Robin glanced down. The front side read 爆. His gut twisted. He was too afraid to look at the back.
‘Bào,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘The radical for fire. And beside it, the radical for violence, cruelty, and turbulence; the same radical which on its own can mean untamed, savage brutality; the same radical used in the words for thunder and cruelty.* And he translated it against burst, the tamest English translation possible, so tame that it hardly translates as such at all – so that all of that force, that destruction, was trapped in the silver. It exploded against her chest. Sprang her ribs apart like an open birdcage. And then he left her there, lying among the shelves, books still in hand. When I saw her, her blood had pooled across half the floor. Stained every page red.’ He slid the bar across the table. ‘Hold it.’
Robin flinched. ‘Sir?’
‘Pick it up,’ snapped Professor Lovell. ‘Feel the weight of it.’
Robin reached out and closed his fingers around the bar. It was terribly cold to the touch, colder than any other silver he’d encountered, and inordinately heavy. Yes, he could believe that this bar had murdered someone. It seemed to hum with trapped, furious potential, a lit grenade, waiting to go off.
He knew it was pointless to ask, but he had to regardless. ‘How do you know it was Griffin?’
‘We’ve had no other students in Chinese in the past ten years,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Do you suppose I did it? Or Professor Chakravarti?’
Was he lying? It was possible – this story was so grotesque, Robin nearly didn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe that Griffin could be capable of something like murder.
But wasn’t he? Griffin, who spoke of Babel faculty as if they were enemy combatants, who sent his own brother repeatedly into the fray without care for the consequences, who was so convinced of the Manichaean justice of the war he fought that he could see little else. Wouldn’t Griffin have murdered a defenceless girl, if it meant keeping Hermes secure?
‘I’m sorry,’ Robin whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘This is who you’ve thrown your lot in with,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘A liar and a killer. Do you imagine you’re aiding some movement of global liberation, Robin? Don’t be naive. You’re aiding Griffin’s delusions of grandeur. And for what?’ He nodded to Robin’s shoulder. ‘A bullet in your arm?’
‘How did you—’
‘Professor Playfair observed you might have hurt your arm rowing. I am not quite so easily deceived.’ Professor Lovell clasped his hands over the desk and leaned back. ‘So. The choice ought to be very obvious, I think. Babel, or Hermes.’
Robin frowned. ‘Sir?’
‘Babel, or Hermes? It’s quite simple. You may decide.’
Robin felt like a broken instrument, capable of uttering only one sound. ‘Sir, I don’t . . .’
‘Did you think you would be expelled?’
‘Well – yes, wouldn’t—’
‘It’s not quite so easy to leave Babel, I’m afraid. You’ve strayed down the wrong path, but I believe it was as a result of vicious influences – influences crueller and wilier than you could have been expected to handle. You’re naive, yes. And a disappointment. But you’re not finished. This does not need to end with gaol or prison.’ Professor Lovell tapped his fingers against the desk. ‘But it would be very helpful if you could give us something useful.’
‘Useful?’
‘Information, Robin. Help us find them. Help us root them out.’
‘But I don’t know anything about them,’ said Robin. ‘I don’t even know any of their names, except Griffin’s.’
‘Really.’
‘It’s true, it’s how they operate – they’re so decentralized, they don’t tell new associates anything. In case—’ Robin swallowed. ‘In case something like this happens.’
‘How unfortunate. You’re quite sure?’
‘Yes, I really don’t—’
‘Say what you mean, Robin. Don’t dither.’
Robin flinched. Those were precisely the same words Griffin had used; he remembered. And Griffin had said it exactly the same way Professor Lovell did now, cold and imperious, as if he’d already won the argument, as if any response Robin made was bound to be nonsense.
And Robin could imagine Griffin’s smirk just now; knew exactly what he would say – of course you’ll choose your creature comforts, you coddled little scholar. But what right did Griffin have to judge his choices? Staying at Babel, at Oxford, wasn’t indulgence; it was survival. It was his only ticket into this country, the one thing between him and the streets.
He felt a sudden flare of hatred towards Griffin. Robin had asked for none of this, and now his future – and Ramy’s and Victoire’s futures – hung in the balance. And where was Griffin? Where was he when Robin had been shot? Vanished. He’d used them to do his bidding, then abandoned them when things went sour. At least if Griffin went to prison, he deserved it.
‘If it’s loyalty that’s keeping you quiet, then there’s nothing else to be done,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘But I think we can work together still. I think you’re not quite ready to leave Babel. Don’t you?’
Robin took a deep breath.
What was he giving up, really? The Hermes Society had abandoned him, had ignored his warnings and endangered his two dearest friends. He owed them nothing.
In the days and weeks that followed he would try to persuade himself that this was a moment of strategic concession, not of betrayal. That he was not giving up much of importance – Griffin himself had said they had multiple safe houses, hadn’t he? – and that this way Ramy and Victoire were protected, he was not expelled, and all the lines of communication existed still for some future cooperation with Hermes. But he’d never quite talk himself out of the nasty truth – that this was not about Hermes, nor about Ramy or Victoire, but about self-preservation.
‘St Aldate’s,’ he said. ‘The back entrance to the church. There’s a door near the basement that looks rusted shut, but Griffin has a key. They use it as a safe room.’
Professor Lovell scribbled this down. ‘How often does he go there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robin said again. ‘I never went myself. Truly, he told me very little. I’m sorry.’
Professor Lovell cast him a long, cool look, then appeared to relent.
‘I know you’re better than this.’ He leaned forward over his desk. ‘You are unlike Griffin in every way possible. You’re humble, you’re bright, and you work hard. You are less corrupted by your heritage than he was. If I’d only just met you, I’d be hard pressed to guess you were a Chinaman at all. You have prodigious talent, and talent deserves a second chance. But careful, boy.’ He gestured to the door. ‘There won’t be a third.’
Robin stood up, then glanced down at his hand. He noticed he’d been clutching the bar that had killed Evie Brooke this whole time. It felt simultaneously very hot and very cold, and he had the strange fear that if he touched it for a moment longer, it might erode a hole through his palm. He held it out. ‘Here, sir—’
‘Keep it,’ said Professor Lovell.
‘Sir?’
‘I have been staring at that bar every day for the past five years, wondering where I went wrong with Griffin. If I had raised him differently, or seen him earlier for what he was, if Evie would still – but never mind.’ Professor Lovell’s voice hardened. ‘Now it weighs on your conscience. Keep it, Robin Swift. Carry it in your front pocket. Pull it out whenever you begin to doubt, and let it remind you which side are the villains.’