Joel looked at the middle-aged Rithmatist. “Yes?”
“You seem distracted,” Fitch said. “I’m sorry the place is such a mess. I keep meaning to clean it, but since nobody ever comes in here but me—and, well, I guess now you—there didn’t ever seem to be a point.”
“No,” Joel said. “No, it’s perfect. I…” How could he explain? “Coming in here feels like coming home.”
Fitch smiled. He straightened his long coat, then settled into the chair. “Well then,” he said, “I suppose I should put you to work! Let me see—”
He cut off as a quiet knock echoed through the room. Fitch cocked his head, then stood. “Now, who … Oh yes. The other student.”
“Other student?” Joel asked, trailing Fitch as he rounded the corner and walked down the cluttered hallway.
“Yes, hum,” Fitch said. “York assigned her to me for a remedial tutelage. She gave a very poor showing in my—well, Professor Nalizar’s—Rithmatics class.”
Joel hesitated. “It’s not…”
He trailed off as Fitch pulled open the door. Sure enough, the red-curled Melody stood outside, wearing her white skirt. She’d traded her grey sweater for a short-sleeved, buttoned blouse. She was actually kind of pretty—she had nice eyes, at least.
“I’m here,” she announced with a loud voice. “Let the flogging commence!”
Too bad she was crazy.
“Flogging?” Fitch said. “My dear, are you well?”
Melody stepped into the room. “I’m merely resigned to my fate, Professor.”
“Ah, good, very well.” Fitch turned around and walked back past Joel, waving for Melody to follow. She stopped beside Joel as Fitch began digging through some piles.
“Tell me honestly,” Melody said, whispering to Joel, “are you following me?”
Joel started. “What?”
“Well, you did take the same math class that I did.”
“We get assigned our classes by the campus office!” Joel said.
“After that,” she continued, speaking as if she hadn’t heard his protest, “you got a job at the campus office—the same place that I, unfortunately, have to do service.”
“I’ve had that job since the beginning of the term!”
“And finally,” she said, “you followed me to Fitch’s office. Pretty suspicious.”
“I didn’t follow you. I was here before you!”
“Yes,” Melody said, “a convenient excuse. Just don’t show up outside my window at night, or I shall have to scream and throw something at you.”
“Ah!” Fitch exclaimed, pulling out a large artist’s sketch pad. Then he regarded the wall, rubbing his chin in thought. He eventually pointed at one of the hangings—it depicted a simplified Matson Defense.
Fitch took the hanging off the wall, then shoved aside some books with his foot, making room on the floor. “You, young lady,” he said to Melody, “may think that you are a lost cause. I hardly believe that to be the case. You just need some practice in the fundamentals.” He set the diagram of the Matson Defense on the ground, then ripped a sheet out of the large sketch pad and laid it over the top.
Melody sighed. “Tracing?”
“Yes indeed.”
“It’s something we did back in seventh grade!”
“That, my dear,” Fitch said, “is why this is called a remedial tutelage. I should think that you’ll be able to complete ten copies or so by the time the day is through. Make certain you trace the crosslines in the center and mark the bind points!”
Melody sighed again—she did that a lot, apparently—and shot Joel a glance, as if she blamed him for witnessing her humiliation. He shrugged. Drawing Rithmatic patterns seemed like a fun way to spend the afternoon.
“Get to work, Melody,” Fitch said, rising. “Now, Joel, I have something for you to do as well.” Fitch began to walk down the hallway, and Joel hurried after, smiling in anticipation. Principal York had said the project Fitch was working on was at the request of the federal inspector, so it must be very important. Joel had spent much of the night lying in bed, thinking about what kind of work Fitch was doing. Something involving Rithmatics, lines, and …
“Census records,” Fitch said, hefting a pile of hardbound ledgers and handing them to Joel.
“Excuse me?” Joel asked.
“Your job,” Fitch said, “is to look through the death notices in these ledgers and search out all of the Rithmatists who have died during the last twenty years. Then I want you to cross-reference those with the lists of Armedius graduates I have over here. Every Rithmatist who has passed away, cross off the list.”
Joel frowned. “That sounds like a lot of work.”
“That is precisely,” Fitch said, “the reason I requested a student assistant!”
Joel glanced through the books Fitch had handed him. They were obituary reports from all across the sixty isles.
“It will be easier than you think, lad,” Fitch said. “In those reports, a Rithmatist is always noted by an asterisk, and their obituary will state which of the eight schools they went to. Just scan each page looking for deceased Rithmatists who went to Armedius. When you find one, locate them on this other list and cross them off. In addition, when you find a former Armedius student who died, I want you to read the obituary and note anything … odd in it.”
“Odd?” Joel asked.
