The Rithmatist

nights ago.”
    “What luck two nights ago?”
    “The fact that Harding didn’t shoot at you,” Joel said. “He took a shot at Fitch. Yet against you, he didn’t fire his gun, even though you didn’t have a Line of Forbiddance up at first to stop a shot.”
    Nalizar stood quietly.
    “And,” Joel added, “it’s lucky that he didn’t attack you with his chalklings once you were unconscious. He ignored you and moved on to the students. If I’d been him, I would have turned the major threat—the trained adult Rithmatist—into a chalkling first.”
    Joel cocked his head, the conclusions coming to his tongue before he realized what he was doing. Dusts! he thought. I just got done apologizing, and now I’m accusing him again! I really am obsessed with this man.
    He opened his mouth to retract what he’d said, but froze as Nalizar turned back halfway, his face looking shadowed.
    “Interesting conclusions,” the professor said quietly, the mockery gone from his voice.
    Joel stumbled back.
    “Any more theories?” Nalizar asked.
    “I…” He gulped. “Harding. The thing controlling him didn’t seem very … smart. It boxed itself in with its own Lines of Forbiddance, and it didn’t coordinate its chalklings, which let Melody and me escape. It never spoke except to growl or try to shout.
    “Yet,” Joel continued, “the plot was really intricate. It involved framing Exton, grabbing the perfect students to cause a panic that would end with the majority of the Rithmatists on campus lumped together, where they could be attacked and taken in one swoop. The thing we fought seems to have come out only at night. Harding himself was in control during the day. He didn’t make the plans, and the Forgotten didn’t seem smart enough to do so either. It makes me wonder … was someone else helping it? Maybe something smarter?”
    Nalizar turned around all the way. He stood tall, and something about him seemed different. Like it had that day when Joel had looked up at the window and Nalizar had looked down at him.
    Nalizar’s arrogance was gone, replaced by cool calculation. It was like the young upstart was a persona, carefully crafted to make people hate, but ignore, Nalizar as a threat.
    The professor strolled forward. Joel began to sweat, and he took a step backward.
    “Joel,” Nalizar said, “you act as if you are in danger.” Behind his eyes, something dark flashed—a fuzzing, charcoal blackness.
    “What are you?” Joel whispered.
    Nalizar smiled, stopping a few feet in front of Joel. “A hero,” he whispered, “vindicated by your own words. The man nobody likes, but one they think has a good heart anyway. The professor who came to the rescue of the students, even if he arrived too late—and was too weak—to defeat the enemy.”
    “It was a ruse,” Joel said. He thought back to Nalizar’s surprise at finding Joel in the dorms, and the way he had reacted to Harding. Nalizar hadn’t seemed surprised to see Harding, more … bothered. As if realizing that he’d just been implicated.
    Had Nalizar changed his plans at that moment, fighting Harding to appear like a hero to fool Joel?
    “You would have let me live,” Joel said. “You would have lain there, presumably unconscious, while your minion turned the students to chalklings. You could have charged over then and saved some of them. You’d have been a hero, but Armedius would still have been decimated.”
    Joel’s voice rang in the empty hallway.
    “What would the others think, Joel,” Nalizar said, “if they heard you speak such hurtful things? Just a couple of days after publicly admitting that I’m a hero? I daresay it would make you look rather inconsistent.”
    He’s right, Joel thought numbly. They won’t believe me now. Not after I vouched for Nalizar myself. Plus, Melody and Fitch reinforced that Nalizar had come to help at the end.
    Joel met the professor’s eyes, and saw the darkness moving behind them again—a real, tangible thing, clouding the whites with a shifting, scribbly mess of black.
    Nalizar nodded to Joel, as if in respect. It seemed such an odd motion from the arrogant professor. “I … am sorry for dismissing you. I have trouble telling the difference between those of you who are not Rithmatists, you see. You all look so alike. But you … you are special. I wonder why they did not want you.”
    “I was right,” Joel whispered. “All along, I was right about you.”
    “Oh, but you were so wrong. You