Tales from the Territory (preorder)

(preorder—to be published this Fall)

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Leesha Hannigan.

The world fell in the love with the cozy fantasy world of the No.1 New York Times bestselling series that started with Legends & Lattes and continued in Bookshops & Bonedust and Brigands & Breadknives.

Now award-winning storyteller Travis Baldree takes us back to the Territory in a heart-warming set of five stories, three making their first appearances in Tales from the Territory, that give readers a brand new look at beloved characters.

Tales will be printed in two colors throughout, with a full-page illustration for each story.

The delightful “Goblins & Greatcoats” is a tale of murder and intrigue that introduces Zyll, a goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery on a rain-soaked night that features four adventurers, a pair of corpses, a junk-drawer knife, some unfortunate taxidermy, and a beleaguered Gatewarden.

We all know what happened in Legends & Lattes, where retired-soldier Viv dreamed of opening a cafe and ended up with a found family and perhaps the love of her life. “Just a Thimbleful” tells us how one of the most beloved of those family members, Thimble, found his way from a frustrating and unhappy house to creating sweet treats that brought Legends & Lattes to life.

Tandri is a succubus and being a succubus comes with...well...certain expectations and pressures. In “Mirograph” we meet Tandri as an art student at Ackers University trying to find a way to be seen as something else, something more.

And in the longest story here, “Cavaliers & Coffees,” we get a glimpse of trouble for our cafe crew when a new and unscrupulous business comes into town, stealing all of Viv and Tandri's ideas, undercutting them for price and putting everything they've worked for in peril.

Tales from the Territory is another triumph of low stakes and high fantasy, of friends trying to make their way in a challenging world.

Special Features:

• Full-color wrap-around dust jacket artwork
• Printed in two colors throughout
• A duotone illustration for each story, three of them full-pages

Deluxe Production Features:

• A fine cloth binding
• Hot foil stamping on the front cover and spine
• Smyth-sewn to create a more durable binding
• Head and tail bands
• Signed by Travis Baldree
• Limited to 1500 signed and numbered copies

Table of Contents:

• Goblins & Greatcoats
• Just a Thimbleful
• Pages to Fill
• Mirograph
• Cavaliers & Coffees

Goblins & Greatcoats
(excerpt)

When the door thumped closed behind Zyll, she was greeted by the sharp silence that follows a beheading.

The great-room was dominated by a misshapen hearth choked with popping logs that blazed with heat and light, although darkness still piled up in the corners.

Shadows leapt and danced up the stonework, away from the massive, wooly head of a prairie ox mounted above the mantel.

The elderly roof was clearly unequal to the storm outside. Raindrops pittered and pattered on the flagstones and the scarred tables scattered about.

The bristle-bearded innkeeper, frozen in the act of distressed hand-wringing, stared at Zyll from behind a counter with his mouth open.

In the center of the room, two bodies lay supine on the flagstones.

To the left, a plum-vested man spread-eagled in a congealing pool of blood, with the haft of a knife standing up from his chest.

To the right, a rattkin in a blue coat, her form breathless but otherwise unmarked.

Behind them, silhouetted by the hearthlight, stood five figures in tableau.

A knock-kneed local warden with a tin badge shaped like a candle on his vest and a spotty face that had probably never felt the edge of a razor.

An elven woman with hair so frosty silver it called to mind the squeal of ice on a frozen lake, and form-fitting clothes as black as the bottom of one.

An apple-cheeked dwarf in a dressy scarlet doublet with a lute case slung over her shoulder.

A stone-fey priest in emerald robes bearing the symbol of Ard, with gray mustaches you could have tied around his neck thrice if you wanted to.

And last, a hulking tapenti warrior corded over with muscle and rough scales, clad in a golden tabard, his hand halfway to the hilt of the bastard sword strapped across his back.

Zyll took all of this in, nodded to herself, and trotted to the innkeeper, her bare feet trailing muddy prints.

The little goblin grabbed the edge of the bartop and stared up at him with enormous red eyes as she shed water into an ever-growing puddle.

Just a Thimbleful
(excerpt)

In the predawn gloom, only lamplight showed the way as Thimble followed his familiar route through Thune’s sleeping streets. He’d made the journey so many times that he could have easily done so in full dark. The scents of the city, and the textures under paw, were more than enough to navigate by. The sharp, raw pine of the carpenters’ district. The smooth, polished cobbles of the market street. The musk of horse from the coach stables, and the shreds of straw between his toes. The watercress tang of the river Briar as he neared his destination, the pavers slick with morning damp.

The mansion he arrived at adjoined the walled riverbank, a series of black angles against night’s deep indigo. Behind glass shutters and rich curtains, pinpricks of candleglow marked where servants were already about their business.

The rattkin scurried past the grand iron gates that fronted the building, backed with precisely trimmed hedges, and made his way down the sloping alley that led to a private pier where deliveries were made.

A narrow stair led beneath street level, hugging the side of the manor. As he descended below the waterline, Thimble eased into a layer of chill he felt from the ends of his whiskers to the tip of his tail, as though he were submerging into the river itself.

