The Rithmatist (17 page)

The principal looked troubled.

“He’s going to have to let them go, isn’t he?” Joel asked. “The children of the very important.”

“Likely,” Exton said. “Principal York has a lot of influence, but if he butts heads with a knight-senator, there’s little doubt who will win.”

A small group of Rithmatic students watched from a hillside a short distance away. Joel couldn’t tell if their miserable expressions came from the fact that they were worried about the kidnappings, or if they were embarrassed at having their parents show up at school. Probably both.

“Very well,” Joel faintly heard Principal York say from the office doorway, “I see that I have no choice. Know that you do this against my wishes.”

Joel turned to Exton. “Has anyone sent for Inspector Harding?”

“I don’t believe so,” Exton said. “I couldn’t even get into the office! They were here before I was, crowding the way in.”

“Send Harding a messenger,” Joel suggested. “He might want to hear about the parents’ reactions.”

“Yes,” Exton said, watching the security men with obvious hostility. “Yes, that’s a good idea. This isn’t going to do much to ease tensions on campus, I’d say. If those students weren’t afraid before, they will be now.”

Joel moved away toward Fitch’s office, passing James Hovell being walked by his parents to class. He walked with shoulders slumped, eyes toward the ground in embarrassment. Perhaps there were advantages to having a mother who worked all the time.

Fitch took a long time to answer Joel’s knock. When he did pull open the door, he looked bleary-eyed, still wearing a blue dressing gown.

“Oh!” Fitch said. “Joel. What hour is it?”

Joel winced, realizing that Fitch had probably been up late studying those strange patterns. “I’m sorry for waking you,” Joel said. “I was eager to find out if you discovered anything. About the patterns, I mean.”

Fitch yawned. “No, unfortunately. But it wasn’t for lack of trying, I must say! I dug out the other version of that pattern—the one copied from Lilly’s house—and tried to determine if there were any variations. I drew a hundred different modifications on the theme. I’m sorry, lad. I just don’t think it’s a Rithmatic line.”

“I’ve seen it
somewhere
before,” Joel said. “I know I have, Professor. Maybe I should go to the library, look through some of the books I’ve read recently.”

“Yes, yes,” Fitch said, yawning again. “Sounds like … a capital idea.”

Joel nodded, heading toward the library and letting the professor go back to sleep. As he crossed the green toward the central quad, he noticed one of the parents from before—the woman with the sharp nose and pinched face—standing on the green, hands on hips, looking lost.

“You,” she called to him. “I don’t know the campus very well. Could you tell me where might I find a Professor Fitch?”

Joel pointed toward the building behind him. “Office three. Up the stairwell on the side. What do you want him for?”

“My son mentioned him,” she said. “I just wanted to chat with him for a short time, ask him about things here. Thank you!”

Joel arrived at the library and pushed open the door, passing out of the crisp morning air into a place that somehow managed to be cool and musty even during the warmest summer days. The library didn’t have many windows—sunlight wasn’t good for books—and so depended on clockwork lanterns.

Joel walked through the stacks, making his way to the familiar section dedicated to general-interest books on Rithmatics, both fiction and nonfiction. He’d read a lot of these—pretty much everything in the library that he was allowed access to. If he really had seen that pattern somewhere, it could have been in any of these.

He opened one book he remembered checking out a few weeks ago. He only vaguely recalled it at first, but as he flipped through, he shivered. It was an adventure novel about Rithmatists in Nebrask.

He stopped on a page, reading—almost against his will—paragraphs on a man being gruesomely eaten by wild chalklings. They crawled up his skin under his clothing—they only had two dimensions, after all—and chewed his flesh from his bones.

The account was fictionalized and overly dramatic. Still, it made Joel feel sick. He’d wanted very badly to be involved in Professor Fitch’s work. And yet, if Joel were to face an army of chalklings, he wouldn’t be able to build himself a defense. The creatures would crawl right over his lines and get at him. He’d be no better off than the man in the book.

He shook himself free from imaginings of chalklings scrambling up and down his body. He had wanted this. If he was really going to become a scholar of Rithmatics—if that was his goal—he’d have to live with the idea that it could be dangerous, and he would not be able to defend himself.

