Goblin Market

by A.J. Hackwith

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Romantic Fantasy; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; General Fiction

Synopsis

A goblin changeling caught between the human and fey worlds must find a way to save her home in this warm and heartfelt fantasy from the author of Toto and the Hell’s Library series.

Being a changeling is hard enough, but Toast was older than most changeling children when her goblin parents stole her back from her human family and returned her to the harsh, bustling world of the Goblin Market, where anything from your fondest dream to your strongest talent can be bought—or sold.

 Nearly a decade later, Toast has grudgingly cobbled together a life there as the Market’s guide for mortal visitors. But when the next arrival is her long-lost sister and the ancient beast whose magic the Market depends on disappears under strange circumstances, everything starts falling apart.

Now the Market itself is dying. With the Summer Court of noble fey plotting to claim the weakened Market for themselves, Toast, her friends, and an infuriatingly charming fey knight with an agenda of her own must negotiate their differences to make the trade of a lifetime and win back the Market's future. To do so, Toast will have to decide what home--and the flawed community within--is ultimately worth.

Release date: October 20, 2026

Publisher: Ace

Print pages: 368

Sample

1

Extra potatoes for dinner. That's all Toast heard when the boy began negotiations with the foolish offer of his firstborn daughter. Even now, watching him haggle with Silver, she could see he was barely more than a child himself. Not in the cherubic, soft-limbed way, really. But in the slouched curve of his spine, the dull polish of disappointment was beginning to wear down his edges. He had learned the world would not love him back, but had yet to learn that it could strip him bare if he let it. He still had the ambition of his dreams.

Otherwise, he would have never found the door that led nowhere. The door that led to the Goblin Market. "I'm never having kids anyway," he announced with all the bravado of someone who'd convinced himself he meant it. "It'll be like getting it for free."

"What a cunning negotiator you are, Peach Fuzz." Silver's skin was pale with the luster of old jade, smooth in places where age should have made a busy map of lines. Goblin years don't draw wrinkles, just deepen the secrets in the eyes. Though the name alone told Toast she was one of the oldest merchants in the Market. Goblins earned their common name based on the first successful deal they ever struck. Silver had evidently dealt in raw coin at one point. And so far back that her name was Silver rather than Penny, Dollar, or Credit.

"Has anyone tried Bitcoin?" Toast only realized the daydream question was said aloud when Silver shot her a look that could peel bark from a tree.

"Henry." Silver flicked a thumb in Toast's direction, and another man, who had been idly polishing the dream glass, tucked away his rag. He was dressed in too-tight pants and a blousy teal shirt, which could have been from several decades of history but was gaudy in all of them, in Toast's opinion.

Henry offered Toast a candy from a rather stale-looking selection in a dull silver bowl. "Mint?"

Henry may not have been a goblin, but as Silver's indentured assistant, he was as market-blood as Toast. And like any market resident, Toast knew better than to accept a gift. Especially one shaped like a smile.

"What are they? Honey words?" Toast eyed the glistening candies. Her crossed arms made it obvious she wasn't biting, so Henry sighed and set the bowl down. "Delirium drops," Henry admitted, with no remorse in his lazy smile. "Imported fresh from the Summerlands."

"High fey sweets don't interest me." Toast gave him a flat look even while keeping an eye on how Silver's negotiation was progressing with the human mark. He was, as Toast had expected, getting tidily fleeced by Silver's talented omissions. The boy was petting a battered pair of gloves with an awe that bordered on enchantment. The finder fee that was due to Toast from the deal would be decent, maybe even enough to pay for a few deals of her own. (After the potatoes.)

"I wouldn't expect a simple goblin like you to appreciate the finer things." Henry shrugged, selecting one candy from the bowl himself to languidly pluck at the glossy wrapper. "Suit yourself."

God, Toast couldn't stand the addicts. She had never bothered to learn Henry's particular story, how he'd come to find the Goblin Market or what initial deal he'd made, but anyone could guess how he'd become stuck working for Silver. Henry was a goblinfruit addict, one of the many humans that lived-if you could call it that-within the Market, doing any demeaning job or fey bidding they could to win them another taste of the sweet fruit called goblinfruit. It was a delicacy unique to the Market's goblin community, and known to be pleasant to fey of all kinds, but addictive to the point of possession for humans.

