The Rithmatist (2 page)

“You wouldn’t think that way if you understood,” Joel said, getting out some chalk. “Here, take this. And stand here.” He positioned his friend, then knelt and drew a circle on the sidewalk around him. “You’re Paul. See, defensive circle. If that gets breached, you lose the match.”

Joel paced back a ways on the concrete quad, then knelt and drew his own circle. “Now, Adelle’s circle was nearly breached in four places. She quickly began to shift from the Matson Defense to … Okay, you know what, that’s too technical. Just know that her circle was weak, and Paul had a strong, dominant position.”

“If you say so,” Michael said. He smiled at Eva Winters as she walked past, holding books in front of her.

“Now,” Joel said. “Paul started pounding her circle with Lines of Vigor, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to shift defenses quickly enough to recover.”

“Pounding … Lines of what?” Michael asked.

“Lines of Vigor,” Joel said. “Duelists shoot them at each other. That’s the point; it’s how you breach the circle.”

“I thought they made little chalk … things. Creatures.”

“That too,” Joel said. “They’re called chalklings. But that’s not why everyone remembers the 1888 Melee, even some twenty years later. It was the lines she shot. Conventional wisdom would have been for her to last as long as she could, draw out the match, make a good showing of it.”

He set his chalk out in front of his circle. “She didn’t do that,” he whispered. “She saw something. Paul had a small weakened section on the back of his circle. Of course, the only way to attack it would be to
bounce
a shot off
three
different lines left by other duelists. It was an impossible shot. She took it anyway. She drew one Line of Vigor as Paul’s chalklings ate at her defenses. She fired it and…”

Caught up in the moment, Joel finished drawing the Line of Vigor in front of him, raising his hand with a flourish. With surprise, he realized that some thirty students had gathered to listen to him, and he could feel them holding breaths, expecting his drawing to come to life.

It didn’t. Joel wasn’t a Rithmatist. His drawings were just ordinary chalk. Everyone knew that, Joel most of all, but the moment somehow broke the spell of his story. The gathered students continued on their way, leaving him kneeling on the ground in the middle of his circle.

“And let me guess,” Michael said, yawning again. “Her shot got through?”

“Yeah,” Joel said, suddenly feeling foolish. He stood up, putting away his chalk. “The shot worked. She won the Melee, though her team had been lowest favored in the odds. That shot. It was
beautiful
. At least, so the accounts say.”

“And I’m sure you’d love to have been there,” Michael said, stepping out of the circle Joel had drawn. “By the Master, Joel. I’ll bet if you could travel through time, you’d waste it going to Rithmatic duels!”

“Sure, I guess. What else would I do?”

“Oh,” Michael said, “maybe prevent some assassinations, get rich, find out what’s really happening in Nebrask.…”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Joel said, pocketing his chalk, then jumping out of the way as a soccer ball shot past, followed by Jephs Daring. Jephs gave Michael and Joel a wave before chasing down his ball.

Joel joined Michael, continuing across campus. The beautiful, low green hills were topped by flowering trees, and green vines wound their way up the sides of buildings. Students darted this way and that between classes, in a variety of dresses and trousers. Many of the boys wore their sleeves rolled up in the late spring warmth.

Only the Rithmatists were required to wear uniforms. That made them stick out; a group of three of them walked between buildings, and the other students casually made way, most not looking at them.

“Look, Joel,” Michael said. “Have you ever wondered if maybe … you know, you think about this stuff too much? Rithmatics and all that?”

“It’s interesting to me,” Joel said.

“Yes, but … I mean, it’s a little odd, considering…”

Michael didn’t say it, but Joel understood. He wasn’t a Rithmatist, and could never be one. He’d missed his chance. But why couldn’t he be interested in what they did?

Michael narrowed his eyes as that group of three Rithmatists passed in their grey-and-white uniforms. “It’s kind of like,” he said softly, “it’s kind of like it’s us and them, you know? Leave them alone to do … whatever it is they do, Joel.”

“You just don’t like that they can do things you can’t,” Joel said.

That earned Joel a glare. Perhaps those words hit too close to home. Michael was the son of a knight-senator, a son of privilege. He wasn’t accustomed to being excluded.

