In the Roman-Renaissance port city of Portus Magnus, the priests of the big gods have quietly agreed to keep every other god out. Most people are refused a class at their coming-of-age petition and live as the Classless: the working majority who carry the whole city and are never once looked at. Alessandro is refused like most. But a minor god named Puck, too poor to grant a class, slips him something stranger, and a dangerous idea takes root among the passed-over: a class is a loan, and what you build yourself, you keep.
A four-book progression saga for readers of Cradle and He Who Fights With Monsters who want their underdog to rise by wit and organisation rather than brute power. No stat blocks, no chosen one, no fair fights.
The Books
Book 1
The Unchosen
His mother pressed the good coat the night before. At the altar, no god spoke. By morning the family forge is cold, there is nothing he is permitted to make, and the docks hire by the back.
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Book 2
The Uncounted
Sixty of them against six guards, and the guards backed down. Then a bolting horse nearly takes a friend in the fish-market lane, somebody in the crowd says the word lucky, and it lands wrong.
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Book 3
The Unwanted
Two hundred cobbles in the pile past the third quay, and nobody will say why they left theirs. In a scullery court a starving god of cleaners is down to her last followers, and he needs her to say yes.
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Book 4
The Unstoppable
The bell rings the wrong warning, and the guards draw their line above the quarter instead of in front of it. Below: green light, rising water, and a crowd about to pile against a gate that will not open.
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