The Rithmatist

by Brandon Sanderson

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.

  The track stood elevated by a series of large steel pillars, their bases plunging into the ocean. The water was relatively shallow between islands—perhaps a hundred feet deep—but even still, constructing the springrail tracks had been an enormous undertaking. New tracks were continually being laid, connecting the sixty isles in an intricate web of steel.

  Up ahead, he saw a junction where five different tracks met up together. Two headed southwest, toward West Carolina and beyond, and another curved southeastward, probably heading toward the Floridian Atolls. None of them went directly east. There was talk of building a springrail line all the way to Europe, but the depths of the ocean made the project difficult.

  Their train hit the loop of track that ran in a circle around the inside of the junction. They rounded this, Joel watching out the window, as the engineer threw a lever that raised a hooked contraption above the train. The hook tripped the proper latch, and a few seconds later they were shooting southward toward East Carolina.

  Fitch and Harding settled back for the trip, Fitch looking through a book, Harding scribbling notes to himself on a pad. The earlier sense of urgency now seemed an odd counterpoint to their relaxed attitudes. All they could do was wait. While the isles were relatively close to one another, it still took several hours to cross the larger swaths of ocean.

  Joel spent the time sitting and watching the ocean waves some fifty feet below. There was something mesmerizing about the way they crashed and churned. As the minutes passed, the train began to slow, the gears methodically running out of spring power.

  Eventually, the train stopped, sitting still on its track above the water. The car shook, and a distant clink sounded as the second gear drive was engaged. Motion started again. By the time Joel spotted land, almost exactly two hours had passed from the time they left Armedius.

  Joel perked up. What would East Carolina look like? His instincts told him that it wouldn’t be all that different from New Britannia, since the two islands were next to one another. In a way, he was right. The green foliage and bushy trees reminded him a lot of his own island.

  And yet, there were differences. Instead of concrete cities, he saw forested patches, often dominated by large manor houses that seemed to be hiding within the thick branches and deep greenery. They passed no towns larger than a couple dozen buildings. The train eventually began to slow again, and Joel saw another scattering of homes ahead. Not a town, really—more a set of wooded mansions distant enough from one another to feel secluded.

  “Is the entire island filled with mansions?” Joel asked as the train descended.

  “Hardly,” Fitch said. “This is the eastern side—a favorite spot for country estates. The western side of the island is more urban, though it doesn’t contain anything like Jamestown. You have to go almost all the way to Denver to find a city as magnificent.”

  Joel cocked his head. He’d never considered Jamestown magnificent, really. It simply was.

  The train clinked into the station and stopped. Not many people got off, and most who did were police. The train’s other occupants were apparently heading for the western side of the isle, where the train would soon continue.

  Joel, Fitch, and Harding left their coach and walked into a muggy heat as workers began to change the spring drums atop the waiting train.

  “Quickly now, men,” Harding said, rushing down the steps and out of the station. His urgency seemed to have returned now that they were off the train. Joel followed, once again carrying Fitch’s scrolls and books, though he now had a large shoulder bag, borrowed from one of the police officers.

  They crossed a gravel-strewn road, passing beneath the shade of the train above. Joel expected to take a carriage, but apparently the mansion in question was the enormous white one that stood just down the road. Fitch, Harding, and the other officers hurried toward it.

  Joel wiped his brow with his free hand. The mansion had a large iron fence, much like the one at Armedius. Trees dotted the lawn, keeping most of the green shaded, and the front of the mansion sported stately white pillars. The lawn smelled freshly cut and was well-groomed.

  Police officers scuttled about the front lawn, and a contingent of them stood guarding the gate. Near them gathered a large number of men in expensive suits and top hats. As Harding, Joel, and Fitch walked up the green toward the mansion, a couple of officers rushed over.

  “I really need to institute the practice of saluting among police officers,” Harding muttered as the men approached. “Everybody just seems so dusting informal.”

  “Inspector,” one of the men said, falling into step beside them, “the area is secure. We’ve kept everyone out, though we cleaned away the bodies of the servants. We haven’t entered the boy’s room yet.”

  Harding nodded. “How many dead?”

  “Four, sir.”

  “Dusts! How many witnesses do we have?”

  “Sir,” the police officer said, “I’m sorry … but, well, we’re guessing those four men were the witnesses.”