“Yes, yes,” Fitch said. “If they died in an unusual way, or were murdered, or something of that nature. Armedius has about twenty Rithmatic graduates a year. Figure an eighty-year period; that means we have over fifteen hundred Rithmatists to look through! I want to know who among them is dead, and I want to know how they passed.” The professor rubbed his chin. “It occurred to me that the school should have this information, but a check with Exton at the office informed me that they don’t keep strict track of alumni deaths. It is an oversight for which we—well, you—will now have to pay the penalty.”
Joel sank down on the stool, looking at the seemingly endless stacks of census reports. To the side, Melody glanced at him, then smiled to herself before turning back to her sketching.
What have I gotten myself into? Joel wondered.
“My life,” Melody declared, “is a tragedy.”
Joel looked up from his stack of books, names, and dead people. Melody sat on the floor a short distance away; she’d spent hours drawing copies of the Matson Defense. Her tracings were terrible.
Professor Fitch worked at a desk in the corner. He ignored Melody’s outburst.
“Why,” she continued, “out of all people on the Isles, did I have to get chosen to be a Rithmatist? I can’t even draw a perfect circle when I’m tracing!”
“Actually,” Joel said, closing his book, “it’s impossible for the unaided human hand to draw a perfect circle. That’s one of the things that makes Rithmatic duels so interesting.”
She glared at him. “Technicality.”
“Here,” Joel said, getting down and taking out one of the sheets of paper. He picked up an ink and quill and drew a freehand circle.
She leaned over, getting a closer look. “That’s not bad,” she said grudgingly.
He shrugged, glancing about. A piece of string hung from a dusty tome. Joel pulled it free, then used it to measure the circle he’d drawn—sticking one point at the center, then tracing the rest around the perimeter. “See,” he said, “I’m off by about half a millimeter.”
“So?” she said. “You were still freakishly accurate.”
“Yes,” Joel said, “but if we were dueling, and you could determine just where the arc of my circle was off, you’d be able to attack me there. It’s my weak point. Anyway, drawing a Circle of Warding isn’t about getting it perfect—it’s just about getting as close as you can.”
“They should let us use a tool, like that string.”
“You can’t always count on having a compass,” Joel said. “And drawing with a tool takes much longer. My circle here might not be perfect, but it’s close enough that finding the weak spots will be tough, particularly when my opponent is sitting inside their own circle five or ten feet away.”
He sat back on his stool. “It’s just better to learn how to draw a good freehand circle. That will help you more in the long run than pretty much anything else in Rithmatics.”
The girl eyed him. “You know a lot about this.”
“It interests me.”
She leaned in. “Hey, you want to do my tracing for me?”
“What?”
“You know, finish this work for me. We’ll trade. I can look through those books for you.”
“Professor Fitch is sitting right there,” Joel said, pointing. “He can probably hear everything you’re saying.”
“Sure can,” Fitch said, scribbling at a notebook.
“Oh,” Melody said, wincing.
“You’re a strange girl,” Joel said.
Melody leaned back, crossing her legs beneath her skirt and sighing melodramatically. “Maybe you’d be strange too if you’d been forced into a life of abject, unrelenting slavery.”
“Slavery?” Joel asked. “You should be proud to have been chosen.”
“Proud?” she said. “Of being forced into a career since my eighth birthday? Of having to spend my days being told that if I don’t learn to draw a stupid circle, it could cost me my life—or even the safety of the entire United Isles? I should be proud having no freedom or will of my own? Proud that I’ll eventually get shipped off to Nebrask to fight? I figure I have at least a little bit of a right to complain.”
“Or maybe you’re just spoiled.”
Melody’s eyes opened wide, and she huffed as she stood and snatched her oversized sketch pad. She marched away, rounding the corner to sit in the other hallway, accidentally knocking over a stack of books as she went.
“More work, please, Joel,” Fitch said without looking up from his work. “Less antagonizing of the other student.”
“Sorry,” Joel said, picking up a ledger.
Fitch was right—the work moved more quickly than Joel had first anticipated. Still, it was boring. What was the point? Was his “important project” nothing more than an excuse to update the school’s records? Maybe the principal wanted to search out old graduates and get them to donate money or something to the school.
After all he’d gone through to get into a tutelage with Fitch, he wanted to be involved in something interesting. It didn’t have to be spectacular. But bookkeeping?
As he worked, he found his mind drifting toward thoughts of Nebrask. Fitch’s work had something to do with why the inspector had visited. Was Lilly Whiting really involved?
Maybe she’d run off to Nebrask. Melody might not want to go, but Joel thought the place sounded terribly exciting. The dark island in the middle of the others, an island where terrible, dangerous chalklings sought to escape and flood the other islands.