The Rithmatist

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.