instinct was to wonder if this was the work of Hermes. But it couldn’t be – Griffin’s thefts were so meticulously planned; they belied a far more sophisticated apparatus than this furious mob. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ Robin asked Cathy O’Nell. ‘They’re mill workers, I think,’ said Cathy. ‘I heard Babel’s just signed a contract with mill owners north of here and that’s put all these people out of work.’ ‘All these people?’ Ramy asked. ‘With just some silver bars?’ ‘Oh, they’ve laid off several hundred workers,’ said Vimal, who’d overheard. ‘Supposedly it’s a brilliant match-pair, something Professor Playfair came up with, and it’s netted us enough to fund renovations for the entire east wing of the lobby. Which doesn’t surprise me, if it can do the work of all those men combined.’ ‘But it’s quite sad, isn’t it?’ mused Cathy. ‘I wonder what they’ll do
now.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Robin.
Cathy gestured to the window. ‘Well, how are they going to provide for their families?’ It shamed Robin that he hadn’t even considered this.
Upstairs in their Etymology class, Professor Lovell expressed a decidedly more cruel opinion. ‘Don’t worry about them. Just the usual riffraff. Drunkards, malcontents from up north, lowlifes with no better way to express their opinions than shouting about them on the street. I’d prefer they wrote a letter, of course, but I doubt half of them can read.’ ‘Is it true they’re out of work?’ asked Victoire. ‘Well, of course. The sort of labour they do is redundant now. It should have been made redundant long ago; there’s simply no reason that weaving, spinning, carding, or roving hasn’t all been mechanized already. This is simply human progress.’ ‘They seem rather mad about it,’ Ramy observed. ‘Oh, they’re furious for sure,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘You can imagine why. What has silver-working done for this country over the past decade?
Increased agricultural and industrial productivity to an unimaginable extent.
It’s made factories so efficient they can run with a quarter of their workers.
Take the textile industry – Kay’s flying shuttle, Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s spinning mule, and Cartwright’s loom were all made possible with silver-working. Silver-working has catapulted Britain ahead of every other nation, and put thousands of labourers out of work in the process. So instead of using their wits to learn a skill that might actually be useful, they’ve decided to whine about it on our front steps. Those protests outside aren’t anything new, you know. There’s a sickness in this country.’ Professor Lovell spoke now with a sudden, nasty vehemence. ‘It started with the Luddites – some idiot workers in Nottingham who thought they’d rather smash machinery than adapt to progress – and it’s spread across England since. There are people all over the country who’d rather see us dead. It’s not just Babel that gets attacked like this; no, we don’t even see the worst of it, since our security’s better than most. Up north, those men are pulling off arson, they’re stoning building owners, they’re throwing acid on factory managers. They can’t seem to stop smashing looms in Lancashire. No, this isn’t the first time our faculty have received death threats, it’s only the first time they’ve dared to come as far south as Oxford.’ ‘Do you get death threats?’ Letty asked, alarmed.
‘Of course. I get more and more every year.’ ‘But doesn’t it bother you?’ Professor Lovell scoffed. ‘Never. I look at those men, and I think of the vast differences between us. I am where I am because I believe in knowledge and scientific progress, and I have used them to my advantage. They are where they are because they have stubbornly refused to move forward with the future. Men like that don’t scare me. Men like that make me laugh.’ ‘Is it going to be like this all year?’ Victoire asked in a small voice. ‘Out on the green, I mean.’ ‘Not for long,’ Professor Lovell assured her. ‘No, they’ll have cleared off by this evening. Those men have no persistence. They’ll be gone by sunset once they get hungry, or once they wander off in search of a drink. And if they don’t, the wards and the police will move them on.’
But Professor Lovell was wrong. This wasn’t the work of an isolated handful of discontents, nor did they simply dissipate overnight. The police did clear the crowd away that morning, but they returned in smaller numbers; several times a week, a dozen or so men showed up to harass scholars on their way into the tower. One morning, the entire building had to be evacuated when a package making a ticking noise was delivered to Professor Playfair’s office.
It turned out to be a clock connected to an explosive. Fortunately, rain had soaked through the package, eroding the fuse. ‘But what happens when it doesn’t rain?’ Ramy asked.
