Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

And, certainly, Letty could not have been aiming for his heart. That was also impossible. She loved him, she loved him almost like Robin loved him – she’d told him so, he remembered, and if that were true, then how could she look into Ramy’s eyes and shoot to kill?

Which meant Ramy might still be alive, might have survived against all odds, might have dragged himself from the carnage of the Old Library and found himself somewhere to hide, might yet recover if only someone found him in time, stanched the wound in time. Unlikely, but perhaps, perhaps, perhaps . . .

Perhaps when Robin escaped this place, when they were reunited, they’d laugh so hard over this whole thing that their ribs hurt.

He hoped. He hoped until hope became its own form of torture. The original meaning of hope was ‘to desire’, and Robin wanted with every ounce of his being a world that no longer was. He hoped until he thought he was going mad, until he started hearing fragments of his thoughts as if spoken outside of him, low, gruff words that echoed around the stone.

I wish—

I regret—

And then a flurry of confessions that weren’t his.

I wish I’d loved her better.

I wish I’d never touched that knife.

This wasn’t his imagination. He lifted his throbbing head, his cheek sticky with blood and tears. He glanced around, astonished. The stones were talking, whispering a thousand different testimonies, each too drowned out by the next for him to make out anything but passing phrases.

If only, they said.

It isn’t fair, they said.

I deserve this, they said.

And yet, amidst of all that despair:

I hope—

I hope—

I hope against hope—

Wincing, he stood up, pressed his face against the stone, and inched down the wall until he found the telltale glint of silver. The bar was inscribed with a classic Greek to Latin to English daisy-chain. The Greek epitaphion meant ‘a funeral oration’ – something spoken, something meant to be heard; the Latin epitaphium, similarly, referred to a eulogy. It was only the modern English epitaph that referred to something written and silent. The distorted translation gave voices to the written. He was surrounded by the confessions of the dead.

He sank down and clutched his head in his hands.

What a uniquely terrible torture. What genius had thought this up? The point was, surely, to inundate him with the despair of every other poor soul who had been imprisoned here, to fill him with such unfathomable sadness that, when questioned, he would give up anyone and anything to make it stop.

But these whispers were redundant. They did not darken his thoughts; they merely echoed them. Ramy was dead; Hermes was lost. The world could not go on. The future was only a vast expanse of black, and the only thing that gave him a shred of hope was the promise that someday, all this would end.

The door opened. Robin jerked awake, startled by the creaking hinges. In walked a graceful young man, blond hair gathered into a knot just above his neck.

‘Hello, Robin Swift,’ he said. His voice was gentle, musical. ‘Do you remember me?’

Of course not, Robin almost said, but then the man walked closer, and the words died on his tongue. He wore the same features as the likeness in the frieze in the University College chapel: the same straight, aristocratic nose and intelligent, deep-set eyes. Robin had seen this face just once, over three years ago, in Professor Lovell’s dining room. He’d never forget it.

‘You’re Sterling.’ Brilliant, famed Sterling Jones, nephew of Sir William Jones, the greatest translator of the age. His appearance here was so unexpected that for a moment Robin could only blink at him. ‘Why—’

‘Why am I here?’ Sterling laughed. Even his laughter was graceful. ‘I couldn’t miss it. Not after they told me they’d caught Griffin Lovell’s little brother.’

Sterling drew two chairs into the room and sat down opposite Robin, crossing his legs at the knees. He tugged his jacket down to straighten it, then cocked his head at Robin. ‘My word. You’ve really grown alike. You’re a bit easier on the eye, though. Griffin was all sneers and hackles. Like a wet dog.’ He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. ‘So you killed your father, did you? You don’t look like a killer.’

‘And you don’t look like a county policeman,’ said Robin.

But even as he said this, the last false binary he’d constructed in his head – the one between scholars and the blades of empire – fell away. He recalled Griffin’s words. He recalled his father’s letters. Slave traders and soldiers. Ready killers, all of them.