In the next space, there were many long tables covered in mounds of bent tools, ripped clothing, cracked pottery, and other, well…garbage. Goblins were lined up, carefully picking through the debris and assessing each piece to sort into slightly more useful piles, but fell still when Skoob announced the new Gribtoss King had arrived.
Amma quietly urged them back to work, and Skoob took a deep breath of the foul air. “Ah,” he said, “commerce.”
“Where does it all come from?”
“Mostly humies city,” he said with a grin. “Also sometimewoods, sometime trader cart, sometime dwarvies. Dwarvies give good commerce actually, just say,take dis, gobbie, no need, so gobbie do!”
Amma giggled at Skoob’s gruff impression of a dwarf, wiggling fingers under his chin to mimic a beard and stomping. The goblins really were sort of cute if she squinted, and she didn’t even notice the pang in her stomach telling her not to trust the sudden maternal feelings flooding in.
“Used to get good commerce from da big, scary part of da mountain too, but not no more.”
“You mentioned that before. What exactly is—”
“Harem!” exploded Skoob, hurrying away. “I show you new wives. Is Jiblix’s old wives, so can pick new new wives, but some is very nice, so maybe want keep.”
Amma rubbed her temples and followed after. She grumbled in the back of her throat, voice low, “Okay, new decree: don’t talk aboutanygoblins like that anymore.”
Skoob came to a quick stop, standing straight, turning to her with abject fear in his glistening eyes. “Skoob make King mad?” He fell to his knees before her at the doorway to the sorting room. “Skoob apologies. Skoob take beating now.”
Amma cringed at the scepter in her hand and held it behind her back. “No, no! Please get up!”
Confused, Skoob rushed to follow her order, taloned toes clacking on the stone. “Enormous King Amma sure?”
“Yes, of course, Skoob, I don’t…let’s just go to the next thing, okay?”
A huge swell ran down Skoob’s throat, and he led her back across the market and through a series of tunnels into which she had to duck, the walls there covered in a variety of mushrooms being harvested by goblins outfitted with rucksacks. Finally, they came out into an open hall-like space. A set of some of the biggest goblins stood at attention outside an actual door hangingprecariously off hinges somehow nailed into the stone. The two fought one another to open it, and after a short brawl, eventually completed the act together.
The new chamber glittered with piles of metal objects, shined up to reflect the glow of many stubby candles, easy to mistake for gold at first glance. When Amma got a little closer, she could pick out kitchen tools, brass plates, and doorknobs amongst what she could only assume the goblins considered treasure.
“King Amma, Skoob present da Gribtoss throne.”
A wooden chair carved from cherry, scuffed but with fanciful finials along its back, sat in the room’s center. Additional scraps of wood, pine and oak, were tied on with leather cords to extend the back and arms. Shiny rocks and iridescent shells were stuck on with hardened sap, and the seat was balanced atop a stack of crates to form a dais.
Amma took a big breath that she immediately regretted and went up to it, taking a careful seat. It fit her perfectly, but she could imagine any one of the goblins in it, their feet sticking out and believing the throne made them seem big and menacing.
“Now, wives!” Skoob clapped twice, and from a side door, a line trailed in until half of the room was full of little, green-skinned, scantily-clad, lady goblins. Looking much more demure than even the market-goers with their heads bowed, they stood in rows before Amma and waited. “You pick which is good, and others…um, well? We figure what do others for King!”
Amma looked over the forty or so goblins and frowned. “Ya know what, Skoob? Why don’t you take a little break, okay?”
This word seemed completely foreign to him. “But I visor to king,” he said. “Need vise.”
“Right, but I need a little break from kinging. Maybe you can go check on Damien for me? You know, my, um…tallconcubine?”
“Oh!” Skoob winked at her. “Skoob get!” Then he scurried out of the room, and the door was closed.
Alone with the former partners of the recently deceased Jiblix, Amma was awash once again with guilt. Katz was standing in the midst of them, having silently followed all through the den, but for once didn’t appear to be the most miserable creature in the room. She supposed it was probably her responsibility to say something first. “Um, hello, all.”
A chorus of sweet but pinched goblin voices greeted her in return.
Amma’s eye twitched—she recognized that tone meant to please even if one didn’t really mean it. “So, were you all, like, married to Jiblix or…”
The goblins traded looks until one of them stepped forward. She had her hands clasped behind her back, eyes trailing the ground even as she came closer. “Some us wives,” she said, voice honeyed and quiet. “Could be wife if had nuff babies.”
Well, that won’t work with me, Amma thought.
“I have most babies, so I head wife,” she said, a little pride in her voice.
“What’s your name?”