No one had a good answer to that.
Security at the tower doubled overnight. The post was now received and sorted by newly hired clerks at a processing centre halfway across Oxford. A rotating team of policemen guarded the tower entrance at all hours. Professor Playfair installed a new set of silver bars over the front door, though as usual he refused to reveal what match-pairs he’d inscribed them with, or what they would do when triggered.
These protests were not the symptoms of a minor disturbance. Something was happening throughout England, a set of changes the consequences of which they were only beginning to fathom. Oxford, which consistently ran about a century behind the rest of England’s major cities, could only pretend to be immune to change for so long. The vicissitudes of the world outside had now become impossible to ignore. This was about more than mill workers.
Reform, unrest, and inequality were the keywords of the decade. The full impact of a so-called silver industrial revolution, a term coined by Peter Gaskell just six years before, was just beginning to be felt across the country.
Silver-powered machines of the kind William Blake dubbed ‘dark Satanic Mills’ were rapidly replacing artisanal labour, but rather than bringing prosperity to all, they had instead created an economic recession, had caused a widening gap between the rich and poor that would soon become the stuff of novels by Disraeli and Dickens. Rural agriculture was in decline; men, women, and children moved en masse to urban centres to work in factories, where they laboured unimaginably long hours and lost limbs and lives in frightful accidents. The New Poor Law of 1834, which had been designed to reduce the costs of poverty relief more than anything else, was fundamentally cruel and punitive in design; it withheld financial aid unless applicants moved into a workhouse, and those workhouses were designed to be so miserable no one would want to live in them. Professor Lovell’s promised future of progress and enlightenment seemed only to have wrought poverty and suffering; the new jobs he thought the displaced workers should take up never materialized. Truly, the only ones who seemed to profit from the silver industrial revolution were those who were already rich, and the select few others who were cunning or lucky enough to make themselves so.
These currents were unsustainable. The gears of history were turning fast in England. The world was getting smaller, more mechanized, and more unequal, and it was as yet unclear where things would end up, or what that would mean for Babel, or for the Empire itself.
Robin and his cohort, though, did what scholars always did, which was to bend their heads over their books and focus solely on their research. The protestors eventually dispersed after troops sent in from London dragged the ringleaders off to Newgate. The scholars stopped holding their breath every time they ascended the steps to the tower. They learned to put up with the swarming police presence, along with the fact that now it took twice as long for new books and correspondence to arrive. They stopped reading the editorials in the Oxford Chronicle, which was a newly minted proreform, pro-Radical publication that seemed intent on destroying their reputation.
Still, they couldn’t quite ignore the headlines, hawked from every street corner on their way to the tower:
BABEL A THREAT TO THE NATIONAL ECONOMY? FOREIGN BARS SEND DOZENS TO THE WORKHOUSE SAY NO TO SILVER!
It should have been distressing. In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.
One stormy night, on his way to dinner at Professor Lovell’s home, Robin glimpsed an family sitting at the corner of Woodstock Road holding out tin mugs for alms. Beggars were a common sight in Oxford’s outskirts, but entire families were rare. The two small children gave him little waves as he approached, and the sight of their pale, rain-streaked faces made him feel guilty enough to stop and fish several pennies out of his pocket. ‘Thank you,’ murmured the father. ‘God bless you.’ The man’s beard had grown out, and his clothes had got a good deal tattier, but Robin still recognized him – he was, without question, one of the men who had screamed obscenities at him on his way into the tower several weeks ago. He met Robin’s eyes. It wasn’t clear if he recognized Robin as well; he opened his mouth to say something, but Robin quickened his pace, and whatever the man might have called after him was soon drowned out by the wind and the rain.
He didn’t mention the family to Mrs Piper or Professor Lovell. He didn’t want to dwell on all the things they represented – the fact that for all of his professed allegiance to revolution, for his commitment to equality and to helping those who were without, he had no experience of true poverty at all.
He’d seen hard times in Canton, but he had never not known where his next meal might come from or where he would sleep at night. He had never looked at his family and wondered what it might take to keep them alive. For all his identification with the poor orphan Oliver Twist, for all his bitter self- pity, the fact remained that since the day he had set foot in England, he had not once gone to sleep hungry.
