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.