“I know,” Joel said, following Professor Fitch toward the door. “But what are we doing about it?”
“Don’t you remember?” Fitch said, closing the door behind Joel, then hurriedly leading the way down the steps. “You suggested that we needed to see the crime scene before it was contaminated by police officers. As good as they are, they have no realistic understanding of Rithmatics. I explained this to Inspector Harding.”
“Will they actually wait until we get there to look things over?”
“They can’t start until Harding arrives,” Fitch said. “And he’s here at Armedius. The disappearance wasn’t discovered until just a short time ago. And so, if we—”
“Fitch!” a voice called from ahead. Joel looked up to see Inspector Harding standing with a group of police officers. “Double-time, soldier!”
“Yes, yes,” Fitch said, quickening his pace.
Harding gestured, and his police officers scrambled away. “I’ve told the engineer to hold the springrail,” Harding said as Fitch and Joel joined him. “My men are securing the campus—no more Rithmatic students are going to leave this place without police protection until we know what is happening.”
“Very wise,” Fitch said as Harding and he strode toward the station. Joel hurried along behind, carrying the scrolls. Students had gathered on the green nearby to watch the police, and Joel caught sight of some familiar red curls among them.
“Hey!” Melody said, pushing through the students and rushing up to Joel. “What’s going on?”
Joel winced as Professor Fitch turned. “Ah, Melody, dear. I left some defenses for you to trace in my office. You can work on that today while I’m gone.”
“Tracing?” Melody demanded. “We’re in the middle of a crisis!”
“Now, now,” Fitch said. “We don’t have all the facts yet. I am going to go see what is going on. However, you need to continue your education.”
She glanced at Joel, and he shrugged apologetically.
“Come on, soldiers!” Harding said. “We must move quickly while the crime scene is still fresh!”
They left Melody behind. She watched with hands on her hips, and Joel had a feeling that he was going to have to listen to another tirade when he got back.
They arrived at the station, a large brick building that was open on the ends. Joel had rarely ridden one of the trains. Joel’s grandparents lived on the same island, and a carriage trip to see them was cheaper. Other than them, there was little reason for him to leave the city, let alone the island.
He smiled in anticipation as he walked up the ramp behind Harding and Fitch. They had to fight traffic as the usual morning crowd of students moved down the ramp around them.
“You haven’t shut down the station, Inspector?” Fitch asked, looking at the flood of students.
“I can’t afford to,” Harding said. “If this campus is going to become a haven for the students, we need to let them get here first. Many of the non-Rithmatists live off campus. I want to let as many of them as possible come here for refuge. Now that civilians have died, we don’t know for certain if ordinary students are safe.”
The three of them stepped into the rectangular brick station. Springrail trains hung beneath their tracks, and so the track was high in the air, about ten feet up; it ran through the building and out the ends. The train cars were long and slender, designed like ornate carriages.
The vehicle’s clockwork engines sprouted from the tops of the first two train cars, wrapping around the track above like large iron claws. A group of workers labored above on catwalks, lowering down and attaching an enormous, drum-shaped spring battery onto the first engine. It had been wound in another location; it could take hours to wind a single drum. The powerful springs inside had to be strong enough to move the entire train. That was why chalklings to do the work were preferable.
Harding hurried Fitch and Joel onto the train, and they were followed by a set of policemen. The officers cleared out a few annoyed people from a cabin at the very front of the train, and there made space for Fitch, Harding, and Joel.
Joel sat down eagerly. The situation was gloomy—another student kidnapped, innocent people murdered—yet he couldn’t banish the thrill of being able to ride the springrail. And in his own cabin, no less.
The train clanked and shook as the workers attached the spring drum above. Outside, Joel saw annoyed people leaving the train and going to stand out on the platform.
“You’re evacuating the train?” Fitch asked.
“No,” Harding said. “My men are just informing everyone on the vehicle that it will be canceling all stops until we reach East Carolina. Anyone who doesn’t want to go there will have to get off and wait for the next train.”
The drum locked into place with a powerful clamping sound. Then the workers moved down to the second car, and similar sounds came as they began to attach a second drum to the gearwork engine there. Joel imagined the massive springs and gears inside of the drums, incredibly taut with power just waiting to be released.
“Inspector,” Fitch said, leaning forward. “Was it really Sir Calloway’s son who was taken?”
“Yes,” the officer said, looking troubled.
“What does it mean?” Fitch said. “I mean, for Armedius and the isle?”
