The Rithmatist

CHAPTER

Joel ran across the campus to Professor Fitch’s office. He knocked on the door and got no answer. So he tested the doorknob, and found it unlocked.

He pushed it open.

“Just a moment!” Fitch called. The professor stood next to his desk, quickly gathering up a bunch of scrolls, writing utensils, and books. He looked even more disheveled than usual, hair sticking up, tie askew.

“Professor?” Joel asked.

“Ah, Joel,” Fitch said, glancing up. “Excellent! Please, come help me with these.”

Joel hastened to help carry an armful of scrolls. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve failed again,” Fitch said. “There’s been another disappearance.”

“I know,” Joel said, following Professor Fitch toward the door. “But what are we doing about it?”

“Don’t you remember?” Fitch said, closing the door behind Joel, then hurriedly leading the way down the steps. “You suggested that we needed to see the crime scene before it was contaminated by police officers. As good as they are, they have no realistic understanding of Rithmatics. I explained this to Inspector Harding.”

“Will they actually wait until we get there to look things over?”

“They can’t start until Harding arrives,” Fitch said. “And he’s here at Armedius. The disappearance wasn’t discovered until just a short time ago. And so, if we—”

“Fitch!” a voice called from ahead. Joel looked up to see Inspector Harding standing with a group of police officers. “Double-time, soldier!”

“Yes, yes,” Fitch said, quickening his pace.

Harding gestured, and his police officers scrambled away. “I’ve told the engineer to hold the springrail,” Harding said as Fitch and Joel joined him. “My men are securing the campus—no more Rithmatic students are going to leave this place without police protection until we know what is happening.”

“Very wise,” Fitch said as Harding and he strode toward the station. Joel hurried along behind, carrying the scrolls. Students had gathered on the green nearby to watch the police, and Joel caught sight of some familiar red curls among them.

“Hey!” Melody said, pushing through the students and rushing up to Joel. “What’s going on?”

Joel winced as Professor Fitch turned. “Ah, Melody, dear. I left some defenses for you to trace in my office. You can work on that today while I’m gone.”

“Tracing?” Melody demanded. “We’re in the middle of a crisis!”

“Now, now,” Fitch said. “We don’t have all the facts yet. I am going to go see what is going on. However, you need to continue your education.”

She glanced at Joel, and he shrugged apologetically.

“Come on, soldiers!” Harding said. “We must move quickly while the crime scene is still fresh!”

They left Melody behind. She watched with hands on her hips, and Joel had a feeling that he was going to have to listen to another tirade when he got back.

They arrived at the station, a large brick building that was open on the ends. Joel had rarely ridden one of the trains. Joel’s grandparents lived on the same island, and a carriage trip to see them was cheaper. Other than them, there was little reason for him to leave the city, let alone the island.

He smiled in anticipation as he walked up the ramp behind Harding and Fitch. They had to fight traffic as the usual morning crowd of students moved down the ramp around them.

“You haven’t shut down the station, Inspector?” Fitch asked, looking at the flood of students.

“I can’t afford to,” Harding said. “If this campus is going to become a haven for the students, we need to let them get here first. Many of the non-Rithmatists live off campus. I want to let as many of them as possible come here for refuge. Now that civilians have died, we don’t know for certain if ordinary students are safe.”

The three of them stepped into the rectangular brick station. Springrail trains hung beneath their tracks, and so the track was high in the air, about ten feet up; it ran through the building and out the ends. The train cars were long and slender, designed like ornate carriages.

The vehicle’s clockwork engines sprouted from the tops of the first two train cars, wrapping around the track above like large iron claws. A group of workers labored above on catwalks, lowering down and attaching an enormous, drum-shaped spring battery onto the first engine. It had been wound in another location; it could take hours to wind a single drum. The powerful springs inside had to be strong enough to move the entire train. That was why chalklings to do the work were preferable.

Harding hurried Fitch and Joel onto the train, and they were followed by a set of policemen. The officers cleared out a few annoyed people from a cabin at the very front of the train, and there made space for Fitch, Harding, and Joel.

Joel sat down eagerly. The situation was gloomy—another student kidnapped, innocent people murdered—yet he couldn’t banish the thrill of being able to ride the springrail. And in his own cabin, no less.

The train clanked and shook as the workers attached the spring drum above. Outside, Joel saw annoyed people leaving the train and going to stand out on the platform.

“You’re evacuating the train?” Fitch asked.

“No,” Harding said. “My men are just informing everyone on the vehicle that it will be canceling all stops until we reach East Carolina. Anyone who doesn’t want to go there will have to get off and wait for the next train.”

The drum locked into place with a powerful clamping sound. Then the workers moved down to the second car, and similar sounds came as they began to attach a second drum to the gearwork engine there. Joel imagined the massive springs and gears inside of the drums, incredibly taut with power just waiting to be released.

“Inspector,” Fitch said, leaning forward. “Was it really Sir Calloway’s son who was taken?”

“Yes,” the officer said, looking troubled.

“What does it mean?” Fitch said. “I mean, for Armedius and the isle?”

The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never understood politicians, Fitch. I’m a fighting man; I belong on the battlefield, not in a conference room.” He turned to meet Fitch’s eyes. “I do know that we’d better figure out what’s going on, and quickly.”

“Yes,” Fitch said.

Joel frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Fitch eyed him. “Haven’t you had classes on government?”

“Of course I have,” Joel said. “Government was … uh, the class I failed last year.”

Fitch sighed. “Such potential wasted.”

“It wasn’t interesting,” Joel protested. “I mean, I want to learn about Rithmatics, not politics. Let’s be honest, when am I ever going to need to know historical government theories?”

“I don’t know,” Fitch said. “Maybe right now.”

Joel winced.

“It’s more than that, of course,” Fitch said. “Joel, lad, school is about learning to learn. If you don’t practice studying things you don’t like, then you’ll have a very hard time in life. How are you going to become a brilliant Rithmatic scholar and attend university if you don’t learn to study when you don’t feel like it?”

“I never really saw it that way.”

“Well, perhaps you should.”

Joel sat back. He’d only recently learned that there were liberal universities where non-Rithmatists studied Rithmatics. He doubted those universities would admit a student who had a habit of failing at least one class every term.

He gritted his teeth, frustrated with himself, but there was nothing he could do about years past. Perhaps he could change the future. Assuming, of course, the recent troubles didn’t lead to Armedius getting shut down. “So why would New Britannia be in danger because of events at Armedius?”

“The Calloway boy was the son of a knight-senator,” Harding said. “The Calloways are from East Carolina, which doesn’t have its own Rithmatic school, so people there send their Rithmatists to attend Armedius. Some of the isles, however, complain that they have to pay for a school away from their own shores. They don’t like entrusting their Rithmatists to another island’s control, even for schooling.”

Joel nodded. The United Isles were all independent. There were some things the isles all paid for together, like Rithmatists and the inspectors, but they weren’t totally a single country—at least not like the Aztek Federation in South America.

“You’re saying the knight-senator could blame New Britannia for his son’s disappearance,” Joel said.

Harding nodded. “Tensions are high, what with the trade problems between the northeastern coalition and the Texas coalition. Blast it all! I hate politics. I wish I were back on the front lines.”

Joel almost asked why he wasn’t still on the front lines, but hesitated. Something about Harding’s expression implied that might not be a good idea.

Fitch shook his head. “I worry that all of this—the disappearing children, the strange drawings at the crime scenes—is all a cover-up to mask what just happened. The kidnapping of an influential knight-senator’s son. This could be a political move.”

“Or,” Harding added, “it could be the move of some rogue organization trying to build its own force of Rithmatists. I’ve seen a well-drawn Line of Forbiddance stop bullets, even a cannonball.”

“Hum,” Fitch said. “Perhaps you’re on to something there, Inspector.”

“I hope I’m not,” Harding said, pounding the armrest of his seat. “We can’t afford to fight each other. Not again. The last time nearly doomed us all.”

Wow, Joel thought, feeling cold. It had never occurred to him just how much Armedius might influence the politics of the world. Suddenly, the future of the school seemed a whole lot more weighty than it had just moments earlier.

The second drum locked into place, and the last of the annoyed commuters climbed out of the coaches. The track wound into the sky ahead; the line of steel was filled with crenellations where the teeth of the massive gears above would grip it and pull the train along. A sharp grating sound of steel against steel screeched from above as the engineer released the locking mechanism on the first gear drive, and the train began to move.

It went slowly at first, clicks sounding from the gears, the entire vehicle shaking. The train steadily gained speed, climbing out of the station and up the track into the air. There was something awe-inspiring about being above everything else. As the train gathered speed, it passed straight through the middle of the downtown skyline, rising over the tops of some of the shorter buildings.

People milled about on the streets, looking like dolls or tin soldiers jumbled together after a child forgot to clean them up. The springrail dipped down, moving toward another station—but didn’t slow, passing through the center of the building without stopping.

Joel imagined he could see the annoyed expressions on the people waiting on the platforms, though they were just a blur as their train shot by. The train wove through the city, ignoring several more stops; then the track turned sharply south. In seconds they raced out across the water.

Jamestown was on the coast of New Britannia, and the few times Joel had ridden the springrail, it had been to go to the beach. Once with his father, back when times had been better. Once a few years after, with his mother and grandparents.

That trip hadn’t been as fun. They’d all spent the time thinking of the one they’d lost.

Regardless, Joel had never actually crossed the waters. My first time visiting another of the isles. He wished it could be under more pleasant circumstances.

The track stood elevated by a series of large steel pillars, their bases plunging into the ocean. The water was relatively shallow between islands—perhaps a hundred feet deep—but even still, constructing the springrail tracks had been an enormous undertaking. New tracks were continually being laid, connecting the sixty isles in an intricate web of steel.

Up ahead, he saw a junction where five different tracks met up together. Two headed southwest, toward West Carolina and beyond, and another curved southeastward, probably heading toward the Floridian Atolls. None of them went directly east. There was talk of building a springrail line all the way to Europe, but the depths of the ocean made the project difficult.

Their train hit the loop of track that ran in a circle around the inside of the junction. They rounded this, Joel watching out the window, as the engineer threw a lever that raised a hooked contraption above the train. The hook tripped the proper latch, and a few seconds later they were shooting southward toward East Carolina.

Fitch and Harding settled back for the trip, Fitch looking through a book, Harding scribbling notes to himself on a pad. The earlier sense of urgency now seemed an odd counterpoint to their relaxed attitudes. All they could do was wait. While the isles were relatively close to one another, it still took several hours to cross the larger swaths of ocean.

Joel spent the time sitting and watching the ocean waves some fifty feet below. There was something mesmerizing about the way they crashed and churned. As the minutes passed, the train began to slow, the gears methodically running out of spring power.

Eventually, the train stopped, sitting still on its track above the water. The car shook, and a distant clink sounded as the second gear drive was engaged. Motion started again. By the time Joel spotted land, almost exactly two hours had passed from the time they left Armedius.

Joel perked up. What would East Carolina look like? His instincts told him that it wouldn’t be all that different from New Britannia, since the two islands were next to one another. In a way, he was right. The green foliage and bushy trees reminded him a lot of his own island.

And yet, there were differences. Instead of concrete cities, he saw forested patches, often dominated by large manor houses that seemed to be hiding within the thick branches and deep greenery. They passed no towns larger than a couple dozen buildings. The train eventually began to slow again, and Joel saw another scattering of homes ahead. Not a town, really—more a set of wooded mansions distant enough from one another to feel secluded.

“Is the entire island filled with mansions?” Joel asked as the train descended.

“Hardly,” Fitch said. “This is the eastern side—a favorite spot for country estates. The western side of the island is more urban, though it doesn’t contain anything like Jamestown. You have to go almost all the way to Denver to find a city as magnificent.”

Joel cocked his head. He’d never considered Jamestown magnificent, really. It simply was.

The train clinked into the station and stopped. Not many people got off, and most who did were police. The train’s other occupants were apparently heading for the western side of the isle, where the train would soon continue.

Joel, Fitch, and Harding left their coach and walked into a muggy heat as workers began to change the spring drums atop the waiting train.

“Quickly now, men,” Harding said, rushing down the steps and out of the station. His urgency seemed to have returned now that they were off the train. Joel followed, once again carrying Fitch’s scrolls and books, though he now had a large shoulder bag, borrowed from one of the police officers.

They crossed a gravel-strewn road, passing beneath the shade of the train above. Joel expected to take a carriage, but apparently the mansion in question was the enormous white one that stood just down the road. Fitch, Harding, and the other officers hurried toward it.

Joel wiped his brow with his free hand. The mansion had a large iron fence, much like the one at Armedius. Trees dotted the lawn, keeping most of the green shaded, and the front of the mansion sported stately white pillars. The lawn smelled freshly cut and was well-groomed.

Police officers scuttled about the front lawn, and a contingent of them stood guarding the gate. Near them gathered a large number of men in expensive suits and top hats. As Harding, Joel, and Fitch walked up the green toward the mansion, a couple of officers rushed over.

“I really need to institute the practice of saluting among police officers,” Harding muttered as the men approached. “Everybody just seems so dusting informal.”

“Inspector,” one of the men said, falling into step beside them, “the area is secure. We’ve kept everyone out, though we cleaned away the bodies of the servants. We haven’t entered the boy’s room yet.”

Harding nodded. “How many dead?”

“Four, sir.”

“Dusts! How many witnesses do we have?”

“Sir,” the police officer said, “I’m sorry … but, well, we’re guessing those four men were the witnesses.”

“Nobody saw anything?”

The police officer shook his head. “Nor heard anything, sir. The knight-senator himself discovered the bodies.”

Harding froze in place on the lawn. “He was here?”

The police officer nodded. “He spent the night sleeping in his chambers at the end of the hallway—only two rooms down from where the boy was taken.”

Harding glanced at Fitch, and Joel saw the same question in both of their expressions. The perpetrator—whoever he is—could have killed the knight-senator with ease. Why, then, just take the son?

“Let’s go,” Harding said. “Professor, I hope you’re not disturbed by the sight of a little blood.”

Fitch paled. “Well, uh…”

The three of them hustled up the marble steps to the front doors, which were made of a fine red wood. Just inside the white entryway, they found a tall man wearing a top hat, hands on a cane that rested tip-down on the floor in front of him. He wore a monocle on one eye and a scowl on his face.

“Inspector Harding,” the man said.

“Hello, Eventire,” Harding said.

“And who is this?” Fitch asked.

“I am Captain Eventire,” the man said. “I represent Sir Calloway’s security forces.” He fell into step beside Harding. “I should say that we are most displeased by these events.”

“Well, how do you think I feel?” Harding snapped. “Bubbly and happy?”

Eventire sniffed. “Your officers should have dealt with this issue long before now. The knight-senator is irritated, you might say, with your New Britannia police force for letting your problems spill over onto his estate and endanger his family.”

“First of all,” Harding said, raising a finger, “I’m a federal inspector, not a member of the New Britannia Police. Secondly, I can’t very well bear the blame for this. If you will remember, Captain, I was here just last evening, trying to persuade the knight-senator that his son would be safer back at Armedius! That fool has nobody to blame but himself for ignoring my warnings.” Harding stopped, pointing directly at Eventire. “Finally, Captain, I should think that your security force should be the first ones to draw your lord’s ‘irritation.’ Where were all of you when his son was being kidnapped?”

Eventire flushed. They stared at each other before Eventire finally looked away. Harding began moving again, walking up the steps to the second floor. Joel and Fitch followed, as did Eventire. “These are your Rithmatists, I assume?”

Harding nodded.

“Tell me, Inspector,” Eventire said, “why is it that the federal inspectors don’t employ a Rithmatist full time? One should think that if your organization were really as important and capable as everyone claims, you would be prepared for events like this.”

“We’re not prepared,” Harding said, “because dusting Rithmatists don’t normally kill people. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my men and I need to do some investigations. Look after your lord, Eventire, and stay out of my business.”

Eventire stopped and waited behind, watching them go with obvious displeasure.

“Private security forces,” Harding said once they were out of earshot. “No better than mercenaries. Can’t trust them on the front lines; their loyalty only goes as far as the coin in their pockets. Ah, here we are.”

Here they were indeed. Joel paled as they rounded a corner and found a small hallway marked with several splotches of blood. He was glad the bodies had been removed. The sight of the dried, brownish red stains was disturbing enough.

The hallway was white with white carpeting, which only made the red more stark. It was nicely decorated, with fancy-looking floral paintings on the wall. A small chandelier hung from the ceiling; its clockwork mechanism flickered, clicking softly.

“That fool,” Harding said, surveying the bloodied carpet. “If only the knight-senator had listened. Maybe this will make the others listen to reason and send their children back to Armedius.”

Fitch nodded, but Joel could see that the blood had unsettled him. The professor walked on shaky feet as Harding stepped up to one of the ranking police officers at the scene, a tall man with Aztek heritage. “What do we have, Tzentian?” Harding asked.

“Four bodies discovered in the hallway here, sir,” the police officer said, pointing at the bloodstains. “Method of death seems consistent with chalkling attacks. The boy’s room is over there.” The officer pointed at an open doorway in the middle of the hallway. “We haven’t gone in.”

“Good,” Harding said, walking around the bloodstains and moving to the doorway.

“Sir—” the officer said as Harding tried to step through the doorway.

Harding stopped flat as if he’d hit something solid.

“Sir, there’s a Rithmatic line on the floor,” Tzentian said. “You didn’t want us to breach the scene, so we haven’t removed it yet.”

Harding waved for Fitch to approach. The professor walked on shaky feet, obviously trying not to look at the blood. Joel joined them, kneeling down beside the doorway. He reached out, pressing his hand against the air.

It stopped. Something pushed back, softly at first, then harder as he pressed. With a lot of effort, he could get a few hairs closer to the invisible wall, but never quite felt like he could touch it. It was like trying to press two magnets together with the same poles facing.

The hallway had a carpet, but the boy’s room had a wood floor. The Line of Forbiddance was easy to see. It was broken in places, with holes large enough for chalklings to get through. At these points, Joel could reach his hand through and into the room.

“Ah, hum,” Fitch said, kneeling beside Joel. “Yes.” He pulled out a piece of chalk and drew four chalklings shaped like men with shovels. Watching closely, Joel could see the glyphs the professor wrote below each chalkling as he drew it, giving them instructions to march forward, then attack any chalk they discovered.

One at a time, the chalk drawings began to dig at the Line of Forbiddance. “There,” Fitch said, standing. “That will take a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

“Inspector,” one of the officers said. “If you have a moment, you may want to see this.”

Harding followed the officer a short way down the hallway.

Joel stood. “You all right, Professor?”

“Yes, yes,” Fitch said. “I just … well, I’m not good with things like this, you know. Part of why I never did well in Nebrask.”

Joel nodded, then set his bag down and walked over to where the inspector knelt beside something on the floor. The bloodstain was shaped like a footprint.

“The prints lead down that direction,” the officer was saying, “and out the back door. We lose them after that.”

Harding studied the print, which was indistinct because of the carpet. “It’ll be hard to tell anything from this.”

The officer nodded.

“Are all the prints the same size?” Joel asked.

The officer glanced at Joel, as if noticing him for the first time. He nodded.

“That means there’s probably only one person doing this, right?” Joel asked.

“Unless only one of them stepped in the blood,” Harding said.

“What about other chalk drawings?” Joel asked. “Were there any besides the ones in the boy’s room?”

“Actually, there are a few,” the officer said. “One on either side of this hallway.” He led them to a wall, set with the same looping pattern of swirls that had been drawn at the other scenes. Joel waved a hand in front of the pattern, but wasn’t repelled or affected in any way.

“Professor?” Joel called, drawing Fitch’s attention. The professor approached.

“Draw a chalkling on the wall here,” Joel said, pointing. “Have it move through this pattern.”

“Hum, yes.… Yes, very good idea, lad.” Fitch began to draw.

“What is the point of this exercise?” Harding asked, standing with hands behind his back.

“If that pattern is really a Rithmatic sketch,” Joel said, “then the chalkling will have to attack the chalk to get through it. If this pattern doesn’t have any Rithmatic powers, then the chalkling will just be able to walk over it as if it weren’t there.”

Fitch finished his chalkling. The crab crawled across the wall in front of them, then hesitated beside the looping pattern. The chalkling appeared to consider, then took another step forward.

And stopped.

Joel felt a chill. It tried again, but was repelled. Finally, it began to claw at the looping pattern, digging through it quite easily.

“Well I’ll be…” Fitch said. “It is Rithmatic.”

“So?” Harding said. “Soldier, I’m at a distinct disadvantage in this area. What’s going on?”

“There are only four Rithmatic lines,” Fitch said. “So we assume.” He looked thoughtful, as if considering something deep. “Joel, tell me. Do you think this could be a Line of Warding? After all, we didn’t know about ellipses during the early years. Maybe this is just something like that.”

“But why draw such a small Line of Warding? And on the wall? It doesn’t make sense, Professor. Besides, the chalkling is breaking through far too easily for that to be a Line of Warding. If it is one, it isn’t working very well at all.”

“Yes…” Fitch said. “I believe you are right.” He reached up, dismissing his chalkling. “Odd indeed.”

“Didn’t you say there was a second drawing on the wall?” Harding asked the police officer.

The man nodded, leading Harding and Joel to the other end of the hallway. There was another copy of the same swirling line at this end of the hallway.

Joel ran his fingers around the perimeter, then frowned.

“What is it, son?” Harding asked. “You look troubled.”

“This one has a break in it,” Joel said.

“It was attacked by a chalkling?”

“No,” Joel said. “It doesn’t look scraped. It just looks unfinished, like it was drawn too quickly.” Joel looked down the hallway. “You found this drawing at Lilly Whiting’s house. Which wall was it on there?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“It was on the front outside wall of the house,” Harding said. “Toward the street.”

“And at Herman’s house?”

“Outside his door,” Harding said, “in the hallway.”

Joel tapped the wall. “This is the first time that someone other than the Rithmatist has been harmed. The four dead men.”

Harding nodded. “From the reports, they were probably up playing cards in the servants’ kitchen.”

“Where’s the kitchen?” Joel asked.

Harding pointed down the stairs.

“This side of the hallway,” Joel said. “Near the broken symbol. Maybe there’s a connection.”

“Maybe,” Harding said, rubbing his chin. “You’ve got a good eye for this sort of thing, son. You ever consider becoming a police officer?”

“Me?” Joel said.

Harding nodded.

“Well … not really.”

“You should think about it, soldier. We can always use more men with a good eye for detail.”

An inspector. Joel hadn’t given it any thought. More and more, he wanted to go study Rithmatics, as Fitch had suggested. But this … well, that was another option. He would never be a Rithmatist—he had accepted that years ago—but there were other things he could do. Exciting things.

“Inspector?” Fitch called. “The Line of Forbiddance is down now. We can go in.”

Joel glanced at Harding, then together they crossed the hallway and walked into the room.

CHAPTER

“By the Master,” Fitch breathed, standing just inside the doorway. Beyond was a short hallway that turned right, running a short distance into the room itself.

The hallway was filled with broken Rithmatic drawings. Circle upon Circle of Warding, dozens of Lines of Forbiddance. Joel looked on, amazed by the sheer amount of chalk on the floor.

“This looks like a battlefield,” Harding said from the doorway. “I’ve seen it before. Not with chalk, of course—with men.”

Joel looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s easy to see,” Harding said, pointing. “The Calloway boy drew an initial circle near the doorway, then blocked off the sides with lines so he couldn’t get surrounded. When his front was breached, he abandoned that circle, drawing another one behind it. Like an army slowly retreating on a battlefield.”

“He was good,” Joel said. “Those defenses are intricate.”

“Yes,” Fitch said. “I never had Charles in my class, but I heard much of him. He was supposed to be something of a troublemaker, but his skill was unrivaled.”

“The three kidnapped students had that in common,” Joel said. “They were the best Rithmatic students in the school.” He stepped forward—he could walk over the Lines of Warding that formed the circles, though the Lines of Forbiddance at the sides would block him if he tried to go through them.

“Please try not to step on any of the chalk,” Fitch said, getting out rolls of paper and settling down to make sketches of each of the defensive lines. “Don’t disturb anything!”

Joel nodded. There were a lot of small lines and dots that, when he looked closely, he could tell were the remnants of chalklings that had been destroyed. Inspector Harding motioned for his officers to remain outside the room, then edged around Fitch and carefully picked his way through the hallway with Joel.

“There,” Harding said, pointing to the last circle in the line. “Blood.”

Indeed there was. Just a few drops, like at the other scenes. Joel rounded the defense and whistled softly, squatting down.

“What?” Harding asked.

