The Rithmatist

doorway, then blocked off the sides with lines so he couldn’t get surrounded. When his front was breached, he abandoned that circle, drawing another one behind it. Like an army slowly retreating on a battlefield.”
    “He was good,” Joel said. “Those defenses are intricate.”
    “Yes,” Fitch said. “I never had Charles in my class, but I heard much of him. He was supposed to be something of a troublemaker, but his skill was unrivaled.”
    “The three kidnapped students had that in common,” Joel said. “They were the best Rithmatic students in the school.” He stepped forward—he could walk over the Lines of Warding that formed the circles, though the Lines of Forbiddance at the sides would block him if he tried to go through them.
    “Please try not to step on any of the chalk,” Fitch said, getting out rolls of paper and settling down to make sketches of each of the defensive lines. “Don’t disturb anything!”
    Joel nodded. There were a lot of small lines and dots that, when he looked closely, he could tell were the remnants of chalklings that had been destroyed. Inspector Harding motioned for his officers to remain outside the room, then edged around Fitch and carefully picked his way through the hallway with Joel.
    “There,” Harding said, pointing to the last circle in the line. “Blood.”
    Indeed there was. Just a few drops, like at the other scenes. Joel rounded the defense and whistled softly, squatting down.
    “What?” Harding asked.
    “Shoaff Defense,” Joel said. “A nine-pointer. He got it right on, too.” He reached over, picking up a slip of paper that lay discarded near the circle. It detailed the Shoaff Defense.
    Joel held it up for the inspector. “Cheat sheet. Even with a pattern, it’s hard to do a nine-pointer.”
    “Poor lad,” Harding said, taking off his round policeman’s hat and tucking it under his arm in respect. He looked back past the line of seven circles leading out of the room. “He put up one dusting good fight. Real trooper.”
    Joel nodded, glancing at those drops of blood. Again, there was no body. Like at the other scenes. Everyone assumed the students were being kidnapped, but …
    “How did they get him out?” Joel asked.
    The others looked at him.
    “We had to go through a Line of Forbiddance at the doorway,” Joel said. “If they’re kidnapping the Rithmatists, how did they get him out of the room?”
    “They must have redrawn the line,” Harding said, scratching at his chin. “But it had holes in it, as if attacked. So they redrew it, then attacked it again? But why would they do that? To cover up taking the boy? Why bother? We’re obviously going to know he was kidnapped.”
    None of them had an answer to that. Joel studied the defenses for a moment, then frowned, leaning closer to the broken, ripped Shoaff Defense. “Professor Fitch, you should look at this.”
    “What is it?”
    “A drawing,” Joel said. “On the floor—not a Rithmatic pattern. A picture.”
    It was done in chalk, but it looked like a charcoal drawing someone would do in art class. It was hastily done, more a silhouette than a real drawing. It depicted a man wearing a bowler hat and holding a long, oversized cane to his side, tip down against the ground.
    The man’s head seemed too big, and there was a large undrawn section on the face, like a gaping open mouth. It was smiling.
    Beneath the picture were a few short, hastily written paragraphs.
    I can’t see his eyes. He draws in scribbles. Nothing he does keeps its shape. The chalklings are distorted, and there seem to be hundreds of them. I destroy them, and they return to life. I block them, and they dig through. I scream for help, but nobody comes.
    He just stands there, watching with those dark, unseen eyes of his. The chalklings aren’t like any I’ve seen. They writhe and contort, never keeping a single shape.
    I can’t fight them.
    Tell my father that I’m sorry for being such a bad son. I love him. I really do.
    Joel shivered, all three of them silent as they read Charles Calloway’s final words. Fitch knelt and drew a chalkling on the ground, then used it to check the sketch, in case it was Rithmatic. The chalkling just walked over the picture, ignoring it. Fitch dismissed the chalkling.
    “These paragraphs make little sense,” Fitch said. “Chalklings that return to life after they’re destroyed? Rithmatic shapes that don’t hold their forms?”
    “I’ve seen such things,”