"RUARGH! RUARGH UARGH!"
The short green creature in front of me slapped both palms against a stone table.
"GRAKH NAR RUARGH!"
A second green creature slapped the table back.
They stared at one another with bloodshot yellow eyes, pointed ears twitching, needlelike teeth bared. Their argument consisted of snarls, throat noises, flying spit, and increasingly aggressive abuse of furniture.
I watched with wide eyes.
They were short, green, and ugly as hell.
Goblins.
That was the best description my mind could produce.
Then I looked down.
My hands were small and green. My fingernails resembled sharpened corn chips. My arms were skinny, my knees were knobby, and my stomach protruded as though it had been inflated by a disappointed balloon merchant.
I raised one trembling hand and touched my face.
Large nose.
Pointed ear.
One crooked fang.
Greasy hair.
No.
I touched the fang again.
No, no. I refuse. Send me back. I had dental insurance.
A translucent blue rectangle appeared in front of my eyes.
I froze.
The two goblins continued roaring at each other behind the box.
Sustainable for whom?
A sharp sensation stabbed through my skull.
It felt as if someone had driven an ice pick into my left ear and stirred my brain twice.
I clutched my head.
"—and if we enter the eastern shaft again, we'll all die!" the younger goblin shouted.
I stopped.
The snarling sounds had become words.
The goblin standing at the far end of the table was younger and slightly taller, though "taller" in this context meant he could probably reach a tavern counter if he jumped. A dirty leather harness crossed his chest. A stone pickaxe hung at his waist, and his left arm was covered in white webbing.
The other goblin was old.
He had deep wrinkles, drooping ears, and a beard consisting of eleven gray hairs arranged with the dignity of a dying broom. A chunk of bark sat on his head, twigs jutting out, firewood engaged in identity fraud.
The old goblin drew himself upright.
"We cannot miss another delivery," he said with all the strained dignity of a male goblin wearing forest debris on his head. "We promised the humans thirty baskets of charcoal before the new moon. If we fail, they won't trade with us anymore."
"They barely trade with us now!"
"They give us grain."
"They give us spoiled grain."
"It is only partially spoiled."
"It has mushrooms growing on it!"
"Free mushrooms for us! What are you complaining?"
The younger goblin's face contorted. His left eye twitched so violently that I worried it might pop off his skull.
"The eastern mine is crawling with giant spiders," he said. "Two miners have already disappeared. The support beams are cracking. If we keep digging, the entire shaft could collapse."
The king stroked his eleven beard hairs.
"Could we perhaps ask the spiders not to interfere until after the delivery?"
The younger goblin stared at him.
I stared at him.
A beetle crawling across the stone table stopped, reconsidered the direction of its life, and turned around.
"That," the younger goblin said slowly, "is your plan?"
"I am considering several options."
"You only said one."
"I am considering saying it more firmly."
Excellent. I've been reincarnated into a civilization led by negotiation experts.
The room around us looked like the basement of a condemned restaurant. Damp stone walls leaned at questionable angles. The ceiling was held up by crooked wooden posts. Smoke drifted through the air from a fire pit that lacked both chimney and shame.
Five other goblins stood near the walls.
They wore patched rags, pieces of leather, and, in one case, what appeared to be a stolen flour sack with holes cut for the arms. All of them watched the argument with the hollow expressions of workers who had attended too many emergency budget meetings.
The old goblin turned toward me with nervous expectation.
"My son," he said, "do you have an idea?"
My mind stopped.
Son?
I glanced behind me.
There was no one there.
I pointed at my chest.
"Me?"
"Yes, you."
The wooden crown tilted as the old goblin leaned closer.
"My only son. Prince Groble."
I'm the goblin prince.
The sentence entered my mind, walked in a slow circle, and sat down.
I died and became the heir to a cave full of malnourished green idiots.
I inspected the room again.
The cracked walls.
The smoke.
The naked torch flame positioned directly beneath a shelf of dry moss.
The royal table, which was actually a boulder with delusions of carpentry.
What the hell?
The younger goblin narrowed his eyes at me.
"Well?"
The last thing I remembered was polished glass, expensive coffee, a tie that cost more than this entire cave, and numbers moving across six monitors.
Now a goblin wearing half a boot as a shoulder guard wanted my opinion on industrial spider management.
Think. Gather information. Assess assets, liabilities, cash flow, operational risks, and why the king's crown has termites.
I closed my eyes.
Only for a moment.
