The Rithmatist

is confidential information, but we found items belonging to the three missing students in Exton’s desk.”
    “You did ?” Joel asked.
    “Yes,” Harding said. “And pages and pages of ranting anger about Rithmatists in his room. Hatred, talk of … well, unpleasant things. I’ve seen it before in the obsessed. It’s always the ones you don’t expect. Fitch tipped me off about the clerk a few days back; something reminded him that Exton had once attended Armedius.”
    “The census records,” Joel said. “I was there when Fitch remembered.”
    “Ah yes,” Harding said. “Well, I now wish I’d been more quick to listen to the professor! I began investigating Exton quietly, but I didn’t move quickly enough. I only put the pieces together when you were attacked last night.”
    “Because of the wiggly lines?” Joel asked.
    “No, actually,” Harding said. “Because of what happened yesterday afternoon in the office. You were there, talking to Fitch, and he praised how much of a help you’d been to the process of finding the Scribbler. Well, when I heard you’d been attacked, my mind started working. Who would have a motive to kill you ? Only someone who knew how valuable you were to Fitch’s work.
    “Exton overhead that, son. He must have been afraid that you’d connect him to the new Rithmatic line. He probably saw the line when your father was working on it—your father approached the principal for funding to help him discover how the line worked. It wasn’t until some of my men searched his quarters and his desk that we found the truly disturbing evidence, though.”
    Joel shook his head. Exton. Could it actually have been him? The realization that it could have been someone so close, someone he knew and understood, was almost as troubling as the attack.
    Things belonging to the three students, in his desk, Joel thought, cold. “The objects … maybe he had them for … I don’t know, reasons relating to the case? Had he gathered them from the students’ dorms to send to the families?”
    “York says he ordered nothing of the sort,” Harding said. “No questions remain except for the locations of the children. I won’t lie to you, lad. I think they’re probably dead, buried somewhere. We’ll have to interrogate Exton to find the answers.
    “This is disgraceful business, all of it. I feel terrible that it happened on my watch. I don’t know what the ramifications will be, either. The son of a knight-senator dead, a man Principal York hired responsible…”
    Joel nodded numbly. He didn’t buy it, not completely. Something was off. But he needed time to think about it.
    “Exton,” he said. “When will he be tried?”
    “Cases like these take months,” Harding said. “It won’t be for a while, but we’ll need you as a witness.”
    “You’re going to keep the campus on lockdown?”
    Harding nodded. “For at least another week, with a careful eye on all of the Rithmatist students. Like I said. An arrest is no reason to get sloppy.”
    Then I have time, Joel thought. Exton won’t be tried for a while, and the campus is still safe. If it ever was.
    That seemed enough for now. Joel was exhausted, worn thin, and he still had his inception to deal with. He would do that, then maybe have time to think, figure out what was wrong with all of this.
    “I have a request of you,” Joel said. “My friend, Melody. I want her to attend my inception. Will you let her out of the lockdown for today?”
    “Is she that redheaded troublemaker?” Harding asked.
    Joel nodded, grimacing slightly.
    “Well, for you, all right,” Harding said. He spoke to a couple of officers, who rushed off to fetch her.
    Joel waited, feeling terrible for Exton sitting in jail. Potentially becoming a Rithmatist is important, Joel thought. I have to go through with this. If I’m one of them, my words will hold more weight.
    The officers eventually returned with Melody, her red hair starkly visible in the distance. When she got close, she ran toward him.
    Joel nodded to Harding and walked over to meet her.
    “You,” she said, pointing, “are in serious trouble.”
    “What?” Joel asked.
    “You went on an adventure, you nearly got killed, you fought chalklings, and you didn’t invite me !”
    He rolled his eyes.
    “Honestly,” she said. “That was terribly thoughtless of you. What good is having friends if they don’t put you in mortal peril every once in a while?”
    “You might even call it