“Shoaff Defense,” Joel said. “A nine-pointer. He got it right on, too.” He reached over, picking up a slip of paper that lay discarded near the circle. It detailed the Shoaff Defense.

Joel held it up for the inspector. “Cheat sheet. Even with a pattern, it’s hard to do a nine-pointer.”

“Poor lad,” Harding said, taking off his round policeman’s hat and tucking it under his arm in respect. He looked back past the line of seven circles leading out of the room. “He put up one dusting good fight. Real trooper.”

Joel nodded, glancing at those drops of blood. Again, there was no body. Like at the other scenes. Everyone assumed the students were being kidnapped, but …

“How did they get him out?” Joel asked.

The others looked at him.

“We had to go through a Line of Forbiddance at the doorway,” Joel said. “If they’re kidnapping the Rithmatists, how did they get him out of the room?”

“They must have redrawn the line,” Harding said, scratching at his chin. “But it had holes in it, as if attacked. So they redrew it, then attacked it again? But why would they do that? To cover up taking the boy? Why bother? We’re obviously going to know he was kidnapped.”

None of them had an answer to that. Joel studied the defenses for a moment, then frowned, leaning closer to the broken, ripped Shoaff Defense. “Professor Fitch, you should look at this.”

“What is it?”

“A drawing,” Joel said. “On the floor—not a Rithmatic pattern. A picture.”

It was done in chalk, but it looked like a charcoal drawing someone would do in art class. It was hastily done, more a silhouette than a real drawing. It depicted a man wearing a bowler hat and holding a long, oversized cane to his side, tip down against the ground.

The man’s head seemed too big, and there was a large undrawn section on the face, like a gaping open mouth. It was smiling.

Beneath the picture were a few short, hastily written paragraphs.

I can’t see his eyes. He draws in scribbles. Nothing he does keeps its shape. The chalklings are distorted, and there seem to be hundreds of them. I destroy them, and they return to life. I block them, and they dig through. I scream for help, but nobody comes.

He just stands there, watching with those dark, unseen eyes of his. The chalklings aren’t like any I’ve seen. They writhe and contort, never keeping a single shape.

I can’t fight them.

Tell my father that I’m sorry for being such a bad son. I love him. I really do.

Joel shivered, all three of them silent as they read Charles Calloway’s final words. Fitch knelt and drew a chalkling on the ground, then used it to check the sketch, in case it was Rithmatic. The chalkling just walked over the picture, ignoring it. Fitch dismissed the chalkling.

“These paragraphs make little sense,” Fitch said. “Chalklings that return to life after they’re destroyed? Rithmatic shapes that don’t hold their forms?”

“I’ve seen such things,” Harding said. He looked up and met Fitch’s eyes. “At Nebrask.”

“But this is so far from there!” Fitch said.

“I don’t think we can deny it any longer, Professor,” Harding said, rising. “Something has escaped the Tower. It got here, somehow.”

“But it’s a man who is doing this,” Fitch said, hands shaking as he tapped the drawing Charles had done. “That’s no Forgotten shadow, Harding. It’s in the shape of a person.”

As Joel listened, he realized something: there was a whole lot more going on at Nebrask than people knew.

“What is a Forgotten?” Joel asked.

Both turned to him, then grew quiet.

“Never mind that, soldier,” Harding said. “You’re a great help here, but I’m afraid I don’t have clearance to tell you about Nebrask.”

Fitch looked uncomfortable, and suddenly Joel knew what Melody felt like, being excluded. He wasn’t surprised, though. The details of what happened at Nebrask were kept nearly as quiet as the secrets of complex Rithmatics.

Most people were actually fine with that. The battlefield was a long way away, out in the central isles. People were content to ignore Nebrask. The fighting had been pretty much constant since the days of King Gregory, and it wouldn’t ever go away. Occasionally there were deaths—but they were infrequent, and were always either Rithmatists or professional soldiers. Easily ignored by the general public.

Unless something managed to get out. Joel shivered. Something strange is happening, even by Nebrask standards, he thought, studying Harding and Fitch. Harding had spent over a decade on the battlefront, and he seemed dumbfounded by what was occurring.

Eventually, Harding returned to inspecting the room and Fitch returned to his drawing. Joel knelt, reading the paragraphs one last time.

He draws in scribbles.…

With some persuasion, Joel got Fitch to let him help do sketch replicas of the defenses. Harding went outside to organize his men to search for other information, such as signs of forced entry.

Joel drew quietly, using charcoal on the paper. Charcoal would have no Rithmatic properties, even if drawn by a Rithmatist, but it approximated chalk fairly well. The trouble was, no sketch would exactly re-create the drawings on the floor, with all of their subtle scratch marks and broken lines.

After Joel finished a few sheets, he walked over to Fitch, who was again studying the circle where Charles had made his final stand.

“Notice how he outlined the entire room in chalk to keep the chalklings from crawling around his lines by going on the walls?” Fitch said. “Very clever. Have you noticed, yet, that the format of this attack reinforces our thoughts on the previous ones?”

Joel nodded. “Lots of chalklings, attacking in mass.”

“Yes,” Fitch said. “And we have some evidence, now, that this attacker … this Scribbler … is probably a male, which lets us narrow our results. Would you mind going out and making copies of those swirling patterns on the walls so that we have several versions done by different hands? I suspect that will help us be more accurate.”

Joel nodded, grabbing a roll of paper and some charcoal, then picking his way out. Most of the officers were down below, now. Joel hesitated in the doorway, looking back into the room.

Charles had blocked himself in, just like Herman. He had even drawn Lines of Forbiddance around the window, and those lines showed signs of being attacked from the outside. Perhaps he had intended to climb out, and had found his escape route blocked. He’d been out of options.

Joel shivered, thinking of the hours Charles must have spent during the night, resisting the chalklings with defense after defense, trying desperately to survive until morning.

Joel left the doorway and walked to the first of the two wall marks. This crime scene seemed to give more questions than answers. Joel put his paper up against the wall, then eyed the swirling pattern and began to do a sketch. It was—

Something moved in the hallway.

Joel spun, catching sight of it scuttling along the floor of the room, barely visible against the white carpet. A chalkling.

“Professor!” Joel yelled, charging after the thing. “Inspector Harding!”

The chalkling moved down the steps. Joel could barely see it against the white marble, and lost sight of it once he reached the base of the stairs. He glanced about, shivering, imagining it crawling up his leg and gnawing at his skin.

“Joel?” Fitch asked, appearing at the banister above.

There! Joel thought, catching sight of a flash of white as the chalkling crossed the wooden doorway and moved down the steps outside.

“A chalkling, Professor!” he yelled. “I’m chasing it.”

“Joel! Don’t be a fool! Joel!”

Joel was out the door, running after the chalkling. Some officers saw him immediately, and they charged over. Joel pointed at the chalkling, which was much easier to see now that it moved across grass, its lines conforming to the shape and contours of the blades much as a shadow would look when it fell on an uneven surface.

The police called for more backup, and Fitch appeared at the doorway of the building, looking frazzled. Joel kept running, barely keeping pace with the chalkling. The things were very fast and completely tireless; it would outdistance him eventually. But for the moment, he and the police kept up.

The chalkling reached the fence and shot underneath; Joel and the officers charged out the gate. The chalkling moved over to a large oak tree with thick branches, then—oddly—moved up the side of the trunk.

It was then that Joel finally got a good look at the shape of the chalkling. He froze.

“A unicorn?” Oh no …

The police officers piled around the base of the tree, looking up, lifting clockwork rifles. “You!” one called. “Come down immediately!”

Joel walked up to them. Melody sat in the tree. He heard her sigh dramatically.

“Bad idea?” she called down to him.

“You could say that,” he replied.

“You will explain yourself,” Harding said, standing with hands on hips.

Melody grimaced, sitting in a chair in the mansion’s kitchen, her white skirt dirtied from climbing the tree. To the side, one of the police officers meticulously wound the gears in his rifle. The clicking sounds rang in the small kitchen.

“Is that really necessary?” Fitch asked, glancing at the gun.

“Please do not interrupt, Professor,” Harding said. “You may understand Rithmatic study, but I understand spies.”

“I’m not a spy!” Melody said. Then she paused. “Well, okay, yeah. I’m a spy. But only for myself.”

“And what interest do you have in this operation?” Harding asked, placing his hands behind his back, walking in a slow circle around Melody. “What did you have to do with the deaths?”

She shot a glance at Joel, and he could see that she finally seemed to be realizing just how much trouble she might be in. “I didn’t have anything to do with that! I’m just a student.”

“You’re a Rithmatist,” Harding said. “These crimes were committed by a Rithmatist.”

“So?” Melody said. “There are a lot of Rithmatists in the area.”

“You have shown a persistent, undeniable interest in this investigation,” Harding said.

“I’m curious!” Melody said. “Everybody else gets to hear what is going on. Why not me?”

“No questions from you,” Harding said. “Do you realize that I have the power to imprison you until this investigation is over? Do you realize that you are now our prime suspect for having caused the murders?”

She paled.

“Inspector,” Joel said. “Could I … talk to you? Outside, maybe?”

Harding eyed Joel, then nodded. The two of them left by the side doors and went a little ways down, where they could speak in private.

“We’ll go back in a few minutes,” Harding said. “It’ll be good for her to sweat a bit.”

“Inspector,” Joel said, “Melody isn’t behind the murders or the kidnappings. Trust me.”

“Yes,” Harding said. “I suspect that you are right, Joel. However, I have to pursue every lead. That young woman puts me on edge. Makes me suspicious.”

“She puts a lot of us on edge,” Joel said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s the Scribbler. I mean, it’s obvious how she got here. She saw us leave Armedius, and everyone knows who it was that got kidnapped. I can vouch for her.”

“Are you absolutely sure you know her, Joel?” Harding asked. “How can you be sure she’s not fooling you? Part of me keeps worrying that the person behind this is hiding right in front of us, moving about Armedius itself. It would be the best place for a Rithmatist to hide without looking suspicious.”

Like Nalizar? Joel thought. He left his rooms last night, going somewhere.

But, then, how well did Joel know Melody? Could her silliness and friendship all be an act? Harding’s suspicion got to Joel for just a moment. He realized he knew very little about Melody’s past, or why her family didn’t seem to care about what happened to her.

She was also genuine. She didn’t hide her feelings—she belted them out, trumpeted them. She was straightforward with him. With everyone, it seemed.

And, he realized, he liked that about her.

“No,” Joel said. “It’s not her, Inspector.”

“Well, a vote of faith from you means a lot, in my estimation.”

“You’ll let her go, then?”

“After just a few more questions,” Harding said, walking back toward the kitchen. Joel followed.

“All right,” Harding said, entering. “Joel has vouched for you, young lady, and that makes me more likely to listen to what you have to say. But you are still in serious trouble. Answer my questions, and perhaps I won’t have to bring charges against you.”

She glanced at Joel. “What questions?”

“My men reported that you sent a chalkling all the way to the building,” Harding said. “How in the name of the Master did you manage such a thing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did.”

“Dear,” Fitch said, “I know many of the most skilled Rithmatists in the world. The string of glyphs you’d need to use in order to instruct a chalkling to cross that distance, climb the stairs, then go to the room … Why, that list would be incredible! I had no idea you had that kind of ability.”

“What was the point?” Harding asked. “Why make a chalkling go all that way, then come back? Were you trying to get caught?”

“Dusts, no!” Melody said. “I just wanted to know what was going on.”

“And you expected a chalkling to tell you?”

She hesitated. “No,” she finally admitted. “I just … well, I lost control of it, all right? I made it to distract some of the officers.”

Joel frowned. She’s lying, he thought, noticing how she looked down when she spoke. As he’d noted earlier, she was genuine, and her lie was easy to see.

She’s strangely good with chalklings, he thought. She wouldn’t have lost control of that one. But … did that mean that she did expect it to report to her on what it found? Chalklings couldn’t talk. They were like springwork creatures—they didn’t think beyond what they were told to do.

Yet that unicorn chalkling had fled directly back to Melody.

“Chalklings do act very strangely sometimes, Inspector,” Fitch said.

“Believe me,” Harding said, “I’m aware of this. I heard that excuse from Rithmatists every week on the battlefield. I’m amazed you people can ever make them do anything, considering how often they simply go off in the wrong direction for no reason.”

Melody smiled wanly.

“You, young lady, are still suspicious,” Harding said, pointing.

“Inspector,” Fitch said. “Really. We now know from the drawing above that the Scribbler is a man, or at least a woman dressed very convincingly as one. I doubt Melody could have managed that, and I’m certain there are those who can vouch for her location last night.”

Melody nodded eagerly. “I have two roommates in my dormitory room.”

“Beyond that, Inspector,” Fitch said, raising a finger, “the description we discovered in Charles’s room indicated that the kidnapper’s Rithmatic lines act very oddly. I have seen Miss Muns’s lines, and they are quite normal. To be honest, they’re often rather poorly drawn.”

“Fine,” Harding said. “You may go, Miss Muns. But I will be keeping an eye on you.”

She sighed in relief.

“Excellent,” Fitch said, standing from his chair. “I have more sketches to complete. Joel, would you walk Melody to the station? And, uh, make certain she doesn’t get into any more trouble along the way?”

“Sure,” Joel said.

Harding went back to his work, though he did assign two officers to go with Joel and Melody, making certain she left the building. She went sullenly, Joel trailing along behind, and she gave the officers a world-class scowl once they reached the door.

The police remained inside; Joel strolled along the lawn outside with Melody.

“That,” she declared, “was decidedly less than enjoyable.”

“What did you expect,” Joel asked, “spying on a crime scene?”

“They let you in.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked up at the sky, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just … well, it’s frustrating. It seems like every time I want to be involved in something, I’m told that’s the one thing I can’t do.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Anyway,” Melody said, “thanks for vouching for me. I think you kept that vulture from ripping me apart.”

He shrugged.

“No, really,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“I’m … not sure if I want to know what that will entail.”

“Oh, you’ll enjoy it,” she said, perking up. “I’ve got an idea already.”

“Which is?”

“You have to wait!” she said. “No spoiling surprises.”

“Great.” A surprise from Melody. That would be wonderful. They neared the station, but didn’t enter, instead sticking to the comfortable shade of the trees as they waited for Fitch. Melody tried to get Joel to talk some more, but he found himself giving uninvolved answers.

He kept thinking of that hurried picture with the frightened words beneath it. Charles Calloway had known he was going to die, yet he’d left notes on as much as he could figure out. It was noble—probably more noble than anything Joel had ever done in his life.

Someone needs to stop this, he thought, leaning back against a tree trunk. Something needs to be done. It wasn’t just the students, not just Armedius, who were in danger. Ordinary people had been killed. And if what Fitch and Harding said was true, these kidnappings were threatening the stability of the United Isles themselves.

It comes back to those strange chalk drawings, Joel thought. That looping pattern. If only I could remember where I saw it before!

He shook his head and glanced at Melody. She was sitting on a patch of grass a short distance away. “How did you do it?” he asked. “With that chalkling, I mean.”

“I just lost control of it.”

He gave her a flat stare.

“What?” she said.

“You’re obviously lying, Melody.”

She groaned, flopping back on the grass, staring up at the trees. He figured she was probably going to ignore the question.

“I don’t know how I do it, Joel,” she said. “Everyone in classrooms always talks about instructing the chalklings, and about how they are completely without will themselves, like clockwork. But … well, I’m not really that good at the instructional glyphs.”

“Then how do you make them obey so well?”

“They just do,” she said. “I … well, I think they understand me, and what I want of them. I explain what I want, then they go do it.”

“You explain it?”

“Yeah. Little whispers. They seem to like it.”

“And they can bring you information?”

She shrugged, which was an odd gesture, considering that she was lying down. “They can’t talk or anything. But the way they move around me, the things they do, well … yeah, sometimes I feel like I can understand what they mean.” She rolled her head to the side, looking at him. “I’m just imagining things, aren’t I? I just want to be good with chalklings to make up for the fact that I’m bad with the other lines.”

“I don’t know. I’m the last person who could tell you about chalklings. As far as I’m concerned, they probably do listen to you.”

She seemed to find that comforting. She smiled, staring up at the sky until Professor Fitch arrived. Apparently Harding was going to stay at the mansion to investigate more. Joel found himself glad to be returning to Armedius. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, and his stomach had begun to rumble.

They walked into the station and climbed up onto the empty platform, waiting for the next train.

“This adds some very disturbing elements to our situation,” Fitch said.

Joel nodded.

“Wild chalklings,” Fitch continued. “Unknown Rithmatic lines … I think that, perhaps, I shall need to have you begin helping me look through some of the more obscure Rithmatic texts. There has to be mention of things like this somewhere in the records.”

Joel perked up, feeling a surge of excitement. Yet it was dulled by the realities of their situation. He glanced at Melody, who stood behind them, probably too far to hear; she obviously felt sheepish around Fitch since she’d been caught spying.

“Troubled times,” Fitch said, shaking his head as the track began to shake, a train approaching. “Troubled times…”

A short time later, they were riding back across the waters and toward Armedius.

CHAPTER

The first European encounters with wild chalklings are the subject of some debate, the book read.

Joel sat with his back to the brick wall of Professor Fitch’s office. “The subject of some debate” was a terrible understatement. So far—despite a week of studying—he hadn’t been able to find two sources that agreed about when the first wild chalklings had been sighted.

This is because of the poor recordkeeping practices maintained by many who traveled westward across the oceans after initial contact was made between Aztek ships and the Old World.

Though many of these early explorers—such as Jacques Cartier and the infamous Francisco Vásquez de Coronado—worked on the behalf of European nations, they truly sought personal fame or fortune. This was a time of expansionism and exploration. The American Isles presented an unknown landscape to conquer, control, and—hopefully—use.

There were already rumblings of war in Asia at this time, and the JoSeun Empire was beginning to flex its muscles. Many an enterprising man realized that if he could get a foothold in the New World, he might be able to establish himself as independent, freed from the oppression—either perceived or actual—of his European masters.

After being rebuffed by powerful South American empires—which had been galvanized by centuries of warfare and struggles against the chalklings—the explorers turned to the isles. They were never told what dangers would await them. The Aztek nations were very xenophobic and reclusive during this era.

The Tower of Nebrask is, of course, a central feature in early records. Of obviously ancient date, the Tower was one of the wonders of the islands, as it was the only freestanding structure of apparent human design to be discovered there.

Numerous explorers described the Tower. Yet these same explorers would swear that the next time they returned to Nebrask, the Tower would be gone. They claim that it moved about the island, never quite being in the same place as it was before.

Obviously, these reports are to be taken with skepticism. After all, the Tower now appears perfectly stable. Still, there are some legitimate oddities. The total lack of human life on the isles should have been a clue that something was wrong in America. Someone built the Tower of Nebrask; someone once occupied the islands. Had it been the Azteks?

They would not speak of Nebrask, only to call it an abomination. So far, their records provide no insight. They used an acid made from local plants to fight the chalklings that tried to gain a foothold in their lands, and they accepted refugees from the islands, but they themselves did not explore northward. Of those purported refugees—now some five hundred years integrated into Aztek culture—their stories are completely oral, and have deteriorated over time. They tell legends and speak of terrible horrors, of bad luck and omens, and of nations slaughtered. But they give no details, and each story seems to contradict its fellows.

Early North American explorers do say they happened across an occasional native on the isles. Indeed, many of the names of the islands and cities they bear come from such early reports. Once again, questions pile atop one another. Were these natives Azteks, or the remnants of some other culture? If some peoples had lived on the isles, as Aztek legends claim, what happened to the signs of their cities and towns?

Some of the early settlers reported feeling an almost eerie emptiness to the isles. A haunted, troubling stillness. We can only conclude that there must be some truth to Aztek stories—that the peoples who lived here before us were driven southward. Either that or destroyed by the wild chalklings, as we almost were.

In this author’s opinion, the Estevez report seems the most trustworthy and accurately dated of all the early European chalkling sightings, even if it is disturbing in concept.

Joel slid the book closed, leaning his head back against the wall and rubbing his eyes with the fingers of one hand. He knew about the Estevez report—he’d just read of it in another book. It spoke of a group of Spanish explorers searching for gold who had crossed into a strange, narrow canyon on one of the southwestern isles—Bonneville or Zona Arida or something like that.

These explorers—led by Manuel Estevez—had found a group of small, human-shaped pictures on the canyon walls. Primitive figures, like one might find in caves left by long-ago inhabitants.

The explorers had camped there for the night, enjoying the quiet stream and shelter from the winds. However, not long after sunset, they reported that the pictures on the walls began to dance and move.

Estevez himself had described the drawings in great detail. Most importantly, he had insisted that the drawings weren’t scratched or carved, but instead drawn in a whitish, chalky substance. He had even done drawings of the figures and put them in his log, which survived to the present day.

“Joel, lad,” Fitch said, “you look exhausted.”

Joel blinked, looking up. Fitch sat at his desk, and from the dark circles under his eyes, Joel figured the man must feel at least twice as tired as Joel did. “I’m all right,” Joel said, battling a yawn.

Fitch didn’t look convinced. The two of them had spent the past week searching through tome after tome. Fitch mostly assigned Joel the historical books, as the high-level texts were simply beyond Joel’s abilities. Joel intended to learn and to study until he could figure out those books. For the moment, it was better for him to focus on other subjects.

Inspector Harding was pursuing the investigation to track down the kidnapper. That wasn’t a job for Joel and Fitch; they were scholars. Or, well, Fitch was. Joel still wasn’t certain what he himself was. Other than tired, of course.

“Anything of note in that book?” Fitch asked hopefully.

Joel shook his head. “It mostly talks about other reports and comments on their validity. It is a fairly easy read. I’ll keep going and see if there’s anything useful.”

Fitch was convinced that if there were other Rithmatic lines, there would be mentions of them in such records. Drawings, like Estevez had done, lost in time but now suddenly relevant.

“Hey,” Joel said, noticing what Fitch was reading, “are those my notes about the census reports?”

“Hum? Oh, yes. I never did get a chance to go over these.”

“You probably don’t need to worry about it now. I doubt those death records will be all that helpful.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Fitch said, leafing through the pages. “Perhaps this isn’t the first time events like the ones here have occurred. What if there were other such disappearances, but they were so isolated that they were never connected? We just…”

He trailed off, holding up one of the sheets.

“What?” Joel asked. “Did you find something?”

“Hum? Oh, no, I didn’t.” Fitch quickly put the sheet back down. “I should get back to work on my other reading.…”

Fitch, Joel decided, was a terrible liar. Probably came from the man’s inability to stand confrontation of any type. So what had Fitch seen on that sheet that had caught his attention? And why didn’t he want to mention it to Joel?

Joel was trying to figure out a way to inconspicuously glance at the stack of sheets on Fitch’s desk when the door at the end of the narrow chamber opened and Melody entered. Her class with Fitch had ended a half hour ago. Why had she returned?

“Melody?” Fitch asked. “Did you forget something?”

“Hardly,” she said, leaning against the doorway frame. “I’m here on official business.”

“Official?” Fitch asked.

“Yeah,” she said, holding up a slip of paper. “Nalizar still has me running errands after classes, you know. By the way, I’ve realized that my sorry state is completely your fault, Joel.”

“Mine?”

“Sure,” she said. “If you hadn’t gotten yourself into trouble visiting all those Rithmatic classes, then I wouldn’t have had to end up running all over campus every afternoon like a windup toy. Here’s your note, Professor—it says the principal wants Joel to come to the office.”

“Me?” Joel asked. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Something about your grades. Anyway, I have more menial, tedious, obnoxious busywork to be about. See you at dinner?”

Joel nodded, and she took off. He walked over to take the note, which she’d stuffed between two books. Grades. He knew that he should have felt alarmed, but something as mundane as grades seemed distant to him at the moment.

The note had been sealed shut, of course, but Joel could see where Melody had pried it open on the side to peek in. He walked over to grab his book bag. “I’m going to go, then.”

“Hum?” Fitch said, already absorbed in a book. “Ah, yes. Very well. I will see you tomorrow.”

Joel walked past the desk—and quickly scanned what Fitch had been reading—on his way out. It was one of the census lists of students who had graduated Armedius in a given year. Joel had marked the ones who had died suspiciously. There were two of these, but Joel didn’t recognize either name as being all that important. Why, then …

He almost missed it, just like last time. Exton’s name was at the top of the list, among the graduates from the general school that year. Was that what Fitch had noticed, or was it just a coincidence?

Outside, Joel crossed the green, heading toward the office. Armedius had changed during the last seven days. The police were far more plentiful now, and they checked identification at the front gates and the springrail station. Rithmatic students weren’t allowed off campus without an escort. He passed several nearby, grumbling that Armedius was starting to feel like a prison.