He put the novel away—it had no illustrations—and moved to the nonfiction section. Here, he grabbed a stack of books that looked familiar and walked to a study desk at the side of the room.

An hour of searching left Joel feeling even more frustrated than when he’d started. He groaned, sitting back, stretching. Perhaps he was just chasing shadows, looking for a connection to his own life so that he could prove useful to Fitch.

It seemed to him that his memory of the pattern was older than this. Familiar, but from a long, long time ago. He had a good memory, particularly when it came to Rithmatics. He gathered his current stack of books and walked back toward the shelves to return them. As he did so, a man in a bright red Rithmatic coat walked into the library.

Professor Nalizar,
Joel thought.
I sure hope that someday, some upstart young Rithmatist challenges
him
to a duel and takes away his tenure. He …

The first student hadn’t disappeared until Nalizar arrived at the school. Joel hesitated, considering that fact.

It’s just a coincidence,
Joel thought.
Don’t jump to conclusions.

And yet … hadn’t Nalizar talked about how dangerous the battlefield in Nebrask was? He thought the students and professors at Armedius were weak. Would he go so far as to do something to make everyone more worried? Something to put them all on edge and make them study and practice more?

But kidnapping?
Joel thought.
That’s a stretch.

Still, it would be interesting to know what books Nalizar was looking at. Joel caught sight of a swish of red coat entering the Rithmatic wing of the library. He hurried after Nalizar.

As soon as Joel reached the doorway to the Rithmatic wing, a voice called out to him.

“Joel!” said Ms. Torrent, sitting at her desk. “You know you’re not supposed to go in there.”

Joel stopped, cringing. He’d hoped she wouldn’t be paying attention. Librarians seemed to have a sixth sense for noticing when students were doing things they weren’t supposed to.

“I just saw Professor Nalizar,” Joel said. “I wanted to go mention something to him.”

“You can’t enter the Rithmatic section of the library without an escort, Joel,” Torrent said, stamping pages in a book, not looking up at him. “No exceptions.”

He ground his teeth in frustration.

Escort,
he thought suddenly.
Would Fitch help?

Joel rushed out of the library, but realized that Fitch might still not be dressed or might have returned to bed. By the time Joel got the man back to the library, Nalizar would probably be gone. Beyond that, he suspected that Fitch would disapprove of spying on Nalizar—he might even be afraid to do so.

Joel needed someone who was more willing to take a risk.…

It was still breakfast time, and the dining hall was just a short distance away.

I can’t believe I’m doing this,
he thought, but took off at a dash for the dining hall.

*   *   *

Melody was sitting at her usual place. As always, none of the other Rithmatists had chosen to sit next to her.

“Hey,” Joel said, stepping up to the table and taking one of the empty seats.

Melody looked up from her plate of fruit. “Oh. It’s you.”

“I need your help.”

“To do what?”

“I want you to escort me into the Rithmatic section of the library,” he said quietly, “so I can spy on Professor Nalizar.”

She stabbed a piece of orange. “Well, all right.”

Joel blinked. “That’s it? Why are you agreeing so easily? We could get in trouble, you know.”

She shrugged, dropping her fork back to the plate. “Somehow,
I
appear to be able to get into trouble just by sitting around. How much worse could this be?”

Joel couldn’t refute that logic. He smiled, standing. She joined him, and they rushed from the room back across the lawn.

“So, is there any particular reason why we’re spying on Nalizar?” she asked. “Other than the fact that he’s cute.”

Joel grimaced. “Cute?”

“In an arrogant, mean sort of way.” She shrugged. “I assume you have a better reason?”

What could he tell her? Harding was worried about security, and … well, Melody didn’t seem the safest person to tell a secret.

“Nalizar got to Armedius right about the same time those students started disappearing,” Joel said, sharing only what he’d figured out on his own.

“And?” Melody replied. “They often hire new professors before summer elective starts.”

“He’s suspicious,” Joel said. “If he was such a great hero back at the battlefront, then why did he come here? Why take a low-level tutor position? Something’s going on with that man.”

