The Rithmatist

said.
    Joel stiffened.
    “Now, that’s just useless speculation,” Exton said, wagging a finger at her.
    “I heard enough before York closed the door,” Florence replied. “That inspector thinks a Rithmatist was involved in the killing, and he wanted expert help. It—”
    She cut off as the front door to the office behind Joel opened and closed.
    “I delivered the message to Haberstock,” a female voice said. “But I—”
    Joel groaned.
    “You!” Melody snapped, pointing at Joel. “See, you are following me!”
    “I just came to—”
    “I don’t want to hear your excuses this time,” Melody said. “I have evidence now.”
    “Melody,” Florence said sharply, “you’re acting like a child. Joel is a friend. He can visit the office if he wants.”
    The redheaded Rithmatist huffed at that, but Joel didn’t want another argument. He figured he’d gotten as much out of Florence as he was going to be able to, so he nodded farewell to the clerks and made his exit.
    Killed by a Rithmatist? Joel thought once outside. How would they know?
    Had Lilly died in a duel gone wrong? Students didn’t know the glyphs that would make a chalkling dangerous. Usually a chalkling drawn with a Line of Making would be unable to harm anything aside from other chalk drawings. It took a special glyph to make them truly dangerous.
    That glyph—the Glyph of Rending—was only taught at Nebrask during the last year of a student’s training, when they went to maintain the enormous Circle of Warding in place around the Tower. Still, it was not outside of reason that a student could have discovered it. And if a Rithmatist had been involved, it would explain why Fitch had been brought in.
    Something is happening, Joel thought. Something important. He was going to find out, but he needed a plan.
    What if he got through those census records as quickly as possible? He could show Fitch how hard he was willing to work, that he was trustworthy. Professor Fitch would have to assign him another project—something more involved, something that gave him a better idea of what was going on.
    Plan in place, he headed back toward Fitch’s to ask for a few of the census ledgers to take home with him tonight. He’d been planning to read a novel—he’d found an interesting one set during the Koreo Dynasty in JoSeun, during the first days when the JoSeun people had turned the Mongols to their side. It would wait.
    He had work to do.



CHAPTER

    By the end of the week, Joel had discovered something important about himself. Something deep, primal, and completely inarguable.
    The Master had not meant for him to be a clerk.
    He was tired of dates. He was fed up with ledgers. He was nauseated by notes, cross-references, and little asterisks beside people’s names.
    Despite that, he continued to sit on Fitch’s floor, studying page after page. He felt as if his brain had been sucked out, his lips stapled shut, and his fingers given a life of their own. There was something about the rote work that was mesmerizing. He couldn’t stop until he was done.
    And he nearly was. After one week of hard work, he was well over halfway through the lists. He had started taking records home with him each day, then worked on them until it grew dark. He’d often spent extra hours after that, when he couldn’t sleep, working by the light of lanterns.
    But soon, very soon, he would be done. Assuming I don’t go mad first, Joel thought, noting another death by accident on one of his lists.
    A paper rustled on the other side of Fitch’s office. Each day, Fitch gave Melody a different defensive circle to trace. She was getting better, but still had a long way to go.
    Each night at dinner, Melody sat apart from the other Rithmatists. She ate in silence while the others chatted. So he wasn’t the only one to find her annoying.
    Fitch had spent the last week poking through old, musty Rithmatic texts. Joel had sneaked a look at a couple of them—they were high-level, theoretical volumes that were well beyond Joel’s understanding.
    Joel turned his attention back to his work and ticked off another name, then moved on to the next book. It was …
    Something bothered him about that last list—another list of graduates from Armedius, organized by year, for checking off those who had died. One of the names he hadn’t checked off caught his attention. Exton L. Pratt. Exton the clerk.
    Exton had never given any indication that he was an alumnus. He’d been senior