No Gods No Kings

Chapter 1

Torver isn’t crying, so at least there’s that.

By the skin of his teeth, he’s holding it together as he’s pushed from the overturned mess of his home, hands shackled in smoke. The smokemancing Enforcer at his back kicks him in the heels and he stumbles, thoughts racing. He needs to get out of this.

If only he can figure out how.

He’d bribe her if money wasn’t how he got into this mess, his every last yan, tan, and tethera now in the grubby hands of whoever burgled his shack.

He wants to explain this to the burly woman presently engaged in smacking the side of his head with her sharp vambrace.

But when he turns his head, he’s stopped by the sight of his own terrified face in the Enforcer’s shining breastplate, blood running down the side of his stinging scalp.

The blanched expression of a man without registration papers, or the money he’d saved to buy fake ones.

The only useless worm in the whole of the People’s Kingdom not to have magic, and therefore, nothing to register.

A worm who is probably going to hang for it.

Torver swallows hard, regretting his reaction to the robbery—the wailing that had drawn the Enforcer knight from her patrol.

When she’d seen the wreck of his hut, she’d demanded his name, to see his papers, to know what magic he had—and Torver had realised the severity of his mistake.

Better to take defeat silently and to slink away, rather than come into contact with an Enforcer.

Torver opens his mouth to emit some bleating plea, hoping that pity will be his salvation—instead, he’s kicked behind the knee. He goes down hard and the gathering crowd laughs. Crows circle above, the air punctuated with their cries.

“Your sort make me sick,” the Enforcer mutters. A bead of sweat runs the length of her face, a strand of brown hair escaping her helmet and sticking to her temple.

“My—my sort?” Torver’s cheeks burn. Surely she can’t tell what he is just by looking at him?

He tries to stand, but the task is difficult without the use of his hands, still bound by her smoke. The Enforcer watches him struggle, and from the end of the dusty street, someone laughs again.

Finally making it back to his feet, Torver looks into the woman’s face and finds grey eyes burning into him, like they’re also made of the hot smoke she wields.

“I heard it the second you first spoke—that accent.” The Enforcer smirks, taking her shire horse’s reins in one hand, and yanking on the solid tendril that constrains Torver with the other. His heart thuds, his veins heating in panic.

”You’re from the border, aren’t you?” He hears her snarl as she pushes him in front of her. “Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re one of those filthy Rath, just disguised like a real person.”

The Enforcer spits. The wet glob lands on the back of Torver’s neck.

“I’m from the Mere,” Torver whispers, mouth dry. “Near the border, yes. But…the right side of it. I promise.”

The Enforcer isn’t convinced as they move through the narrow streets.

Towards the Citadel, the redstone castle at the centre of the Wen that houses the Courts.

It towers over everything, the size of a mountain, its turrets and parapets perched upon it like falcons.

Watching in the heat that hangs like a roof over the city.

“Mere or no,” the silver-clad woman grumbles into the shell of his ear. “You’re up to no good. No papers, won’t tell me what your magic is—Beast below, I bet that house you claimed to have had burgled was the least of your scams, wasn’t it?”

Torver’s consciousness shifts to his throat, the tightness. How the air stutters through it. How he can feel the noose around it already.

They march through the warren of narrow streets before he’s kicked onto the Rhodfa, the Wen’s main road. At the end of it, the towering hulk of the Citadel looms; the boot above the beetle. Sweat slicks Torver’s palms.

Citadel Square, the expanse of smooth marble at the castle’s feet, greets them far too quickly.

Usually bustling with citizens coming and going, collecting job scrolls from the Court of Works, verifying sanctioned knowledge in the Court of Learning, the square is eerily devoid of life.

The lack of obstruction only speeds their approach, no matter how Torver twists and strains against the smokemancer’s bindings.

The Citadel looks down on him, its many windows like many eyes, and he can imagine the Court of Punishments like a predator, licking its lips as he’s pushed towards its open maw.

The ornately carved gallows in front of the castle won’t break his eye contact. Then, the crows overhead caw in alarm and bank away.

The Enforcer’s shire flinches, its iron shoes making sparks. Torver realises with a start that the square shouldn’t be empty. Not at this time of day. And beneath the noise of the now-departed crows, there should be the rumble of the Wen’s centre.

Torver’s arms prickle with goosebumps.

From the moment he had crossed the river that morning to return to his hut, two mattress-bound yan jangling in his pocket, he had been aware of the noise of the Wen.