That night he ate his dinner, smiled at Mrs Piper’s compliments, and shared a bottle of wine with Professor Lovell. He walked a different route back to the college. The next month, he forgot to take the same detour on his way up, but it didn’t matter – by then, the little family was already gone.
Looming exams made a bad year awful. Babel scholars underwent two rounds of exams – one at the end of their third year, and another during their fourth. These were staggered throughout the calendar; the fourth years sat their exams in the middle of Hilary term, while the third years had until Trinity Term. The effect was that starting after the winter holidays, the mood in the tower was utterly changed. The libraries and study rooms were packed during all hours by nervous fourth years who flinched whenever someone breathed and looked ready to murder whenever someone dared to so much as whisper.
Traditionally, Babel publicly announced the fourth years’ marks at the end of the examination period. At noon on Friday of that week, a bell rang three times throughout the tower. Everyone stood and hurried downstairs to the lobby, where that afternoon’s clients were being ushered out the door.
Professor Playfair stood on a table at the centre of the room. He was dressed in an ornate gown with purple edges, holding aloft the kind of curling scroll that Robin had only ever seen in medieval illuminations. Once the tower had been cleared of everyone not affiliated with the department, he cleared his throat and intoned, ‘The following degree candidates have passed their qualifying exams with distinction. Matthew Houndslow—’ Someone in the back corner let out a loud shriek. ‘Adam Moorhead.’ A student near the front sat plumb down on the floor in the middle of the lobby, both hands clasped over his mouth. ‘This is inhumane,’ Ramy whispered. ‘Most cruel and unusual,’ Robin agreed. But he couldn’t take his eye off the proceedings. He wasn’t up for examination yet, but it was so much closer now, and his heart was pounding hard with vicarious terror. As horrific as this was, it was also still exciting, this public declaration of who had proven themselves brilliant and who hadn’t.
Only Matthew and Adam had won distinction. Professor Playfair announced a merit (James Fairfield) and a pass (Luke McCaffrey), then said in a very sombre voice, ‘The following candidate failed their qualifying exams, and will not be asked to return to the Royal Institute of Translation for a postgraduate fellowship, nor will they be awarded a degree. Philip Wright.’
Wright was the French and German specialist who had sat beside Robin at the faculty dinner during his first year. Over the years, he had grown thin and haggard-looking. He was one of the students who constantly lurked around at the library looking as if he hadn’t bathed or shaved in days, staring at the stack of papers before him with a mixture of panic and bewilderment. ‘You’ve been offered every lenience,’ Professor Playfair said. ‘You’ve been granted more accommodations than was good for you, I think. Now it’s time to acknowledge this is the end of your time here, Mr Wright.’ Wright made as if to approach Professor Playfair, but two graduate fellows seized him by the arms and pulled him back. He began to beg, babbling about how his exam response had been misinterpreted, how he could clarify everything if only he got another chance. Professor Playfair stood placidly with his hands held behind his back, pretending not to listen. ‘What happened?’ Robin asked Vimal. ‘Gave a folk etymology instead of a real one.’ Vimal shook his head dramatically. ‘Tried to link canards to canaries, you see, except canaries aren’t related to canard ducks – they’re from the Canary Islands, which are named after dogs—’ The rest of his explanation eluded Robin.
Professor Playfair pulled a glass vial out of his inner pocket – the vial, Robin assumed, that contained Wright’s blood. He placed it on the table and stomped down. Glass shards and brown flecks scattered across the floor.
Wright began howling. It wasn’t clear what the breaking of the vial had actually done to him – all four limbs seemed intact, as far as Robin could tell, and there was no fresh blood – but Wright collapsed to the floor, clutching his midriff as if he’d been impaled.
‘Horrific,’ said Letty, awed. ‘Positively medieval,’ Victoire agreed.
They had never witnessed a failure before. They could not tear their eyes away.
It took a third graduate fellow to pull Wright to his feet, drag him to the front door, and fling him unceremoniously down the steps. Everyone else watched, mouths hanging open. Such a grotesque ceremony seemed unbefitting of a modern academic institution. Yet this was utterly appropriate.