He also passed a group of regular students playing soccer on the field. Their efforts seemed subdued, and there were far fewer of them than before. Most parents of ordinary students had pulled their children out of the academy for the summer, and they were being allowed to continue to do so. While non-Rithmatists had been killed now, it was clear that the Rithmatists were still the targets. Normal students should be safe off campus.

There hadn’t been another disappearance since Charles Calloway. A week had passed, and everyone just seemed to be waiting. When would it come? What would happen next? Who was safe and who wasn’t?

Joel hurried along, passing closer to the front gates. Outside them was one of the other big changes at the academy.

Protesters.

They carried signs. GIVE US THE TRUTH. DUSTERS ARE DANGEROUS! SEND THEM TO NEBRASK!

Numerous editorialists around the Isles had decided that the deaths of the four Calloway servants had been the fault of the Rithmatists. These editorialists saw some sort of hidden war—some called it a conspiracy—between sects of Rithmatists. There were even those who thought that all of it—the existence of Rithmatists, the inception ceremony, the fight at Nebrask—was a giant hoax used to keep the Monarchical Church in power.

And so, a small—but very vocal—group of anti-Rithmatist activists had set up a vigil outside the front of Armedius. Joel didn’t know what to make of such nonsense. He did, however, know that several homes of Rithmatic students—all of whom were now staying full-time at the school—had been vandalized in the night. The policemen at the gates, fortunately, kept most troublemakers away from Armedius. Most of them. Two nights ago, someone had tossed in a series of bricks painted with epithets.

Joel didn’t stop to listen to the protestors, but the sounds of their chanting followed him. “We want the truth! Stop Rithmatist privilege! We want the truth!”

Joel hurried up the path to the office. Two rifle-bearing policemen stood at the sides of the doorway, but they knew Joel and let him enter.

“Joel!” Florence said. “We didn’t expect you to come so quickly.” Despite the grim circumstances on the rest of the campus, the blonde clerk insisted on wearing a bright yellow summer dress, complete with a wide-brimmed sun hat.

“Of course he came quickly,” Exton said, not looking up from his work. “Some people don’t ignore their responsibilities.”

“Stop being such a bore.”

Joel could see over the counter to a newspaper lying on Florence’s desk. CRISIS IN NEW BRITANNIA! the top headline read.

“The principal is seeing someone right now, Joel,” Florence said. “I’m sure he’ll be done soon.”

“How are things holding up here?” Joel asked, glancing out the window toward the police officers.

“Oh, you know,” Florence said. “Same as always.”

Exton snorted. “You seem perfectly willing to gossip other times. Why the coy face now?”

Florence blushed.

“The truth is, Joel,” Exton said, setting down his pen and looking up, “things are not good. Even if you ignore those fools at the gates, even if you don’t mind tripping over a police officer every other step, things are bad.”

“Bad how?” Joel asked.

Florence sighed, folding her arms on her desk. “The islands without Rithmatic schools are talking about starting their own.”

Joel shrugged. “Would that be such a disaster?”

“Well, for one thing, the quality of education would plummet. Joel, hon, Armedius isn’t just a school. It’s one of the few places where people from all across the Isles work together.”

“Jamestown is different from most cities,” Exton agreed. “In most of the world, you don’t see JoSeun people and Egyptians mixing. On many isles, if you’re a foreigner—even an American from just a few isles over—you’re considered an outsider. Can you imagine what will happen to the war effort in Nebrask if sixty different schools—each training Rithmatists in different ways—begin squabbling over who gets to defend what section of land? It’s hard enough with eight schools.”

“And then there’s the talk of what these schools should be like,” Florence said, eyeing her newspaper. It was from Maineford, one of the isles to the north. “The editorials make Rithmatists sound like they aren’t even really people. A lot of people are calling for the Rithmatists to be pulled out of ordinary classes and be trained only to fight at Nebrask. Like they’re nothing but bullets, to be wound up in a gun and then fired.”

Joel frowned, standing quietly beside the counter. From her desk, Florence tsked to herself and turned back to her work.

“Brought it on themselves, they did,” Exton said from his place, speaking almost to himself.

“Who?” Joel asked.

“The Rithmatists,” Exton said. “Being so exclusive and secretive. Look how they treated you, Joel. Anyone they don’t deem worthy enough to be on their level, they simply shove aside.”

Joel raised an eyebrow. He sensed some pretty strong bitterness in Exton’s voice. Something having to do with his days as a student at Armedius, perhaps?

“Anyway,” Exton continued, “the way the Rithmatists treat others makes the common people—who pay for this place—begin to wonder if the Rithmatists really need such a fancy school and pensions for the rest of their lives.”

Joel tapped the counter with his index finger. “Exton,” he said, “is it true that you went to Armedius?”

Exton stopped writing. “Who told you that?”

“I saw it,” Joel said, “in the graduation records when I was working on a project for Professor Fitch.”

Exton sat quietly for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said. “I was here.”

“Exton!” Florence said. “You never told me! Why, how did your family manage to pay for your tuition?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Exton said.

“Oh, come on,” Florence said.

Exton stopped writing, then stood up. He took his coat and bowler hat off their hooks on the wall. “I’ll take my break now, I think.”

With that, he left the building.

“Grouch,” Florence called after him.

A short time later, the door to the principal’s office opened and Inspector Harding walked out, blue suit pressed and neat as always. He picked up his rifle, which he’d left sitting outside the principal’s office, then slung it over his shoulder.

“I will see about those patrols,” Harding said to Principal York. “We won’t let something like the brick incident occur again, sir, I assure you.”

York nodded. Harding seemed to regard the principal with quite a bit of respect—perhaps because the principal looked like a battlefield general, with his large frame and drooping mustache.

“I have the most up-to-date list for you, Inspector,” Florence said, standing and handing him a sheet.

Harding scanned it, face going slightly red.

“What is it?” Principal York asked.

Inspector Harding looked up. “An oversight on my part, sir. There are still fourteen Rithmatist students whose parents refuse to send them to the academy for protection. That is unacceptable.”

“It’s not your fault that parents are stubborn, Inspector,” York said.

“I make it my responsibility, sir,” Harding said. “If you’ll excuse me.” He walked out of the room, nodding to Joel as he passed.

“Ah, Joel,” Principal York said. “Come in, son.”

Joel crossed into the principal’s office and, once again, sat down in the chair before the overly large desk, feeling like a small animal looking up at a towering human master.

“You wanted to talk to me about my grades, sir?” Joel asked as York sat down.

“Actually, no,” York said. “That was an excuse that you will forgive, I hope.” He folded his arms before him on the desk. “Things are happening on my campus, son. It’s my job to keep an eye on them all as best I can. I need information from you.”

“Sir?” Joel said. “With all due respect, I’m just a student. I don’t know how much help I can be. I don’t really like the idea of spying on Professor Fitch, anyway.”

York chuckled. “You’re not spying, son. I had Fitch in here yesterday, and I just talked to Harding. I trust both men. What I really want is unbiased opinions. I need to know what is happening, and I can’t be everywhere. I’d like you to tell me about the things you’ve seen and done while working with Fitch.”

And so, over the next hour, Joel did so. He talked about the census studies, his experience visiting the scene of Charles Calloway’s disappearance, and the things he’d read. York listened. As the hour progressed, Joel found his respect for the principal growing.

York did care, and he was willing to listen to the opinions and thoughts of a simple, non-Rithmatic student. As Joel neared the end of his explanation, he tried to decide if he should mention his suspicions about Nalizar. He eyed the principal, who had gotten out his pen and had begun scribbling notes as Joel spoke.

“All right,” York said, looking up. “Thank you, Joel. This is precisely what I needed.”

“You’re welcome, sir,” Joel said. “But … well, there is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“Sir,” Joel said. “I think Nalizar might have something to do with all of this.”

York leaned in. “What makes you say that?”

“Nothing really substantial,” Joel said. “Coincidences, really. Nalizar showing up when he did mixed with some of the things he’d done.”

“Such as?”

Joel flushed, realizing how foolish he sounded. He was sitting in the principal’s office, accusing one of the men York himself had hired.

“I…” Joel said, his eyes dropping. “I’m sorry, sir. I spoke out of turn.”

“No you didn’t. I’m suspicious of Nalizar too.”

Joel looked up with a start.

“I can’t decide,” York said, “if it’s simply my dislike of the man that is making me react this way, or if there is more. Nalizar has spent a lot of time in the office trying to find out more about the investigation. I keep asking myself if that’s because he wants to know how much we know, or if he’s just jealous.”

“Jealous?”

York nodded. “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but Professor Fitch is gaining quite a bit of notoriety. The press got hold of his name, and now he’s mentioned in nearly every article having to do with the disappearances. Apparently, he’s the federal inspectors’ ‘secret weapon against the kidnappers.’”

“Wow,” Joel said.

“Either way,” York continued, “I wish I’d never hired Nalizar. He has tenure, however, and firing him would be very difficult—and I really have no proof he is involved. So I ask again: What specifically makes you suspect him?”

“Well,” Joel said, “do you remember what I told you about new Rithmatic lines? I saw Nalizar checking out a book from the library that was about new Rithmatic lines and their possible existence.”

“Anything else?”

“He left his building the other night,” Joel said. “The night Charles Calloway was kidnapped. I was out walking and saw him.”

York rubbed his chin. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s hardly compelling evidence.”

“Principal,” Joel said. “Do you know why Nalizar is even here? I mean, if he’s such a great hero at Nebrask, then why is he at a school teaching rather than fighting the wild chalklings?”

York studied Joel for a few seconds.

“Sir?” Joel finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide if I should tell you or not,” the principal said. “To be honest, son, this is somewhat sensitive information.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“I don’t doubt that,” York said. “It’s still my responsibility to decide what I tell and what I don’t.” He tapped his fingers together. “There was an … incident at Nebrask.”

“What kind of incident?”

“The death of a Rithmatist,” York said. “Regardless of what many people here in the east claim, a death at Nebrask is always treated with solemnity by the war cabinet. In this case, there were lots of fingers pointed, and it was decided that some men—such as Nalizar—would be better off reassigned to nonactive duty.”

“So he killed someone?”

“No,” York said, “he was involved in an incident where a young Rithmatist was killed by the wild chalklings. Nalizar was never implicated, and shouldn’t have been, from what I read. When I interviewed him for his job here, Nalizar blamed political forces for trying to save their own hides from a blemish on their records. That sort of thing is common enough that I believed him. Still do, actually.”

“But…”

“But it’s suspicious,” York agreed. “Tell me, what do these new lines you discovered look like?”

“Can I have a pen?”

York loaned him one, then gave him a sheet of paper. Joel drew the swirling, looping pattern that had been discovered at all three crime scenes. “Nobody knows what it is, but at least we know that it is Rithmatic now.”

York rubbed his chin, holding up the paper. “Hum … yes. You know, it’s strange, but this looks oddly familiar to me for some reason.”

Joel’s heart skipped a beat. “It does?”

York nodded. “Probably nothing.”

Why would he have seen it? Joel thought. Principal York hasn’t studied Rithmatics. What do the two of us have in common? Just the school.

The school, and …

Joel looked up, eyes widening as he remembered—finally—where he’d seen that pattern before.

CHAPTER

Joel left the office, giving a rushed farewell to York and Florence. He didn’t tell anyone what he’d just realized. He needed to confirm it for himself first.

Joel took off down the path toward the dormitory building, moving at a brisk walk. He resisted running—with how tense the campus was, that would probably draw more attention than he wanted.

Unfortunately, he caught sight of Melody walking back down the path toward the office, her deliveries apparently finished. He winced, ducking to the side. But of course she saw him.

“Joel!” she called. “I have decided that I’m brilliant!”

“I don’t have much time right now…” he said as she rushed over to him.

“Blah, blah,” she said. “Look, I’ve got something exciting to tell you. Aren’t you thrilled!”

“Yeah,” Joel said, starting down the pathway again. “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

“Hey!” Melody said, then pulled up beside him. “Are you trying to ignore me again?”

“Again?” Joel said. “I’ve never tried to ignore you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Look, during those first weeks, weren’t you mad at me because you thought I was stalking you?”

“Past, gone, dead,” she said. “No, listen, this is really important. I think I found a way for you to become a Rithmatist.”

Joel nearly tripped over his own feet.

“Ha!” Melody said. “I figured that would get your attention.”

“Did you say that just to get me to stop?”

“Dusts, no. Joel, I told you, I’m brilliant!”

“Tell me about it as we walk,” Joel said, moving again. “There’s something I need to check on.”

“You’re strange today, Joel,” she said, catching up to him.

“I’ve just figured something out,” he said, reaching the family dormitory building. “Something that’s been bugging me for a long time.” He climbed the steps up to the second floor, Melody tagging along behind.

“I don’t appreciate being treated like this, Joel,” she said. “Don’t you realize that I’ve spent days and days working on a way to pay you back for vouching for me in front of Harding? Now, I come to tell you, and you repay me by running about like a crazy man? I’m starting to take it personally.”

Joel stopped, then sighed, looking toward her. “We’ve discovered new kinds of Rithmatic lines at each of the crime scenes where students were kidnapped.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. One of them looked familiar to me. I couldn’t remember why, but Principal York just said something that reminded me of where I’d seen it. So I’m going to make sure.”

“Ah,” she said. “And … once you’re done with that, you’ll be able to give proper attention to my stunning, brilliant, amazing announcement?”

“Sure,” Joel said.

“Fair enough,” she said, tagging along as he continued down the hallway to the room he shared with his mother. He pushed inside, then went to the dresser beside the bed.

“Wow,” Melody said, peeking into the room. “You sleep here, eh? It’s, uh, cozy.”

Joel pulled open the top drawer of the dresser, which was filled with knickknacks. He began to rummage in it.

“Where are the rest of your rooms? Across the hallway, here?”

“No, this is it,” Joel said.

“Oh. Where does your mother live?”

“Here.”

“You both live in this room?” Melody asked.

“I use the bed during the nights; she uses it during the days. She’s out today, though, visiting her parents. It’s her day off.” She takes precious few of those.

“Incredible. You know, this is way smaller than my dormitory room. And we all complain about how tiny they are.”

Joel found what he was looking for, pulling it out of the dresser.

“A key?” Melody asked.

Joel pushed past her, rushing to the stairwell. She trailed behind. “What’s the key for?”

“We didn’t always live in that room,” Joel said, passing the first floor and continuing on to the basement. The door he wanted was at the bottom of the stairwell.

“So?” Melody asked as he unlocked the door.

He looked at her, then pushed the door open. “We used to live here,” he said, pointing toward the room beyond.

His father’s workshop.

The large chamber was filled with shadowed shapes and a dusty scent. Joel walked in, surprised at how familiar the place felt. He hadn’t stepped foot past that door in eight years, yet he knew just where to find the wall lamp. He wound it, then twisted the gear at the bottom, making it begin to hum and shine out light.

Illumination fell on a dusty room filled with old tables, stacks of limestone blocks, and an old kiln used for baking sticks of chalk. Joel walked reverently into the room, feeling his memories tingle and shake, like taste buds encountering something both sour and sweet.

“I slept over there,” he said, pointing to the far corner. A small bed stood there, and a couple of sheets hung from the ceiling, arranged so that they could be pulled to give him privacy.

His parents’ bed was in the other corner, with similar hanging sheets. Between the two “rooms” was furniture—some chairs, chests of drawers. His father had always talked about building walls to split the shop into rooms. After he’d died, they hadn’t been able to fit any of the furniture in the new room, so Joel’s mother had just left it.

Joel smiled faintly, remembering his father humming as he smoothed chalk at his table. Most of the chamber had been dedicated to the workshop. The cauldrons, the mixing pots, the kiln, the stacks of books about chalk composition and consistency.

“Wow,” Melody said. “It feels … peaceful in here.”

Joel crossed the room, feet scraping the dusty floor. On one of the tables, he found a line of chalk sticks running the entire spectrum of colors. He slid a blue one off the table and rubbed the length of chalk between his fingers, the coating on the outside keeping his fingers from getting color on them. He walked over to the far side of the room, the one opposite the beds. There, hung on the wall, were chalk formulas detailing different levels of hardness.

The chalk formulas were surrounded by pictures of the different Rithmatic defenses. There were dozens of them, drawn by Joel’s father, with notations along the sides explaining who had used them and during which duel. There were newspaper clippings about famous duels, as well as stories on famous duelists.

Trent’s voice drifted into Joel’s head from memory. His father reading out loud about those duels, explaining to Joel with excitement about brilliant plays. Remembering that enthusiasm brought back a menagerie of other memories. Joel pushed those aside for the moment, focusing on something else. For in the middle of all those formulas, defenses, and newspaper clippings was a particularly large sheet of paper.

Drawn on it was the looping Rithmatic pattern they’d found at each of the crime scenes.

Joel breathed out slowly.

“What?” Melody asked as she stepped up beside him.

“That’s it,” Joel said. “The new Rithmatic line.”

“Wait, your father is the kidnapper?”

“No, of course not. But he knew, Melody. He borrowed money; he took time off; he visited with Rithmatists at all eight schools. He was working on something—his passion.”

Melody glanced to the side, looking over the clippings and the pictures. “So that’s why,” she whispered.

“Why what?”

“Why you’re so fascinated by Rithmatics,” she said. “I asked you once. You never answered. It’s because of your father.”

Joel stared at the wall, with its patterns and defenses. His father would talk about them at length, telling Joel which defenses were good against which offensive structures. Other boys had played soccer with their fathers. Joel had drawn defenses with his.

“Father always wanted me to attend Armedius,” Joel said. “He wanted so badly for me to turn out to be a Rithmatist, though he never said anything. We drew together all the time. I think he became a chalkmaker so that he’d be able to work with Rithmatists.”

And he’d done something wonderful. A new Rithmatic line! It hadn’t been discovered by men like Fitch or Nalizar, Rithmatists with years of experience. It had been discovered by Joel’s father, a simple chalkmaker.

How? What did it mean? What did the line even do? So many questions. His father would have notes, wouldn’t he? Joel would have to search them, tracking his father’s studies during his last days. Discover how this was related to the disappearances.

For the moment, Joel reveled. You did it, Father. You accomplished something none of them did.

“All right,” Joel said, turning to Melody, “what is your big news?”

“Oh,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to declare it properly now. I don’t know. I just … well, I’ve been doing some studying.”

“Studying?” Joel asked. “You?”

“I study!” she said, hands on hips. “Anyway, you shouldn’t complain, because it was about you.”

“You studied about me? Now who’s the stalker?”

“Not about you personally, idiot. It was about what happened to you. Joel, your inception was handled wrong. You are supposed to go into the chamber of inception.”

“I told you,” Joel said, “Father Stewart said I didn’t need to.”

“He,” Melody said, raising a hand dramatically, “was dead wrong. Your eternal soul could be in danger! You weren’t incepted. The ceremony was botched! You need to do it again.”

“Eight years later?”

“Sure,” Melody said. “Why not? Look, the Fourth of July is less than a week away. If we can convince the vicar that you are in peril of losing your soul, he might let you try again. The right way, this time.”

Joel considered that for a moment. “You sure I can go through it again?”

“Positive,” Melody said. “I can find you the references.”

I’m too old. But … well, King Gregory became one after he was eight. So, maybe I could too. He smiled. “That might actually be worth a try.”

“I knew you’d appreciate it,” Melody said. “Tell me I’m a genius.”

“You’re a genius,” Joel said, then glanced back at the pattern on the wall. “Let’s go get Fitch. I want him to see this. We’ll worry about the vicar later.”

“From what I can tell,” Fitch said, sitting at a chair beside a table in the middle of the workshop, “your father was convinced that there were other Rithmatic lines. Here, look at this.”

Fitch pulled a page from the stack of books and old papers. Over the last few hours, Joel and Melody had helped him organize the workshop and sort through Joel’s father’s papers. The workshop almost seemed to be in use again.

The page fluttered as Fitch handed it over to Joel. It looked like some kind of legal document.

“That,” Fitch said, “is a contract of patronage.”

“Valendar Academy,” Joel said. “That’s in the Californian Archipelago, isn’t it? One of the other schools that trains Rithmatists?”

Fitch nodded. “There are four of those sheets in here, each from one among the eight schools, including Armedius. They promise your father and his family patronage for a period of one hundred years should he prove the existence of a Rithmatic line beyond the original four.”

“Patronage?” Melody asked.

“Money, dear,” Fitch said. “A stipend, rather large. With such an income from four different schools, Joel’s father would have become a very wealthy man. I must say, I’m astounded at the level of your father’s understanding of Rithmatics! These writings are quite advanced. I should think the other professors would be very surprised to discover these things. I now realize that we never gave him the credit he deserved.”

“He convinced someone,” Joel said, pointing at the contract of patronage.

“Ah, yes. Indeed, it appears that he did. He must have worked hard, and presented some very convincing evidence, to get those contracts. From what I can see here, he researched with the various schools. He even went to Europe and Asia to meet with scholars and professors there.”

And in doing so, racked up quite a large number of debts, Joel thought, sitting down on the stool beside the worktable-turned-desk that Fitch was using.

“But he found the line,” Melody said, pointing at the drawing on the wall. “So why didn’t he get rich?”

“He couldn’t make it work,” Fitch said, digging out a sheet of paper. “Just as we haven’t been able to. I draw that line exactly, and it doesn’t do anything. The kidnapper knows something we don’t.”

“So it’s meaningless,” Joel said. “My father didn’t know anything more than we do. He figured out that other lines existed—he even managed to draw a replica of one—but couldn’t make it work.”

“Well,” Fitch said, sorting through the papers. “There is one important point here, a theory from your father as to why the symbol didn’t work. You see, there is a group of scholars who believe that a Rithmatic line functions based on the Rithmatist’s goals in drawing it. They point to the fact that if we write words in chalk—or even doodle in chalk—nothing comes to life unless we’re specifically attempting to do a Rithmatic drawing. None of the straight lines in the alphabet accidentally turn into Lines of Forbiddance, for example.

“Therefore, the Rithmatist’s desires affect what he draws. Not in a quantifiable way—for instance, a Rithmatist can’t simply wish his Lines of Forbiddance to be stronger. However, if a Rithmatist doesn’t intend to draw a Line of Forbiddance, the line simply won’t work.”

“So, the reason you couldn’t make the swirl pattern do anything…” Joel said.

“Was because I don’t know what it’s supposed to do,” Fitch said. “Your father believed that unless he could match the proper type of line with the knowledge of what it did, nothing would come of it.”

Fitch pulled out another sheet. “Some laughed at him for that, I fear. I, um, vaguely remember some of these incidents. At one point, your father convinced some Rithmatists to draw his lines—I wasn’t involved, and didn’t pay much attention at the time, or I might have remembered his interest in new Rithmatic lines earlier. But he wasn’t able to make those lines do anything, even though he had a large number of possible intentions for them to try out. From his writings here, he saw that as a major defeat.”

There was a loud sigh from the floor, where Melody lay, listening and staring up at the ceiling. She must have to launder her skirts daily, Joel thought, considering how much she likes to sit on the floor, and climb trees, and lie on the ground.

“Bored, dear?” Fitch asked her.

“Only mildly,” Melody said. “Keep going.” Then, however, she sighed again.

Fitch raised an eyebrow toward Joel, who shrugged. Sometimes, Melody just liked to remind everyone else that she was around.

“Regardless,” Fitch said, “this is a wonderful discovery.”

“Even if it doesn’t tell us what the line does?”

“Yes,” Fitch replied. “Your father was meticulous. He gathered stacks of texts—some of them quite rare—and annotated them, listing any that contained hints or theories about new Rithmatic lines. Why, it’s almost like your father looked forward in time and saw just what we needed for this investigation. His notes will save us months!”

Joel nodded.

“I daresay,” Fitch said, almost to himself, “we really should have taken Trent far more seriously. Yes indeed. Why, the man was a closet genius. It’s like discovering that your doorman is secretly a scholar of advanced springwork theory and has been building a working Equilix in his spare time. Hum…”

Joel ran his fingers across one of the volumes, imagining his father working in this very room, crafting his chalk, all the while thinking on Rithmatic wonders. Joel remembered sitting on the floor, looking up at the table and listening to his father hum. He remembered the smell of the kiln burning. His father baked some of his chalks, while he dried others in the air, always searching for the ideal composition, durability, and brightness of lines.

Melody sat up and brushed some curly red hair out of her eyes. “You all right?” she asked, watching him.

“Just thinking about my father.”

She sat there for a time, looking at him. “So,” she finally said, “tomorrow is Saturday.”

“And?”

“The day after that is Sunday.”