The fruit didn't kill you. It just made you forget why anything else ever mattered.

Once you'd tasted goblinfruit, your every waking thought was devoted to securing the next portion. Henry was a case in point, serving as Silver's ever-present lackey in exchange for a steady but meager supply. Fey never hesitated to take advantage of us-no, of humans. Humans. Not us. Toast berated herself again as she watched Henry drop the faint cerulean delirium drop on his tongue and slouch against a crate of goods.

"Ach!" Silver twisted around and delivered a faint smack to Henry's shoulder. "Foolish boy! What have I told you about sampling the merchandise? You'll owe me for that."

Toast could imagine the groveling Henry would do to preserve his ration serving of goblinfruit, but he was already too far gone, a drippy smile on his face as the candy of glazed emotion melted through his brain.

"You could have bothered to stop him." Silver turned her frown on Toast.

"Could have. Didn't see the fair trade." Toast shrugged.

That earned her a mute, narrow look. Toast was secure in the fact that Silver couldn't even hold it against her. Fair trade was the lifeblood of the Market. If the goblins and low fey of the Market had a religion, it was the cosmic concept of fair trade. Not that there was ever anything equitable in the promise of "fair." There were always winners and losers in the Market. And when a human was involved, they always played the loser.

Toast focused her attention on the boy she'd escorted to Silver's booth. He was still lost in fascination, staring avariciously at those stupid gloves. "You . . ." Toast wavered, but a sharp raise of one brow from Silver was enough to tip her over into a sigh. "If you are satisfied, I can walk you back to the door," she said to the fool, who barely heard her. Toast wanted nothing more than to back out of the tent and let the Churn's crowd sweep her along, but her own sense of "fair" didn't allow it. Even foolish boys deserved to find their way home.

The boy was too enchanted with his new purchase to answer, but Silver frowned at the contents of a drawer before pulling out a handful of pebbles whose surfaces gleamed like oil slicks. She counted five into Toast's waiting palm.

"Bezoars again?" Toast let her annoyance carry.

Silver shrugged, indicating the currency of payment, and Toast jostled them in her palm before putting them away. The oily dark feel said they were from the belly of a nightmare, or possibly even an omen. It was a generous fee, not that she'd ever admit that to Silver. She tugged on the boy's sleeve and nudged him into the dim bustle of the Churn.

The Churn was the Market's backbone. A cavernous space with a large main thoroughfare of tents and booths perched beneath the ruins of pillars that jutted out of the wall in impossible geometry. The lighting came from twine-strung lanterns that swayed without wind. Nothing about the Market was straight-not its rooms, not its wares, not its people. But the Churn, at least, pretended to stay still. Deeper in, the Market turned feral, hallways slipping and folding, rearranging themselves like rebellious memories.

By the time they reached the stairs, the lanterns had guttered low. Toast managed to drag the boy back up the switchback to the entrance hallway. "Right. Pleasure meeting you, yadda, yadda, yadda-"

"Yes . . ." the boy agreed absently. But then he managed to pull his gaze away from the bauble he'd just sold his firstborn for. "Wait, what if I need to come back?"

Toast kept her skepticism off her bland expression. Fey from elsewhere were regular visitors of the Market, but typically, humans only stumbled in once, and whether by fate or failing, they were not seen again. She pretended to consider it with a shrug. "How'd you find the door, again?"

"I . . ." His expressive face folded into confusion. "I remember it was end of semester, and I had a shit ton to drink, and then there was this weirdo at the bar who . . . I can't remember what they said."

"Oh, that's normal," Toast said reassuringly. Her stomach dropped and pity sunk in despite her best efforts. A wandering trickster had sent him here, or worse. There were enough creatures out there who rarely visited the Market themselves because they made such a tidy meal of others' desperation.

"You understand what you paid today, right?" She shouldn't be asking, but at least it did serve as a distraction. The boy's face bloomed into a prideful smile.

"Yeah. Whatever. Basically free."

