The Rithmatist (27 page)

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.”