The cave disappeared.
A skyscraper rose around me.
A few hours earlier, or perhaps an entire lifetime earlier, I had been in my office high above Wall Street. The windows stretched from floor to ceiling, looking out over Manhattan. Traffic crawled below like blood through clogged arteries.
I remembered screens of red numbers and green numbers.
Men in tailored suits pretending not to panic.
Markets were shifting.
A currency crisis. A leveraged acquisition. A short squeeze. Perhaps all three. I had left one meeting and was rushing toward another while two analysts followed me, arguing about exposure.
My phone had been vibrating without pause.
My coffee had gone cold.
Someone had lost eighty billion dollars before lunch, which meant it was either a catastrophe or an average Tuesday.
Then pain clenched my chest.
I stopped near the conference-room door.
I told myself it was stress.
Stress was the preferred medical diagnosis of every finance professional who didn't want to admit his body had begun union negotiations.
I loosened my tie and took one step. The floor struck me in the face.
Darkness swallowed everything. That was my end.
A heart attack and an undignified collision with imported marble.
I spent my life studying markets, building capital, and surviving hostile takeovers, only to be taken over by my own arteries.
I opened my eyes.
The goblins were still watching me.
The younger miner folded his arms.
The king fiddled with his wooden crown.
A female goblin near the wall scratched her armpit, sniffed her fingers, and frowned at the result.
This was reality. I was Prince Groble, noble heir, owner of one crooked fang, and, I abruptly realized, completely naked.
A cold draft passed between my legs.
I looked down.
Then I looked farther down.
My eyes widened.
There were no trousers.
My princely authority was dangling freely in front of the royal council like an underfunded banner.
Three female goblins stood near the entrance.
They were staring.
One tilted her head.
Another squinted.
The third brought two fingers close together.
The other two nodded solemnly.
Heat surged across my face.
Wonderful. I have been alive for six minutes and the kingdom has already downgraded my credit rating.
I turned sideways and covered myself with both hands.
The younger miner frowned.
"Are you cold, Prince?"
"No."
"Then why are you holding your—"
"I am thinking."
The king nodded gravely.
"Your brother used to think that way."
"I have a brother?"
"Had."
I decided not to ask.
I coughed and tried to regain what remained of my dignity.
The female goblins whispered.
Two fingers appeared again.
I'm going to tax them first.
I spotted a filthy cloth hanging from a peg, snatched it, and wrapped it around my waist. It had a strange smell and a hole near the center, but it provided coverage.
The king inhaled sharply.
"My ceremonial feast banner."
"It has a hole in it."
"For hanging."
He looked wounded.
I ignored him.
The mine was dangerous. Production was halted. A delivery obligation was approaching. Their counterparty held most of the bargaining power, and the goblins lacked enough food to survive a breakdown in trade.
Simple.
"We need a hedge," I said.
Everyone blinked.
The king glanced toward the cave entrance.
"A hedge?"
"Yes."
"Like bushes?"
"No. A financial hedge."
The younger miner's eyebrows crept upward.
"A finance bush?"
"It isn't a freaking bush."
"Then why call it a hedge?"
"Because it limits exposure."
His eyebrows continued upward until they nearly escaped into his hairline.
I took a breath.
"A hedge is a position designed to offset potential losses from another position."
In plain language, a hedge was a second position that became more valuable when the first one went badly. It exchanged some potential profit for protection and predictability. Strictly speaking, what I was proposing here was risk-sharing. They would sell part of the upside to buy a reason for someone richer to keep them alive. A real hedge against mine failure would be insurance, a counter-position, or a contract that paid us when coal production collapsed. Unfortunately, insurance required trustworthy institutions, and our central bank was an old goblin wearing bark.
Silence.
Somewhere deeper in the cave, water dripped, plink, plink.
The flour-sack goblin raised one finger.
"What is a position?"
"An investment."
"What is an investment?"
"Capital allocated with the expectation of future returns."
"What is capital?"
"Money or productive assets."
"What are productive assets?"
I stared at him.
He stared back.
His mouth hung slightly open. A fly landed on his lower lip.
I'm trying to explain portfolio theory to creatures who haven't discovered sleeves.
"Fine," I said. "Forget the technical terms."
I pointed at the younger miner.
"You go into the mine."
He nodded.
"You might find coal."
"Charcoal," the king corrected.
"Your mine produces charcoal?"
"We dig up old black wood."
"That is coal."
The council exchanged uncertain glances.