“Anyway,” Michael said, looking away and continuing to hike down the busy sidewalk, “you can’t be one of them, so why keep spending all of your time talking about them? It’s useless, Joel. Stop thinking about them.”

I can’t ever be one of you either, Michael,
Joel thought. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be at this school. Armedius was horribly expensive, and you either had to be important, rich, or a Rithmatist to attend. Joel was about as far from any of those three things as a boy could get.

They stopped at the next intersection of sidewalks. “Look, I’ve got to get to history class,” Michael said.

“Yeah,” Joel said. “I’ve got open period.”

“Running messages again?” Michael asked. “In the hope that you’ll get to peek into a Rithmatic classroom?”

Joel blushed, but it was true. “Summer’s coming up,” he said. “You going home again?”

Michael brightened. “Yeah. Father said I could bring some friends. Fishing, swimming, girls in sundresses on the beach. Mmmm…”

“Sounds great,” Joel said, trying to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice. “I’d love to see something like that.” Michael took a group each year. Joel had never been invited.

This year, though … well, he’d been hanging out with Michael after school. Michael needed help with math, and Joel could explain things to him. They had been getting along really well.

Michael shuffled his feet. “Look, Joel,” he said. “I mean … it’s fun to hang out with you here, you know? At school? But back home, it’s a different world. I’ll be busy with the family. Father has such expectations.…”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Joel said.

Michael smiled, banishing all discomfort from his expression in an instant. Son of a politician for sure. “That’s the spirit,” he said, patting Joel on the arm. “See ya.”

Joel watched him jog off. Michael ran into Mary Isenhorn along the way, and he immediately started flirting. Mary’s father owned a massive springworks. As Joel stood on that sidewalk intersection, he could pick out dozens of members of the country’s elite. Adam Li was directly related to the emperor of JoSeun. Geoff Hamilton had three presidents in his family line. Wenda Smith’s parents owned half of the cattle ranches in Georgiabama.

And Joel … he was the son of a chalkmaker and a cleaning lady.
Well,
he thought,
it looks like it will be just me and Davis here all summer again.
He sighed, then made his way to the campus office.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Joel hurried back down the sidewalk, delivering messages around campus during his free period. Those sidewalks were now mostly empty of students, with everyone else in class.

Joel’s moment of depression had vanished the instant he’d looked through the stack. There had been only three messages to deliver today, and he’d done those quickly. That meant …

He clutched a fourth message in his pocket, one that he himself had added without telling anyone. Now, with some time to spare because of his speed earlier, he jogged up to Warding Hall, one of the Rithmatic lecture halls.

Professor Fitch was teaching in there this period. Joel fingered the letter he carried in his pocket, penned—after some nervousness—to the Rithmatic professor.

This might be my only chance,
Joel thought, shoving down any nervousness. Fitch was a relaxed, pleasant man. There was no reason to be worried.

Joel scurried up the long flight of steps outside the vine-covered, grey brick building, then slipped in the oak door. That brought him into the lecture hall at the very top. It was shaped like a small amphitheater, with tiered seats. Schematics depicting Rithmatic defenses hung on the whitewashed walls, and the plush seats were bolted in rows along the tiers, facing toward the lecture floor below.

A few of the students glanced at Joel as he entered, but Professor Fitch did not. The professor rarely noticed when he got deliveries from the office, and would ramble on for the entire lecture before realizing that a member of his audience wasn’t actually a member of the class. Joel didn’t mind that one bit. He sat down on the steps eagerly. Today’s lecture, it appeared, was on the Easton Defense.

“… is why this defense is one of the very best to use against an aggressive assault from multiple sides,” Fitch was saying down below. He pointed with a long red baton toward the floor where he’d drawn a large circle. The hall was arranged so that the students could look down at his Rithmatic drawings on the ground.

With his pointer, Fitch gestured toward the Lines of Forbiddance he’d affixed to the bind points on the circle. “Now, the Easton Defense is most famous for the large number of smaller circles drawn at the bind points. Drawing nine other circles like this can be time-consuming, but they will prove well worth the time in defensive capabilities.