Oxford, and Babel by extension, were, at their roots, ancient religious institutions, and for all their contemporary sophistication, the rituals that
comprised university life were still based in medieval mysticism. Oxford *was Anglicanism was Christianity, which meant blood, flesh, and dirt.
The door slammed shut. Professor Playfair dusted off his gown, hopped down from the table, and turned around to face the rest of them. ‘Well, that’s taken care of.’ He beamed. ‘Happy exams. Congratulations all.’
Two days later Griffin asked Robin to meet him at a tavern in Iffley, nearly an hour’s walk from the college. It was a dim, noisy place. It took Robin a moment to find his brother, who was sitting slouched near the back. Whatever he’d been up to since their last meeting, he apparently hadn’t been eating; he had two steaming shepherd’s pies before him and was wolfing one down
with no fear of scalding his tongue. ‘What is this place?’ Robin asked. ‘I get supper here sometimes,’ said Griffin. ‘The food’s awful but there’s a lot of it, and importantly, nobody from the university ever comes out here.
It’s too close to the – what did Playfair call them? The locals.’ He looked worse than he’d been all term – visibly exhausted, hollow- cheeked, and whittled down to a sharp, lean core. He gave off the air of a shipwreck survivor, of someone who’d travelled long distances and barely made it out alive – though of course he wouldn’t tell Robin where he’d been.
His black coat, hanging off the chair behind him, reeked. ‘Are you all right?’ Robin pointed to Griffin’s left arm. It was wrapped in bandages, but whatever wound lay beneath was clearly still open, because the dark stain over his forearm had spread visibly since Robin had sat down. ‘Oh.’ Griffin glanced at his arm. ‘That’s nothing, it’s just taking forever to
close up.’
‘So it’s something.’ ‘Bah.’ ‘It looks bad.’ Robin chuckled, and what came next sounded more bitter than he’d intended. ‘You should suture it. Brandy helps.’ ‘Ha. No, we’ve got someone. I’ll have it looked at later.’ Griffin pulled his sleeve over the bandages. ‘Anyhow. I need you ready next week. It’s very touch-and-go, so I don’t yet have a good idea of the time or day, but it’s a big one – they’re expecting a massive shipment of silver in from Magniac & Smith, and we’d love to get a crate during the unloading. It’ll take a large
distraction, of course. I might need to store some explosives in your room for
quick access—’ Robin recoiled. ‘Explosives?’ ‘I forgot you scare easily.’ Griffin waved a hand. ‘It’s all right, I’ll show you how to set them off before the day, and if you plan it well enough then no one will get hurt—’ ‘No,’ said Robin. ‘No, that’s it, I’m done – this is absurd, I’m not doing this.’ Griffin arched a brow. ‘Where’s all this coming from?’ ‘I’ve just seen someone expelled—’ ‘Oh.’ Griffin laughed. ‘Who was it this year?’ ‘Wright,’ said Robin. ‘They crushed a vial of his blood. They threw him out of the tower, locked him out, cut him off from everything and everyone—’ ‘But that won’t happen to you, you’re too brilliant. Or am I keeping you from your revision?’ ‘Opening doors is one thing,’ said Robin. ‘Setting explosives is quite
another.’ ‘It’ll be fine, just trust me—’ ‘But I don’t,’ Robin blurted. His heart beat very quickly, but it was too late now to hold his silence. He had to say it all at once; he couldn’t keep biting down on his words forever. ‘I don’t trust you. You’re getting messy.’ Griffin’s brows shot up. ‘Messy?’ ‘You don’t show up for weeks, and when you do you’re late half the time; your instructions are all scratched out and revised so many times that it takes skill, really, to decipher what they say. Babel’s security has nearly tripled, but you don’t seem interested in working out how to deal with it. And you still haven’t explained what happened last time, or what your new workaround for the wards is. I was shot in the arm and you don’t seem to care—’ ‘I said I’m sorry about that,’ Griffin said wearily. ‘Won’t happen again.’ ‘But why should I believe you?’ ‘Because this one’s important.’ Griffin leaned forward. ‘This could change everything, could shift the balance—’ ‘Tell me how, then. Tell me more. This doesn’t work when you always keep me in the dark.’
