The first was a small mask with a pointy nose. The second was a gray flute carved out of bone. The third was a metal box. He quickly snatched up the mask and the flute, but the box he nudged with the tip of his boot, as though by accident. It snapped open. A copper flower, fashioned out of tiny filaments of gearwork, grew up from the box. The petals clicked against each other as it bloomed. Then it wilted. Each petal fell with a small clatter. The bare stem reached around the floor in an embarrassed sort of way, gathered up the petals, and closed the box lid over itself.

The goblin apologized, picked up the box, and hid it back inside his hat.

Kaile clapped. She couldn’t help it. The domini men also clapped, all four of them, and Kaile had never seen them react to anything that was not their own tower of tiles.

“You can set up your stage on the long table at the end of the room,” she said. She was in charge of the public room, at that moment at least, so it was her decision to make. “But not until the afternoon.” The Guard Captain usually came to conduct his Inspection in the morning, and Father always took his shift during the midday crowd. Both should be over and done with by the afternoon. “Make sure it’s me standing here at the counter when you come back, before you get started.”

The old goblin winked. He seemed a trustworthy conspirator. “We will.”

“And promise me you won’t cause a ruckus and break the oven.”

“The oven will suffer no damage from us,” the goblin said—and more than said. He almost sang the words to make them more than just a promise, to change the shape of the world around them. Then he left.

Kaile heard domini tiles clack against each other. The day seemed ordinary again. She went back into the kitchen.

“Is the Captain here?” Mother asked. “The very best bread is in that basket, there by the door. That’s the stuff to give him, if he’s here.”

“He isn’t,” Kaile told her, “but I’m running out of pastries. And I think it’s Father’s turn at the counter.”

Mother grunted, handed over a tray of pastries, and disappeared behind the curve of the oven.

‘Ambassador‘ Excerpt

Turn the page for a first look at AMBASSADOR!

Chapter 1

1

The Envoy tossed itself at the world.

An ambassador’s business had left it stranded on the moon for years and decades. During all that time it tried to patch together a return capsule from Soviet equipment abandoned on the surface. But this had never actually worked, and now it needed to hurry, so it gave up on the capsule and built a cannon instead. Then the Envoy aimed itself and its cannon at the world.

This was not the tricky part.