“You can see that the inner lines form an irregular nonagon, and the number of arms you leave off will determine how much room you have to draw, but also how stable your figure is. Of course, if you want a more aggressive defense, you can also use the bind points for chalklings.”

What about Lines of Vigor?
Joel thought.
How do you defend against those?

Joel didn’t ask; he dared not draw attention to himself. That might make Fitch ask for his message, and that would leave Joel with no reason to keep listening. So, Joel just listened. The office wouldn’t expect him back for some time.

He leaned forward, willing one of the other students to ask about the Lines of Vigor. They didn’t. The young Rithmatists lounged in their seats, boys in white slacks, girls in white skirts, both in grey sweaters—colors to disguise the ever-present chalk dust.

Professor Fitch himself wore a deep red coat. Thick, with straight, starched cuffs, the coat reached all the way down to Fitch’s feet. The coat buttoned up to a tall collar, mostly obscuring the white suit Fitch wore beneath. It had a militaristic feel to it, with all of those stiff lines and straps at the shoulders almost like rank insignia. The red coat was the symbol of a full Rithmatic professor.

“And that is why a Keblin Defense is inferior to the Easton in most situations.” Professor Fitch smiled, turning to regard the class. He was an older man, greying at the temples, with a spindly figure. The coat gave him an air of dignity.

Do you understand what you have?
Joel thought, looking over the unengaged students. This was a class of fifteen- and sixteen-year-old students, making them Joel’s age. Despite their noble calling, they acted like … well, teenagers.

Fitch was known to run a loose classroom, and many of the students took advantage, ignoring the lecture, whispering with friends or lounging and staring at the ceiling. Several near Joel actually appeared to be sleeping. He didn’t know their names—he didn’t know the names of most of the Rithmatic students. They generally rebuffed his attempts to chat with them.

When nobody spoke, Fitch knelt and pressed his chalk against the drawing he’d done. He closed his eyes. Seconds later, the drawing puffed away, willed by its creator to vanish.

“Well, then,” he said, raising his chalk. “If there are no questions, perhaps we can discuss how to
beat
an Easton Defense. The more astute of you will have noticed that I made no mention of Lines of Vigor. That is because those are better talked about from an offensive viewpoint. If we were to—”

The door to the lecture hall banged open. Fitch rose, chalk held between two fingers, eyebrows raised as he turned.

A tall figure strode into the room, causing some of the lounging students to perk up. The newcomer wore a grey coat after the style of a Rithmatic professor of low rank. The man was young, with stark blond hair and a firm step. His coat fit him well, buttoned up to the chin, loose through the legs. Joel didn’t know him.

“Yes?” Professor Fitch asked.

The newcomer walked all the way to the floor of the lecture hall, passing Professor Fitch and pulling out a piece of red chalk. The newcomer turned, knelt, and placed his chalk against the ground. Some of the students began to whisper.

“What is this?” Fitch asked. “I say, did I pass my lecture time again? I heard no sound for the clock. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve intruded into your time!”

The newcomer looked up. His face seemed smug to Joel. “No, Professor,” the man said, “this is a challenge.”

Fitch looked stunned. “I … Oh my. It…” Fitch licked his lips nervously, then wrung his hands. “I’m not sure how to, I mean, what I need to do. I…”

“Ready yourself to draw, Professor,” the newcomer said.

Fitch blinked. Then, hands obviously shaking, he got down on his knees to place his chalk against the ground.

“That’s Professor Andrew Nalizar,” whispered a girl seated a short distance from Joel. “He gained his coat just three years ago from Maineford Academy. They say he spent the last two years fighting in Nebrask!”

“He’s handsome,” the girl’s companion said, twirling a bit of chalk between her fingers.

Down below, the two men began to draw. Joel leaned forward, excited. He’d never seen a real duel between two full professors before. This might be as good as being at the Melee!

Both began by drawing circles around themselves to block attacks from the opponent. Once either circle was breached, the duel would end. Perhaps because he’d been talking about it, Professor Fitch went to draw the Easton Defense, surrounding himself with nine smaller circles touching the larger one at the bind points.