Melody glanced to the side, looking over the clippings and the pictures. “So that’s why,” she whispered.
“Why what?”
“Why you’re so fascinated by Rithmatics,” she said. “I asked you once. You never answered. It’s because of your father.”
Joel stared at the wall, with its patterns and defenses. His father would talk about them at length, telling Joel which defenses were good against which offensive structures. Other boys had played soccer with their fathers. Joel had drawn defenses with his.
“Father always wanted me to attend Armedius,” Joel said. “He wanted so badly for me to turn out to be a Rithmatist, though he never said anything. We drew together all the time. I think he became a chalkmaker so that he’d be able to work with Rithmatists.”
And he’d done something wonderful. A new Rithmatic line! It hadn’t been discovered by men like Fitch or Nalizar, Rithmatists with years of experience. It had been discovered by Joel’s father, a simple chalkmaker.
How? What did it mean? What did the line even do? So many questions. His father would have notes, wouldn’t he? Joel would have to search them, tracking his father’s studies during his last days. Discover how this was related to the disappearances.
For the moment, Joel reveled. You did it, Father. You accomplished something none of them did.
“All right,” Joel said, turning to Melody, “what is your big news?”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to declare it properly now. I don’t know. I just … well, I’ve been doing some studying.”
“Studying?” Joel asked. “You?”
“I study!” she said, hands on hips. “Anyway, you shouldn’t complain, because it was about you.”
“You studied about me? Now who’s the stalker?”
“Not about you personally, idiot. It was about what happened to you. Joel, your inception was handled wrong. You are supposed to go into the chamber of inception.”
“I told you,” Joel said, “Father Stewart said I didn’t need to.”
“He,” Melody said, raising a hand dramatically, “was dead wrong. Your eternal soul could be in danger! You weren’t incepted. The ceremony was botched! You need to do it again.”
“Eight years later?”
“Sure,” Melody said. “Why not? Look, the Fourth of July is less than a week away. If we can convince the vicar that you are in peril of losing your soul, he might let you try again. The right way, this time.”
Joel considered that for a moment. “You sure I can go through it again?”
“Positive,” Melody said. “I can find you the references.”
I’m too old. But … well, King Gregory became one after he was eight. So, maybe I could too. He smiled. “That might actually be worth a try.”
“I knew you’d appreciate it,” Melody said. “Tell me I’m a genius.”
“You’re a genius,” Joel said, then glanced back at the pattern on the wall. “Let’s go get Fitch. I want him to see this. We’ll worry about the vicar later.”
* * *
“From what I can tell,” Fitch said, sitting at a chair beside a table in the middle of the workshop, “your father was convinced that there were other Rithmatic lines. Here, look at this.”
Fitch pulled a page from the stack of books and old papers. Over the last few hours, Joel and Melody had helped him organize the workshop and sort through Joel’s father’s papers. The workshop almost seemed to be in use again.
The page fluttered as Fitch handed it over to Joel. It looked like some kind of legal document.
“That,” Fitch said, “is a contract of patronage.”
“Valendar Academy,” Joel said. “That’s in the Californian Archipelago, isn’t it? One of the other schools that trains Rithmatists?”
Fitch nodded. “There are four of those sheets in here, each from one among the eight schools, including Armedius. They promise your father and his family patronage for a period of one hundred years should he prove the existence of a Rithmatic line beyond the original four.”
“Patronage?” Melody asked.
“Money, dear,” Fitch said. “A stipend, rather large. With such an income from four different schools, Joel’s father would have become a very wealthy man. I must say, I’m astounded at the level of your father’s understanding of Rithmatics! These writings are quite advanced. I should think the other professors would be very surprised to discover these things. I now realize that we never gave him the credit he deserved.”
“He convinced someone,” Joel said, pointing at the contract of patronage.
“Ah, yes. Indeed, it appears that he did. He must have worked hard, and presented some very convincing evidence, to get those contracts. From what I can see here, he researched with the various schools.