Page 149 of Babel

It was over so quickly Robin hardly registered what was happening. Griffin whipped out his revolver. Sterling pointed his gun at Griffin’s chest. They must have pulled their triggers simultaneously, for the noise that split the night sounded like a single shot. They both collapsed at once.

Victoire screamed. Robin dropped to his knees, pulling at Griffin’s coat, patting frantically at his chest until he found the wet, growing patch of blood over his left shoulder. Shoulder wounds were not fatal, were they? Robin tried to remember what little he’d gleaned from adventure stories – one might bleed to death, but not if they got help in time, not if someone stanched the bleeding long enough to bind the wound, or stitch it, or whatever it was doctors did to fix a bullet through the shoulder—

‘Pocket,’ Griffin gasped. ‘Front pocket—’

Robin rooted through his front pocket and pulled out a thin silver bar.

‘Try that – I wrote it, don’t know if it’ll—’

Robin read the bar, then pressed it against his brother’s shoulder. ‘Xiu,’ he whispered. ‘Heal.’

?. To fix. Not merely to heal, but to repair, to patch over the damage; undo the wound with brute, mechanical reparation. The distortion was subtle, but it was there, it could work. And something was happening – he felt it under his hand, the knitting together of broken flesh, a crackling noise of bone regrowing. But the blood wouldn’t stop; it spilled over his hands, coating the bar, coating the silver. Something was wrong – the flesh was moving but it wouldn’t patch together; the bullet was in the way, and it was too deep for him to prise out. ‘No,’ Robin begged. ‘No, please—’ Not again; not thrice; how many times was he doomed to bend over a dying body, watching a life slip away, helpless to snatch it back?

Griffin writhed beneath him, face contorted with pain. ‘Stop,’ he begged. ‘Stop, just let it—’

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Victoire.

Robin felt paralysed. ‘Griffin—’

‘Go.’ Griffin’s face had turned paper-white, almost green. χλωρ?ς, Robin thought stupidly; it was the only thing his mind could process, a memory of a frivolous debate over the translation of colour. He found himself remembering in detail how Professor Craft had questioned why they kept translating χλωρ?ς as ‘green’, when Homer had also applied it to fresh twigs, to honey, to faces pale with fright. Was the bard merely blind, then? No. Perhaps, proposed Professor Craft, it was simply the colour of fresh nature, of verdant life – but that could not be right, for the sickly green of Griffin’s body was nothing but the onset of death.

‘I’m trying—’

‘No, Robin, listen.’ Griffin spasmed in pain; Robin held him tight, unable to do anything more. ‘There’s more than you think. Hermes – the safe room, Victoire knows where, she knows what to do – and in my satchel, wúxíng, there’s—’

‘They’re coming,’ Victoire urged. ‘Robin, the constables, they’ll see us—’

Griffin pushed him away. ‘Go, run—’

‘No.’ Robin slid his arms under Griffin’s torso. But Griffin was so heavy, and his own arms so weak. Blood spilled all over his hands. The smell of it, salty; his vision went fuzzy. He tried pulling his brother upright. They lurched to the side.

Griffin moaned. ‘Stop...’

‘Robin.’ Victoire grasped his arm. ‘Please, we have to hide—’

Robin reached into the satchel, dug around until he felt the cold burn of silver. ‘Wúxíng,’ he whispered. ‘Invisible.’

Robin and Victoire flickered, then disappeared just as three constables came running down the square.

‘Christ,’ someone said. ‘It’s Sterling Jones.’

‘Dead?’

‘He’s not moving.’

‘This one’s still alive.’ Someone bent over Griffin’s body. A rustle of fabric – a gun drawn. A sharp, surprised laugh; a half-hearted utterance, ‘Don’t – he’s—’

The click of a trigger.

‘No,’ Robin almost shouted, but Victoire clamped a hand over his mouth.

The shot boomed like a cannon. Griffin convulsed and lay still. Robin doubled over, screaming, but there was no sound to his anguish, no shape to his pain; he was incorporeal, voiceless, and though he suffered the kind of shattering grief that demanded shrieking, beating, a ripping of the world – and if not the world, then himself – he could not move; until the square was clear, all he could do was wait, and watch.

When at last the guards had gone, Griffin’s body had turned a ghastly white. His eyes were open, glassy. Robin pressed his fingers against his neck, looking for a pulse and knowing he’d find none; the blast had been so direct, from such a short range.

Victoire stood over him. ‘Is he—’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we have to go,’ she said, fingers closing around his wrist. ‘Robin, we don’t know when they’ll be back.’

He stood. What an awful tableau, he thought. Griffin’s and Sterling’s bodies lay adjacent on the ground, blood pooling beneath each one, running together under the rain. Some kind of love story had concluded on this square – some vicious triangle of desire, resentment, jealousy, and hatred had opened with Evie’s death and closed with Griffin’s. Its details were murky, would never be known to Robin in full;* all he knew, with certainty, was that this was not the first time Griffin and Sterling had tried to kill each other, only the first time one of them had succeeded. But all the principal characters were dead now, and the circle was closed.

‘Let’s go,’ Victoire urged again. ‘Robin, there’s not much time.’

It felt so wrong to leave them like this. Robin wanted at least to pull his brother’s body away, to lay it somewhere quiet and private, to close his eyes and place his hands over his chest. But there was only time now to run, to put the scene of the massacre behind.