The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never understood politicians, Fitch. I’m a fighting man; I belong on the battlefield, not in a conference room.” He turned to meet Fitch’s eyes. “I do know that we’d better figure out what’s going on, and quickly.”
“Yes,” Fitch said.
Joel frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Fitch eyed him. “Haven’t you had classes on government?”
“Of course I have,” Joel said. “Government was … uh, the class I failed last year.”
Fitch sighed. “Such potential wasted.”
“It wasn’t interesting,” Joel protested. “I mean, I want to learn about Rithmatics, not politics. Let’s be honest, when am I ever going to need to know historical government theories?”
“I don’t know,” Fitch said. “Maybe right now.”
Joel winced.
“It’s more than that, of course,” Fitch said. “Joel, lad, school is about learning to learn. If you don’t practice studying things you don’t like, then you’ll have a very hard time in life. How are you going to become a brilliant Rithmatic scholar and attend university if you don’t learn to study when you don’t feel like it?”
“I never really saw it that way.”
“Well, perhaps you should.”
Joel sat back. He’d only recently learned that there were liberal universities where non-Rithmatists studied Rithmatics. He doubted those universities would admit a student who had a habit of failing at least one class every term.
He gritted his teeth, frustrated with himself, but there was nothing he could do about years past. Perhaps he could change the future. Assuming, of course, the recent troubles didn’t lead to Armedius getting shut down. “So why would New Britannia be in danger because of events at Armedius?”
“The Calloway boy was the son of a knight-senator,” Harding said. “The Calloways are from East Carolina, which doesn’t have its own Rithmatic school, so people there send their Rithmatists to attend Armedius. Some of the isles, however, complain that they have to pay for a school away from their own shores. They don’t like entrusting their Rithmatists to another island’s control, even for schooling.”
Joel nodded. The United Isles were all independent. There were some things the isles all paid for together, like Rithmatists and the inspectors, but they weren’t totally a single country—at least not like the Aztek Federation in South America.
“You’re saying the knight-senator could blame New Britannia for his son’s disappearance,” Joel said.
Harding nodded. “Tensions are high, what with the trade problems between the northeastern coalition and the Texas coalition. Blast it all! I hate politics. I wish I were back on the front lines.”
Joel almost asked why he wasn’t still on the front lines, but hesitated. Something about Harding’s expression implied that might not be a good idea.
Fitch shook his head. “I worry that all of this—the disappearing children, the strange drawings at the crime scenes—is all a cover-up to mask what just happened. The kidnapping of an influential knight-senator’s son. This could be a political move.”
“Or,” Harding added, “it could be the move of some rogue organization trying to build its own force of Rithmatists. I’ve seen a well-drawn Line of Forbiddance stop bullets, even a cannonball.”
“Hum,” Fitch said. “Perhaps you’re on to something there, Inspector.”
“I hope I’m not,” Harding said, pounding the armrest of his seat. “We can’t afford to fight each other. Not again. The last time nearly doomed us all.”
Wow, Joel thought, feeling cold. It had never occurred to him just how much Armedius might influence the politics of the world. Suddenly, the future of the school seemed a whole lot more weighty than it had just moments earlier.
The second drum locked into place, and the last of the annoyed commuters climbed out of the coaches. The track wound into the sky ahead; the line of steel was filled with crenellations where the teeth of the massive gears above would grip it and pull the train along. A sharp grating sound of steel against steel screeched from above as the engineer released the locking mechanism on the first gear drive, and the train began to move.
It went slowly at first, clicks sounding from the gears, the entire vehicle shaking. The train steadily gained speed, climbing out of the station and up the track into the air. There was something awe-inspiring about being above everything else. As the train gathered speed, it passed straight through the middle of the downtown skyline, rising over the tops of some of the shorter buildings.
People milled about on the streets, looking like dolls or tin soldiers jumbled together after a child forgot to clean them up. The springrail dipped down, moving toward another station—but didn’t slow, passing through the center of the building without stopping.
Joel imagined he could see the annoyed expressions on the people waiting on the platforms, though they were just a blur as their train shot by. The train wove through the city, ignoring several more stops; then the track turned sharply south. In seconds they raced out across the water.
Jamestown was on the coast of New Britannia, and the few times Joel had ridden the springrail, it had been to go to the beach. Once with his father, back when times had been better. Once a few years after, with his mother and grandparents.
That trip hadn’t been as fun. They’d all spent the time thinking of the one they’d lost.
Regardless, Joel had never actually crossed the waters. My first time visiting another of the isles. He wished it could be under more pleasant circumstances.