But that, he reminded himself, was the advantage of the image Letty occupied. In this country, she had the face and colouring that inspired sympathy. Among them, no matter what happened, Letty alone could walk out of here innocent.
He nodded at her flag. ‘Here to surrender?’
‘Here to negotiate,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’
‘Then come in,’ said Victoire.
Letty, invited, stepped through the door. It slammed shut behind her.
For a moment the three of them only looked at each other. They stood uncertain in the middle of the lobby, an unbalanced triangle. It felt so fundamentally wrong. There had always been four of them; they had always come in pairs, an even set, and all Robin could think of was the acute absence of Ramy among them. They were not themselves without him; without his laughter, his quick, easy wit, his sudden turns of conversation that made them feel like they were spinning plates. They were no longer a cohort. Now they were only a wake.
Victoire asked, in a flat and toneless voice, ‘Why?’
Letty flinched, but only just barely. ‘I had to,’ she said, chin high, unwavering. ‘You know it’s all I could have done.’
‘No,’ said Victoire. ‘I don’t.’
‘I couldn’t betray my country.’
‘You didn’t have to betray us.’
‘You were in the thrall of a violent criminal organization,’ said Letty. The words came out so smoothly Robin could only assume they had been rehearsed. ‘And unless I pretended I agreed with you, unless I played along, I didn’t see how I was going to get out of there alive.’
Did she truly believe that? Robin wondered. Was that how she’d always seen them? He couldn’t believe these words were coming out of her mouth, that this was the same girl who’d once stayed up late with them, laughing so hard their ribs had ached. Only Chinese had a character that encapsulated how much simple words could hurt: 刺, cì, the character for thorns, for stabs, for criticism. Such a flexible character. In a phrase, 刺言, 刺語, it meant ‘barbed, stinging words’. 刺 could mean ‘to goad’. 刺 could also mean ‘to murder’.
‘So what’s this, then?’ Robin asked. ‘Parliament’s had enough?’
‘Oh, Robin.’ Letty gave him a plaintive look. ‘You need to surrender.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not how negotiation works, Letty.’
‘I mean it. I’m trying to warn you. They don’t even want me to be here, but I begged them, I wrote to my father, I pulled every string I had.’
‘Warn us about what?’ Victoire asked.
‘They’re going to storm the tower at dawn. And they’re going to destroy your resistance with guns. No more waiting. It’s over.’
Robin crossed his arms. ‘Good luck with getting their city back, then.’
‘But that’s just it,’ said Letty. ‘They’ve held back because they thought they could starve you out. They don’t want you dead. Believe it or not, they don’t like shooting at scholars. You’re all very useful, you’re right about that. But the country can’t stand it anymore. You’ve pushed them to the edge.’
‘Seems like the logical thing then would be to agree to our demands,’ said Victoire.
‘You know they can’t do that.’
‘They’re going to destroy their own city?’
‘Do you think Parliament cares what you destroy?’ Letty demanded, impatient. ‘Those men aren’t bothered about what you’re doing to Oxford, or to London. They laughed when the lights went dark, and they laughed when the bridge fell down. Those men want the city destroyed. They think it’s grown too big and unwieldy already, that its dark, squalid slums are overriding all its civilized boroughs. And you know it’s the poor who will suffer the most. The rich can ride out to the country and stay on their summer estates where they’ll have clean air and clean water until spring. The poor will die in droves. Listen, you two. The people who run this country care more about the pride of the British Empire than they do mild inconveniences, and they’ll let the city collapse before they bow to the demands of what they see as a handful of – of Babblers.’
‘Say what you mean,’ said Victoire.
‘Of foreigners.’
‘That’s quite a sense of pride,’ said Robin.
‘I know,’ said Letty. ‘It’s what I grew up with. I know how deep it runs. Believe me on this. You have no idea how much they’re willing to bleed for the sake of their pride. These men let Westminster Bridge fall. What else can you threaten them with?’
Silence, then. Westminster Bridge was the trump card. What rebuttal could they offer?
‘So you mean to talk us into our deaths,’ Victoire said finally.
‘I don’t,’ said Letty. ‘I mean to save you.’
She blinked, and suddenly tears traced two thin, clear lines down her face. This was not an act; they knew Letty could not act. She was heartbroken, truly heartbroken. She loved them; Robin did not doubt it; at least she really believed that she loved them. She wanted them safe and sound, only her version of a successful resolution was to put them behind bars.
‘I didn’t want any of this,’ she said. ‘I just want things to go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of us.’
Robin bit back a laugh. ‘What did you imagine?’ he asked quietly. ‘That we would keep eating lemon biscuits together while this country declared war on our motherlands?’
‘They’re not your motherlands,’ said Letty. ‘They don’t have to be.’
‘They do have to be,’ said Victoire. ‘Because we’ll never be British. How can you still not understand? That identity is foreclosed to us. We are foreign because this nation has marked us so, and as long as we’re punished daily for our ties to our homelands, we might as well defend them. No, Letty, we can’t maintain this fantasy. The only one who can do that is you.’
Letty’s face tightened.
The truce was over; the walls were up; they had reminded her why she’d abandoned them, which was that she could never really, properly, be one of them. And Letty, if she could not belong to a place, would rather tear the whole thing down.
‘You realize that if I walk out of here with a no, they’ll come in prepared to kill all of you.’
‘But they can’t do that.’ Victoire glanced at Robin as if for confirmation. ‘The whole point of this strike was that they need us; they can’t risk us.’
‘Please understand.’ Letty’s voice hardened. ‘You gave them a headache. Well done you. But you are, in the end, expendable. All of you. Losing you would be a minor setback, but the imperial project involves more than a few scholars. And it will span more than a few decades. This nation is trying to achieve what no other civilization has done throughout history, and if mowing you down means a temporary delay, then they’ll do it. They’ll train new translators.’
‘They won’t,’ said Robin. ‘No one will work for them after this.’
Letty scoffed. ‘Of course they will. We knew very well what they were up to, didn’t we? They told us on the very first day. And we still loved it here. They’ll always be able to find new translators. They’ll relearn what they lost. And they’ll just keep going, because no one else will be there to stop them.’ She seized Robin’s hand. The gesture was so sudden, so shocking that he didn’t have time to pull away. Her skin was icy cold, her grip so strong he was afraid she might snap his fingers off. ‘You can’t change things if you’re dead, Birdie.’
Violently, he shook her off. ‘Don’t call me Birdie.’
She pretended not to hear this. ‘Don’t lose sight of your end goal. If you want to fix the Empire, your best course is to work within it.’