“Very well, mistress,” Durn said. “Where are you going?”
Miranda looked out through the enormous gaping hole in the side of Hern’s tower, where the city of Gaol lay dark, silent, and frozen under the Enslavement. “I’m going to make sure that thief keeps his promise.”
Durn bowed, and Miranda climbed onto Gin’s back. As soon as she was on, he leaped through the hole in the wall, landing neatly on the roof of the house next door. The moment his feet hit the rain-soaked tiles, he was running, jumping along the roofs toward the citadel.
D
uke Edward stood soaked and alone on the battlements of his citadel. His guards were gone; so were his servants. He didn’t know where and he didn’t care. He had larger problems. He stood very still, his eyes closed, his face twitching in a concentration deeper than any he’d ever had to maintain. Below him, spread out in a dark grid, was the city, his city, and every spirit, every speck of stone, cowered in homage to him. Their fear bled through the raging spread of his own spirit, making him feel ill and weak, but he did not loosen his grip. Such unpleasantness was necessary if he was to preserve the perfection he’d worked his whole life to achieve. This was just another test, and though he’d never been pushed to Enslavement before, he’d always been ready to do what he had to do. Perfection was not something that could be achieved through half-measures.
Out on the edge of his control, he could feel the sea spirit that had taken over his river surging. It was gathering water from farther upstream, increasing its size and power. It had doubled since he began the Enslavement, swollen with water until he could no longer feel the Spiritualist girl’s hold on it. Maybe she had died, or maybe the water spirit had grown too large for her and broken away. Whatever the case, Hern’s idea of catching and forcing her to remove her spirit had never been an efficient option. The river was growing too quickly. In another ten minutes it would have enough water to flood the whole city, an outcome that could break his already tenuous hold on his spirits and ruin his town, neither of which was an option he was willing to consider. No, his path was clear. Reestablishing control meant getting the sea spirit out of his river, and Edward was going to do just that, even if it meant destroying the water.
He reached out, his focus sliding across the cowering city to the warehouses on the northern stretch of the river, where he kept his tanneries. Long ago, when he was just a boy, he’d brought the river to heel by threatening to dump the tannery waste into its waters. Now, forty years later, he made good on that threat. With a great thrust of his spirit, the side of the tannery burst open, and five enormous metal barrels of stinking hide soak, their tops frothy with flies and decay, toppled into the river’s newly clear water. He grinned when he felt the Great Spirit’s power shudder and cringe as hundreds of gallons of rancid, black-green sludge slithered across its surface.
Still, it wasn’t enough. The river surged beneath the layer of poison, denying Edward’s control of the area, refusing to retreat. He needed something more drastic, but he was already panting from the effort of controlling spirits so far away. Fortunately, the next step was easy. Even Enslaved, fire needed little encouragement to burn. All he had to do was nudge one of the fallen torches that lay on the docks, dropped by his retreating army, and the flame leaped into the polluted water.
The sludge caught instantly, and the night lit up as hot red fire streaked across the river’s surface. The water screamed and churned, raising great waves as it tried to break the surface film of floating sludge and smother the flames, but all it managed was to fan them higher. The duke smiled in triumph, but never let his control waver. Even this might not be enough to drive the invading spirit out.
“My lord?” a small voice whispered beside him. It was plaintive and hoarse, as if it had been calling a long time. He would have ignored it, but if a spirit had gotten up the courage to interrupt him under these circumstances, it was probably important.
“What?” he said, turning only a tiny fraction of his attention from his battle with the river.
The spirit flickered, and he saw it was the castle fire, the single large fire that moved the treasury door and cooked the castle’s food and heated the rooms, speaking through the chimney. The fire had remained loyal even when the river had been compromised, which was why he turned to listen more closely.
“The thief, Eli Monpress,” it said, its voice crackling. “He’s out in the front square.”
The duke’s patience vanished instantly. “Don’t bother me with such rubbish,” he said, turning back to the river.