“All right.…”

“You need to talk to the vicar,” she explained. “You have to get him to agree that you should be allowed to go through the inception.”

“What’s this?” Fitch asked, looking up from a book.

“Joel’s going to be incepted,” Melody said.

“That wasn’t done when he was eight?” Fitch asked.

“Oh, it was,” Melody said. “They screwed it up. We’re going to make them let him do it again.”

“I doubt we can make them do anything, Melody,” Joel said quickly. “I don’t even know if this is the right time to worry about that.”

“The Fourth of July is next week,” Melody said. “If you miss it, then you’ll have to wait an entire year.”

“Yes, well,” Joel said. “There are much bigger things to worry about right now.”

“I can’t believe this!” Melody said, flopping back down. “You spend your entire life mooning over Rithmatics and Rithmatists, and now you have your chance to become one, and you’re just going to ignore it?”

“It’s not that good of a chance,” Joel said. “I mean, only one in a thousand get chosen anyway.”

Fitch was watching with interest. “Now, wait. Melody, dear, what exactly makes you think they’ll let Joel try again?”

“He didn’t get to go into the chamber of inception,” Melody said. “So, he couldn’t … well, you know.”

“Ah,” Fitch said. “I see.”

“I don’t,” Joel noted.

“It’s not fair,” Melody said, staring up at the ceiling. “You’ve seen how good he is at Rithmatics. He never even had a chance. He should get a chance.”

“Hum,” Fitch said. “Well, I’m no expert on church procedure. I think, however, you will have a difficult time convincing the vicar to let a sixteen-year-old young man take part in an inception ceremony.”

“We’ll make it work,” Melody said stubbornly, as if Joel didn’t have a say in the matter at all.

A shadow darkened the doorway. Joel turned to see his mother standing outside, on the landing at the bottom of the stairwell. “Oh,” he said, noting her stunned look. “Um…”

“Mrs. Saxon,” Fitch said, standing. “Your son has made a wonderful discovery.”

She walked into the room, wearing her blue travel dress, her hair tied back.

Joel watched her with trepidation. What would she think of them invading the chamber she’d locked up and left behind so long before?

She smiled. “It’s been years,” she said. “I thought about coming back down, but I always worried that it would hurt too much. I worried it would remind me of him.” She met Joel’s eyes. “It does remind me of him, but it doesn’t hurt. I think … I think it’s time to move back in here.”

CHAPTER

Joel sat in the broad cathedral hall, arms resting on the back of the pew in front of him, head resting on his arms, thoughts refusing to rest at all.

“The Master gave life to the lifeless,” Father Stewart proclaimed, droning on at his sermon. “We are the lifeless now, needing his atoning grace to restore light and life to us.”

Light shone through the stained glass windows, which were each set with a clock that ticked away the time. The main window—a brilliant blue circular one—was inset with the most magnificent clock on the island, the gears and spindles themselves formed of stained glass.

The pews filled the nave of the cathedral, with a single aisle running down the center. Above them, in the reaches of the domed cathedral interior, statues of twelve apostles watched over the crowd of devout. The statues moved occasionally, their internal clockwork mechanisms giving them a semblance of life. Life from the lifeless.

“The bread of life,” Father Stewart said, “the water of life, the power of the resurrection.”

Joel had heard it all before. Priests, he had long since noted, had a distinct tendency to repeat themselves. This day, Joel was finding it even more difficult than usual to pay attention. It seemed strange to him—even unsettling—that his life should have intersected so keenly with the important developments at Armedius. Was it fate that had placed Joel where he was? Was it instead the will of the Master, as Father Stewart spoke of so often?

He looked up at the stained glass windows again. What would it mean for the church if public opinion turned against the Rithmatists? Several of the windows depicted King Gregory, the Monarch in Exile. He was always surrounded by Rithmatic drawings.

Cut into the stonework of the walls were interlocking patterns of circles and lines. While the building itself had the shape of a cross, the center where the cathedral arms met was circular, set with pillars marking the points on a nine-point circle.

Apostles watched, and the Master himself was symbolized on the rood. A statue of Saint da Vinci drew circles, gears, and Rithmatic triangles before itself on the ground. He had been canonized and adopted into the Monarchical Church, even though—or perhaps because—he had been a rebel Christian.

Even the most oblivious of men knew of the connection between Rithmatics and the Monarchical Church. No man gained Rithmatic powers without first agreeing to be incepted. They didn’t have to stay faithful—in fact, they didn’t even have to profess belief. They simply had to agree to be incepted, thereby taking the first step toward salvation.

Muslims called Rithmatics blasphemy. Other Christian churches grudgingly accepted the necessity of the ceremony, but then disputed that it proved the Monarchical Church’s authority. The JoSeun people ignored the religious side of the experience, remaining Buddhist despite their inceptions.

However, no man could deny that without the Monarchical Church, there would be no Rithmatics. That simple fact allowed the church—once on the brink of extinction—to eventually become the most powerful in the world. Would the church stand up for the Rithmatists if the public tried to bring them down?

Joel’s mother sat next to him, listening devoutly to the sermon. She and Joel had spent the previous day moving back down into the workroom. It hadn’t taken very long; they didn’t own much. Every time Joel stepped into the workroom, though, he felt as if he were eight years too old and about two feet too tall.

Something poked Joel in the back of the neck. He started, then turned around, surprised to find Melody sitting on the bench behind him. She’d been on the other side of the building when he’d last seen her.

“He’s almost done,” she hissed. “You going to ask him, or should I?”

Joel shrugged noncommittally.

A few moments later, she slid onto the bench beside him. “What’s up with you?” she asked quietly. “I thought this was everything you ever wanted.”

“It is,” he whispered.

“You don’t sound like it. You’ve been dragging your feet ever since I told you my plan! You act like you don’t want to be incepted.”

“I do, I just…” How could he explain? “It’s stupid, Melody, but I’m worried. For so long, I’ve defined myself by the fact that I missed the opportunity to become a Rithmatist. Don’t you see? If this works, but I’m still not chosen, I won’t have that to fall back on anymore.”

Joel had studied, learning the patterns and defenses, following in the footsteps of his father. But all the while, he’d been able to feel secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t a failure or a reject. He’d simply missed his chance, and for a good reason.

Joel hadn’t destroyed his father’s hopes for a Rithmatist child. Joel couldn’t be blamed if he hadn’t had an opportunity, could he?

“You’re right, that is silly,” Melody said.

“I’ll go through with it,” Joel replied. “I just … It makes me feel sick. That’s all.”

Logically, he saw problems in that reasoning. One couldn’t be “blamed” for not being a Rithmatist. Still, logic didn’t always change the way a person felt. He’d almost rather be left with the possibility that he could have been a Rithmatist than find out for certain.

Melody’s insistence that he try again dug up all of the old fears.

Father Stewart finished his preaching. Joel bowed his head for the ritual prayer. He didn’t hear much of what Stewart said. By the time the “amen” was spoken, however, he’d made up his mind. If there was a chance for him to become a Rithmatist, he was not going to lose it. Not again.

He shoved down his nervousness and stood up.

“Joel?” his mother asked.

“Just a second, Mom,” he said. “I want to talk to the vicar.” He rushed away, Melody quickly joining him.

“I will do it,” Joel said. “You don’t need to.”

“Excellent,” Melody said, for once not wearing her school uniform. Instead, she wore a white dress that was quite fetching. It came down to her knees, showing off quite a bit of leg.

Focus, Joel thought. “I still don’t think this will work.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” she said, eyes twinkling. “I’ve got a few tricks planned.”

Oh dear, Joel thought.

They arrived at the front of the nave and stopped before Father Stewart. The vicar glanced at them, adjusting his spectacles, the miter on his head waggling. The large headdress was yellow—like his robes—and was marked with a nine-point circle circumscribing a cross.

“Yes, children?” Father Stewart asked, leaning forward. He was growing quite old, Joel realized, and his white beard came almost all the way down to his waist.

“I…” Joel faltered momentarily. “Father, do you remember my inception?”

“Hum, let me see,” the aged man said. “How old are you, again, Joel?”

“Sixteen,” Joel said. “But I wasn’t incepted during the usual ceremony. I…”

“Ah yes,” Stewart said. “Your father. I remember now, son. I performed your inception myself.”

“Yes, well…” Joel said. It didn’t feel right to outright accuse the aged priest of having done it wrong.

To the sides, other people were lining up—there were always those who wanted to speak to Father Stewart after the sermon. Candles burned atop candelabra near the altar, flickering in the wind of opening doors, and footsteps echoed in the great hall of the building. Beyond the altar, at the back of the cathedral, sat the chamber of inception, a small stone room with doors on either end.

Melody nudged him.

“Father,” Joel said, “I … don’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m bothered by my inception. I didn’t go into the chamber.”

“Ah yes, child,” Stewart said. “I can understand your worry, but you needn’t fear for your salvation. There are places all over the world where the church isn’t prominent enough to warrant a full cathedral, and they have no rooms of inception there. Those people are just as well off as we are.”

“But they can’t become Rithmatists,” Joel said.

“Well, no,” Stewart said.

“I didn’t have a chance,” Joel said. “To become one, then. A Rithmatist.”

“You did have a chance, son,” Stewart said. “You simply were unable to take it. Child, too many people dwell on this issue. The Master accepts both Rithmatists and non-; all are the same to him. To be a Rithmatist is to be chosen for service—it is not meant to make a man powerful or self-centered. To seek after such things is a sin that, I fear, too many of us ignore.”

Joel blushed. Stewart seemed to consider the conversation over, and he smiled warmly at Joel, laying a hand on his shoulder and blessing him. The priest then turned toward the next patron.

“Father,” Joel said, “I want to take part in the inception this week.”

Father Stewart started, turning back. “Son, you’re far too old!”

“I—”

“That doesn’t matter,” Melody said quickly, cutting Joel off. “A man can be incepted at any age. Isn’t that true? It mentions so in the Book of Common Prayer.”

“Well,” Stewart said, “that usually refers to people who convert to our Master’s gospel after the age of eight.”

“But it could refer to Joel,” she said.

“He’s already been incepted!”

“He didn’t get to go through the chamber,” Melody said stubbornly. “Don’t you know about the case of Roy Stephens? He was allowed to be incepted during his ninth year since he was sick the Fourth of July.”

“That happened all the way up in Maineford,” Stewart said. “A completely different archdiocese! They do some odd things there. There’s no reason to incept Joel again.”

“Except to give him a chance to be a Rithmatist,” Melody said.

Father Stewart sighed, shaking his head. “You seem to have studied the words well, child, but you don’t understand the meanings. Trust me; I know what is best.”

“Oh?” Melody said, voice rising as he turned away again. “And why don’t you tell Joel why it really is that you didn’t let him into the chamber of inception eight years ago? Perhaps because the north wall was being worked on due to water damage?”

“Melody,” Joel said, taking her arm as she grew belligerent.

“What if the Master wanted Joel to be a Rithmatist?” she continued. “Did you consider that when you denied him the opportunity? All because you were renovating your cathedral? Is a boy’s soul and future worth that?”

Joel grew more and more embarrassed as Melody’s voice rang through the normally solemn chamber. He tried to hush her, but she ignored him.

“I, for one,” Melody said very loudly, “think this is a tragedy! We should be eager to encourage a person who wants to be a Rithmatist! Will the church side with those who are turning against us? Won’t its priests encourage a boy who seeks to do the will of the Master? What’s really going on, Vicar?”

“All right, hush, child,” Father Stewart said, holding his forehead. “Enough yelling.”

“Will you let Joel be incepted?” she asked.

“If it will shut you up,” Father Stewart said, “then I will seek permission from the bishop. If he allows it, Joel can be incepted again. Will that satisfy you?”

“For now, I suppose,” Melody said, folding her arms.

“Then go with the Master’s blessing, child,” Father Stewart said. Then, under his breath, he added, “And whatever demon sent you my way will likely be promoted in the Depths for giving me such a headache.”

Melody grabbed Joel’s arm and towed him away. His mother stood a short distance down the aisle between the pews. “What was that about?” she asked.

“Nothing, Mrs. Saxon,” Melody said perkily. “Nothing at all.”

Once they had passed, Joel glanced at Melody. “So, that was your big plan, eh? To throw a tantrum?”

“Tantrums are a noble and time-tested strategy,” she said airily. “Particularly if you have a good set of lungs and are facing down a crotchety old priest. I know Stewart; he always bends if you make enough noise.”

They passed out of the cathedral. Harding stood conferring with a few of his police officers on the landing. A couple of springwork gargoyles prowled across the ledge above the door into the building.

“Father Stewart said he’d ask for permission,” Joel said. “I don’t think we’ve won.”

“We have,” Melody said. “He won’t want me to make another scene, particularly considering the tensions between Rithmatists and ordinary people right now. Come on; let’s go get something to eat. Being irate sure can build a girl’s appetite.”

Joel sighed, but let himself be towed across the street and toward the campus.

CHAPTER

The circle is divine, Joel read.

The only truly eternal and perfect shape, it has been a symbol for the Master’s works since the ancient Egyptian Ahmes first discovered the divine number itself. Many medieval scholars used the compass—the tool by which a circle is drafted—as a symbol of the Master’s power of creation. One can find it scattered throughout illuminated manuscripts.

Before we landed on the American Isles, history entered a dark period for the circle. The Earth was shown to not be a flat circle at all, but a sphere of questionable regularity. The celestial planets were proven to move in ellipses, further weakening belief in the divine circle.

Then we discovered Rithmatics.

In Rithmatics, words are unimportant. Only numbers have meaning, and the circle dominates all. The closer one can come to perfection in its form, the more powerful one is. The circle, then, is proven to be beyond simple human reasoning. It is something inherently divine.

It is odd, then, that something man-made should have played such an important part in the discovery of Rithmatics. If His Majesty hadn’t been carrying one of Master Freudland’s new-style pocket watches, perhaps none of this would have ever occurred, and man might have fallen to the wild chalklings.

The chapter ended there. Joel sat in the empty workshop, back against the wall. A few thin ribbons of sunlight crept through the windows above, falling through the dusty air to fall in squares on the floor.

Joel flipped through the pages of the old tome. It came from the journal of one Adam Makings, the personal astronomer and scientist of King Gregory III, founder of Rithmatics. Adam Makings was attributed with discovering and outlining the principles surrounding two-, four-, and six-point Rithmatic circles.

The book came from Joel’s father’s collection, and was apparently quite valuable, since it was a very early copy. Why hadn’t Joel’s mother sold it—or any of the books—to pay debts? Perhaps she hadn’t known the value.

The book contained Makings’s theories on the existence of other Rithmatic figures, though he’d never come to any definite conclusions. That last part, however, proved more interesting to Joel than any other.

If His Majesty hadn’t been carrying one of Master Freudland’s new-style pocket watches, perhaps none of this would have ever occurred, and man might have fallen to the wild chalklings.…

Joel frowned, flipping to the next chapter. He was unable to find anything else on the topic of the pocket watch.

Very little was known of how King Gregory discovered Rithmatics. The church’s official position was that he had received the knowledge in a vision. Religious depictions often showed Gregory kneeling in prayer, a beacon of light falling around him and forming a circle marked with six points. The inside cover of the book had a similar plate in the front, though this one showed the vision appearing in front of Gregory in the air.

Why would a pocket watch be involved?

“Joel?” A feminine voice rang through the brick hallways of the dormitory basement. A few seconds later, Melody’s face appeared in the open doorway to the workshop. She wore a book bag on her shoulder and had on the skirt and blouse of a Rithmatic student.

“You’re still here?” she demanded.

“There’s a lot of studying to—” Joel began.

“You’re sitting practically in the dark!” she said, walking over to him. “This place is dreary.”

Joel looked around the workshop. “I find it comforting.”

“Whatever. You’re taking a break. Come on.”

“But—”

“No excuses,” she said, grabbing his arm and yanking. He let her pull him to his feet. It was Wednesday; tomorrow was the Fourth of July and the inception ceremony. There was still no word from the vicar about whether or not Joel would be able to attend, and the Scribbler had yet to strike again.

Many in the media were claiming Inspector Harding’s lockdown to be a success, and the last few holdouts on keeping Rithmatist students away were giving in.

Joel didn’t feel their same relief. He felt like an axe was hanging over them, just waiting to fall.

“Come on,” Melody said, towing him out of the basement and into the afternoon light. “Honestly, you’re going to shrivel up and turn into a professor if you don’t watch yourself.”

Joel rubbed his neck, stretching. It did feel nice to be out.

“Let’s go to the office,” Melody said, “and see if the vicar has sent you anything yet.”

Joel shrugged, and they began walking. The days were growing warm, New Britannia humidity rolling in off the ocean. The heat felt good after a morning spent down in the workshop.

As they passed the humanities building, Joel eyed a group of workers busy scrubbing the building’s side where the phrase “Go Back to Nebrask” had been scrawled two nights ago in the darkness. Harding had been furious that someone had managed to penetrate his security.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done by members of the student body, Joel thought. There had always been tensions between the rich, non-Rithmatic students and the Rithmatists.

Melody saw it too. “Did you hear about Virginia and Thaddius?”

“Who?”

“Rithmatists,” Melody said. “Students from the class ahead of us. They were out yesterday after church services. Ran into a mob of men who chased them and threw bottles at them. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening.”

“Are they all right?”

“Well, yes.…” Melody said, growing uncomfortable. “They drew chalklings. It made the men scatter in a heartbeat.”

Chalklings. “But—”

“No, they don’t know the Glyph of Rending,” Melody said quickly. “They wouldn’t have used it if they’d known it. Using that against people is quite a sin, you know.”

“That will still be bad,” Joel said. “Stories will spread.”

“What would you have them do? Let the mob catch them?”

“Well, no.…”

The two walked, uncomfortable, for another few moments. “Oh!” Melody said. “I just remembered. I have to stop by Making Hall.”

“What?” Joel said as she spun about.

“It’s on the way,” she said, adjusting the shoulder strap on the book bag and waving him along.

“It’s on the other dusting side of the campus!”

She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “What? A little walking is going to kill you? Come on.”

Joel grumbled, joining her.

“Guess what?” Melody said.

Joel raised an eyebrow.

“I finally got to move on from tracing,” she said. “Professor Fitch is having me work from a pattern now.”

“Great!” That was the next step—drawing the Rithmatic forms from a small design to use as a reference. It was something Melody should have mastered years ago, but he didn’t say that.

“Yes,” she said with a flip of the hand. “Give me another few months, and I’ll have this Rithmatics thing down. I’ll be able to beat any ten-year-old in a duel.”

Joel chuckled. “Why do we need to drop by Making Hall, anyway?”

Melody held up a small folded note.

“Oh, right,” Joel said. “Office deliveries.”

She nodded.

“Wait,” Joel said, frowning. “You’re doing deliveries? Is that why you came down to get me? Because you were bored doing deliveries alone?”

“Of course,” Melody said happily. “Didn’t you know that you exist to entertain me?”

“Great,” Joel said. To the side, they passed Warding Hall, where a large number of staff members were moving in and out.

“The Melee,” Joel said. “They’re getting ready for it.” It was coming up on Saturday.

Melody got a sour look on her face. “I can’t believe that they’re still holding the thing.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, considering recent events…”

Joel shrugged. “I suspect Harding will limit attendance to students and faculty. The Scribbler attacks at night anyway. An event like this would be too well attended by Rithmatists to be a good place to try anything.”

Melody grumbled something unintelligible as they walked up the hill to Making Hall.

“What was that?” Joel asked.

“I just don’t see why they have to have the Melee in the first place,” Melody said. “I mean, what’s the point?”

“It’s fun,” Joel said. “It lets the students get some practice in with real duels and prove themselves Rithmatically. What’s your problem with it?”

“Every professor has to send at least one student to the thing,” Melody said.

“So?”

“So, how many students does Fitch have?”

Joel stopped on the side of the hill. “Wait … you’re going to duel in the Melee?”

“And be thoroughly humiliated. Not that that’s anything new. Still, I don’t see why I have to be put on display.”

“Oh, come on. Maybe you’ll do well—you’re so good at chalklings, after all.”

She regarded him flatly. “Nalizar is fielding twelve students to fight.” It was the maximum. “Who do you bet they’ll eliminate first?”

“Then you won’t be humiliated. Who would expect you to stand against them? Just enjoy yourself.”

“It’s going to be painful.”

“It’s a fun tradition.”

“So was witch-burning,” Melody said. “Unless you were the witch.”

Joel chuckled as they reached Making Hall. They walked along to one of the doors, and Melody reached to pull it open.

Joel froze. It was Nalizar’s office. “Here?”

“Yeah,” Melody said with a grimace. “The office had a note for him. Oh yeah, I forgot.” She reached into her bag, pulling out the book Origins of Power, the one that Joel had borrowed a few weeks back. “He requested this, and the library contacted me, since I’d checked it out.”

“Nalizar wants this book?” Joel asked.

“Uh … yeah. That’s what I just said. I found it at Fitch’s office, where you left it. Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Joel said. He’d been hoping that once he’d spent some time studying his father’s texts, he’d be able to figure the book out.

“Be back in a sec,” Melody said, opening the door and rushing up the stairs.

Joel waited below—he had no desire to see Nalizar. But … why did the professor want that book?

Nalizar is involved in this somehow, he thought, walking around the building to look up into the office window. I—

He stopped short. Nalizar stood there, in the window. The professor wore his red coat, buttoned up to the neck. He scanned the campus, eyes passing over Joel, as if not noticing him.

Then the professor’s head snapped back toward Joel, regarding him, meeting his eyes.

Other times when he’d seen the professor, Joel had found the man haughty. Arrogant in a youthful, almost naive sort of way.

There was none of that in the man’s expression now. Nalizar stood in the shadowed room, tall and straight-backed, arms clasped behind him as he stared down at Joel. Contemplative.

Nalizar turned, obviously hearing Melody knock on the door, then walked away from the window. A few minutes later, Melody appeared at the bottom of the stairs, lugging a stack of books, her bag full of others. Joel rushed over to help her.

“Ugh,” she said as he took half of the books. “Thanks. Here, you might be interested in this.” She slid one book across the top of her stack.

Joel picked it up. Postulations on the Possibility of New and Undiscovered Rithmatic Lines, the title read. It was the book he’d wanted to steal from Nalizar, the one the professor had borrowed a few weeks back.

“You stole it?” Joel asked with a hushed tone.

“Hardly,” Melody said, walking down the slope with her stack of books. “He told me to return these to the library as if I were some glorified errand girl.”

“Uh … that’s what you are, Melody. Only without the ‘glorified’ part.”

She snorted, and the two of them continued down the hill. “He sure is checking out a lot of books,” Joel noted, looking over the titles in his arms. “And they’re all on Rithmatic theory.”

“Well, he is a professor,” Melody said. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Looking to see when he checked them out,” Joel said, balancing the books as he tried to flip to the back cover of each one, looking at the stamp on the card. “Looks like he’s had these for less than two weeks.”

“So?”

“So, that’s a lot of reading,” Joel said. “Look, he checked out this one on advanced Vigor reflecting yesterday. He’s returning it already?”

She shrugged. “It must not have been that interesting.”

“Either that, or he’s looking for something,” Joel said. “Skimming the books for specific information. Perhaps he’s trying to develop another new line.”

“Another?” Melody said. “You still insist on connecting him to the disappearances, don’t you?”

“I’m suspicious.”

“And if he’s behind it,” Melody said, “then why did all of the disappearances happen off campus? Wouldn’t he have taken the students easiest to reach?”

“He wouldn’t have wanted to draw suspicion to himself.”

“And motive?” Melody said.

“I don’t know. Taking the son of a knight-senator changes so much, transforming this from a regional problem to a national crisis. It doesn’t make sense. Unless that’s what he wanted in the first place.”

Melody eyed him.

“Stretch?” Joel asked.

“Yeah. If this were about creating a national crisis, then he could have just taken the knight-senator.”

Joel was forced to admit that she was right. What were the Scribbler’s motives? Was it about Rithmatists, or about driving a wedge between the islands? If it was just about killing or kidnapping students, then where had the new Rithmatic lines come from, and why were the wild chalklings involved? Or were they really? Could ordinary chalklings be instructed to act like wild ones to throw the police off?

Joel and Melody arrived at the library, and they went in, dropping off Nalizar’s books. Ms. Torrent gave them one of her trademark looks of displeasure as she checked the books in, then checked the book on potential Rithmatic lines back out to Melody.

They left, and Melody handed the book to Joel.

He tucked it under his arm. “Weren’t we going to the office to look for a note from the vicar?”

“I suppose,” she said, sighing.

“You’re down, all of a sudden.”

