Free Grizelda by Margaret Taylor

backs together on a pedestal. The first
one was industriously hammering away at a rock; the second held up
an axe in a warlike gesture. The third held a piece of paper. There
was writing around the base.
    INDUSTRY, SCHOLARSHIP, UNITY.
    As she was reading this, her eye was caught
by a bustle of movement at one of the square’s borders. A lot of
goblins were coming in and out of one particular building that
didn’t look very different from its neighbors. They were mostly
coming out at this point, putting on their hats and hurrying off to
their various jobs around the city. It seemed as good a place to
try as any.
    She crossed the square and went inside. It
was a large room, low-ceilinged and stuffy. A clatter of silverware
filled the air. A lot of goblins were lined up against one wall
with bowls in their hands, waiting for somebody behind the window
to serve them something. Bingo! This must be where the goblins got
their food.
    She took a bowl off the rack and got into
line. Rows and rows of stone benches filled the room; goblins sat
on them with their bowls, some of them in clumps, some alone. One
of them was walking up and down the rows, making some sort of
impassioned speech that involved lots of arm-waving. She realized
with an unpleasant feeling that it was Miner Nelin. She turned her
head and tried to make herself small.
    When it came to her turn in line she handed
her bowl to the goblin behind the window. He snatched it from her
with a growl, filled it and handed it back, along with two
biscuits. She stared down at it.
    “What, not good enough for you?” He put a
claw on his hip.
    “It’s just … this is normal food. This is
bean soup.” She couldn’t lift her eyes from it. She addressed
herself more to the soup than to the server.
    “Did you expect us to grow our own in this
pit? No, we have to buy your ogre food. And at a high price it is,
too.” When she didn’t move, he made a menacing gesture with his
claw. “Go on! Shoo!”
    She hurried away to find herself a bench,
head down. If she could just avoid attracting Nelin’s notice long
enough to get a seat in the corner, she might be able to stuff her
soup and get out of there without a confrontation. But she had no
such luck. In her hurry to get to a seat, she bumped into a goblin
going the other way.
    “Hey, watch where you’re going,
Ogreface!”
    The remark was loud enough to make heads turn
clear across the room. Nelin stopped mid-sentence and pivoted on
his heel. Grizelda froze in the middle of the aisle.
    “So, the oppressor has arrived at last,” he
said.
    She was too terrified to speak. She stared at
him a long moment. Then she picked out an empty table in the
corner, behind him. Very slowly, she started to move.
    “Hey, what are you doing? Just walking
away?”
    On either side, the goblins leered at her.
She kept on going.
    Nelin took his case to the other goblins.
“Look at her! She’s just walking away!”
    She was not quite sure if doing nothing was
going to work. If Nelin wanted to try something violent, she wasn’t
sure that the other goblins would stop them. They looked willing to
try something violent themselves. When she passed him, he just
started gesticulating at her.
    “Goblins, this is the sort of thing we’re up
against. Privelege. She lives off the fruit of our labors. Those
shoe buckles were manufactured with goblins’ sweat. Then the
Republic’s merchants, with their unfair prices…”
    She sat down at the table in the corner. It
looked like Nelin was just going to keep making his speech, so she
started eating her soup. It had gone cold, but by that point she
didn’t care. She ate it quickly and used the biscuits to swab every
last bit out of the bottom.
    She dumped her bowl in a bin with a clatter
and left the cafeteria at a very undignified pace, almost a dead
run. She swore she could feel dozens of eyes watching her as she
left.
     
    Grizelda had barely made it back to the
workroom when the work whistle blew. She