Page 34 of Babel

‘Steal?’ They were strolling at an absurd pace again. ‘You mean from Babel?’

‘Obviously, yes. Keep up.’

‘But why do you need me?’

‘Because you’re a part of the institution and we’re not. Your blood’s in the tower, which means there are doors you can open that we can’t.’

‘But why...’ Robin’s tongue kept tripping over a flood of questions. ‘What for? What do you do with what you steal?’

‘Just what I told you. We redistribute it. We’re Robin Hood. Ha, ha. Robin. No? All right. We send bars and silver-working materials all over the world to people who need them – people who don’t have the luxury of being rich and British. People like your mother. See, Babel’s a dazzling place, but it’s only dazzling because it sells its match-pairs to a very limited customer base.’ Griffin glanced over his shoulder. There was no one around them save a washerwoman lugging a basket down the other end of the street, but he quickened his pace regardless. ‘So are you in?’

‘I – I don’t know.’ Robin blinked. ‘I can’t just – I mean, I still have so many questions.’

Griffin shrugged. ‘So ask anything you want. Go on.’

‘I – all right.’ Robin tried to arrange his confusion into sequential order. ‘Who are you?’

‘Griffin Lovell.’

‘No, the collective you—’

‘The Hermes Society,’ Griffin said promptly. ‘Just Hermes, if you like.’

‘The Hermes Society.’ Robin turned that name over in his mouth. ‘Why—’

‘It’s a joke. Silver and mercury, Mercury and Hermes, Hermes and hermeneutics. I don’t know who came up with it.’

‘And you’re a clandestine society? No one knows about you?’

‘Certainly Babel does. We’ve had a – well, it’s been quite back and forth, shall we say? But they don’t know much, and certainly not as much as they’d like to. We’re very good at staying in the shadows.’

Not that good, Robin thought, thinking of curses in the dark, silver scattered across cobblestones. He said instead, ‘How many of you are there?’

‘Can’t tell you.’

‘Do you have a headquarters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you show me where it is?’

Griffin laughed. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘But – there’s more of you, surely?’ Robin persisted. ‘You could at least introduce me—’

‘Can’t, and won’t,’ said Griffin. ‘We’ve just barely met, brother. For all I know, you could go running to Playfair the moment we part.’

‘But then how—’ Robin threw up his arms in frustration. ‘I mean, you’re giving me nothing, and asking me for everything.’

‘Yes, brother, that’s really how secret societies with any degree of competence work. I don’t know what sort of person you are, and I’d be a fool to tell you more.’

‘You see why this makes things very difficult for me, though?’ Robin thought Griffin was brushing off some rather reasonable concerns. ‘I don’t know a thing about you either. You could be lying, you could be trying to frame me—’

‘If that were true you’d have been sent down by now. So that’s out. What do you think we’re lying about?’

‘Could be you’re not using the silver to help other people at all,’ said Robin. ‘Could be the Hermes Society is a great fraud, could be you’re reselling what you steal to get rich—’

‘Do I look like I’m getting rich?’