The slim basement entrance sported an impressive iron lock, but he had no need for a key. Maddie had arrived ahead of him, just as she did every morning.

He slipped inside, closing the door gently behind him against the cold. Retrieving his apron from the row of pegs in a little alcove to his right, he pulled it over his head and knotted the strings behind his waist before navigating the twists of the dark passage ahead, until he found himself at last in the light and heat of the kitchen.

Pages to Fill
(excerpt)

“Mind the blades!” cried Roon.

Viv hurled herself to the side as a pair of dirks whipped toward her. The street was narrow, though, hardly built with an orc in mind. Her shoulder slammed hard into brick, and she couldn’t make herself small enough to dodge them both. One purred past harmlessly, while the other sliced a red ribbon across her upper arm. She hissed and clapped a hand over the wound, baring her teeth.

Roon glanced back long enough to confirm that Viv was still breathing, and then the dwarf renewed his pursuit of their quarry. Gods love him, but he was already flagging. He’d never catch up.

As Viv pressed off the wall and stumbled back into a run, she could see the object of their pursuit, a slender elf in full flight, increasing her lead down the curving thoroughfare. Tossing those knives hadn’t slowed her up any. In seconds, she’d be obscured by the bend, and losing sight of her would be disastrous. Viv pushed herself to a dead sprint and outpaced Roon after only a few strides.

Gnomes scattered before her thundering approach, and she felt like a giant terrorizing a helpless village. A wild laugh escaped, her breath hitching in her chest.

“Fennus!” bellowed Viv. “We need eyes on her!”

She caught sight of him leaping gracefully across the sloping metal rooftops. He offered no reply—she couldn’t imagine him suffering the indignity of raising his voice—but she thought he’d be able to keep track of the fugitive woman.

For the first time since coming to Azimuth, she was grateful her greatsword was too menacing to lug around the city. Without Blackblood weighing her down, Viv began to close the distance.

The elf fled tirelessly, her long braid flying behind her as she tore through the crowd.

Mirograph
(excerpt)

The brass plaque beside the door read:

THAUMIC MIROGRAPHY
Prof. Almeda Dupesne

Tired old hallways sighed with the distant voices of scholarship and lecture. The ground floor of the Cadden Annex of Ackers University was mostly empty.

Tandri hesitated, a satchel of drafting supplies hanging heavy from her shoulder. Her tail lashed once behind her, lassoing a courage too recently tested. She rapped sharply with a single knuckle.

“Come.” The voice issuing from within was strong and barely muffled.

Breathing out with the swing of the door, Tandri stepped across the threshold.

Cheerful clutter overspilled every shelf and surface of the office. Crystals, gewgaws, and curios clung to gravity-defying slopes of parchment and paper. A profusion of thaumic instruments bristled from jars and cubbies, and those without a home of their own teetered in piles in the corners.

She absorbed all of this in only a moment, and then her gaze was arrested by the artwork.

Every inch of plastered wall hosted canvases, sketches, painted boards, and here and there, exotic silks lush with embroidery. The contrast of artistry and technical accoutrements in the room bewildered and dazzled her in equal measure. She involuntarily squeezed her satchel closer to her side.

A handsome tapenti woman turned from the teapot whistling atop a burner on the crowded desk. She extended a steaming porcelain cup in Tandri’s direction. Her eyes were heavy lidded in the way of all tapenti, the scales of her hood gleaming a dusky, reptilian rose. And yet her warm smile and sensual gestures communicated a feminine self-assurance that Tandri had never recognized in herself.

No matter how much others might have looked for it.

“Well, come on in,” purred the professor, and raised the cup a little higher. “It’s best when it’s hot.”

Cavaliers & Coffees
(excerpt)

As they stood together in front of Cavaliers & Coffees, Viv ran a hand through her hair and took it all in with bemusement.

The building stood only about six blocks away from Legends & Lattes. Viv thought it might once have been a tavern. It was hardly an exact match for their own place in construction, although she supposed there were some similarities in arrangement given the door and window placement. It was an old building though, so that had to be pure coincidence.

The sign though. When she looked at the sign, a weird, curdled feeling foamed up in her belly that she was entirely unfamiliar with.

The sign was fashioned in the shape of a kite shield. A very recognizable shape. One that she looked at every day when she unlocked their front door.

The wood was still raw and unstained, and in diagonal lettering were chiseled the words cavaliers & coffees. What really bothered her, though, was the crude wooden sword in the middle, a deliberate echo of the metal one on their own sign.

“Those alliterative bastards,” seethed Tandri.

Another sandwich board sat in the street nearby, chalked identically to the one Tandri had purloined.

Crowded out the door, a queue of townsfolk trailed across the front of the shop and past the opening of the adjoining alley. Viv recognized several faces—regulars of Legends & Lattes. That curdled feeling increased.

“Our opening day was nothing like this,” mumbled Viv.

Tandri hooked an arm through hers at the elbow and squeezed. “That’s because everybody knows what coffee is now. We did all the work for them.”

“Well,” said Viv, trying for a reassuring smile. “I guess we’d better get in line.”

“Feels like waiting to get into our own damn shop,” muttered her wife, darkly.