“I’m like that,” she said. “Wild mood swings. It makes me more interesting. Anyway, you have to admit that it hasn’t been a pleasant afternoon you’ve shown me. I got to see Nalizar—dreamy as he is—but I was also forced to think about the Melee.”

“You almost sound like it’s my fault,” Joel said.

“Well,” she said, “I wasn’t going to say it myself, but since you pointed it out, I find myself persuaded. You really should apologize to me.”

“Oh please.”

“Don’t you feel the least bit sorry for me?” she asked. “Having to go and be laughed at by the entire school populace?”

“Maybe you’ll hold your own.”

She regarded him flatly. “Have you seen one of my circles, Joel?”

“You’re getting better.”

“The Melee is in three days!”

“Okay,” he admitted. “You don’t have a chance. But, well, the only way to learn is by trying!”

“You really are like a professor.”

“Hey!” Joel said as they approached the office building. “I resent that. I’ve worked very hard during my school career to be a delinquent. I’ll bet I’ve failed more classes than you have.”

“I doubt that,” she said haughtily. “And, even if you did, I doubt you failed them as spectacularly or as embarrassingly as I did.”

He chuckled. “Point conceded. Nobody’s as spectacularly embarrassing as you, Melody.”

“That’s not what I said.”

They approached the office, and Joel could see Harding’s police guarding there. “Well, one good part about all this,” Melody said. “If Principal York restricts the Melee to students and faculty, then I won’t have to be embarrassed in front of my parents.”

“Wait. They’d actually come?”

“They always come to the Melee,” she said, grimacing. “Particularly when one of their children is in it.”

“When you talk about them, it sounds like you think they hate you or something.”

“It’s not that. It’s just … well, they’re important people. Busy doing stuff. They don’t have much time for the daughter who can’t seem to get Rithmatics right.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Joel said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I have two brothers and one sister, all older than me, all Rithmatists. Each one won the Melee at least twice during their careers. William won all four years he was eligible.”

“Wow,” Joel said.

“And I can’t even do a straight circle,” Melody said, walking quickly. Joel hurried to catch up to her.

“They’re not bad people,” she said. “But, well, I think it’s easy for them to have me here. Floridia is far enough away that they don’t have to see me often. I could probably go home on weekends—I did during the early years. Lately, though, with William’s death … well, it’s not really a very happy place at home.”

“Wait,” Joel said, “death?”

She shrugged. “Nebrask is dangerous.”

Death, Joel thought. At Nebrask. And her last name is …

Muns. Joel stopped short.

Melody turned.

“Your brother,” Joel said. “How old was he?”

“Three years older than me,” Melody said.

“He died last year?”

She nodded.

“Dusts!” Joel said. “I saw his obituary in the lists Professor Fitch gave me.”

“So?”

“So,” Joel said, “Professor Nalizar was involved in the death of a Rithmatic student last year. That’s why he was sent away from the battlefront. Maybe it’s connected! Maybe—”

“Joel,” Melody snapped, drawing his attention.

He blinked, regarding her, seeing the distress in her eyes, hidden behind anger.

“Don’t involve William,” she said. “I just … Don’t. If you have to look for conspiracies around Nalizar, do it. But don’t talk about my brother.”

“I’m sorry,” Joel said. “But … if Nalizar was involved, don’t you want to know?”

“He was involved,” Melody said. “Nalizar led a team past the Nebrask Circle up to the base of the Tower itself trying to recover my brother. They never even found the body.”

“Then maybe he killed your brother!” Joel said. “Maybe he just said he couldn’t find him.”

“Joel,” she said, growing quiet. “I’m only going to discuss this one time, all right? William’s death was his own fault. He ran out past the defensive lines. Half the contingent saw him get swarmed by chalklings.

“William tried to prove himself a hero, and he put a lot of people in danger. Nalizar did all he could to rescue him. Nalizar risked his life for my brother.”

Joel hesitated, remembering how she always described Nalizar.

“I don’t like what he did to Fitch,” Melody said, “but Nalizar is a hero. He left the battlefront because of the failure he felt in not being able to rescue William in time.”

Something didn’t seem right about that to Joel. However, he didn’t say anything about it to Melody. Instead, he simply nodded. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded as well, apparently considering the topic closed. They walked the rest of the way to the office in silence.

Nalizar suddenly decided he couldn’t take failure? Joel thought. He left the battlefront because of one death? If it was his conscience that made him leave the battlefront, then why did he complain about politics to Principal York?

Something is going on with that man.

They opened the door to the office, and Joel was pleased to find both Inspector Harding and Professor Fitch there. Harding stood talking to Florence about supplies and housing accommodations for his officers. Fitch sat in one of the waiting chairs.

“Ah, Joel,” Fitch said, rising.

“Professor?” Joel said. “You weren’t looking for me, were you?”

“Hum? What? Ah, no, I have to give a report to the principal about our work. He has me in every couple of days or so. You haven’t discovered anything new, have you?”

Joel shook his head. “I’m just keeping Melody company on her errands.” He paused, leaning against the wall as Melody walked over to get another stack of notes to deliver. “Though there was one thing.”

“Hum?”

“Do you know much about the original discovery of Rithmatics?” Joel asked. “Back when King Gregory was alive?”

“I know more than most,” Fitch said. “I am, after all, a historian.”

“Was there some involvement of clocks in the discovery?”

“Ah,” Fitch said. “You’re talking about the Adam Makings report, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! We’ll turn you into a scholar yet, lad. Very nice work, very nice. Yes, there are some strange references to the workings of clocks in the early records, and we haven’t been able to figure out why. Early chalklings reacted to them, though they no longer do so. The power of the gears over chalklings is one of the reasons that springworks are used so often in Monarchical churches, you know.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Exton added from the other side of the room. Joel looked up; he wasn’t aware the clerk had been paying attention.

“Ask the vicar about it sometime,” Exton continued. “The priests see time in an interesting way. Something about how it is divided by man bringing order to chaos.”

There was a chuckle from the side of the room, where Florence had turned from her conversation with Inspector Harding. “Exton! I thought you were too busy to chat!”

“I am,” he muttered. “I have nearly given up on getting anything done in this madhouse. Everyone bustling about and making noise all the time. I’m going to have to find a way to do work when nobody is around.”

“Well,” Joel said to Professor Fitch, “the clock thing is probably a dead end then, if people have already noticed it and researched it.” He sighed. “I’m not certain I’ll be able to find anything of use in these books. I keep being shocked by how little I know about Rithmatics.”

Fitch nodded. “I feel the same way sometimes.”

“I remember sitting and watching your duel with Nalizar,” Joel said. “I thought I knew it all, just because I understood the defenses you were using. There’s a lot more to all of it than I once thought.”

Fitch smiled.

“What?” Joel asked.

“What you just said is the foundation of all scholarship.” Fitch reached out, putting a hand on Joel’s shoulder, which stood a bit taller than Fitch’s own. “Joel, son, you’ve been invaluable to this investigation. If York hadn’t given you to me as an assistant … well, I don’t know where we would be.”

Joel found himself smiling. Fitch’s sincerity was touching.

“Aha!” a voice declared.

Joel spun to find Melody holding a letter. She rushed across the office room, prompting a frown from Exton. She stretched across the counter between the office area and the waiting area, handing the letter to Joel. “It’s from the vicar,” she said. “Open it, open it!”

Joel accepted it hesitantly. It was marked with the clockwork cross. He broke the seal, then took a breath, opening the letter.

Joel, I have reviewed your case and have spoken with the bishop of New Britannia, as well as the principal of your school. After some deliberation, we have determined that—indeed—your request has merit. If there is a chance that the Master wishes you to be a Rithmatist, we should not deny you the opportunity.

Arrive at the cathedral on Thursday at eight sharp, and you will be fitted for a robe of inception and be allowed an opportunity to enter the chamber before the regular ceremony begins. Bring your mother and any with whom you might wish to share this event.

Vicar Stewart

Joel looked up from the note, stunned.

“What does it say?” Melody asked, hardly able to contain herself.

“It means there’s still hope,” Joel said, lowering the note. “I’m going to get a chance.”

CHAPTER

Later that night, Joel lay quietly in bed, trying to sort through his emotions. A clock ticked on the wall of the workshop. He didn’t look at it; he didn’t want to know the hour.

It was late. And he was awake. The night before his inception.

Less than one in a thousand. That was his chance of becoming a Rithmatist. It seemed ridiculous to hope, and yet his nervousness drove away any possibility of sleep. He was going to get a chance to be a Rithmatist. A real, honest chance.

What would it mean, if he were chosen? He wouldn’t be able to draw a stipend until after he’d served in Nebrask, and so his mother would probably have to continue working.

Nebrask. He’d have to go to Nebrask. He didn’t know much about what happened at the place. There were the wild chalklings, of course. The Rithmatists on the island maintained their enormous chalk Circle of Warding, thousands of feet in diameter, to keep the chalklings and the Tower locked in.

There were the reports of other things on the island as well. Dark, unexplained things. Things Joel would eventually have to face, should he be made a Rithmatist. And he’d only have one year to prepare and learn, while other students had eight or nine.

That’s why they don’t let older people become Rithmatists, he realized. They need to be trained and taught when they are young.

Students went to Nebrask their final year of schooling. Ten years of service came next, then freedom. Some chose to work at the spring-winding stations, but others stayed at Nebrask, Melody said. Not for the money, but for the challenge. For the struggle and the fight. Would this be Joel’s future?

This is all moot anyway, Joel thought, rolling over, trying to force himself to sleep. I’m not going to become a Rithmatist. The Master won’t pick me because I won’t have enough time to train.

Yet there was a chance. Over the next thirty minutes or so, thinking about that chance kept him from being able to sleep.

Eventually, Joel rose and reached for the lamp beside his bed. He cranked the key on the side, then watched through the glass as the spinners inside began to twirl. Several small filaments grew hot from the friction, giving out illumination, which the reflectors inside concentrated and bounced out the top.

He stooped over, picking through the books beside his bed. He chose one. The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, the first page read. A diary, one of the earliest recorded bits of literature from the original settlers of the American Isles. It had happened before the wild chalklings began their main offensive, but after they began to harass people.

The sovereignty and goodness of THE MASTER, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed, being a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. The second Addition Corrected and amended. Written by her own hand for her private use, and now made public at the earnest desire of some friends.

On the tenth of February, sixteenth year of our arrival, came the wild chalklings with great numbers upon Lancaster. Hearing the sounds of splashing, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. The monsters were visible upon the ground, dodging between the buckets of water thrown by our men.

Water. It washed away chalk, but not very well. They hadn’t yet discovered the composition of acids that would dissolve the chalklings with a single splash.

There were five persons eaten in one house; the father, and the mother and a sucking child, they stripped of skin, then ate out the eyes. The other two they herded out the doorway. There were two others, who being out of their garrison upon some occasion were set upon; one was stripped of all skin, the other escaped.

Another, seeing many of the wild chalklings about his barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly set upon. They ate at his feet until he screamed, falling to the ground, then swarmed above him. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the wild chalklings climbing up the sides of the walls, attacking from all sides, knocking over lanterns and beginning fires. Thus these murderous creatures went on, burning and destroying before them.

Joel shivered in the silence of his room. The matter-of-fact narrative was disturbing, but oddly transfixing. How would you react, if you’d never seen a chalkling before? What would your response be to a living picture that climbed up walls and slid beneath doors, attacking without mercy, eating the flesh off bodies?

His lantern continued to whir.

At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw. They slid beneath the door and quickly they ate one man among us, then another, and then a third.

Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often heard of (in time of war, as it was the case of others), but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one another, “Master, what shall we do?”

Then I took my children (and one of my sisters’, hers) to go forth and leave the house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the creatures outside swarmed up the hill toward us.

My brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, his legs bleeding) was set upon from behind, and fell down screaming with a bucket of water in his hands. Whereat the wild chalklings did dance scornfully, silently, around him. Demons of the Depths they most certainly are, many made in the form of man, but created as if from the shape of sticks and lines.

I stood in fright as we were surrounded. Thus was my family butchered by those merciless creatures, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. The children were taken as I ran for the bucket to use in our defense, but it was emptied, and I felt a cold feeling of something on my leg, followed by a sharp pain.

It was at that point that I saw it. Something in the darkness, illuminated just barely by the fire of our burning house. A shape that did seem to absorb the light, created completely of dark, shifting blackness: like charcoal scraped and scratched on the ground, only but standing upright in the shadows beside the house.

It did watch. That deep, terrible blackness. Something from the Depths themselves. The shape wiggling, shaking, like a pitch-black fire sketched in charcoal.

Watching.

Something cracked against the window of Joel’s room.

He jumped and saw a shadow moving away from the small pane of glass. The window stood at the very top of the wall, in the small space between where the ground stopped and the ceiling began.

Vandals! Joel thought, remembering the curse that had been painted on the humanities building. He jumped from the bed and rushed for the door, throwing on a coat. He was up the stairs and out the door a few moments later.

He rounded the building to see what the vandals had written. He found the side of the building clean. Had he been wrong?

That was when he saw it. A symbol, written in chalk on the brick wall. A looping swirl. The Rithmatic line they still hadn’t been able to identify.

The night was strangely quiet.

Oh no … Joel thought, feeling a horrible chill. He backed away from the wall, then opened his mouth to call for help.

His scream came out unnaturally soft. He felt the sound almost get torn away from his throat, sucked toward that symbol, dampened.

The kidnappings … Joel thought, stunned. Nobody heard the Rithmatists call for help. Except for a few servants, on the side of the hall where that symbol had been drawn too hastily.

That’s what the line does. It sucks in sound.

He stumbled back. He had to find the police, raise the alarm. The Scribbler had come to the dormitory for …

Dormitory. This was the general dormitory. There were no Rithmatists in it. Who had the kidnapper come for?

Several shaking white shapes crawled over the top of the building and began to move down the wall.

For Joel.

Joel yelled—the sound dying—and took off at a dash across the green. This can’t be happening, he thought with terror. I’m not a Rithmatist! The Scribbler is only supposed to come after them.

He ran madly, screaming for help. His voice came out as barely a whisper. He glanced back and saw a small wave of whiteness following him across the lawn. There were about a dozen of the creatures—fewer than the attacks indicated had taken the others. But then, Joel wasn’t a Rithmatist.

He yelled again, panicking, his heart thumping, his entire body feeling cold. No sound came from his mouth.

Think, Joel, he told himself. Don’t panic. You’ll die if you panic.

That sound-stealing line can’t have this long a range. Someone at one of the other crime scenes would have noticed that they couldn’t make sound, and that would have given it away.

That means there must be other copies of the symbol nearby. Drawn in a row, because …

Because the Scribbler guessed which direction I’d run.

Joel pulled up sharply, looking wildly across the dark green. It was lit only by a few phantom lanterns, but in that light, he saw it. A white line drawn across the concrete walk ahead. A Line of Forbiddance.

He turned, looking behind him. The chalklings continued onward, pushing Joel toward the Line of Forbiddance. Trying to corner him and trap him. There were probably lines to the sides as well—it was hard to draw with chalk on earth, but it was possible. If he got trapped behind Lines of Forbiddance …

He would die.

That thought was almost enough to stun him again. The wave of chalklings approached, and he could see what Charles had described in his final note. The things weren’t like traditional chalklings. Their forms shook violently, as if to some phantom sound. Arms, legs, bodies melding together. Like the visions of an insane painter who couldn’t make up his mind which monstrosity he wanted to create.

Move! something inside of Joel yelled. He sucked in a deep breath, then took off at a dash straight at the chalklings. When he drew near, he jumped, soaring over the top of the creatures. He hit the ground and dashed back the way he had come.

Have to think quickly, he told himself. Can’t go to the dormitory. They’ll just come under the doors. I have to find the policemen. They have acid.

Where were Harding’s patrols? Joel ran with all his might toward the Rithmatic side of the campus.

His breath began to come in gasps. He couldn’t outrun chalklings for long. Ahead, he saw lights. The campus office building. Joel let out a ragged yell.

“Help!”

Blessedly, the sound came in full force. He’d gotten away from the trap. However, though sound was no longer dampened, his voice felt weak. He had been running at full speed for too long.

The door to the office flung open and Exton looked out, wearing his typical vest and bow tie. “Joel?” he called. “What’s wrong?”

Joel shook his head, sweating. He dared a glance behind, and saw the chalklings scrambling over the grass just behind him. Inches away.

“Blessed heavens!” Exton shouted.

Joel turned back, but in his haste, he tripped and fell to the ground.

Joel cried out, hitting hard, the breath knocked from him. Dazed, he cringed, waiting for the pain, the coldness, the attacks he had read about.

Nothing happened.

“Help, police, someone!” Exton was screaming.

Joel lifted his head. Why wasn’t he dead? The grass was lit only by a lantern shining through the window of the office building. The chalklings quivered nearby, surrounding him, their figures shaking. Small hands, eyes, faces, legs, claws formed periodically around whirling, tempestuous chalk bodies.

They did not advance.

Joel raised himself up on his arms. Then he saw it: the gold dollar Melody had given him. It had fallen from his pocket and lay sparkling on the grass.

The gears inside it ticked quietly, and the chalklings shied away from it. Several of them tested forward, but they were reticent.

There was a sudden splash, and one of the chalklings washed away in a wave of liquid.

“Quickly, Joel,” Exton said, holding out his hand from a short distance away, an empty bucket in his other hand. Joel scrambled to his feet, snatching the gold coin and dashing through the hole Exton had made in the ring of chalklings.

Exton rushed back into the office building.

“Exton!” Joel said, following him through the doorway and into the office. “We have to run. We can’t stop them here!”

Exton slammed the door shut, ignoring Joel. Then he knelt to the floor and pulled out a piece of chalk. He drew a line in front of the doorway, then up the sides of the wall and around the doorway. He stepped back.

The chalklings stopped outside. Joel could just barely see them begin attacking the line. Exton proceeded to draw another one around Joel and himself, boxing them in.

“Exton,” Joel said. “You’re a Rithmatist!”

“A failed one,” Exton admitted, hands shaking. “Haven’t carried chalk in years. But, well, with all the problems here at the school…”

Across the room, chalklings moved across the windowpanes, looking for other ways in. A single lantern flickered, giving the office a shadowy illumination.

“What’s going on?” Exton asked. “Why were they chasing you?”

“I don’t know,” Joel said, testing the Line of Forbiddance around them. It wasn’t drawn particularly well, and wouldn’t hold for long against the chalklings.

“Do you have any more acid?” Joel asked.

Exton nodded toward a second bucket nearby, within their defensive square. Joel grabbed it.

“It’s the last one,” Exton said, wringing his hands. “Harding left the two here for us.”

Joel glanced at the chalklings, visible under the door, attacking at Exton’s line. He took out the coin.

It had stopped them. Why?

“Exton,” he said, trying to keep the terror from shaking his voice. “We’re going to have to make a run for the gates. The policemen will have more acid there.”

“Run?” Exton said. “I … I can’t run! I’m in no shape to keep ahead of chalklings!”

He was right. Portly as he was, Exton wouldn’t be able to keep up for long. Joel felt his hands shaking, so he clenched his fists. He knelt down, watching the chalklings beyond the Line of Forbiddance. They were chewing through it at an alarming rate.

Joel took the coin and snapped it to the ground behind the line. The chalklings shied away.

Then, tentatively, they came back and began to work on the Line of Forbiddance again.

Blast, Joel thought. So it won’t stop them, not for good. He and Exton were in trouble. Serious trouble. He turned to Exton, who was wiping his brow with a handkerchief.

“Draw another box around yourself,” Joel said.

“What?”

“Draw as many lines as you can,” Joel said. “Don’t let them touch each other except at corners. Wait here.” Joel turned toward the door. “I’m going for help.”

“Joel, those things are out there.” Exton jumped as the window cracked. He glanced toward the glass, where a couple of chalklings were attacking, scraping at the glass with a terrible sound. It cracked further. “They’ll be in here soon!”

Joel took a deep breath. “I’m not going to sit here like Herman and Charles did, waiting for my defenses to be breached. I can make it to the gates—it’s just a short distance.”

“Joel, I—”

“Draw the lines!” Joel yelled.

Exton fumbled, then went down on his knees, boxing himself inside a set of Lines of Forbiddance. Joel turned the coin over in his palm.

Then he picked up the bucket and splashed most of its contents beneath the door, washing away the Line of Forbiddance. The chalklings outside washed away like dirt sprayed off a white wall. Joel threw open the door and, without looking back, took off at a charge toward the gates to the academy.

He knew he’d never be able to run with a bucket of liquid, so he tossed it behind him.

He ran, holding the coin.

What would happen to him if the gates weren’t guarded? What if the Scribbler had managed to kill the policemen or make a distraction?

Joel would die. His skin ripped from his flesh, his eyes gouged out. Just like the people in Mary Rowlandson’s narrative.

No, he thought with determination. She survived to write her story.

I’ll survive to write mine!

He yelled, pushing himself in a dash over the dark landscape. Ahead, he saw lights.

People moved near them.

“Halt!” one of the officers said.

“Chalklings!” Joel screamed. “They’re following me!”

The officers scattered at his call, grabbing buckets. Joel was thankful for Harding’s sense of preparation, as the men didn’t even stop to think or question. They formed a defensive bucket line as Joel charged between them and collapsed to his knees, puffing and exhausted, his heart racing.

He twisted about, leaning one hand against the ground. There had been four chalklings following him—more than enough to kill him. They had stopped in the near darkness, barely visible from the gates.

“By the Master,” one of the police officers whispered. “What are they waiting for?”

“Steady,” said one of the others, holding his bucket.

“Should we charge?” asked another.

“Steady,” the first said.

The chalklings scrambled away, disappearing into the night.

Joel wheezed in exhaustion, falling backward to the ground and lying on his back. “Another man,” he said between breaths, “is trapped inside the office building. You’ve got to help him.”

One of the policemen pointed, motioning for a squad of four to go that direction. He took his gun and fired it upward. It made a crack of sound as the springs released and the bullet ripped through the air.

Joel lay, sweating, shaking. The officers held their buckets, nervous, until Harding raced into sight from the east, riding his springwork charger. He had his rifle out.

“Chalklings, sir!” one of the officers yelled. “At the office building!”

Harding cursed. “Send three men to alert the patrols around the Rithmatist barracks!” he yelled, turning his horse and galloping toward the office. He slung his rifle over his shoulder as he went, trading it for what looked to be a wineskin filled with acid.

Joel simply lay, trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened.

Someone tried to kill me.

Two hours later, Joel sat in Professor Fitch’s office, holding a cup of warmed cocoa, his mother in tears at his side. She alternated between hugging him and speaking sternly with Inspector Harding for not setting patrols to protect the non-Rithmatists.

Professor Fitch sat bleary-eyed, looking stunned after hearing what had happened. Exton was, apparently, all right—though the police were speaking with him back at the office building.

Harding stood with two policemen a short distance away. All of the people crowded the small, hallwaylike office.

Joel couldn’t stop himself from shaking. It felt shameful. He’d almost died. Every time he considered that, he felt unsteady.

“Joel,” Fitch said. “Lad, are you sure you’re all right?”

Joel nodded, then took a sip of his drink.

“I’m sorry, Son,” said his mother. “I’m a bad mother. I shouldn’t stay out all night!”

“You act like it’s your fault,” Joel said quietly.

“Well, it—”

“No, Mother,” Joel said. “If you’d been there, you might have been killed. It’s better that you were away.”

She sat back on her stool, still looking troubled.

Harding dismissed his officers, then approached Joel. “Soldier, we found the patterns you mentioned. There were five—one on the wall outside your room, then four spaced along the ground in the direction you ran. They ended in a box of Lines of Forbiddance. If you hadn’t thought as quickly as you did, you would have been trapped.”

Joel nodded. His mother began crying again.

“I have the entire campus on alert, soldier,” Harding said. “You did well tonight. Very well. Quick thinking, bravery, physical adeptness. I’m impressed.”

“I nearly wet myself,” Joel whispered.

Harding snorted. “I’ve seen men twice your age freeze in combat when they saw their first chalkling. You did an amazing job. Might well have just solved this case.”

Joel looked up with surprise. “What?”

“I can’t speak now,” Harding said, raising a hand. “But if my suspicions prove to be correct, I’ll have made an arrest by the morning. You should get some sleep, now.” He hesitated. “If this were the battlefield, son, I’d put you in for highest honors.”

“I…” Joel said. “I don’t know that I can go back to the workshop to sleep.…”

“The lad and his mother can stay here,” Fitch said, rising. “I’ll stay in one of the empty rooms.”

“Excellent,” Harding said. “Ms. Saxon, I will have ten men with acid guarding this doorway all night, two inside the room, if you wish.”

