With that, and a yawn, Fitch closed the door.
“Great,” Melody said.
“He’s not good with lack of sleep,” Joel said. “Never has been.”
“So what now?” Melody asked.
“Let’s go talk to the policemen at the front of your dormitory,” Joel said, rushing down the stairs. “See why the others aren’t on their patrol.”
They crossed the campus again in the dark, and Joel began to wish he’d brought that bucket of acid with him. But surely Harding’s men would—
He pulled up short. The Rithmatic student dormitory was straight ahead, and the door was open. Two forms lay on the grass in front of it.
“Dusts!” Joel said, pelting forward, Melody at his side. The forms proved to be the policemen. Joel checked the pulse of the first one with nervous fingers.
“Alive,” Joel said. “But unconscious.” He moved over to the other one, finding that he was still alive as well.
“Uh, Joel,” Melody said. “You remember what I said this morning, about being angry at you for not inviting me to be attacked with you?”
“Yeah.”
“I completely take that back.”
Joel looked up at the open doorway. Light reflected distantly inside.
“Go for help,” he said.
“Where?”
“The front gates,” he said. “The office. I don’t know! Just find it. I’m going to see who’s inside.”
“Joel, you’re not a Rithmatist. What can you do?”
“People could be dying in there, Melody.”
“I’m the Rithmatist.”
“If the Scribbler really is in there,” Joel said, “it won’t matter which of us goes in. Your lines will be little defense against him. Go!”
Melody stood for a moment, then bolted away at a dash.
Joel looked at the open doorway. What am I doing?
He gritted his teeth, slipping inside. At the corner, he found some buckets of acid, and he felt more confident carrying one as he snuck up the stairs. Boys were on the first floor, with girls on the second, some families of professors on the third. There were hall mothers stationed on the second floor to keep watch. If Joel could find one of them, perhaps she could help.
He rounded the top of the stairs on the second floor, slipping into the hallway. It appeared empty.
He heard something on the stairs behind him.
He looked with a panic to see something coming down from the third floor, moving in the darkness there. Barely thinking, Joel hefted his bucket of acid and tossed it.
The something turned out to be a person. The wave of acid completely drenched the surprised Nalizar.
The professor gasped, rubbing his eyes, and Joel yelped, scrambling away down the second-floor hallway. In his panicked mind, he thought to make for Melody’s room, where he could use the aforementioned tree to climb away. He heard Nalizar follow, cursing.
Joel smacked straight into something invisible. It threw him backward to the ground, stunned. The hallway was barely lit, and he hadn’t seen the Line of Forbiddance on the ground.
“Foolish child,” Nalizar said, grabbing him by the shoulder.
Joel yelled and punched as hard as he could at Nalizar’s gut. Nalizar grunted, but didn’t let go. Instead, he stuck his foot out, scraping it along the ground. It left a chalk line behind it.
Chalk on the bottom tip of the shoe, Joel thought. Good idea. Hard to draw straight lines, but good idea.
Nalizar shoved Joel to the floor, then finished a Box of Forbiddance around him. Joel groaned at the pain in his arm—Nalizar had a powerful grip.
Trapped.
Joel cried out, feeling at the invisible box. It was solid.
“Idiot,” Nalizar said, wiping his face with a dry section of his coat. “If you live this night, you’re going to owe me a new coat.” The professor’s skin looked irritated from the acid, and his eyes were bloodshot. The acid used wasn’t powerful enough to be truly dangerous to a person, however.
“I—” Nalizar said.
One of the doors in the hallway opened and interrupted him. Nalizar spun as a large figure stepped out into the hallway. Joel could just barely make out the face in the dim light.
Inspector Harding.
Nalizar stood for a moment, dripping acid. He glanced at Joel, then back at Harding.
“So,” Nalizar said to Harding, “it is you. I’ve tracked you down at last.”
Harding stood still. In the shadowed light, his domed police officer’s hat looked an awful lot like a bowler. He lowered his rifle, resting his hand on the butt, the tip against the ground. Like a cane.
His hat was pulled down over his eyes so that Joel couldn’t see them. Joel could see the inspector’s ghastly grin. Harding opened his mouth, tipping his head back.
A swarm of squirming chalklings flooded out of his mouth like a torrent, scurrying down his chest and across his body.
Nalizar cursed, dropping to his knees and drawing a circle around himself. Joel watched as Nalizar completed the Easton Defense with quick, careful strokes.
Harding, Joel thought. He said there was a federal police station near Lilly Whiting’s house. And he said he was on patrol in the very area where Herman Libel was taken—Harding claimed that the Scribbler was taunting him by striking so close.
And then Charles Calloway. While we were investigating Charles’s house, Harding mentioned that he’d been there the very evening before, trying to get the family to send their son back to Armedius.
When Harding charged to the gates after being called on the night I was attacked, he came from the east. From the direction of the general campus, not the Rithmatic one. He’d been over there, controlling the chalklings.
Exton wasn’t the only one in the room who heard Professor Fitch say how important I was—Harding was there too.
Dusts!
Joel screamed for help, slamming his fists against the invisible barrier. It all made sense! Why attack the students outside campus? Why take the son of the knight-senator?
To inspire panic. To make the Rithmatic students all congregate at Armedius, rather than staying at their homes. Harding had secured the campus, brought all of the Rithmatists here, including the half who normally lived far away, and had locked them in the dorms.
That way, he had them all together and could take them in one strike.
Joel continued to pound uselessly at the walls of his invisible prison. He yelled, but as soon as his voice reached a certain decibel, the excess vanished. He glanced to the side, and there saw one of the Lines of Silencing, hidden against the white of the painted wall. It was far enough away that it only sucked in his voice when he yelled, not when he spoke normally.
Joel cursed, falling to his knees. Harding dismissed the Line of Forbiddance in the hallway, the one Joel had run into, and the multitude of chalklings swarmed forward and surrounded Professor Nalizar, attacking his defenses. The man worked quickly, reaching out of his circle and drawing Lines of Vigor to shoot off pieces of chalklings. That didn’t seem to have much effect. The formless chalklings just grew the pieces back.
Joel pushed at the base of his prison, looking for the place that felt the weakest. He found a section that Nalizar had drawn with his foot that pushed back with less strength. The chalk there wasn’t as straight.
Joel licked his finger and began to rub at the base of the line. It was a poor tactic. Lines of Forbiddance were the strongest of the four. He could only rub at the side, carefully wearing away the line bit by bit. It was a process that the books said could take hours.
Nalizar was not faring well. Though he’d drawn a brilliant defense, there were just so many chalklings. Inspector Harding stood shadowed in the darkness. He barely seemed to move, just a smiling, dark statue.