“But sir,” the fire said again. “I really think you should look. He’s doing something…” It paused, throwing a puff of nervous smoke into the air. “Odd.”
“Odd?” The duke looked sideways at the chimney. “Odd how?”
“It looks like he’s giving a speech, sir,” the fire finished in a rush, its light ducking back down the chimney just in case the duke decided it was wasting his time. But Edward was frowning, considering his decision. The river demanded his attention, but ignoring Eli Monpress was a risk only fools took. He tried it one way, then another, and came to the conclusion there was nothing to be done but to have a look himself. Keeping the back of his mind on the burning river, the duke walked through the small knot of buildings at the top of the citadel to the battlements on the opposite side, which overlooked the square.
The moment he looked down he understood why the fire had called him. There, standing on a pile of barrels and crates he’d scavenged from who knew where, was Eli Monpress. He was standing in plain sight in the middle of the square, and he seemed to be yelling. Very cautiously, the duke shifted a bit of his spirit away from the river and toward the city center. As his spirit moved over the square, he suddenly heard the thief’s words loud and clear, and his hands clutched the edge of the battlements in white-knuckled fury.
Eli stood atop his mountain of borrowed barrels like a general in a war monument. Light rain soaked his shirt and plastered his black hair to his scalp, which added nicely to the desired effect. Beleaguered heroes always looked better in the rain.
He threw out his hands dramatically as he spoke, pouring every ounce of every scrap of everything he’d ever learned from a lifetime of unconventional wizardry into his voice. “Spirits of Gaol!” he cried, layering just enough power so that his words flowed smooth and strong over the quivering panic around him. “Look at what’s been done to you! Look at the situation you’ve allowed yourselves to be put in! What has happened in Gaol? Free spirits are beholden to no one save their Great Spirit, and yet here you are, cowering while your river is out there fighting the duke for your freedom!”
“That’s not our river!” one of the lamps shouted. “It’s that Spiritualist’s spirit!”
“All the more reason to be ashamed!” Eli answered, his voice harsh. “That an outsider came and risked their neck to save you, and you won’t even help.”
A great round of shouts went up at this, calling him wizard thief, and demanding why should we listen to you? Finally, one voice rolled over the rest. It was the door, the great iron door from the treasury, now standing sullenly at the corner of the square, propped up with sandbags.
“What do you know?” it said. “This is all your fault, anyway. Things were fine until you got here. And now you stand there and tell us to what, rise up? Bah, easy for you! You’re a wizard. You never lived with the duke!”
Eli stared at the door, his eyes wide. When he spoke next, there was a tremor in his voice. “You think I don’t know the duke’s cruelty? You think I just waltzed into Gaol to make empty speeches? Look then!” he shouted, ripping off his coat. “Look for yourselves and then say that I don’t know what it’s like to cross the Duke of Gaol!”
He unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it back, and a great sound went up from the gathered spirits as his bare shoulders came into view. Eli’s skin, always pale, was now a horrid mottle of black and purple bruises. Angry red marks stood out on his lower arms, and his joints were red and swollen until they were painful to look at. All around the courtyard, the spirits who could see the physical world were whispering to those who couldn’t. Those in turn whispered to their neighbors, and Eli’s injuries got worse with every telling. For his part, Eli stood perfectly still, letting the soft rain splash on his injured skin as the story grew around him.
“So you see,” Eli said, gritting his teeth as he gently replaced his shirt, “I, too, have felt what it means to defy the Duke of Gaol.”
But the door was not impressed. “Bah,” it growled. “What are a few bruises? You’re human. You’re free from the true horrors. You can’t even feel the Enslavement, the duke putting his boot on your mind. If you could feel what we feel, you’d be terrified. You wouldn’t last a day living the life we live.”
A general murmur of agreement went up at this, but Eli kept his eyes on the door. “And this life,” he said calmly. “Do you like it?”