“Yes,” she said, “please.”

“Try not to be too worried,” Harding said. “I’m sure the worst of this is through. Plus, as I understand, you have an important day tomorrow, Joel.”

The inception ceremony. Joel had almost forgotten about it. He nodded, bidding the inspector farewell. Harding marched out and closed the door.

“Well,” Fitch said. “You can see that the bed is already made, and Joel, there are extra blankets underneath for you to sleep on the floor. I hope that’s all right?”

“It’s fine,” Joel said.

“Joel, lad,” Fitch said. “You really did do well.”

“I ran,” Joel said quietly. “It’s the only thing I could do. I should have had acid at the room, and—”

“And what, lad?” Fitch asked. “Thrown one bucket while the other chalklings swarmed you? A single man can’t hold the front against chalklings—you learn that quickly in Nebrask. It takes a bucket brigade, dozens of men, to keep a group of the things back.”

Joel looked down.

Fitch knelt. “Joel. If it’s any help, I can imagine what it feels like. I … well, you know I never did very well at Nebrask. The first time I saw a chalkling charge, I could barely keep my lines straight. I can’t even duel another person and keep my wits. Harding is right—you did very well tonight.”

I want to be able to do more, Joel thought. Fight.

“Exton is a Rithmatist,” he said out loud.

“Yes,” Fitch said. “He was expelled from the Rithmatic school his early years at Armedius for certain … complications. It happens very rarely.”

“I remember you talking about that,” Joel said. “To Melody. Professor, I want you to draw that new line we found, the one with swirls.”

“Now?” Fitch asked.

“Yes.”

“Honey,” his mother said, “you need rest.”

“Just do this one thing, Professor,” Joel said. “Then I’ll go to bed.”

“Yes, well, all right,” Fitch said, getting out his chalk. He knelt to begin drawing on the floor.

“It makes things quiet,” Joel said. “You have to know that. It sucks in sound.”

“How do you know…?” His voice grew much quieter when he finished the drawing.

Fitch blinked, then looked up at Joel. “Well, that’s something,” he said, but the voice sounded far diminished, as if he were distant.

Joel took a deep breath, then tried to yell, “I know!” That was dampened even further, so it came out as a whisper. When he whispered, however, that sound came out normally.

Fitch dismissed the line. “Amazing.”

Joel nodded. “The ones we found at the crime scenes no longer worked, so the line must run out of power after a time, or something like that.”

“Joel,” Fitch said, “do you realize what you just did? You solved the problem your father spent his life trying to uncover.”

“It was easy,” Joel said, suddenly feeling very tired. “Someone gave me the answer—they tried to kill me with it.”

CHAPTER

Harding arrested Exton early the next morning.

Joel heard about it from Fitch as they crossed the green on their way toward the cathedral for Joel’s inception. Joel’s mother held to his arm, as if afraid some beast were going to appear out of nowhere and snatch him away.

“He arrested Exton?” Joel demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, hum,” Fitch said. “Murder rarely makes sense. I can see why you might be shocked. Exton was a friend of mine too. And yet, he never did like Rithmatists. Ever since he was expelled.”

“But he came back to work here!”

“Those who have intense hatred often are fascinated by the thing they detest,” Fitch said. “You saw that drawing at Charles’s house—the man with the bowler and the cane. It looks an awful lot like Exton.”

“It looks like a lot of people,” Joel said. “Half the men in the city wear bowlers and carry canes! It was a small chalk sketch. They can’t use that as proof.”

“Exton knew where all of the Rithmatist children lived,” Fitch said. “He had access to their records.”

Joel fell silent. They were fairly good arguments. But Exton? Grumbling yet good-natured Exton?

“Don’t worry about it, Son,” his mother said. “If he’s innocent, I’m sure the courts will determine that. You need to be ready. If you’re going to be incepted, you should be focused on the Master.”

“No,” Joel said. “I want to talk to Harding. My inception…” It couldn’t wait. Not again. But this was important. “Where is he?”

They found Harding directing a squad of police officers who were searching through the campus office. Principal York stood a distance off, seeming very dissatisfied, a weeping Florence beside him. She waved to Joel. “Joel!” she called. “Tell them what madness this is! Exton would never hurt anyone! He was such a dear.”

The police officer at her side quieted her—he was apparently questioning both her and the principal. Inspector Harding stood at the office doorway, leafing through some notes. He looked up as Joel approached. “Ah,” he said. “The young hero. Shouldn’t you be somewhere, lad? Actually, as I consider it, you should have an escort. I’ll send a few soldiers with you to the chapel.”

“Is all of that really necessary?” Fitch asked. “I mean, since you have someone in custody…”

“I’m afraid it is necessary,” Harding said. “Every good investigator knows that you don’t stop searching just because you make an arrest. We won’t be done until we know who Exton was working with, and where he hid the bodies … er, where he is keeping the children.”

Joel’s mother paled at that last comment.

“Inspector,” Joel said, “can I talk to you alone for a moment?”

Harding nodded, walking with Joel a short distance.

“Are you sure you have the right man, Inspector?” Joel asked.

“I don’t arrest a man unless I’m sure, son.”

“Exton saved me last night.”

“No, lad,” Fitch said. “He saved himself. Do you know why he got expelled from the Rithmatic program thirty years ago?”

Joel shook his head.

“Because he couldn’t control his chalklings,” Harding said. “He was too much of a danger to send to Nebrask. You saw how wiggly those chalklings were. They didn’t have form or shape because they were drawn so poorly. Exton set them against you, but he couldn’t really control them, and so when you led them back against him, he had no choice but to lock them out.”

“I don’t believe it,” Joel said. “Harding, this is wrong. I know he didn’t like Rithmatists, but that’s not enough of a reason to arrest a man! Half of the people in the Isles seem to hate them these days.”

“Did Exton come to your aid immediately?” Harding asked. “Last night?”

“No,” Joel said, remembering his fall and Exton screaming. “He was just scared, and he did help eventually. Inspector, I know Exton. He wouldn’t do something like this.”

“The minds of killers are strange things, Joel,” Harding said. “Often, people are shocked or surprised that people they know could turn out to be such monsters. This is confidential information, but we found items belonging to the three missing students in Exton’s desk.”

“You did?” Joel asked.

“Yes,” Harding said. “And pages and pages of ranting anger about Rithmatists in his room. Hatred, talk of … well, unpleasant things. I’ve seen it before in the obsessed. It’s always the ones you don’t expect. Fitch tipped me off about the clerk a few days back; something reminded him that Exton had once attended Armedius.”

“The census records,” Joel said. “I was there when Fitch remembered.”

“Ah yes,” Harding said. “Well, I now wish I’d been more quick to listen to the professor! I began investigating Exton quietly, but I didn’t move quickly enough. I only put the pieces together when you were attacked last night.”

“Because of the wiggly lines?” Joel asked.

“No, actually,” Harding said. “Because of what happened yesterday afternoon in the office. You were there, talking to Fitch, and he praised how much of a help you’d been to the process of finding the Scribbler. Well, when I heard you’d been attacked, my mind started working. Who would have a motive to kill you? Only someone who knew how valuable you were to Fitch’s work.

“Exton overhead that, son. He must have been afraid that you’d connect him to the new Rithmatic line. He probably saw the line when your father was working on it—your father approached the principal for funding to help him discover how the line worked. It wasn’t until some of my men searched his quarters and his desk that we found the truly disturbing evidence, though.”

Joel shook his head. Exton. Could it actually have been him? The realization that it could have been someone so close, someone he knew and understood, was almost as troubling as the attack.

Things belonging to the three students, in his desk, Joel thought, cold. “The objects … maybe he had them for … I don’t know, reasons relating to the case? Had he gathered them from the students’ dorms to send to the families?”

“York says he ordered nothing of the sort,” Harding said. “No questions remain except for the locations of the children. I won’t lie to you, lad. I think they’re probably dead, buried somewhere. We’ll have to interrogate Exton to find the answers.

“This is disgraceful business, all of it. I feel terrible that it happened on my watch. I don’t know what the ramifications will be, either. The son of a knight-senator dead, a man Principal York hired responsible…”

Joel nodded numbly. He didn’t buy it, not completely. Something was off. But he needed time to think about it.

“Exton,” he said. “When will he be tried?”

“Cases like these take months,” Harding said. “It won’t be for a while, but we’ll need you as a witness.”

“You’re going to keep the campus on lockdown?”

Harding nodded. “For at least another week, with a careful eye on all of the Rithmatist students. Like I said. An arrest is no reason to get sloppy.”

Then I have time, Joel thought. Exton won’t be tried for a while, and the campus is still safe. If it ever was.

That seemed enough for now. Joel was exhausted, worn thin, and he still had his inception to deal with. He would do that, then maybe have time to think, figure out what was wrong with all of this.

“I have a request of you,” Joel said. “My friend, Melody. I want her to attend my inception. Will you let her out of the lockdown for today?”

“Is she that redheaded troublemaker?” Harding asked.

Joel nodded, grimacing slightly.

“Well, for you, all right,” Harding said. He spoke to a couple of officers, who rushed off to fetch her.

Joel waited, feeling terrible for Exton sitting in jail. Potentially becoming a Rithmatist is important, Joel thought. I have to go through with this. If I’m one of them, my words will hold more weight.

The officers eventually returned with Melody, her red hair starkly visible in the distance. When she got close, she ran toward him.

Joel nodded to Harding and walked over to meet her.

“You,” she said, pointing, “are in serious trouble.”

“What?” Joel asked.

“You went on an adventure, you nearly got killed, you fought chalklings, and you didn’t invite me!”

He rolled his eyes.

“Honestly,” she said. “That was terribly thoughtless of you. What good is having friends if they don’t put you in mortal peril every once in a while?”

“You might even call it tragic,” Joel said, smiling wanly and joining his mother and Professor Fitch.

“Nah,” Melody said. “I’m thinking I need a new word. Tragic just doesn’t have the effect it once did. What do you think of appalling?”

“Might work,” Joel said. “Shall we go, then?”

The others nodded, and they again began walking toward the campus gates, accompanied by several of Harding’s guards.

“I guess I’m happy you’re all right,” Melody said. “News of what happened is all over the Rithmatic dorm. Most of the others are red in the face, thinking that the puzzle was solved and they were saved by a non-Rithmatist. Of course, half of the red-facedness is probably because none of us can leave yet.”

“Yeah,” Joel said. “Harding’s a careful guy. I think he knows what he’s doing.”

“You believe him, then?” Melody said. “About Exton, I mean.”

Things belonging to each of the students, Joel thought. And pages of rants about wanting revenge against them.…

They walked the same path Joel had run the night before, terrified in the dark, approaching the police officers. “I don’t know,” he said.

Joel remembered much of what Father Stewart said from the last time he’d gone through an inception ceremony. He’d been less nervous that time. Perhaps he’d been too young to realize what he was getting himself into.

Joel’s knees ached as he knelt in a white robe before Father Stewart, who sprinkled him with water and anointed him with oil. They had to go through the whole ceremony again if Joel wanted to enter the chamber of inception.

Why did everything have to happen at once? He was still fatigued from lack of sleep, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Exton. The man had seemed truly frightened. But he would have been, if his own chalklings had come back to attack him.

Joel felt like he had been swept up in something so much larger than he was. There were new Rithmatic lines. He’d solved his father’s quest, yet wouldn’t get paid for it—all of his father’s contracts of patronage had expired when no line had been produced within five years. Still, the world would be shaken by the discovery of a Rithmatic pattern that was so different from the others.

Father Stewart intoned something in Old English, barely recognizable to Joel as from scripture. Above, the apostles turned their springwork heads. To his right, down a hallway, PreSaint Euclid stood inside a mural dedicated to the triangle.

Joel was about to be one of the oldest nonconverts to ever go through the inception ceremony. The world seemed to be becoming a more uncertain place. The disappearances—probably deaths—of Armedius students made the islands bristle, and there was talk of another civil war. The realities of world politics were starting to seem more and more real to Joel. More and more frightening.

Life wasn’t simple. It never had been simple. He just hadn’t known.

But how does Nalizar play into all of this? Joel thought. I still don’t trust that man. Exton had expressed dislike of Nalizar on several occasions, but perhaps it was something to think about. Could he have framed Exton?

Perhaps Joel just wanted to find that Nalizar was doing something nefarious.

Father Stewart stopped talking. Joel blinked, realizing he hadn’t been paying attention. He looked up, and Father Stewart nodded, his thin white beard shaking. He gestured toward the chamber of inception behind the altar.

Joel stood up. Fitch, his mother, and Melody sat alone on the pews—the regular inception ceremony for the eight-year-olds wouldn’t come for another hour yet. The broad, vast cathedral hall sparkled with the light of stained glass windows and delicate murals.

Joel walked quietly around the altar toward the boxy chamber. The door was set with a six-point circle. Joel regarded it, then fished the coin out of his pocket and held it up.

The main gear moving inside had six teeth. The center of each tooth corresponded to the location of one of the six points. The smaller gear to the right had only four teeth. The one to the left, nine teeth, spaced unevenly. The three clicked together in a pattern, one that had to be perfectly attuned to work with the irregular nine-tooth gear.

Huh, Joel thought, tucking the coin in his pocket. Then he pushed open the door.

Inside, he found a white marble room containing a cushion for kneeling and a small altar made from a marble block, topped by a cushion to rest his elbows on. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the room—though a springwork lantern shone quite brightly from above, mounted in a crystalline casing so that it cast sparkling light on the walls.

Joel stood, waiting, heart thumping. Nothing happened. Hesitantly, he knelt down, but didn’t know what to say.

That was another piece in this whole puzzle. Was there really a Master up in heaven? People like Mary Rowlandson—the colonist he’d read about the night before—believed in God.

The wild chalklings hadn’t killed her. They’d kept her prisoner, always stopping her from fleeing. Nobody knew their motives for such an act.

She’d eventually escaped, partially due to the efforts of her husband and some other colonial men. Had her survival been directed by the Master, or had it been simple luck? What did Joel believe?

“I don’t know what to say,” Joel said. “I figure that if you are there, you’ll be angry if I claim to believe when I don’t. The truth is, I’m not sure I don’t believe, either. You might be there. I hope you are, I guess.

“Either way, I do want to be a Rithmatist. Even with all of the problems it will cause. I … I need the power to fight them. I don’t want to run again.

“I’ll be a good Rithmatist. I know the defenses better than almost anyone else on campus. I’ll defend the Isles at Nebrask. I will serve. Just let me be a Rithmatist.”

Nothing happened. Joel stood. Most people went in and came out quickly, so he figured that there was no point in waiting around. Either he’d be able to draw the lines when he left, or he wouldn’t.

He turned to leave.

Something stood in the room behind him.

He jumped, stumbling back, almost falling over the small altar. The thing behind him was a brilliant white. It stood as high as Joel did, and was in the shape of a man—but a very thin one, with spindly arms and only a curved line for a head. It held what appeared to be a crude bow in one hand.

The thing looked as if it had been drawn, but it didn’t stick to the walls or floors like a chalkling. Its form was primitive, like the ancient drawings one might find on the side of a cliff.

Suddenly, Joel remembered the story he’d read from before, the tale of the explorer who had found a canyon where the drawings danced.

It didn’t move. Joel hesitantly leaned to the side and could see that the thing almost disappeared when looked at from that angle.

Joel leaned back to look at it from the front. What would it do? He took a hesitant step forward, reaching out. He paused, then touched the thing.

It shook violently, then fell to the ground, pasting itself to the floor like a chalk drawing. Joel stumbled back as the thing shot away underneath the altar.

Joel dropped to his knees, noticing a slit at the base of the altar. There was darkness beyond.

“No,” Joel whispered, reaching out. “Please. Come back!”

He knelt there for the better part of an hour. A knock finally came at the far door.

He opened it and found Father Stewart standing outside. “Come, child,” he said. “The others needing inception will arrive soon. Whatever has happened has happened, and we shall see the result.”

He held out a piece of chalk.

Joel left the chamber feeling shocked and confused. He took the chalk numbly, walking over to a stone placed on the ground for the purpose of drawing. He knelt down. Melody, Fitch, and his mother approached.

Joel drew a Line of Forbiddance on the top of the block. Melody reached out with an anxious hand, but Joel knew what would happen.

Her hand passed through the plane above the line. Her face fell.

Father Stewart looked troubled. “Well, son, it appears that the Master has other plans for you. In his name, I pronounce you a full member of the Church of the Monarch.” He hesitated. “Do not see this as a failure. Go, and the Master will lead you to the path he has chosen.” It was the same thing that Stewart had told Joel eight years ago.

“No,” Melody said. “This isn’t right! It was supposed to … supposed to be different this time…”

“It’s all right,” Joel said, standing. He felt so tired. With a crushing sense of defeat on top of that, making it difficult for him to breathe.

Mostly, he just wanted to be alone. He turned and walked slowly from the cathedral and back toward campus.

CHAPTER

Joel slept through most of the day, but didn’t try to go to bed that night. He sat up at his father’s table, a springwork lantern whirring on the wall behind him.

He’d cleaned the books off the table, making way for his father’s old notes and annotations, which he’d placed alongside a few pieces of the man’s best chalk. The notes and diagrams seemed unimportant. The mystery had been solved. The problems were over.

Joel wasn’t a Rithmatist. He’d failed his father.

Stop that, he told himself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

He wanted to throw the table over and scream. He wanted to break the pieces of chalk, then grind them to dust. Why had he dared hope? He’d known that very few people got chosen.

So much about life was disappointment. He often wondered how humankind endured so long, and if the few moments when things went right really made up for all the rest.

This was how it ended. Joel, back where he had begun, the same as before. He’d done too poorly in his classes to earn himself further education once he was done with Armedius. Now he didn’t even have the slight, buried hope that he might find a way to be a Rithmatist.

The three students who had been taken were dead. Gone, left in unmarked graves by Exton. The killer had been stopped, but what did that mean to the families who had lost children? Their pain would continue.

He leaned forward. “Why?” he asked of the papers and notes. “Why does everything turn out like this?”

His father’s work would be forgotten in the light of Exton’s horrible deeds. The clerk would be remembered as a murderer, but also as the man who had finally solved the mystery of a new Rithmatic line.

How? Joel thought. How did he solve that mystery? How did Exton, a man who failed his classes, discover things that no Rithmatic scholar has been able to?

Joel stood up, pacing back and forth. His father’s notes continued to confront him, seeming to shine in the light of the lantern.

Joel walked over, digging through them, trying to find the very oldest of the notes. He came up with a yellowed piece of paper, browning on one edge.

I traveled again to the fronts of Nebrask. And discovered very little. Men speak of strange happenings all the time, but they never seem to occur when I am there.

I remain convinced that there are other lines. I need to know what they do before I can determine anything else.

The page had a drawn symbol at the bottom, the Line of Silencing, with its four loops. “Where?” Joel asked. “Where did you get this, Father? How did you discover it? At Nebrask?”

If that had been the case, then others would know about it. Surely the Rithmatists on the battlefront, if they saw lines like these, would intuit their meaning. And who would draw them? Wild chalklings didn’t draw lines. Did they?

Joel put the sheet aside, looking through his father’s log, trying to date when he’d written that particular passage.

The last date on the log was the day before his father had died. It listed Nebrask as the location of that trip.

Joel sat down, thinking about that. He flipped back to the very first dates of travel. A visit to the island of Zona Arida.

Zona Arida, near Bonneville and Texas. They were all southwestern islands. Joel’s father had gone there several times, according to the logs.

Joel frowned, then glanced at the books on the floor. One was the one that Nalizar had checked out, about further Rithmatic lines. Joel picked it up and opened it to the back, looking at the stamped card that listed the book’s history. The volume had only been checked out a few times over the years.

Joel’s father was one of the first on the list. His father’s first visit to Zona Arida had come only a few weeks after he had checked out the book.

Joel flipped open the volume, scanning the chapter lists. One was called “Historical New-Line Theories.” He flipped to that one, skimming the contents by the light of a single lantern. It took several hours to find what he wanted.

Some early explorers reported strange designs upon the cliffs of these islands in the southwest. We cannot know who created them, since much of America was uninhabited at the time of European arrival.

Some have claimed that lines drawn after these patterns have Rithmatic properties. Most scholars dismiss this. Many odd shapes can be drawn and gain chalkling life from a Line of Making. That does not make them a new line.

Joel turned the next page. There, facing him, was a sketch of the very creature he’d seen in the chamber of inception earlier that day.

What is going on here? Joel thought, reading the caption to the picture. It read: One of the many sketches made by Captain Estevez during his explorations of Zona Arida Island.

Joel blinked, then looked back at his table.

Something tapped at his window.

He yelped, jumping up out of his chair. He reached for the bucket of acid he’d taken from Inspector Harding, but then saw what was on the other side of the window.

Red hair, wide eyes. Melody grinned at him, waving. Joel checked the clock. It was two in the morning.

He groaned, walking out and then climbing the steps to open the dormitory door, which was locked. Melody stood outside. Her skirt was scuffed, and there were twigs in her hair.

“Melody,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Standing in the cold,” she said. “Aren’t you going to invite a lady in?”

“I don’t know if it would be proper.…”

She pushed her way in anyway, walking down to the workroom. Joel sighed, closing the door and following her. Inside, she turned to him, hands on hips. “This,” she said, “is appalling.”

“What?” he asked.

“It really doesn’t work as well as the word ‘tragic,’ does it?” She flopped down into a chair. “I need a different word.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m annoyed,” she said, ignoring his question. “They’ve had us locked up all day. You’re an insomniac. I figured I could come bug you.”

“You snuck past the guards?”

“Out the window. Second story. There’s a tree close by. Harder to climb down than it looks.”

“You’re lucky the policemen didn’t catch you.”

“Nah,” she said. “They aren’t there.”

“What?”

“Oh, there are a couple at the main door,” she said. “But only those two. The ones that patrolled below the windows left a short time ago. Guess they changed shift or something. Anyway, that’s not important. Joel, the important thing is this tragedy I’m trying to tell you about.”

“You being locked up?”

“That,” she said. “And Exton being locked up. He didn’t do it, Joel. I know he didn’t. The guy gave me half of his sandwich once.”

“That’s a reason for him not being a murderer?”

“It’s more than that,” Melody said. “He’s a nice man. He grumbles a lot, but I like him. He has a kind heart. He’s also smart.”

“The person doing this was smart.”

“Exactly. Why would Exton attack the son of a knight-senator? That’s a stupid move for him, if he wanted to remain inconspicuous. That’s the part of this that doesn’t make sense. We should be asking why—why attack Charles? If we knew that, I’ll bet the real motive for all of this would come together.”

Joel sat thoughtfully.

“Harding has evidence against Exton,” Joel said.

“So?”

“So,” Joel said. “That’s usually what proves that a person is guilty.”

“I don’t believe it,” Melody said. “Look, if Exton got kicked out of here all those years ago, then how in the world was he a good enough Rithmatist to create a line nobody else knew of?”

“Yeah. I know.” He stood. “Come on,” he said, walking out the door.

Melody followed. “Where are we going?”

“Professor Fitch’s office,” Joel said, crossing the dark campus. They walked in silence for a time before Joel noticed it. “Where are the police patrols?”

“I don’t know,” Melody said. “See, I told you.”

Joel hastened his step. They reached Warding Hall, then rushed up the stairs. Joel pounded on the door for a while, and eventually a very groggy Professor Fitch answered the door. “Hum?”

“Professor,” Joel said. “I think something’s going on.”

Fitch yawned. “What time is it?”

“Early,” Joel said. “Look, Professor, you saw the lines that were intended to trap me? The cage of Lines of Forbiddance that Exton supposedly drew?”

“Yes?” Fitch asked.

“How well were the lines drawn?”

“They were good. Expertly straight.”

“Professor,” Joel said, “I saw lines that Exton drew at the door. They weren’t shaped right. He did a terrible job.”

“So he was trying to fool you, Joel.”

“No,” Joel said. “He was afraid for his life. I saw it in his eyes. He wouldn’t have drawn poor lines in that case! Professor, what if Nalizar—”

“Joel!” Fitch snapped. “I’m tired of your fixation on Professor Nalizar! I … well … I hate raising my voice, but I’m just fed up! You wake me up at awful hours, talking about Nalizar? He didn’t do it, no matter how badly you want him to have.”

Joel fell silent.

Fitch rubbed his eyes. “I don’t mean to be testy. It’s just … well, talk to me in the morning.”

With that, and a yawn, Fitch closed the door.

“Great,” Melody said.

“He’s not good with lack of sleep,” Joel said. “Never has been.”

“So what now?” Melody asked.

