Torchlight and Rebel Galaxy co-creator Travis Baldree published his first book, Legends & Lattes, in 2022, and quickly captured the hearts of fantasy fans. The cozy tale of Viv, an orc warrior who quits her adventuring career to start a coffee shop, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for both the 2023 Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel.
Baldree provided a look back at Viv’s first days at a sword for hire in a second book in the series: his 2023 prequel Bookshops & Bonedust. In that book, Viv she spends her time recovering from a devastating adventuring injury by helping improve a ramshackle bookshop in a sleepy seaside town. Fern, the foul-mouthed rattkin owner of that bookshop, becomes the protagonist of the third book in his series, Brigands & Breadknives.
Ahead of the book’s release on Nov. 11, Tor Books offered Polygon an exclusive excerpt from Brigands & Breadknives.
Fern awoke to the sight of an alligator grin and eyes the red of a harvest sunset in a round, green face.
And daylight. Painful, painful daylight.
Supine as she was in the back of the wagon, and boxed in on all sides by, well, boxes, there was nowhere to escape to but up, directly toward that fierce and deadly smile. A direction no right-thinking rattkin would choose.
The hangover that battered Fern’s skull confused the whole business to such a degree that up was exactly where she went, though, lurching to a sitting position, flailing with the satchel her arms were tangled in, and screaming her throat raw.
The sharp grin and red glare were suddenly three feet away, at the very back of the wagon. Through the sick thumping of blood behind her eyes, Fern saw that both belonged to a goblin with a mop of orange hair and bottlebrush pigtails, clad in some sort of enormous coat made entirely of pockets in a riot of mismatched colors.
Improbably, the goblin’s hands were bound before her, and as if that weren’t sufficient, several loops of cord were wrapped around her body, from her wrists all the way to her shoulders, and secured to a ringbolt on the back of the buckboard.
“What… what in the faithless fuck?” wailed Fern. With an ungainly leap, she tumbled sideways over the boxboards of the cart and landed hard on a rutted track, with her cloak flipped over her head and her tail pinned underneath her.
She heard birdsong.
And smelled sweaty horse.
And heard a dimly familiar voice.
“How long have you been in there?”
Fern shoved her cloak out of her face and squinted upward, wishing not entirely hyperbolically that she were dead, for a variety of defensible reasons.
Astryx One-Ear stared down at her from a great height, one hand on her hip, the other combing through her silver hair.
Astryx narrowed her eyes in recognition. “Hang on, where do I know you from?”
With a mighty effort to keep the contents of her stomach inside her, Fern scrambled to her feet. She was aware that her fur was caked with the dust of the road and probably something horse-related.
She shot a glance at the goblin in the back of the wagon, who hadn’t moved an inch and still grinned benignly at the both of them.
“I’m, uh… so, a few weeks ago I was in a carriage in some marshlands, and, er—”
“Oh. The pescadines. Mute couple in the wagon. That’s it.”
She sniffed the air and caught a whiff of Fern’s regret, judging by the face she made. “So is this on purpose, or did you just pass out in the wrong wagon?”
Still hung up on the idea of herself and the coachman as a couple and her head aching too much to formulate a lie, Fern replied, “Bit of both?” and winced.
Astryx nodded, thought about that for a moment, and then seemed to dismiss her entirely, shifting her attention to the goblin in the wagon. She pointed. “You. Back up front.”
The goblin obliged, leaping nimbly across the cargo in the cartbed and up onto the buckboard, where she dropped onto her butt.
“Is she… some kind of prisoner?” Despite the sharpness of her smile, she didn’t seem particularly threatening.
Fern crept gingerly off the road and found a grassy swell. She sank to the ground, hissing as every muscle along her spine shrieked in protest. She had no idea how she’d slept through the night, given that she felt like one enormous bruise.
“Bounty,” replied Astryx as she tied the tarpaulin back down.
“Isn’t that a lot of rope?”
“Trust me when I say it was not my first choice. You must’ve come aboard in Thune. Yes?”
Fern nodded mutely. Astryx couldn’t see her, facing away as she was, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“We’re a day and a half out, and three days to the next town.”