  “Nobody saw anything?”

  The police officer shook his head. “Nor heard anything, sir. The knight-senator himself discovered the bodies.”

  Harding froze in place on the lawn. “He was here?”

  The police officer nodded. “He spent the night sleeping in his chambers at the end of the hallway—only two rooms down from where the boy was taken.”

  Harding glanced at Fitch, and Joel saw the same question in both of their expressions. The perpetrator—whoever he is—could have killed the knight-senator with ease. Why, then, just take the son?

  “Let’s go,” Harding said. “Professor, I hope you’re not disturbed by the sight of a little blood.”

  Fitch paled. “Well, uh…”

  The three of them hustled up the marble steps to the front doors, which were made of a fine red wood. Just inside the white entryway, they found a tall man wearing a top hat, hands on a cane that rested tip-down on the floor in front of him. He wore a monocle on one eye and a scowl on his face.

  “Inspector Harding,” the man said.

  “Hello, Eventire,” Harding said.

  “And who is this?” Fitch asked.

  “I am Captain Eventire,” the man said. “I represent Sir Calloway’s security forces.” He fell into step beside Harding. “I should say that we are most displeased by these events.”

  “Well, how do you think I feel?” Harding snapped. “Bubbly and happy?”

  Eventire sniffed. “Your officers should have dealt with this issue long before now. The knight-senator is irritated, you might say, with your New Britannia police force for letting your problems spill over onto his estate and endanger his family.”

  “First of all,” Harding said, raising a finger, “I’m a federal inspector, not a member of the New Britannia Police. Secondly, I can’t very well bear the blame for this. If you will remember, Captain, I was here just last evening, trying to persuade the knight-senator that his son would be safer back at Armedius! That fool has nobody to blame but himself for ignoring my warnings.” Harding stopped, pointing directly at Eventire. “Finally, Captain, I should think that your security force should be the first ones to draw your lord’s ‘irritation.’ Where were all of you when his son was being kidnapped?”

  Eventire flushed. They stared at each other before Eventire finally looked away. Harding began moving again, walking up the steps to the second floor. Joel and Fitch followed, as did Eventire. “These are your Rithmatists, I assume?”

  Harding nodded.

  “Tell me, Inspector,” Eventire said, “why is it that the federal inspectors don’t employ a Rithmatist full time? One should think tha
t if your organization were really as important and capable as everyone claims, you would be prepared for events like this.”

  “We’re not prepared,” Harding said, “because dusting Rithmatists don’t normally kill people. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my men and I need to do some investigations. Look after your lord, Eventire, and stay out of my business.”

  Eventire stopped and waited behind, watching them go with obvious displeasure.

  “Private security forces,” Harding said once they were out of earshot. “No better than mercenaries. Can’t trust them on the front lines; their loyalty only goes as far as the coin in their pockets. Ah, here we are.”

  Here they were indeed. Joel paled as they rounded a corner and found a small hallway marked with several splotches of blood. He was glad the bodies had been removed. The sight of the dried, brownish red stains was disturbing enough.

  The hallway was white with white carpeting, which only made the red more stark. It was nicely decorated, with fancy-looking floral paintings on the wall. A small chandelier hung from the ceiling; its clockwork mechanism flickered, clicking softly.

  “That fool,” Harding said, surveying the bloodied carpet. “If only the knight-senator had listened. Maybe this will make the others listen to reason and send their children back to Armedius.”

  Fitch nodded, but Joel could see that the blood had unsettled him. The professor walked on shaky feet as Harding stepped up to one of the ranking police officers at the scene, a tall man with Aztek heritage. “What do we have, Tzentian?” Harding asked.

  “Four bodies discovered in the hallway here, sir,” the police officer said, pointing at the bloodstains. “Method of death seems consistent with chalkling attacks. The boy’s room is over there.” The officer pointed at an open doorway in the middle of the hallway. “We haven’t gone in.”

  “Good,” Harding said, walking around the bloodstains and moving to the doorway.

  “Sir—” the officer said as Harding tried to step through the doorway.

  Harding stopped flat as if he’d hit something solid.

  “Sir, there’s a Rithmatic line on the floor,” Tzentian said. “You didn’t want us to breach the scene, so we haven’t removed it yet.”