The Rithmatist (31 page)

“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.”

Light shone through the stained glass windows, which were each set with a clock that ticked away the time. The main window—a brilliant blue circular one—was inset with the most magnificent clock on the island, the gears and spindles themselves formed of stained glass.

The pews filled the nave of the cathedral, with a single aisle running down the center. Above them, in the reaches of the domed cathedral interior, statues of twelve apostles watched over the crowd of devout. The statues moved occasionally, their internal clockwork mechanisms giving them a semblance of life. Life from the lifeless.

“The bread of life,” Father Stewart said, “the water of life, the power of the resurrection.”

Joel had heard it all before. Priests, he had long since noted, had a distinct tendency to repeat themselves. This day, Joel was finding it even more difficult than usual to pay attention. It seemed strange to him—even unsettling—that his life should have intersected so keenly with the important developments at Armedius. Was it fate that had placed Joel where he was? Was it instead the will of the Master, as Father Stewart spoke of so often?

He looked up at the stained glass windows again. What would it mean for the church if public opinion turned against the Rithmatists? Several of the windows depicted King Gregory, the Monarch in Exile. He was always surrounded by Rithmatic drawings.

Cut into the stonework of the walls were interlocking patterns of circles and lines. While the building itself had the shape of a cross, the center where the cathedral arms met was circular, set with pillars marking the points on a nine-point circle.

Apostles watched, and the Master himself was symbolized on the rood. A statue of Saint da Vinci drew circles, gears, and Rithmatic triangles before itself on the ground. He had been canonized and adopted into the Monarchical Church, even though—or perhaps because—he had been a rebel Christian.