The 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.”