The king shrugged.
"We call it underground charcoal."
I pinched the bridge of my large new nose.
One industrial revolution at a time.
"You enter the mine," I continued. "You might get coal. You might also get eaten by spiders."
"Yes."
"So we need someone else to lose something if the spiders eat you."
The younger goblin blinked.
"Why?"
"Because then that someone has a reason to stop you from being eaten."
Understanding dawned slowly across his face.
His eyes widened. His mouth opened. His ears rose.
Then confusion returned and hit him with a chair.
"But I still get eaten."
"Only if our protections fail."
"What protections?"
"We secure outside funding, use it to reinforce the mine, hire fighters to clear the spiders, and guarantee the delivery."
The king stared at me.
"Outside… fooding?"
"Funding."
"Is it edible?"
"No."
"Then why does it sound like food?"
"Because the gods hate me."
The king accepted this explanation immediately.
I paced around the stone table, keeping one hand on my stolen ceremonial loincloth.
"We currently bear all the danger. That is unacceptable. We need investors to divide the risk and share the profit."
The flour-sack goblin raised his hand again.
"What is risk?"
"The bad thing that might happen."
"What is profit?"
"The good thing we receive if the bad thing doesn't happen."
The copper-eyed female near the entrance scratched her cheek.
"So we find someone with food, tell them the mine might kill us, take their food, and if we survive, give them more food?"
"Yes."
"And if we die?"
"We don't give them anything."
Her eyes shone.
The king's mouth dropped open.
The miner leaned across the table.
"You can do that?"
"Of course."
"Why would anyone agree?"
"Greed."
The whole council nodded at once.
At last, a concept they understood.
The king slowly rose from his stone seat.
The younger miner slapped the table.
"That's brilliant!"
The table cracked.
Everyone looked down.
A thin fracture crawled across the boulder.
The miner slowly removed his hand.
"That was already there."
"It was not," said the king.
I waved them back to the matter at hand.
"We need to know what resources we have. How much coal is already extracted?"
"Six baskets," the miner said.
"How much is required?"
"Thirty."
"How many miners?"
"Twelve."
"Experienced?"
"Four."
"And the others?"
"Alive."
"That wasn't the question."
I paused.
The labor market here is incredibly flexible.
"How many fighters?"
The king counted on his fingers.
"Eight."
The miner shook his head.
"Five."
"Why five?"
"Three went hunting yesterday."
"When do they return?"
"They were hunting cave bears."
I waited.
No further explanation came.
"Five fighters," I said. "What weapons?"
"Two spears, three clubs, a shovel, and Bort."
"Who is Bort?"
A goblin in the corner stepped forward.
He was wider than the others.
His shoulders were enormous, his arms reached almost to the floor, and a rusted cooking pot covered his head. He held no weapon.
Bort grinned.
"Bort."
"Is he a fighter?"
The king considered.
"Bort is more of an event."
Bort headbutted the wall.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
A crack appeared in the stone.
Bort laughed.
I looked up at the ceiling. Then at Bort. Then at the miners who had warned me the cave might collapse.
"Do not let Bort near the support beams."
The younger miner nodded fervently.
"Again."
Again?
I added structural collapse to my growing list of immediate threats.
"Fine. We lack coal, equipment, labor, capital, and structural integrity. The mine contains giant spiders, and our trade partner is likely to abandon us if we fail this delivery."
The king brightened.
"So you understand."
"Oh, I understand perfectly. We're insolvent."
The room went quiet.
The king whispered, "Is that a kind of illness?"
"Yes."
"Can mushrooms cure it?"
"No."
His ears drooped.
"But money can."
Every head rose.
The most dependable spark in the world.
Greed.
I had seen it survive sanctions, a Monday open, and the collapse of a mid-sized bank before lunch. Apparently it survived reincarnation too.
The old king leaned forward.
"How much money?"
"I don't know yet."
"We have three silver coins."
"That's not enough."
"Four, if we melt the one stuck in Durg's nose."
A goblin near the wall covered his nose protectively.
"I found it," Durg mumbled.
"You inhaled it," said the miner.
"Finders keepers?"
I rubbed my temples.
"We need investors with real capital. Merchants. Mine owners. Nobles. Anyone who benefits from a stable coal supply."
The king's expression darkened.
"That means speaking with humans."
"Yes."
"Yeah. No way."
"Why not?"
"Humans don't speak with goblins."
"They trade with you."
