The Rithmatist

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.