“Joel,” she said. “You’re not
honestly
implying that Nalizar is behind the disappearances?”

“I don’t know,” Joel said as they reached the library. “I just want to know what books he’s looking at. I’m hoping Ms. Torrent lets me use a student for an escort.”

“Well, all right,” Melody said. “But I’m only doing this because I get to take a peek at Nalizar.”

“Melody,” Joel said. “He’s
not
a good person.”

“I never said anything about his morality, Joel,” she said, opening the door. “Only his face.” She swished into the room, and he followed. Ms. Torrent looked up as they passed her desk.

“He,” Melody said, pointing dramatically at Joel, “is mine. I need someone to carry books for me.”

Ms. Torrent looked like she wanted to protest, but—thankfully—she decided not to do so. Joel hurried after Melody, but stopped in the doorway to the Rithmatic wing.

He’d spent years trying to find a way to get into this room. He’d asked Rithmatic students before to bring him in, but nobody had been willing. Nalizar wasn’t the only one who was stingy with Rithmatic secrets. There was an air of exclusion to the entire order. They had their own table at dinner. They expressed hostility toward non-Rithmatic scholars. They had their own wing of the library, containing all the best texts on Rithmatics.

Joel took a deep breath, following Melody—who had turned toward him and was tapping her foot with an annoyed expression. Joel ignored her, reveling. The room even
felt
different from the ordinary library wing. The shelves were taller, the books older. The walls contained numerous charts and diagrams.

Joel stopped beside one that detailed the Taylor Defense—one of the most complicated, and controversial, Rithmatic defenses. He’d only ever seen small, vague sketches of it. Here, however, its various pieces were dissected and explained in great detail, along with several variations drawn smaller to the sides.

“Joel,”
Melody snapped. “I didn’t abandon half my breakfast so you could stare at pictures. Honestly.”

He reluctantly turned his attention to their task. The bookshelves here were high enough that Nalizar wouldn’t be able to see Joel or Melody enter the room—which was good. Joel hated to contemplate the ruckus Nalizar would cause if he caught a non-Rithmatist poking around these texts.

Joel waved to Melody, quickly moving down the rows. They seemed placed more haphazardly than back in the main wing, though the library wasn’t really
that
big. He should be able to find—

Joel froze midstep as he walked past an aisle between shelves. There was Nalizar, not five feet from where Joel stood.

Melody pulled Joel aside, out of Nalizar’s line of sight. He stifled a grunt and joined her in the next row. They could peek through a crack between bookshelves and catch a glimpse of Nalizar, though the poor view didn’t let Joel read the title of the book the professor had.

Nalizar glanced up toward where Joel had been. Then he turned—never noticing Joel and Melody peering through the small slit at him—and walked away.

“What books are shelved there?” Joel whispered to Melody.

She rounded the other side—it wouldn’t matter if Nalizar saw her—and took one off the shelf. She wrinkled her nose and held the book up toward the crack for Joel.
Theoretical Postulations on Developmental Rithmatics, Revised Edition, with a Foreword by Attin Balazmed.

“Dry stuff,” she said.

Theoretical Rithmatics,
Joel thought. “I need to know the exact books Nalizar is carrying!”

Melody rolled her eyes. “Wait here,” she said, then walked off.

Joel waited nervously. Other Rithmatic students poked about. Those who saw him gave him odd looks, but nobody challenged him.

Melody returned a few minutes later and handed him a slip of paper. On it was written the titles of three books. “Nalizar gave these to the librarians,” she said, “then left for class, instructing the staff to check the books out to him and deliver them to his office.”

“How’d you get this?” Joel asked with excitement, taking the paper.

“I walked up to him and mentioned how much I hated my punishment running errands.”

Joel blinked.

“It made him give me a lecture,” Melody said. “Professors
love
giving lectures. Anyway, while he was chastising me, I was able to read the titles on the spines of the books in his arms.”

Joel glanced again at the titles.
Postulations on the Possibility of New and Undiscovered Rithmatic Lines,
the first one read. By Gerald Taffington. The other two had more vague titles having to do with theoretics, but that first one seemed an absolute gem.