A constant hum. Levitating merchants floating their wares around the passersby, hoping to tempt them into a purchase.

The grunts of those with magical strength pulling wagons laden with impossible loads.

Watermancers entertaining crowds of squealing children for a few tethera, mancing river water into the forms of bounding animals.

Enforcers in plate armour mounted on enormous shires, parting the busy crowds like schools of fish.

Torver doesn’t know when it happened, but the hum of the Wen is silent now. He feels the Enforcer stiffen behind him. Not a crow in the sky above.

Like something has scared them all away.

The Enforcer sees her first. Torver can tell because the smoke stutters around his wrists.

The woman standing at the side of the square unfolds her arms. Her approach is slow and measured, her hair white and swaying with each step. She’s small but her face is set hard like ice, her black eyes fixed on them. Torver can feel the Enforcer tense. Her horse too.

The white-haired woman is on them, sucking air between her teeth.

“M-Miss Bassen,” the Enforcer’s eyes immediately drop to the floor. Like most people, she knows exactly who Bassen is. Her hair is unmistakable—all a shimmering silver even though she’s not much older than Torver is. “How nice to see you…”

Bassen smiles, slow and pretty. A black linen gown flutters about her ankles in the warm breeze, overlaid by a dark cloak. Canines peek from between her lips and Torver exhales, shrinking under her gaze. He swallows, can only imagine what she’s going to do.

“What do we have here then?” Bassen says, looking over the pair. “A criminal, Enforcer?”

The Enforcer swallows and mumbles something barely audible about scroll fraud. A breeze catches a nearby banner and the stern faces of the Meddera, the four grand overseers, ripple on the fabric.

Bassen tuts in response.

“Now, that won’t do at all, will it?” she drawls disapprovingly.

Torver’s mouth tastes of copper.

“It’s just a—misunderstanding, that’s all—” Torver tries to say, but his smoke shackles tighten in response, their temperature rising to an uncomfortable sting against his skin. He winces, shutting his mouth.

The Enforcer’s top lip quivers.

“It—it’s not a misunderstanding, I assure you, Miss Bassen,” the Enforcer manages, her engraved gorget clanking against her breastplate.

“I found him wailing in the street about stolen yan, and he wouldn’t answer my questioning about his job scroll or what magic he has…

clearly a charlatan, Miss. Clearly a thief. ”

Bassen’s mouth falls open slightly. The shadow of shock and disgust lines her face.

“How terrible,” Bassen’s eyes are so dark that Torver can’t tell where iris becomes pupil. “I do hate thieves.”

She appraises Torver with a judgemental frown.

The Enforcer swallows. “Scourge of the People’s Kingdom,” she says quietly.

Bassen nods.

“What’s your name?” she asks the Enforcer, nose pointed haughtily upward.

The Enforcer wets her lower lip with a flick of her tongue.

“Conise,” she manages.

Bassen considers this.

“You’re doing your Kingdom a great service by Enforcing, Conise. But, you’d be better off giving this thief to me,” she turns her gaze back to Torver, something wicked in her pupil-dark eyes. “I’d consider it my duty to punish him for you.”

Conise hesitates.

“Will you kill him, Miss?” She steadies her shire with a gloved hand, then looks to her armour-clad feet. “Is this cretin even worthy of your time, deathmancer? He was probably going to hang anyway.”

Bassen’s mouth parts slowly in a feline smile.

“I’ll give him what he deserves.”

After a dithering moment, Torver feels his shackles dissipate into the air. His hands are in front of him again and he rubs the ashy marks from his skin. His teeth find his bottom lip.

“As you wish, Miss.” The Enforcer steps back, head dipped, eyes to the floor in an inchoate bow. “No gods, no kings,” she says by way of farewell.

“No gods, no kings,” Bassen replies.

Conise uses a low wall nearby to mount her shire from whose back she glares down at Torver. With a curt nod, she turns her mount and kicks it into a lolloping walk.

Before he can even process what just happened, Torver is grabbed roughly by the wrist, and yanked away.

Bassen’s touch forces air from his lungs, her skin like ice. Her magic makes her cold like death, and about as well known. Everyone knows about Bassen the deathmancer. She’s famous in the Wen how maneating bears are famous in the countryside.

His throat tightens again. Her ice-grip pulls him out of the square and before he can catch his breath, he’s thrown unceremoniously down a ginnel.

Out of view. Where she can give him what he deserves.

A slap, hard across his face.

“Torver, you fucking idiot, what was that?”