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.’