“Let’s go talk to the policemen at the front of your dormitory,” Joel said, rushing down the stairs. “See why the others aren’t on their patrol.”

They crossed the campus again in the dark, and Joel began to wish he’d brought that bucket of acid with him. But surely Harding’s men would—

He pulled up short. The Rithmatic student dormitory was straight ahead, and the door was open. Two forms lay on the grass in front of it.

“Dusts!” Joel said, pelting forward, Melody at his side. The forms proved to be the policemen. Joel checked the pulse of the first one with nervous fingers.

“Alive,” Joel said. “But unconscious.” He moved over to the other one, finding that he was still alive as well.

“Uh, Joel,” Melody said. “You remember what I said this morning, about being angry at you for not inviting me to be attacked with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I completely take that back.”

Joel looked up at the open doorway. Light reflected distantly inside.

“Go for help,” he said.

“Where?”

“The front gates,” he said. “The office. I don’t know! Just find it. I’m going to see who’s inside.”

“Joel, you’re not a Rithmatist. What can you do?”

“People could be dying in there, Melody.”

“I’m the Rithmatist.”

“If the Scribbler really is in there,” Joel said, “it won’t matter which of us goes in. Your lines will be little defense against him. Go!”

Melody stood for a moment, then bolted away at a dash.

Joel looked at the open doorway. What am I doing?

He gritted his teeth, slipping inside. At the corner, he found some buckets of acid, and he felt more confident carrying one as he snuck up the stairs. Boys were on the first floor, with girls on the second, some families of professors on the third. There were hall mothers stationed on the second floor to keep watch. If Joel could find one of them, perhaps she could help.

He rounded the top of the stairs on the second floor, slipping into the hallway. It appeared empty.

He heard something on the stairs behind him.

He looked with a panic to see something coming down from the third floor, moving in the darkness there. Barely thinking, Joel hefted his bucket of acid and tossed it.

The something turned out to be a person. The wave of acid completely drenched the surprised Nalizar.

The professor gasped, rubbing his eyes, and Joel yelped, scrambling away down the second-floor hallway. In his panicked mind, he thought to make for Melody’s room, where he could use the aforementioned tree to climb away. He heard Nalizar follow, cursing.

Joel smacked straight into something invisible. It threw him backward to the ground, stunned. The hallway was barely lit, and he hadn’t seen the Line of Forbiddance on the ground.

“Foolish child,” Nalizar said, grabbing him by the shoulder.

Joel yelled and punched as hard as he could at Nalizar’s gut. Nalizar grunted, but didn’t let go. Instead, he stuck his foot out, scraping it along the ground. It left a chalk line behind it.

Chalk on the bottom tip of the shoe, Joel thought. Good idea. Hard to draw straight lines, but good idea.

Nalizar shoved Joel to the floor, then finished a Box of Forbiddance around him. Joel groaned at the pain in his arm—Nalizar had a powerful grip.

Trapped.

Joel cried out, feeling at the invisible box. It was solid.

“Idiot,” Nalizar said, wiping his face with a dry section of his coat. “If you live this night, you’re going to owe me a new coat.” The professor’s skin looked irritated from the acid, and his eyes were bloodshot. The acid used wasn’t powerful enough to be truly dangerous to a person, however.

“I—” Nalizar said.

One of the doors in the hallway opened and interrupted him. Nalizar spun as a large figure stepped out into the hallway. Joel could just barely make out the face in the dim light.

Inspector Harding.

Nalizar stood for a moment, dripping acid. He glanced at Joel, then back at Harding.

“So,” Nalizar said to Harding, “it is you. I’ve tracked you down at last.”

Harding stood still. In the shadowed light, his domed police officer’s hat looked an awful lot like a bowler. He lowered his rifle, resting his hand on the butt, the tip against the ground. Like a cane.

His hat was pulled down over his eyes so that Joel couldn’t see them. Joel could see the inspector’s ghastly grin. Harding opened his mouth, tipping his head back.

A swarm of squirming chalklings flooded out of his mouth like a torrent, scurrying down his chest and across his body.

Nalizar cursed, dropping to his knees and drawing a circle around himself. Joel watched as Nalizar completed the Easton Defense with quick, careful strokes.

Harding, Joel thought. He said there was a federal police station near Lilly Whiting’s house. And he said he was on patrol in the very area where Herman Libel was taken—Harding claimed that the Scribbler was taunting him by striking so close.

And then Charles Calloway. While we were investigating Charles’s house, Harding mentioned that he’d been there the very evening before, trying to get the family to send their son back to Armedius.

When Harding charged to the gates after being called on the night I was attacked, he came from the east. From the direction of the general campus, not the Rithmatic one. He’d been over there, controlling the chalklings.

Exton wasn’t the only one in the room who heard Professor Fitch say how important I was—Harding was there too.

Dusts!

Joel screamed for help, slamming his fists against the invisible barrier. It all made sense! Why attack the students outside campus? Why take the son of the knight-senator?

To inspire panic. To make the Rithmatic students all congregate at Armedius, rather than staying at their homes. Harding had secured the campus, brought all of the Rithmatists here, including the half who normally lived far away, and had locked them in the dorms.

That way, he had them all together and could take them in one strike.

Joel continued to pound uselessly at the walls of his invisible prison. He yelled, but as soon as his voice reached a certain decibel, the excess vanished. He glanced to the side, and there saw one of the Lines of Silencing, hidden against the white of the painted wall. It was far enough away that it only sucked in his voice when he yelled, not when he spoke normally.

Joel cursed, falling to his knees. Harding dismissed the Line of Forbiddance in the hallway, the one Joel had run into, and the multitude of chalklings swarmed forward and surrounded Professor Nalizar, attacking his defenses. The man worked quickly, reaching out of his circle and drawing Lines of Vigor to shoot off pieces of chalklings. That didn’t seem to have much effect. The formless chalklings just grew the pieces back.

Joel pushed at the base of his prison, looking for the place that felt the weakest. He found a section that Nalizar had drawn with his foot that pushed back with less strength. The chalk there wasn’t as straight.

Joel licked his finger and began to rub at the base of the line. It was a poor tactic. Lines of Forbiddance were the strongest of the four. He could only rub at the side, carefully wearing away the line bit by bit. It was a process that the books said could take hours.

Nalizar was not faring well. Though he’d drawn a brilliant defense, there were just so many chalklings. Inspector Harding stood shadowed in the darkness. He barely seemed to move, just a smiling, dark statue.

His arm moved, the rest of him completely still. He lowered the tip of his rifle, and Joel could see a bit of chalk taped to it. Harding drew a Line of Vigor on the ground.

Only it wasn’t a Line of Vigor. It was too sharp—instead of curves, it had jagged tips. Like the second new Rithmatic line they had found at Lilly Whiting’s house. Joel had almost forgotten about that one.

This new line shot forward like a Line of Vigor, punching through several of Harding’s own chalklings before hitting the defenses. Nalizar cursed, reaching forward to draw a curve and repair the piece that had been blown away.

His sleeve dripped acid. That acid fell right on his circle, making a hole in it. Nalizar stared at the hole, and the chalklings shied away from the acid. Then, one threw itself at the drop, getting dissolved. Another followed. That diluted the acid, for the next one that touched the acid didn’t vanish. It began attacking the sides of the hole the acid had made.

“You are making a mistake,” Nalizar said, looking up at Harding.

Harding drew another jagged line. This one shot through the hole, hitting Nalizar and throwing him backward.

Joel gaped. It’s a Line of Vigor that can affect more than chalk, he realized. That’s … that’s amazing!

The scribbled, shifting chalklings withdrew. Nalizar lay in the middle of his circle, unconscious. Harding smiled, eyes shadowed, then walked to the next door in the hallway, one just to Joel’s right. Harding pushed it open, and Joel could see young women slumbering in the beds inside.

Wild chalklings swarmed in behind Harding and flooded the room. Joel screamed, but the Line of Silencing stole his voice. One of the girls stirred, sitting up.

The chalklings crawled over her, swarming her body. Her mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Another Line of Silencing hung on the wall there, drawn to keep sound from waking the other students.

Joel could only watch, banging against his invisible wall, as the girl shook and writhed, a group of the chalklings climbing into her mouth as she tried to scream. They pinched at her skin, causing pinpricks of blood. More and more of them crawled into her mouth.

She didn’t stop shaking. She shook and shook, spasming, falling to the floor and rolling as she seemed to shrink and flatten. Her figure began to waver. Joel watched, horrified. Soon the girl was indistinguishable from the other scribbled chalklings.

Harding watched with a broad grin, showing teeth, his eyes lost in shadow.

“Why?” Joel demanded of him. “What is going on?”

Harding made no reply as his chalklings took the other girls in the room. One by one, two other girls were consumed and transformed. The awful sight made Joel look away. The chalklings that had been dissolved in the acid were re-forming, pulling themselves out of the pool and coming back to life.

Harding moved to the next room, passing Joel. He opened the door and stepped inside, and Joel could see a Line of Silencing had already been drawn on the door. Harding had probably done them all first.

The scribbled chalklings flooded the hallway behind Harding, then disappeared into the room. Joel felt sick, thinking of the girls sleeping inside. He dropped to his knees and continued scratching at his line, trying to get through. He wasn’t doing much.

A chalkling suddenly moved in front of him and began to attack the line.

Joel jumped back, grabbing his coin and trying to use it to ward the creature away. It ignored both him and the coin.

It was at that moment that Joel realized the chalkling was a unicorn.

He glanced to the side, where a face peeked around the corner ahead of him, farther down the hallway. Melody drew another unicorn, sending it to help the first. Joel stepped back, amazed at how quickly the unicorn made holes in Nalizar’s line.

She really is good with those, Joel thought as they broke through a large enough section for him to squeeze past. Sweating, he dashed to her.

“Melody,” he whispered. As long as he didn’t yell, the Lines of Silencing wouldn’t steal his voice. The sound wouldn’t carry far enough, he guessed, to hit the lines and activate them.

“Joel,” she said. “Something’s very wrong. There aren’t any policemen at the gates or at the office. I tried pounding on the doors of the professors, but nobody answered. Is that Professor Nalizar on the ground?”

“Yes,” Joel said. “Melody, come on, we—”

“You defeated him!” she said with surprise, standing.

“No, I think I was wrong about him,” Joel said urgently. “We need to—”

Harding stepped out of the room and looked toward them. He was between them and the way to the stairwell. Melody screamed, but most of it dampened, and Joel cursed, pulling her after him. Together, they scrambled farther down the hallway.

The dormitory hallway was a square, with rooms on the inside and out. If they could go all the way around, they could get to the stairs.

Melody ran beside him, then suddenly yanked him to the side. “My room,” she said, pointing. “Out the window.”

Joel nodded. She threw open the door, and they were confronted by chalklings crawling in the open window, moving across the walls like a flood of white spiders. Harding had sent them around the outside of the building.

Joel cursed, slamming the door as Melody screamed again. This scream was dampened less than the others; they were getting away from the Lines of Silencing.

Chalklings crawled under the door. Others scurried down the hallway from Harding’s direction. Joel pulled Melody toward the stairs, but froze as he saw another group of chalklings coming from that direction.

They were surrounded.

“Oh dusts, oh dusts, oh dusts,” Melody said. She fell to her knees and drew a circle around them, then added a Square of Forbiddance around it. “We’re doomed. We’re going to die.”

Harding rounded the corner. He was a dark silhouette, stepping quietly, not speaking. He stopped as the chalklings began to work on Melody’s square, then he reached up and twisted the key on the nearby lantern, bringing light to the hallway.

He seemed even more twisted by the half-light than he had in the dimness.

“Talk to me!” Joel said. “Harding, you’re my friend! Why are you doing this? What happened to you out there, in Nebrask?”

Harding began to draw one of his modified Lines of Vigor on the floor. Melody’s square had failed, and the chalklings were starting to work on her circle. They squirmed and shook, as if anticipating biting into Joel’s and Melody’s flesh.

Suddenly, a voice rang in the hallway. Clear, angry.

“You will leave them alone!”

Harding turned toward a figure standing in an open Rithmatic coat at the other end of the hallway, holding a piece of chalk in each hand.

Professor Fitch.

CHAPTER

Professor Fitch was shaking. Joel could see that, even from the distance. The flood of chalklings turned away from Joel and Melody and rushed toward him.

Harding raised his rifle.

Fitch dropped to his knees and drew a Line of Forbiddance on the floor. There was a loud click and a rush of air as the rifle fired.

The bullet shot through the hallway, then hit the line’s wall and froze a few inches from Fitch’s head. The bullet lost its momentum and was pushed back and away. It hit the floor with a clink.

Harding let out his first sound then, a roar of anger. It was quieted by the Lines of Silencing. Still, it was loud enough to make Fitch waver, and he looked up, eyes widening in fear. Hesitating.

Then he looked at Joel and Melody, trapped in their failing circle. Fitch’s jaw set and his hands stopped shaking. He looked down at the flood of chalklings approaching him, and reached out with both hands to snap his chalk to the ground on either side of him.

Then he drew.

Joel stood up straight, watching with awe as Fitch spun about, using his chalk to draw two Lines of Warding, one inside the other, both as perfect as Joel had ever seen. Fitch added smaller circles on the outside, one after another in rapid succession, one hand drawing each circle even as the other drew a Line of Forbiddance inside each one as an anchor.

The Taylor Defense.

“Professor…” Joel whispered. The defense was perfect. Majestic. “I knew you could to it.”

“Yeah, Joel?” Melody said. “Hello. Pay attention. We need to get out of here.”

She knelt down, using her chalk to dismiss the Line of Warding around them.

“No,” Joel said. He looked down at her. “Melody, those chalklings aren’t natural. Fitch can’t fight them; they can’t be destroyed. We need to help him.”

“How?”

Joel looked back. “Dismiss the rest of those lines around us.”

As she did so, Joel knelt down, taking a piece of blue chalk out of his coat pocket.

“Hey, you started carrying some!” Melody exclaimed.

“My father’s chalk,” Joel said, sketching out a long rectangular maze pattern on the floor. “Go draw this in the corridor there. Make it as long as you can, and leave this little section open on the side and at the far end.”

She nodded, then moved over to begin drawing. Joel took his chalk and closed off the hole she left open.

“What good will that do?” she asked, drawing urgently.

“You’ll see,” Joel said, spinning back toward Harding and Fitch. Fitch drew furiously and was faring far better than Nalizar had. He had managed to enclose a couple of the Scribbler’s chalklings within boxes, trapping them.

Unfortunately, his outer defenses were nearly eaten away. He wouldn’t last long like this.

Joel gave Melody as much time as he dared. Then he yelled, “Hey, Harding!”

The inspector turned.

“Wednesday night,” Joel said, “you tried to kill me. Now is your chance. Because if you don’t, I’m going to go get help and—” He cut off, yelping. Apparently Harding didn’t need any encouragement, for a good third of his chalklings began scrambling back down the hallway toward Joel and Melody, taking some of the pressure off the beleaguered Fitch.

Joel turned and dashed down the hallway. Melody had drawn quickly, and while her lines weren’t perfectly straight, they would do. Joel entered the long corridor of chalk she’d made, with Lines of Forbiddance to either side of him, then wove through the short maze of lines.

As he’d expected, the chalklings piled in after him. They could have gotten through to Melody if they’d known that the section of the lines that Joel had drawn wasn’t Rithmatic—but, just like before, chalklings seemed as fooled by a fake line as a human might be, at least at first.

Joel burst through the hole in the end of the small maze. “Close it!”

Melody did so, blocking the chalklings. The things immediately turned around to escape back out the front of the maze.

“Come on!” Joel said, running, Melody at his side. They raced the chalklings, who had to weave through turns to get to the end. Joel and Melody passed through the gap where he had drawn a non-Rithmatic line, then Melody closed off the entrance to the maze.

She stood, puffing, the chalklings inside shaking angrily. They began to attack the walls.

Joel turned around. “Melody!” he said. Another group of chalklings had broken off from Professor Fitch and were heading toward him and Melody.

She yelped, drawing a line across the corridor, then down the sides of the wall to protect her and Joel.

That trapped them again. Harding left the second batch of chalklings there, chewing on the line blocking Joel and Melody from the combat.

“That’s all we can do, Professor!” Joel called, just quiet enough that the Lines of Silencing had no effect. Then, more softly, he added, “Come on.…”

Fitch drew with a look of intense concentration on his face. Every time he seemed to waver, he glanced up at Melody and Joel surrounded by chalklings. His face grew more determined, and he continued his work.

Harding—the Scribbler—growled, then began launching his enhanced Lines of Vigor at Fitch. The professor drew expert Lines of Forbiddance to not just block, but deflect the Lines of Vigor.

Joel watched, breathing quickly, following Fitch’s moves as Melody shored up their defense, drawing reinforcing lines where the chalklings looked like they might be close to getting through.

“Come on…” Joel repeated. “You can do it.”

Fitch worked furiously, drawing with both hands. His defense was expert—he coaxed the chalklings toward weak points, then blocked them off inside Lines of Forbiddance.

Then, with a smile, Fitch reached out and drew a jagged Line of Vigor like Harding had been doing.

It shot across the room and hit the surprised inspector, throwing him backward. Harding hit the ground with a grunt. He groaned, then stood back up, drawing a Circle of Warding around himself, followed by a Line of Forbiddance in front of it.

When did Harding become a Rithmatist? Joel thought, realizing the oddity for the first time. That Line of Warding is almost inhumanly perfect. And he drew it at a distance, with chalk on the end of his rifle!

Fitch wasn’t daunted. He expertly bounced two Lines of Vigor around Harding’s front defending wall. Harding was forced to draw Lines of Forbiddance at his sides.

Fitch then bounced a Line of Vigor off the wall Melody had drawn, hitting the back of Harding’s defense.

“Wow,” Joel said.

Harding bellowed, then drew a line behind himself as well.

“Ha!” Fitch yelled just as the chalklings burst through his circle.

“Professor!” Joel yelled.

Fitch, however, stood up and leaped out of the circle as the chalklings piled into it. They hesitated, and Fitch quickly drew a Line of Forbiddance to block off the circle, trapping them inside his own defense. Then he rushed across the room and drew a Line of Forbiddance across the hallway to trap the chalklings there against Melody’s line.

Finally, he turned toward Harding. The man, whatever he was, stood with eyes shadowed. He no longer smiled, but simply waited. The creature knew that soon, the chalklings would break free and attack again.

“Professor,” Joel called softly, something occurring to him. It was a long shot, but …

Fitch turned toward him.

“A clock,” Joel said. “Find a clock.”

Fitch frowned, but did as requested. He burst into one of the students’ rooms, then came back out with a clock and held it toward Joel. “What do I do with this?”

“Break off the face,” Joel said. “Show the creature the gears inside!”

Fitch did so, desperately prying off the front of the clock. He held it up, showing the gears. Harding shied back, dropping his rifle, raising his hands.

Fitch approached, displaying the ticking gears, the winding springs, the spinning circles. Harding cried out, and in the light of the single lantern, Joel could see the creature’s shadow begin to shake and twist. The shadow fuzzed, coming to look as if it were drawn in charcoal.

“By the Depths!” Fitch said. “A Forgotten!”

“What the dusts is a Forgotten!” Joel said.

“A creature of Nebrask,” Fitch said. “They lead the wild chalklings. But … how did one get all the way here? And attached to Harding! I wasn’t aware that was possible. This is dire, Joel.”

“I figured that last part out,” Joel said. “How do we kill it?”

“Acid,” Fitch said, proffering the clock. “We need acid!”

“Melody, let me out the back.”

“But—”

“Do it!” Joel said.

She reached back, dismissing the line. Joel dashed down the corridor and steps to where the second bucket of acid waited. He grabbed it, then ran back up the stairs. He rounded the hallway in the other direction, passing Nalizar on the ground and coming up behind Professor Fitch.

Joel hesitated beside the professor. Nearby, the chalklings Fitch had trapped inside his defense burst out, swarming across the floor.

Joel took a deep breath, then threw the acid toward Harding’s feet. The acid washed away the Line of Forbiddance and the Circle of Warding, splashing across Harding’s shadow.

That dissolved, as if it were made of charcoal. Or chalk. Blackness melted into the acid.

The inspector screamed, then collapsed to the ground.

The chalklings froze in place.

All fell silent.

Joel waited, muscles tense, watching those chalklings. They continued to remain frozen.

We beat him. We did it!

“My, my,” Fitch said. He reached up to wipe his brow. “I actually won a duel. That’s the first time I’ve actually won! My hands barely shook.”

“You did fantastic, Professor!” Joel said.

“Well, I don’t know about that. But, well, after you children left I just couldn’t sleep. After how I treated you and all. And, hum. Here you’d been right so many times, and I sent you away without even listening. So I came out to find you. Saw the policemen at the front of the building here, and…” He hesitated. “I say,” Fitch said, pointing. “What is happening to them?”

Joel glanced at the chalklings. They were beginning to quiver even more furiously than normal. Then they began to expand.

Uh-oh, Joel thought. “Dismiss the lines boxing them in! Quick!”

The other two gave him incredulous stares.

“Trust me!” Joel said as the chalklings began to take shape. Fitch rushed over to his defense and began to release the chalklings he’d captured in small boxes. Melody gave Joel a “you’d better know what you’re doing” look, then bent down to release her lines.

The first of the chalklings popped into three dimensions, forming the shape of the young woman Joel had seen taken earlier. Fitch exclaimed in surprise, then reached out with a second piece of chalk, releasing the chalklings more quickly before the people inside of them got squished by their confines.

In minutes, Joel, Melody, and Fitch were surrounded by a group of dazed people. Some of them were students—Joel recognized Herman Libel among the group—but many were older Rithmatists in their twenties, wearing the coats of graduates. Rithmatists from the fight at Nebrask.

“William?” Melody asked, looking at one of the younger Rithmatists—a man with red hair.

“Where the dusts am I?” the young man said. “Mel? What the…?”

Melody’s brother trailed off as she grabbed him in an embrace.

At that moment, Joel heard footsteps. A breathless Nalizar appeared around the corner, holding his chalk, still dripping slightly with acid.

“I will save—” he began, then stopped short. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Joel said. “Great timing, Professor.” He sank down, exhausted, leaning back against a wall.

Melody walked over, hands on hips. “Worn out already?” she asked with a smile, her confused brother trailing along behind her.

“Tragic, eh?” Joel asked.

“Definitely.”

CHAPTER

“I suppose we owe an apology to Professor Nalizar, don’t we?” Principal York asked.

Joel shrugged. “I’d apologize to Exton first, sir.”

York chuckled, his mustache quivering. “Already done, lad. Already done.”

They stood outside Warding Hall, groups of people piling in for the Melee. York had declared the campus open again after just one day of chaos following the Scribbler’s defeat. The principal wanted to make a point that Armedius would continue undaunted; he had been certain to publicize not only the return of the missing students, but the dozens of Rithmatists thought lost at Nebrask. The media was having a frenzy with that.

“And not one, but two new Rithmatic lines discovered,” York said, hands behind his back, looking utterly pleased.

“Yeah,” Joel said, a little noncommittal.

York eyed him. “I’ve sent letters to some of my friends who lead the other academies, Joel.”

Joel turned.

“I think that, in light of events, several of them can be persuaded to honor some of their contracts with your father. Armedius certainly will. It may not be the riches your father dreamed of, lad, but I’ll see your mother’s debts paid and then some. We owe you and Professor Fitch.”

Joel grinned. “Your gratitude will include a couple of good seats to the Melee, won’t it?”

“They’re set aside for you, son. Front row.”

“Thanks!”

“I believe that we are the ones who owe you thanks,” York said. To the side, Joel noticed some men in very rich-looking suits approaching. One was Knight-Senator Calloway.

“Ah,” York said. “If you’ll excuse me, there are politicians who need to be entertained.”

“Of course, sir,” Joel said, and York withdrew.

Joel stood for a long while, watching people enter the broad doors, filling the arena inside. Exton approached with Florence. The two of them seemed to argue a lot less frequently lately.

Harding had been relieved of duty, but claimed he didn’t remember anything of what had happened. Joel was inclined to believe the man. He’d seen the change that happened in Harding. The other authorities weren’t as quick to understand. Apparently, a Forgotten had never acted in this manner before.

Joel was beginning to suspect that whatever happened to make Rithmatists in the chamber of inception could happen in Nebrask as well. That book he wasn’t supposed to have read had said the inception ceremony involved something called a Shadowblaze.

He’d seen one in the chamber of inception. He’d asked several other people who hadn’t become Rithmatists, and none had seen one of the things. He already knew that the Rithmatists, Melody included, wouldn’t speak of the experience.