“A day and a half?” Fern exclaimed.
“By cart.” Astryx was unperturbed. “There’s a village back that way that we passed in the night. You should be all right. Safe country. Warm spots to sleep.” Astryx finished what she was doing and turned to look Fern over. “Any food?”
It dawned on Fern what was happening. “No,” she replied in a very small voice.
Not that food sounded like something she wanted again anytime soon. Her eyes squeezed with every heartbeat, and her guts didn’t like the rhythm.
The elf rummaged under the buckboard and withdrew a hunk of thick-rinded cheese and a piece of bread that looked like it would clunk if dropped. Astryx held them out toward Fern without another word.
She didn’t seem annoyed or angry. But she didn’t seem interested, either.
She might as well have been waiting for her horse to finish relieving itself.
Which, yes, it was currently in the process of doing.
Fern performed some mental arithmetic. A day and a half by horse cart. On foot, that was…
With her head in her hands, she whispered, “Questioning my existence from the comfort of a warm bed sounds pretty gods-damned wonderful right about now. Fern, you ninny.”
“Hm?”
The elf’s hm was as precisely calibrated as Cal’s.
She hefted the food meaningfully.
Fern tried for an endearing but slightly pitiable smile. “Is there any chance I can convince you to take me to the next town or crossroads or someplace I could book passage back . . .” Fern trailed off, and her eyes widened. She patted at her waist with the sudden realization that she was wearing neither her belt, nor her purse. In a wild burst of optimism, she flipped open the satchel and rifled through it, hoping against hope that—
Nope. Not so much as a lonely copper bit gathering dust at the bottom. Only parchment, pencils, and a book she’d already read that was intended for somebody else.
Astryx had no trouble guessing her thoughts. “Seems like the walk might be the best bet.”
It was very clear that the legendary Astryx One-Ear had no intention of retracing her steps to return a hungover rattkin to her shambles of a life. In a story, the heroine would have gallantly changed her plans to usher a naive villager back to the safety of their own home, no matter how inconvenient or obviously impractical that might be.
This clearly was not one of those stories.
“Luffing shunks!” chirped the goblin.
Both Astryx and Fern switched their attention to the girl on the buckboard.
“My thoughts exactly,” muttered Fern, who knew a lot of goblin profanity.
“You know what she’s saying?” Astryx cocked a brow at her.
Something canny in Fern that wasn’t entirely debilitated by alcoholic low tide said, “Oh, sure. Why?”
“You speak goblin?”
“Does she not speak Territories?” Fern neatly avoided the question.
Astryx frowned. “Not so far as I can tell. What’d she say?”
“Well,” Fern hedged. “Nothing polite.” Not that politeness had ever governed Fern’s speech before.
“Never really got on with the goblin tongue myself. They didn’t even have one five hundred years ago. I understand it’s mostly curses, so, that sounds about right.”
Fern thought that if she had lived for a thousand years, she might have picked up a few more languages that were relevant to her line of business, but was wise enough not to say so.
Instead, she said, “Look, I’ve got a proposal. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you take me with you to the next real stop. I can listen to what she’s got to say? That’s bound to make things easier for you, and as a bonus, I don’t expire by the side of the road on my way home.”
The elf pursed her lips in speculation. “You still don’t have any money. How are you planning to hire your way back?”
Fern spread her paws. “You don’t have to worry about that, right? I’ll just have to find a way to scrape together the silver when I get there.”
“Mmm. What’s your name?”
“Fern.”
“And what is it that you do?”
“I’m a bookseller,” replied Fern, which didn’t seem very useful at the moment.
Astryx appeared skeptical. “That doesn’t bode well for your prospects.”
Fern privately agreed, but said, “I’m a very resourceful bookseller . . . ?”
There was a long silence, during which the draft horse cropped several mouthfuls of grass from the verge and flicked away a few bothersome flies.
“Ta shunka,” declared the goblin.
Astryx glanced between the two of them and then raised both brows at Fern expectantly.
Fern sighed. “It means, ‘you’re fucked.’”