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

He might not have to do it himself. When they’d wrung everything they could from his mind, wouldn’t they try him in court and then hang him? In his youth he had once glimpsed a hanging at Newcastle; he’d seen the crowd gathered around the gallows during one of his jaunts around the city and, not knowing what he was seeing, drawn closer to the crush. There had been three men standing in a line on the platform. He remembered the whack of the panel giving way, the abrupt snap of their necks. He remembered hearing someone mutter their disappointment that the victims had not kicked.

Death by hanging might be quick – perhaps even easy, painless. He felt guilty for even considering it – that’s selfish, Ramy had said, you don’t get to take the easy way out.

But what in God’s name was he still alive for? Robin could not see how anything he did from now on mattered. His despair was total. They had lost, they had lost with such crushing completeness, and there was nothing left. If he clung to life for the days or weeks he had left, it was solely for Ramy’s sake, because he did not deserve what was easy.

Time crept on. Robin drifted between waking and sleep. Pain and grief made it impossible to truly rest. But he was tired, so tired, and his thoughts spiralled, became vivid, nightmarish memories. He was on the Hellas again, speaking the words that set all this in motion; he was staring down at his father, watching blood bubble over that ruin of a chest. And it was such a perfect tragedy, wasn’t it? An age-old story, parricide. The Greeks loved parricide, Mr Chester had been fond of saying; they loved it for its infinite narrative potential, its invocations of legacy, pride, honour, and dominance. They loved the way it struck every possible emotion because it so deviously inverted the most basic tenet of human existence. One being creates another, moulds and influences it in its own image. The son becomes, then replaces, the father; Kronos destroys Ouranos, Zeus destroys Kronos and, eventually, becomes him. But Robin had never envied his father, never wanted anything of his except his recognition, and he hated to see himself reflected in that cold, dead face. No, not dead – reanimated, haunting; Professor Lovell leered at him, and behind him, opium burned on Canton’s shores, hot and booming and sweet.

‘Get up,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Get up.’

Robin jerked awake. His father’s face became his brother’s. Griffin loomed above him, covered in soot. Behind him, the cell door was in pieces.

Robin stared. ‘How—’

Griffin brandished a silver bar. ‘Same old trick. Wúxíng.’

‘I thought it couldn’t work for you.’

‘Funniest thing, isn’t it? Sit up.’ Griffin knelt down behind him and set to work on Robin’s cuffs. ‘Once you said it for the first time, I finally got it. Like I’ve been waiting for someone to say those words my whole life. Christ, kid, who did this to you?’

‘Sterling Jones.’

‘Of course. Bastard.’ He fiddled a moment with the lock. Metal dug into Robin’s wrists. Robin winced, trying his hardest not to move.

‘Ah, damn it.’ Griffin rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a large pair of shears. ‘I’m cutting through, hold still.’ Robin felt an agonizing, intense pressure – and then nothing. His hands sprang free – still cuffed, but no longer bolted together.

The pain vanished. He sagged from the reprieve. ‘I thought you were in Glasgow.’

‘I was fifty miles out when I got word. Then I jumped out, waited, and hopped onto the first train I could coming back.’

‘Got word?’

‘We have our ways.’ Robin noticed then that Griffin’s right hand shone mottled pale, red, and angry. It looked like a burn scar. ‘Anthony didn’t elaborate, he only sent an emergency signal, but I reckoned it was bad. Then all the rumours from the tower said they’d hauled you lot here, so I skipped the Old Library – would have been dangerous, regardless – and came here. Good bet. Where is Anthony?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Robin.

‘I see.’ Something rippled across Griffin’s face, but he blinked, and his features resumed their calm. ‘And the rest—?’

‘I think they’re all dead.’ Robin felt wretched; he could not meet Griffin’s eyes. ‘Cathy, Vimal, Ilse – everyone in the house – I didn’t see them fall, but I heard the shooting, and then I didn’t see them again.’

‘No other survivors?’

‘There’s Victoire. I know they brought Victoire, but—’

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know,’ Robin said miserably. She could be lying dead in her cell. They could have already dragged her body outside, dumped it in a shallow grave. He couldn’t speak the words to explain; that would shatter him.

‘Then let’s look.’ Griffin grabbed his shoulders and gave him a hard shake. ‘Your legs are fine, aren’t they? Come, get up.’

The hallway was miraculously empty. Robin glanced left and right, baffled. ‘Where are all the guards?’