"They speak through a mage."
"Why?"
The king pointed at his own mouth.
"Our language sounds threatening to them."
The miner demonstrated.
"GRUAKH NAGH TRAK!"
I had to admit he had a point.
"The human mage casts a spell so we can understand each other," the king said. "But he only comes during deliveries. No one here can speak the human tongue without magic."
I opened my mouth.
"I can."
Everyone froze.
The king's jaw fell so far that his wooden crown slid off his head and landed on the table.
The younger miner stared at me as though I had just produced a roast chicken from my ear.
"What did you say?" he whispered.
"I said I can speak with humans."
"You know their language?"
"I believe so."
This was technically true.
I knew English. The System had installed their goblin language into my skull. There was no guarantee the local humans spoke anything I knew.
"I'll negotiate with them," I said.
The king's eyes filled with tears.
"My son."
He rounded the table and seized my shoulders.
"You would enter human lands?"
"Yes."
"Stand before their merchants?"
"That is the idea."
The king pulled me into an embrace.
His beard hairs entered my nostril.
"My brave boy," he sobbed. "My clever, fearless boy!"
Fearless? I died once today. My standards have changed.
The younger miner thumped his chest.
"I misjudged you, Prince Groble."
The female goblins near the door nodded.
I pointed at them.
"You three. New law. No gesturing in council meetings."
They lowered their hands.
The tallest of the three muttered, "Tyrant."
"I heard that."
"Powerful tyrant."
"Better."
The king released me and wiped his eyes with the feast banner.
Unfortunately, I was still wearing it.
His hand slid down my hip.
We both froze.
He slowly removed it.
Neither of us spoke.
This royal family needs boundaries.
"You cannot go alone," he declared after recovering a fraction of his dignity. "You need a servant."
"An adviser," I corrected.
"We don't have those."
"A guard?"
"We need all five."
"An interpreter?"
"You are the interpreter."
"Someone competent?"
The cave became deathly silent.
Several goblins looked at the floor.
The younger miner coughed into his fist.
Bort picked his nose beneath the cooking pot.
The king's eyes moved desperately around the room before landing on the female goblins.
"You."
The one who had called me a tyrant pointed at herself.
She had copper-colored eyes, short black hair, and a strip of dark cloth wrapped across her chest. A belt hung around her waist, supporting several pouches and a small chipped knife. Unlike the others, she stood straight.
Her expression suggested she had spent years surrounded by idiots and had recently learned the gods intended this as a permanent arrangement.
"Me?" she asked.
"Yes, Nira. You will accompany the prince."
"Why?"
"You can count."
"Up to twenty."
"Exceptional qualifications."
Nira stared at him.
Then she looked at me.
Her gaze traveled from my face to the ceremonial cloth around my waist.
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
The gesture was so familiar that I disliked her immediately.
"Do I have a choice?" she asked.
"Of course," said the king.
Her shoulders relaxed.
"You may walk beside him," he continued, "or two steps behind."
Her shoulders tightened again.
Nira's eyes closed.
For one moment, her face became perfectly serene.
Then her right eyelid began twitching.
"Beside him," she said.
"Excellent. You are now the prince's royal assistant."
"What does that mean?"
"You assist him royally."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Nira looked at me.
I looked at her.
A complete strategic alliance formed between us without words.
We both intended to leave before the king explained anything else.
A blue light flashed.
The air in front of me rippled.
I stumbled backward.
A translucent window unfolded before my eyes, larger and brighter than the first.
My heart quickened.
Now we're talking.
More text appeared.
I glanced around the cave.
The cracked walls.
The starving workers.
The unsafe mine.
The uncertain trade contract.
Bort leaned forward and licked something off the table.
That review may take a while.
The box chimed.
There it is.
A new notification appeared.
My breathing became shallow.
The System was saying that money was not merely useful. Money was muscle, speed, and life.
For the first time in my existence, "time is money" had become a medically verifiable threat.
The box continued.
A final blue box slid into view.
The message paused.
One last line appeared.
My grin vanished.
Nira noticed.
"What?"
"We leave for the human settlement immediately."
I marched toward the cave entrance.
After three confident steps, the feast banner slipped from my waist.
The female goblins gasped.
I snatched the cloth from the floor, wrapped it around myself, and pointed at them with the fury of a future financial tyrant.
"First profits go toward trousers."
Nira read my expression, glanced downward, and sighed.
I tightened the knot around my waist.
She's getting taxed second.