‘Look, I told you about St Aldate’s, didn’t I?’ Griffin looked frustrated. ‘You know I can’t say more. You’re still too new, you don’t understand the risks—’ ‘The risks? I’m the one taking risks, I’m putting my entire future on the line—’ ‘Funny,’ said Griffin. ‘And here I thought the Hermes Society was your
future.’ ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Yes, it’s quite clear.’ Griffin’s lip curled. He looked very much like their father just then. ‘You have such a great fear of freedom, brother. It’s shackling you. You’ve identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can’t be one of them?’ ‘Stop deflecting,’ said Robin. ‘You always deflect. When I say my future, I don’t mean a cushy post. I mean survival. So tell me why this matters. Why
now? Why this one?’ ‘Robin—’ ‘You are asking me to put my life on the line for the invisible,’ Robin snapped. ‘And I’m just asking you to give me a reason.’ Griffin was silent for a moment. He glanced round the room, tapping his fingers against the table, and then said in a very low voice, ‘Afghanistan.’ ‘What’s going on in Afghanistan?’ ‘Don’t you read the news? The British are going to pull Afghanistan into their sphere of influence. But there are plans in motion to make sure that doesn’t happen – and that I really can’t tell you about, brother—’ But Robin was laughing. ‘Afghanistan? Really?’ ‘Is this funny?’ asked Griffin. ‘You’re all talk,’ Robin said, amazed. Something in his mind shattered then – the illusion that he ought to admire Griffin, that Hermes mattered at all. ‘It makes you feel important, doesn’t it? Acting like you’ve got some leverage over the world? I’ve seen the men who really pull the levers, and they’re nothing like you. They don’t have to scramble for power. They don’t organize silly midnight heists and put their kid brothers in jeopardy in some wild attempt to obtain it. They’ve already got it.’ Griffin’s eyes narrowed. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘What do you do?’ Robin demanded. ‘Really, Griffin, what on earth have you ever done? The Empire’s still standing. Babel’s still there. The sun rises,
and Britain’s still got her claws everywhere in the world, and silver keeps flowing in without end. None of this matters.’ ‘Tell me you don’t really think that.’ ‘No, I just—’ Robin felt a sharp twinge of guilt. He’d spoken too harshly perhaps, but his point, he thought, was fair. ‘I just can’t see what any of this achieves. And you’re asking me to give up so much in return. I want to help you, Griffin. But I also want to survive.’ Griffin did not respond for a long while. Robin sat watching him, growing increasingly uncomfortable as he calmly finished the last of his shepherd’s pie. Then he set down his fork and meticulously wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘You know the funny thing about Afghanistan?’ Griffin’s voice was very soft. ‘The British aren’t going to invade with English troops. They’re going to invade with troops from Bengal and Bombay. They’re going to have sepoys fight the Afghans, just like they had sepoys fight and die for them at Irrawaddy, because those Indian troops have the same logic you do, which is that it’s better to be a servant of the Empire, brutal coercion and all, than to resist. Because it’s safe. Because it’s stable, because it lets them survive.
And that’s how they win, brother. They pit us against each other. They tear us apart.’ ‘I’m not out for good,’ Robin said hastily. ‘I just – I mean, just until this year is over, or until things have blown over—’ ‘That’s not how this works,’ said Griffin. ‘You’re in or you’re not.
Afghanistan isn’t waiting.’ Robin drew in a shaky breath. ‘Then I’m out.’ ‘Very well.’ Griffin dropped his napkin and stood up. ‘Only keep your mouth shut, will you? Otherwise I’ll have to come and tie up loose ends, and I don’t like to be messy.’ ‘I won’t tell a soul. You have my word—’ ‘I don’t really care about your word,’ said Griffin. ‘But I do know where you sleep.’ There was nothing Robin could say to that. He knew Griffin was not bluffing, but also that if Griffin really did not trust him, he would not make it back to the college alive. They watched each other for a long time, unspeaking.
At last, Griffin shook his head and said, ‘You’re lost, brother. You’re a ship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what it is you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone.’ He paused beside Robin on his way to the door. His fingers landed on Robin’s shoulder, squeezed so hard they hurt. ‘But realize this, brother. You fly no one’s flag. You’re free to seek your own harbour. And you can do so much more than tread water.’