“Of course not,” the iron said. “We hate every day, but what can we do? This is our domain; we can’t leave it.”
“You don’t need to leave to be free!” Eli stood up straight, filling his voice with power until it swelled through the entire square. “Listen up, all of you. You’re right that, as a human, I can never know the humiliation of Enslavement. But, as a human, and a wizard, let me tell you a secret:
No
wizard, not even the Duke of Gaol, is strong enough to simultaneously Enslave an entire city. The only reason he was able to do it is because you’re all afraid of him. It is your own fear that Enslaves you, not the duke! If you want to be free of this life of fear and subservience, then stand up and fight back! His control is already broken, or he wouldn’t have had to try an Enslavement in the first place. The only thing standing between you and a free life is yourselves!”
A great murmur went up across the square as the last of Eli’s words echoed off the tall buildings. Lamps flickered and houses leaned their eaves together, whispering. Eli remained on his barrels, listening, marking the difference in tone. Fear was being replaced by something else— energy, anticipation, and a raw urge to get out of an intolerable situation. Then, like the tide shifting, the fear came roaring back. In a single instant, the square fell silent. Eli squinted a moment in the dim lamplight, confused, and then he turned around and looked up. Two stories up on the battlements of the square citadel stood the Duke of Gaol.
He looked down over the square in utter contempt, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. At that moment, the full weight of his crushing will slammed down on the square. All around Eli, spirits began to squirm frantically, lowering themselves and begging for forgiveness. The duke just sneered, and the Enslavement grew until the weight was unbearable. It was at that moment, when it looked like the spirits would be under that crushing weight forever, that Eli crooked his fingers behind his back. Suddenly, a sound broke the silence. It was a thin, soft whistling noise, as of a rope being spun, and then, out of the dark, something small and black launched from the alley between two houses. Everything in the square turned to look as a stone roofing tile shot through the air, flying in a beautiful, straight arc high over the houses and the cobbled square, straight toward the duke.
What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion. The duke stared at the tile in disbelief as it whistled toward him. Then, belatedly, he threw up his hands and began to shout a command, but he never got the words out. The tile struck him on the shoulder with a loud, solid
thwack
.
The duke stumbled back with a pained gasp, clutching his shoulder. The tile’s impact wasn’t a blow to kill him, or even injure him beyond inconvenience. His Enslavement hadn’t even wavered, but the change in the square was immediate. All at once, spirits straightened up, gazing in wonder as the duke, the untouchable, terrible, unbeatable Duke of Gaol, lurched from the blow of a single tile.
For a long second, everything was silent, and then, with a great cry, another roofing tile launched itself at the citadel. It fell short, clacking off the stone wall, but the next one whizzed just past the duke’s head, forcing him to duck for cover. The moment his head disappeared below the battlements, the square went crazy.
Houses shook, tossing off the drainpipes, shutters, and overhangs that had been their mouthpieces for reporting to the duke’s wind. The lamps flared up like tiny, glass-trapped suns, spreading the story of what had just happened down the dark streets in a wave of light. Everywhere, spirits were casting off the duke’s order, shouting and carrying on and doing what they wanted. The cobblestones slid out of their perfect geometric alignment to lie comfortably crooked. The tiny flowers in the pristine window boxes sprouted in absurd abundance, spilling leaves and seedpods into the street. Inside the empty houses, whose residents had fled for the walls the moment the conscript army was routed, tables flipped themselves over, chairs fell backward, and neat piles of table linens threw themselves like streamers over everything, creating dancing shapes behind the wobbly glass windows.
It was, in short, beautiful chaos, and Eli could not have been happier. He hopped off his pile of now-jittering barrels and waved at them as they rolled off to wherever they wanted to go. He was sliding his wet jacket back over his sore shoulders when Monpress jogged over from his alley, an anxious look on his usually calm face.
“Excellent job,” Eli said with a wide grin, slapping the old man on the back. “Beautiful arc, too. You haven’t lost an inch on that throw.”