Joel wasn’t certain why he had seen the Shadowblaze, or why he hadn’t become a Rithmatist for it, but his experience hinted that the entire process of inception was far more complex than most people knew.

Harding had no history at all of having Rithmatic abilities, and he could no longer produce lines. Whatever the Forgotten had done to him, it had granted the ability. Was that what a Shadowblaze did for someone during the inception?

That left an uncomfortable knowledge in Joel. There was more than one way to become a Rithmatist. One of those ways involved something dark and murderous. Could there be other ways?

It opened up hope again. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Joel!” Exton said. The stout man hurried over and grabbed Joel’s hand. “Thank you so much, lad. Fitch told me how you continued to believe in me, even when they took me into custody.”

“Harding almost had me convinced,” Joel said. “But some things just didn’t make sense. The inspector must have planted the evidence against you when he was investigating the office.”

Exton nodded. Both Lilly Whiting and Charles Calloway had identified Harding as the Scribbler.

“Well, son,” Exton said. “You are a true friend. I mean it.”

Florence smiled. “Does that mean you’ll stop grumbling at him?”

“I don’t know about that,” Exton said. “Depends on if he’s interrupting my work or not! And, speaking of work, I have to adjudicate the Melee. Goodness help us if I hadn’t been released—nobody else knows the rules to this blasted thing well enough to referee!”

The two of them moved on toward the arena.

Joel continued to wait outside. Traditionally, the Rithmatists didn’t come until most of the seats were filled, and this day was no exception. The students began to arrive, making their way through the doors, where Exton had them draw lots to determine where on the arena floor they—or, if they wanted to work in a team, their group—would begin drawing.

“Hey,” a voice said behind him.

Joel smiled toward Melody. She wore her standard skirt and blouse, though this particular skirt was divided and came down to her ankles to facilitate kneeling and drawing. She probably wore knee pads underneath.

“Come to see me get trounced?” she asked.

“You did pretty well the other night against the chalklings.”

“Those lines barely held them, and you know it.”

“Well, whatever happens today,” Joel said, “you helped rescue about thirty Rithmatists from the Scribbler. The winners of the competition will have to deal with the fact that while you were saving all sixty isles, they were snoozing a few doors away.”

“Good point, that,” Melody agreed. Then she grimaced.

“What?” Joel asked.

She pointed toward a small group of people dressed in Rithmatic coats. Joel recognized her brother, William, among them.

“Parents?” he asked.

She nodded.

They didn’t look like terrible people. True, the mother had very well-styled hair and immaculate makeup, and the father an almost perfectly square jaw and a majestic stance, but …

“I think I see what you mean,” Joel said. “Hard to live up to their standards, eh?”

“Yeah,” Melody said. “Trust me. It’s better to be the son of a chalkmaker.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She sighed with an overly dramatic sound as her parents and brother entered through the doors. “I guess I’d better go get humiliated.”

“I’m sure that whatever happens,” Joel said, “you’ll do it spectacularly.”

She moved on. Joel was about to follow when he saw a set of Rithmatists arrive together. Twelve of them, wearing red shirts with their white pants or skirts. Team Nalizar had arrived.

The professor himself was at their head. How was it that simply by association, he could make a group of students seem more haughty, more exclusive? Nalizar stood beside the doorway with arms folded as they entered one at a time.

Joel gritted his teeth and forced himself to enter the building after Nalizar. He spotted the professor walking down a short hallway to the right, heading toward the stairs up to the observation room.

Joel hurried after. This hall was pretty much empty now, though Joel could hear the buzz of people through the arena doors a short distance away.

“Professor,” Joel said.

Nalizar turned to him, but gave Joel only a quick glance before continuing on his way.

“Professor,” Joel said. “I want to apologize.”

Nalizar turned again, and this time he focused on Joel, as if seeing him for the first time. “You want to apologize for telling people that I was the kidnapper.”

Joel paled.

“Yes,” Nalizar said, “I heard about your accusations.”

“Well, I was wrong,” Joel said. “I’m sorry.”

Nalizar raised an eyebrow, but that was his only response. From him, it seemed like something of an acceptance.

“You came here, to Armedius, chasing Harding,” Joel said.

“Yes,” Nalizar said. “I knew something had gotten loose, but nobody back at Nebrask believed me. Harding seemed like the most likely candidate. I got the authorities to release me on a technicality, then came here. When people started disappearing, I knew I was right. Forgotten can be tricky, however, and I needed proof for an accusation. After all, as you might have figured out, making accusations about innocent people is a terribly unpleasant thing to do.”

Joel gritted his teeth. “What was he, then?”

“A Forgotten,” Nalizar said. “Read the papers. They’ll tell you enough.”

“They don’t know the details. Nobody will speak of them. I was hoping—”

“I am not inclined to speak with non-Rithmatists about such things,” Nalizar snapped.

Joel took a deep breath. “All right.”

Nalizar raised his eyebrow again.

“I don’t want to fight, Professor. In the end, we were working toward the same goal. If we’d helped one another, then perhaps we could have accomplished more.”

“What will accomplish the most,” Nalizar said, “would be if you stayed out of my way. Without your ill-planned dump of acid, I would have had the strength to beat that fool Harding. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get going.”

Nalizar began to walk away.

Would have had the strength…? Joel frowned. “Professor?”

Nalizar stopped. “What is it now?” he said, not turning around.

“I just wanted to wish you luck—like the luck you had two nights ago.”

“What luck two nights ago?”

“The fact that Harding didn’t shoot at you,” Joel said. “He took a shot at Fitch. Yet against you, he didn’t fire his gun, even though you didn’t have a Line of Forbiddance up at first to stop a shot.”

Nalizar stood quietly.

“And,” Joel added, “it’s lucky that he didn’t attack you with his chalklings once you were unconscious. He ignored you and moved on to the students. If I’d been him, I would have turned the major threat—the trained adult Rithmatist—into a chalkling first.”

Joel cocked his head, the conclusions coming to his tongue before he realized what he was doing. Dusts! he thought. I just got done apologizing, and now I’m accusing him again! I really am obsessed with this man.

He opened his mouth to retract what he’d said, but froze as Nalizar turned back halfway, his face looking shadowed.

“Interesting conclusions,” the professor said quietly, the mockery gone from his voice.

Joel stumbled back.

“Any more theories?” Nalizar asked.

“I…” He gulped. “Harding. The thing controlling him didn’t seem very … smart. It boxed itself in with its own Lines of Forbiddance, and it didn’t coordinate its chalklings, which let Melody and me escape. It never spoke except to growl or try to shout.

“Yet,” Joel continued, “the plot was really intricate. It involved framing Exton, grabbing the perfect students to cause a panic that would end with the majority of the Rithmatists on campus lumped together, where they could be attacked and taken in one swoop. The thing we fought seems to have come out only at night. Harding himself was in control during the day. He didn’t make the plans, and the Forgotten didn’t seem smart enough to do so either. It makes me wonder … was someone else helping it? Maybe something smarter?”

Nalizar turned around all the way. He stood tall, and something about him seemed different. Like it had that day when Joel had looked up at the window and Nalizar had looked down at him.

Nalizar’s arrogance was gone, replaced by cool calculation. It was like the young upstart was a persona, carefully crafted to make people hate, but ignore, Nalizar as a threat.

The professor strolled forward. Joel began to sweat, and he took a step backward.

“Joel,” Nalizar said, “you act as if you are in danger.” Behind his eyes, something dark flashed—a fuzzing, charcoal blackness.

“What are you?” Joel whispered.

Nalizar smiled, stopping a few feet in front of Joel. “A hero,” he whispered, “vindicated by your own words. The man nobody likes, but one they think has a good heart anyway. The professor who came to the rescue of the students, even if he arrived too late—and was too weak—to defeat the enemy.”

“It was a ruse,” Joel said. He thought back to Nalizar’s surprise at finding Joel in the dorms, and the way he had reacted to Harding. Nalizar hadn’t seemed surprised to see Harding, more … bothered. As if realizing that he’d just been implicated.

Had Nalizar changed his plans at that moment, fighting Harding to appear like a hero to fool Joel?

“You would have let me live,” Joel said. “You would have lain there, presumably unconscious, while your minion turned the students to chalklings. You could have charged over then and saved some of them. You’d have been a hero, but Armedius would still have been decimated.”

Joel’s voice rang in the empty hallway.

“What would the others think, Joel,” Nalizar said, “if they heard you speak such hurtful things? Just a couple of days after publicly admitting that I’m a hero? I daresay it would make you look rather inconsistent.”

He’s right, Joel thought numbly. They won’t believe me now. Not after I vouched for Nalizar myself. Plus, Melody and Fitch reinforced that Nalizar had come to help at the end.

Joel met the professor’s eyes, and saw the darkness moving behind them again—a real, tangible thing, clouding the whites with a shifting, scribbly mess of black.

Nalizar nodded to Joel, as if in respect. It seemed such an odd motion from the arrogant professor. “I … am sorry for dismissing you. I have trouble telling the difference between those of you who are not Rithmatists, you see. You all look so alike. But you … you are special. I wonder why they did not want you.”

“I was right,” Joel whispered. “All along, I was right about you.”

“Oh, but you were so wrong. You don’t know a fraction of what you think you know.”

“What are you?” Joel repeated.

“A teacher,” he said. “And a student.”

“The books in the library,” Joel said. “You’re not searching for anything specific—you’re just trying to discover what we know about Rithmatics. So you can judge where humankind’s abilities lie.”

Nalizar said nothing.

He came for the students, Joel realized. The war in Nebrask—the chalklings haven’t managed a significant breakout for centuries. Our Rithmatists are too strong. But if a creature like Nalizar can get at the students before they are trained …

A new Rithmatist can only be made once an old one dies. What would happen if instead of dying, all of them were turned into chalkling monsters?

No more Rithmatists. No more line in Nebrask.

The weight of what had just happened pressed down upon Joel. “Nalizar the man is dead, isn’t he?” Joel said. “You took him at Nebrask, when he went into the breach to find Melody’s brother … and Harding was with him, wasn’t he? Melody said that Nalizar led an expedition in, and that would include soldiers. You took them both together, then you came out here.”

“I see I need to leave you to think,” Nalizar said.

Joel reached into his pocket, then whipped out the gold coin, holding it up wardingly at Nalizar.

The creature eyed it, then plucked it from Joel’s fingers, holding it up to the light and looking at the clockwork inside.

“Do you know why time is so confusing to some of us, Joel?” Nalizar asked.

Joel said nothing.

“Because man created it. He sectioned it off. There is nothing inherently important about a second or a minute. They’re fictional divisions, enacted by mankind, fabricated.” He eyed Joel. “Yet in a human’s hands, these things have life. Minutes, seconds, hours. The arbitrary becomes a law. For an outsider, these laws can be unsettling. Confusing. Frightening.”

He flipped the coin back to Joel.

“Others of us,” he said, “take more concern to understand—for a person rarely fears that which he understands. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a competition to win.”

Joel watched, helpless, as the creature that was Nalizar disappeared up the steps to meet with the other professors. It had failed, but it didn’t seem the type to have only one plan in motion.

What was Nalizar planning for his personal team of students? Why create a group of young Rithmatists who were loyal to him? Those who won the Melee would be given prime positions at Nebrask. Made leaders …

Dusts, Joel thought, rushing back toward the dueling arena. He had to do something, but what? Nobody would believe him about Nalizar. Not now.

The students had already been placed on the field, some of them individual, others grouped in teams. He saw Melody, who unfortunately had drawn a very poor location near the very center of the arena. Surrounded by enemies, she’d have to defend on all sides at once.

She knelt out there, head bowed, back slumped in dejection. It twisted Joel’s insides in knots.

If Nalizar’s students won this Melee, those moving to Nebrask for their final year of training would gain positions of authority over other students. Nalizar wanted them to win—he wanted his people in control, in charge. That couldn’t be allowed.

Nalizar’s students could not win the Melee.

Joel glanced to the side. Exton was chatting with several of the clerks from the city who would act as his assistant referees. They’d watch to make certain that as soon as a Circle of Warding was breached, the Rithmatist inside was disqualified.

Joel took a breath and walked up to Exton. “Is there any rule against a non-Rithmatist entering the Melee?”

Exton started. “Joel? What is this?”

“Is there a rule against it?” Joel asked.

“Well, no,” Exton said. “But you’d have to be a student of one of the Rithmatic professors, which isn’t really the case for any non-Rithmatist.”

“Except me,” Joel said.

Exton blinked. “Well, yes, I suppose being his research assistant over the summer elective counts technically. But, Joel, it’d be foolish for a non-Rithmatist to go out there!”

Joel looked across the field. There were some forty students on it this year.

“I’m entering on Professor Fitch’s team,” Joel said. “I’ll take a spot on the field with Melody.”

“But … I mean…”

“Just put me down, Exton,” Joel said, running out onto the field.

His entrance caused quite a stir. Students looked up, and the watching crowd began to buzz. Melody didn’t see him. She was still kneeling, head down, oblivious to the whispers and occasional calls of laughter that Joel’s entrance prompted.

The large clock on the wall rang out, bells marking the hour. It was noon, and once the twelfth chime rang, the students could start drawing. Forty clicks sounded as students placed their chalk against the black stone floor. Melody reached out hesitantly.

Joel knelt and snapped his chalk to the ground beside hers.

She looked up with shock. “Joel? What the dusts are you doing?”

“I’m annoyed at you,” he said.

“Huh?”

“You came out here to get humiliated, and you didn’t even invite me along!”

She hesitated, then smiled. “Idiot,” she said. “You’re not going to prove anything to me by going down faster than I do.”

“I don’t intend to go down,” Joel said, holding up his blue piece of chalk. The sixth chime rang. “Just draw what I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trace me. Dusts, Melody, you’ve practiced tracing all summer! I’ll bet you can manage it better than anyone here. Where you see blue, draw over it with white.”

She hesitated, and then a broad, mischievous smile split her mouth.

The twelfth bell rang, and Joel began to draw. He made a large circle around both him and Melody, and she followed, tracing his line exactly. He finished, but then stopped.

“What?” Melody said.

“Safe and simple?”

“Dusts, no!” she said. “If we go out, we go out dramatically! Nine-pointer!”

Joel smiled, stilling his hands as he listened to the drawing all around him. He could almost believe himself a Rithmatist.

He set his chalk back down, divided the circle in his head, and began to draw.

Professor Fitch stood quietly on the glass floor, a cup held in his hand, though he didn’t drink. He was too nervous. He was afraid his hand would shake and spill tea all over him.

The viewing lounge atop the arena was quite nice, quite nice indeed. Maroon colorings, dim lighting from above as to not distract from what was below, iron girders running between the glass squares so that one didn’t get too much of a sense of vertigo by standing directly above the arena floor.

Fitch generally enjoyed the view and the privileges of being a professor. He had watched numerous duels from this room. That, however, didn’t make the experience any less nerve-racking.

“Fitch, you look pale,” a voice said.

Fitch looked over as Principal York joined him. Fitch tried to chuckle at the principal’s comment and dismiss it, but it kind of came out weakly.

“Nervous?” York said.

“Ah, well, yes. Unfortunately. I much prefer the midwinter duel, Thomas. I don’t usually have students in that one.”

“Ah, Professor,” York said, patting him on the shoulder. “Just two days ago you faced down a Forgotten, for dusts’ sake. Surely you can stand a little bit of dueling stress?”

“Hum, yes, of course.” Fitch tried to smile. “I just … well, you know how I am with confrontation.”

“There is, of course, no contest,” another voice said.

Fitch turned, looking through the collection of professors and dignitaries to where Nalizar stood in his red coat. He wore the one that had once belonged to Fitch—the other one had been ruined by acid.

“My students are the best trained,” Nalizar continued. “We’ve been practicing duels all summer. You will soon see the importance of building a strong, quick offense.”

A strong, quick offense makes for excellent dueling, Fitch agreed in his head. But it makes for terrible defensive practice on the battlefield, where you’ll likely be surrounded.

Nalizar couldn’t see that, of course. All he saw was the victory. Fitch couldn’t really blame the man—he was young. Attacking fast often seemed so important to those who were in their youths.

York frowned. “That one is too arrogant for my tastes,” the principal said softly. “I’m … sorry, Fitch, for bringing him on campus. If I’d known what he’d do to you…”

“Nonsense, Thomas,” Fitch said. “Not your fault at all, no, not at all. Nalizar will grow wiser as he ages. And, well, he certainly did shake things up here!”

“A shakeup isn’t always for the best, Fitch,” York said. “Particularly when you’re the man in charge and you like how things are running.”

Fitch finally took a sip of his tea. Down below, he noticed, the students were already drawing. He’d missed the start. He winced, half afraid to seek out poor Melody. He was taking her reeducation slowly for her own good. She wasn’t yet prepared for something like this.

That made Fitch grow nervous again. Drat it all! he thought. Why can’t I be confident, like Nalizar? That man had a gift for self-assuredness.

“Hey,” said Professor Campbell. “Is that the chalkmaker’s son?”

Fitch started, almost spilling his drink as he looked down at the wide, circular arena floor below. In the very center, two figures drew from within the same circle. That wasn’t forbidden by the rules, but it was highly unusual—it would mean that a break in the circle would knock them both out of the competition, and that wasn’t a risk worth taking.

It slowly dawned on Fitch who those two students were. One didn’t wear the uniform of a Rithmatist. He wore the sturdy, yet unremarkable clothing of a servant’s son.

“Well, I’ll be,” York said. “Is that legal?”

“It can’t possibly be!” Professor Hatch said.

“I think it actually is,” said Professor Kim.

Fitch stared down, mentally calculating the arcs between the points on Joel and Melody’s circle. “Oh, lad,” he said, smiling. “You got it right on. Beautiful.”

Nalizar stepped up beside Fitch, looking down. His expression had changed, the haughtiness gone. Instead, there was simply consternation. Fascination, even.

Yes, Fitch thought, I’m sure he’ll turn out to be an all right fellow, if we just give him enough time.…

Joel’s blue chalk vibrated between his fingers as he dragged it across the black ground. He drew without looking up. He was surrounded by opponents—that was all he needed to know. Keening would do him no good. He needed defense. A powerfully strong defense before he could move on to any kind of attack.

He scratched out a kind of half-person, half-lizard, then attached it to a bind point before moving on.

“Wait,” Melody said. “You call that a chalkling?”

“Well, uh…”

“Is that a walking carrot?”

“It’s a lizard man!” Joel said, drawing on the other side, fixing a circle that had been blown through.

“Yeah, whatever. Look, leave the chalklings to me, all right? Just draw ‘X’ marks where you want them, and I’ll make them to fit the situation.”

“You aren’t going to draw unicorns, are you?” Joel asked, turning, his back to her as he drew.

“What’s wrong with unicorns?” she demanded from behind him, her chalk sounding as it scraped the ground. “They’re a noble and—”

“They’re a noble and incredibly girly animal,” Joel said. “I’ve got my masculine reputation to think of.”

“Oh hush, you,” she said. “You’ll deal with unicorns—maybe some flower people and a pegasus or two—and you’ll like it. Otherwise, you can just go draw your own circle, thank you very much.”

Joel smiled, growing less nervous. The lines felt natural to draw. He’d practiced so much, first with his father, then alone in his rooms, finally with Professor Fitch. Putting the lines where he did just felt right.

The waves of chalklings came first, a surprising number of them. He glanced up to see that Nalizar’s students—with their advanced training in dueling—had already eliminated some opponents. Drawing so quickly and offensively had given them an advantage in the first part of the Melee. It would hurt them as time wore on.

Joel and Melody, along with three or four other unlucky students, were in the direct center of the floor. Surrounded by Nalizar’s team, who formed a ring. Obviously, their plan would be to eliminate those in the direct center, then fight those at the perimeters.

What’s your plan for these students, Nalizar? Joel wondered. What lies are you teaching them?

Joel gritted his teeth—the positioning was great for Nalizar’s students, but terrible for Joel and Melody. He and she were surrounded by a ring of enemies.

Large waves of chalklings swarmed Joel and Melody. By now, however, Melody had up a good dozen of her unicorns. That was one of the great things about an Easton Defense—a large circle with nine bind points, each with a smaller circle bound to it. Each of those smaller circles could theoretically hold up to five bound chalklings.

With Melody on the team, that was a distinct advantage. Her little unicorns frolicked in what Joel thought was a very undignified manner, but they did it even as they ripped apart enemy trolls, dragons, knights, and blobs. The Nalizar chalklings didn’t have a chance. As their broken corpses piled up, Melody added a couple more unicorns to her defense.

“Hey,” she said, “this is actually kind of fun!”

Joel could see the sweat on her brow, and his knees hurt from the kneeling. But he couldn’t help but agree with her.

Lines of Vigor soon began to hit their defenses, blowing chunks off Melody’s unicorns—which made her quite perturbed—and knocking holes in the outer circles. Nalizar’s students had realized that they would have to beat their way through. Fortunately, Joel had built their defense well anchored with Lines of Forbiddance. Too many, maybe. Melody kept running into them and cursing.

He needed to do something. Nalizar’s students would eventually break through.

“You ready to show off?” Joel asked.

“You need to ask?”

Joel drew the new line—the one that was a cross between a Line of Vigor and a Line of Forbiddance. They were calling it a Line of Revocation, and he’d spent hours practicing it already. It was more powerful than a Line of Vigor, but not really that much.

However, it would probably have a big impact on morale. Melody traced his line, and hers shot across the floor—conveniently dusting away Joel’s original as it moved. He’d aimed it at a student who hadn’t anchored his circle properly, and wasn’t disappointed. Joel’s Line of Revocation blasted against the unfortunate student’s circle, shaking it free and knocking it a few feet out of alignment.

That counted as a disqualification—the student was, after all, now outside of his circle. A referee approached and sent the boy away.

“One down,” Joel said, and continued to draw.

The gathered professors and island officials muttered among themselves. Fitch stood directly above Joel and Melody and just watched. Watched the defense repel dozens and dozens of chalklings. Watched it absorb hit after hit but stay strong. Watched Joel’s shots—fired infrequently, yet timed so well—slam against enemy circles.

He watched, and felt his nervousness slowly bleed to pride. Beneath him, two students battled overwhelming odds, and somehow managed to start winning. Circle after circle of Nalizar’s students fell, each breached by a careful shot on Joel’s part.

Melody focused on keeping her chalklings up. Joel would lay down a line, then watch, patient, until there was an opening in the enemy waves. Then he’d get Melody’s attention, and she’d trace his Line of Revocation without even looking up, trusting in his aim and skill.

Usually, a defense with two people inside of it was a bad trade-off—two circles beside one another would be more useful. However, with a non-Rithmatist on the field, it made perfect sense.

“Amazing,” York whispered.

“That’s got to be illegal,” Professor Hatch kept saying. “Inside the same circle?”

Many of the others grew quiet. They didn’t care about legality. No, these—like Fitch—watched and understood. Beneath them were two students who didn’t just duel. They fought. They understood.

“It’s beautiful,” Nalizar whispered, surprising Fitch. He would have expected the younger professor to be angry. “I will have to watch those two very carefully. They are amazing.”

Fitch looked back down, surprised by just how excited he was. By surviving inside Team Nalizar’s ring, Joel and Melody had destroyed the enemy strategy. Nalizar’s students had to fight on two fronts. They slowly destroyed the students on the outside of their ring, but by the time they did, Joel and Melody had taken out half of their numbers.

It became six on two. Even that should have been impossible odds.

It wasn’t.

Joel heard the bell ring before he understood what it meant. He just kept drawing, working on some outer circles to add a secondary bastion of defense, since their main circles had nearly been breached a dozen times.

“Uh, Joel?” Melody said.

“Yeah?”

“Look up.”

Joel stopped, then raised his head. The entire black playing field was empty, the last student in red trailing away toward the doors. The girl walked over broken circles and unfinished lines, moving between the Lines of Forbiddance, scuffing circles with her passing.

Joel blinked. “What happened?”

“We won, idiot,” Melody said. “Uh … did you expect that?”

Joel shook his head.

“Hum,” Melody replied. “Well then, guess it’s time for some drama!” She leapt to her feet and let out a squeal of delight, jumping up and down, screaming, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Joel smiled. He looked up, and though the ceiling was tinted, he thought he could see Nalizar’s red coat where the man stood, eyes focused on Joel.

I’m watching you, the professor’s stance seemed to say.

It was then that the stunned audience erupted into motion and noise, some cheering, others rushing down onto the field.

And I’m watching you back, Nalizar, Joel thought, still looking up. I’ve stopped you twice now. I’ll do it again.

As many times as I have to.

TO BE CONTINUED