The Rithmatist

tragic,” Joel said, smiling wanly and joining his mother and Professor Fitch.
    “Nah,” Melody said. “I’m thinking I need a new word. Tragic just doesn’t have the effect it once did. What do you think of appalling ?”
    “Might work,” Joel said. “Shall we go, then?”
    The others nodded, and they again began walking toward the campus gates, accompanied by several of Harding’s guards.
    “I guess I’m happy you’re all right,” Melody said. “News of what happened is all over the Rithmatic dorm. Most of the others are red in the face, thinking that the puzzle was solved and they were saved by a non -Rithmatist. Of course, half of the red-facedness is probably because none of us can leave yet.”
    “Yeah,” Joel said. “Harding’s a careful guy. I think he knows what he’s doing.”
    “You believe him, then?” Melody said. “About Exton, I mean.”
    Things belonging to each of the students, Joel thought. And pages of rants about wanting revenge against them.…
    They walked the same path Joel had run the night before, terrified in the dark, approaching the police officers. “I don’t know,” he said.
    * * *
    Joel remembered much of what Father Stewart said from the last time he’d gone through an inception ceremony. He’d been less nervous that time. Perhaps he’d been too young to realize what he was getting himself into.
    Joel’s knees ached as he knelt in a white robe before Father Stewart, who sprinkled him with water and anointed him with oil. They had to go through the whole ceremony again if Joel wanted to enter the chamber of inception.
    Why did everything have to happen at once? He was still fatigued from lack of sleep, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Exton. The man had seemed truly frightened. But he would have been, if his own chalklings had come back to attack him.
    Joel felt like he had been swept up in something so much larger than he was. There were new Rithmatic lines. He’d solved his father’s quest, yet wouldn’t get paid for it—all of his father’s contracts of patronage had expired when no line had been produced within five years. Still, the world would be shaken by the discovery of a Rithmatic pattern that was so different from the others.
    Father Stewart intoned something in Old English, barely recognizable to Joel as from scripture. Above, the apostles turned their springwork heads. To his right, down a hallway, PreSaint Euclid stood inside a mural dedicated to the triangle.
    Joel was about to be one of the oldest nonconverts to ever go through the inception ceremony. The world seemed to be becoming a more uncertain place. The disappearances—probably deaths—of Armedius students made the islands bristle, and there was talk of another civil war. The realities of world politics were starting to seem more and more real to Joel. More and more frightening.
    Life wasn’t simple. It never had been simple. He just hadn’t known.
    But how does Nalizar play into all of this? Joel thought. I still don’t trust that man. Exton had expressed dislike of Nalizar on several occasions, but perhaps it was something to think about. Could he have framed Exton?
    Perhaps Joel just wanted to find that Nalizar was doing something nefarious.
    Father Stewart stopped talking. Joel blinked, realizing he hadn’t been paying attention. He looked up, and Father Stewart nodded, his thin white beard shaking. He gestured toward the chamber of inception behind the altar.
    Joel stood up. Fitch, his mother, and Melody sat alone on the pews—the regular inception ceremony for the eight-year-olds wouldn’t come for another hour yet. The broad, vast cathedral hall sparkled with the light of stained glass windows and delicate murals.
    Joel walked quietly around the altar toward the boxy chamber. The door was set with a six-point circle. Joel regarded it, then fished the coin out of his pocket and held it up.
    The main gear moving inside had six teeth. The center of each tooth corresponded to the location of one of the six points. The smaller gear to the right had only four teeth. The one to the left, nine teeth, spaced unevenly. The three clicked together in a pattern, one that had to be perfectly attuned to work with the irregular nine-tooth gear.
    Huh, Joel thought, tucking the coin in his pocket. Then he pushed open the door.
    Inside, he found a white marble room containing a cushion for kneeling and a small altar made from a marble block, topped by a cushion to rest his