The Rithmatist

that.”
    “The Fourth of July is next week, ” Melody said. “If you miss it, then you’ll have to wait an entire year.”
    “Yes, well,” Joel said. “There are much bigger things to worry about right now.”
    “I can’t believe this!” Melody said, flopping back down. “You spend your entire life mooning over Rithmatics and Rithmatists, and now you have your chance to become one, and you’re just going to ignore it?”
    “It’s not that good of a chance,” Joel said. “I mean, only one in a thousand get chosen anyway.”
    Fitch was watching with interest. “Now, wait. Melody, dear, what exactly makes you think they’ll let Joel try again?”
    “He didn’t get to go into the chamber of inception,” Melody said. “So, he couldn’t … well, you know.”
    “Ah,” Fitch said. “I see.”
    “ I don’t,” Joel noted.
    “It’s not fair,” Melody said, staring up at the ceiling. “You’ve seen how good he is at Rithmatics. He never even had a chance. He should get a chance.”
    “Hum,” Fitch said. “Well, I’m no expert on church procedure. I think, however, you will have a difficult time convincing the vicar to let a sixteen-year-old young man take part in an inception ceremony.”
    “We’ll make it work,” Melody said stubbornly, as if Joel didn’t have a say in the matter at all.
    A shadow darkened the doorway. Joel turned to see his mother standing outside, on the landing at the bottom of the stairwell. “Oh,” he said, noting her stunned look. “Um…”
    “Mrs. Saxon,” Fitch said, standing. “Your son has made a wonderful discovery.”
    She walked into the room, wearing her blue travel dress, her hair tied back.
    Joel watched her with trepidation. What would she think of them invading the chamber she’d locked up and left behind so long before?
    She smiled. “It’s been years,” she said. “I thought about coming back down, but I always worried that it would hurt too much. I worried it would remind me of him.” She met Joel’s eyes. “It does remind me of him, but it doesn’t hurt. I think … I think it’s time to move back in here.”



CHAPTER

    Joel sat in the broad cathedral hall, arms resting on the back of the pew in front of him, head resting on his arms, thoughts refusing to rest at all.
    “The Master gave life to the lifeless,” Father Stewart proclaimed, droning on at his sermon. “We are the lifeless now, needing his atoning grace to restore light and life to us.”
    Light shone through the stained glass windows, which were each set with a clock that ticked away the time. The main window—a brilliant blue circular one—was inset with the most magnificent clock on the island, the gears and spindles themselves formed of stained glass.
    The pews filled the nave of the cathedral, with a single aisle running down the center. Above them, in the reaches of the domed cathedral interior, statues of twelve apostles watched over the crowd of devout. The statues moved occasionally, their internal clockwork mechanisms giving them a semblance of life. Life from the lifeless.
    “The bread of life,” Father Stewart said, “the water of life, the power of the resurrection.”
    Joel had heard it all before. Priests, he had long since noted, had a distinct tendency to repeat themselves. This day, Joel was finding it even more difficult than usual to pay attention. It seemed strange to him—even unsettling—that his life should have intersected so keenly with the important developments at Armedius. Was it fate that had placed Joel where he was? Was it instead the will of the Master, as Father Stewart spoke of so often?
    He looked up at the stained glass windows again. What would it mean for the church if public opinion turned against the Rithmatists? Several of the windows depicted King Gregory, the Monarch in Exile. He was always surrounded by Rithmatic drawings.
    Cut into the stonework of the walls were interlocking patterns of circles and lines. While the building itself had the shape of a cross, the center where the cathedral arms met was circular, set with pillars marking the points on a nine-point circle.
    Apostles watched, and the Master himself was symbolized on the rood. A statue of Saint da Vinci drew circles, gears, and Rithmatic triangles before itself on the ground. He had been canonized and adopted into the Monarchical Church, even though—or perhaps because—he had been a rebel Christian.
    Even the most oblivious of men knew of the