"You said as much back there. You understand that's forever, right? Even if you change your mind or there's an . . . um, accident."

He was already nodding in an arrogant way that made Toast feel less sympathy, but then there was a hitch in his expression. Toast's heart sank. "No judgment, but have you had some"-she paused and pulled the words from a memory she'd bought last month-"a one-night stand?"

The blank anxiety on the boy's face was answer enough. Oh, he really was an idiot. Toast clenched her jaw and shoved his lanky legs toward the door. "Anyway, the Goblin Market appreciates your business. Never come againokbye!"

He made some blustery objections, but the enchantment took hold as he touched the brass doorknob. The frame of the door always remained the same-creaky and crooked, with mismatched carvings at the corners. But the door was always unique to the guest. This one was a wide artful mahogany with an ornate latch that reeked of old money. How someone who had such abundance could still fill his heart with so much envy that they called a door to the Market, Toast would never understand. She was halfway down the stairs before the click finished echoing in the empty hall.

At least she had the coin to wash the bad taste out of her mouth. She stopped by her favorite shops, using some of the bezoars to buy a spicy skewer (extra potatoes) and another on a goblinfruit hand pie. After a bit of haggling, she handed over the gleam from her hair for a pint of weak ale and swapped last week's dreams for a new blanket that was heavier than the old one and stitched with runes to keep out the chill and regret. There was a new draft in the abandoned closet that she called home. She'd manage. Still better than the week she spent sweltering at night because the closet had been relocated directly over a boiler room.

The ever-shifting secret space which hosted the Goblin Market was just referred to as "the Market" by everyone Toast had ever spoken to. It gave the impression of a dilapidated nonsensical forever house. It was not, of course. No architect could or would dream up such a sprawling illogical maze of dead-end hallways, stairs to nowhere, bottomless pools, or dusty rooms. A door could open on a decaying Victorian parlor one day or a hurricane-thrashed stairwell the next. It just depended on the Market's mood.

The whimsy made the Market treacherous to navigate if you didn't know the secrets, as Toast did. As she climbed a spiral staircase, she noticed it was the one made of bone that she'd already seen twice on the way in this morning. She touched each brass knob and lever of every door as she sped down the hallway, other arm loaded with her dinner. It never hurt to stay acquainted with the Market, her fingertips memorizing the feeling of cold tarnished metal like breadcrumbs to follow out.

When she reached her door, she exhaled. Still there. Inside, it smelled of dry cloth and old paper. It looked like a supply closet, like the ones where the teacher had always kept the precious craft supplies when she was in grade school. Toast pretended it smelled of crayons and Elmer's glue, the way Ms. Luchsinger's closet had in first grade. One of the good days when their teacher pulled out fresh crayons. A fantasy that she was back at Middlevale Elementary, and when she emerged in the morning, she'd be eleven years old again and human and loved and cared for without expectation of payment or debt.

She laid out her meal, spread the new blanket, and settled into her next nest. She nibbled on the hand pie as she pulled out a sad-looking notebook. The pages were nearly black from scribbles-dream fragments, old sketches, the memory ghosts of horses, because of course she'd been a horse girl once.

Ten years ago. Ten years since she'd woken in her bed not yet changed or claimed only to find a green-skinned creature, Silver, at the foot of it with eyes like flint and a voice like a sealed contract.

She'd screamed, of course. But no one stirred in the house, not her parents or her baby sister, already under Silver's temporary enchantment. There had been no dramatic rescue. Only Silver's voice, calm as paper: "You are not theirs."

Toast had run-of course she had. She'd managed to reach her parents' room, screaming for help. Her mom kept a baseball bat under the bed. She'd-she'd drive this nightmare away. Toast had thrown herself on her parents' bed, but her mother only shifted fretfully in her sleep, brow furrowing then smoothing again. She still remembered the scent of her mother's sleep-warmed skin before Silver pulled her away.

She probably tried to explain it all kindly, if Toast was being fair. But Toast had been so confused, so scared, that the facts might as well have been incantations-that Toast was a changeling child, a goblin pretending to be human. That her "real" parents, also goblins, should have fetched her long ago, but-here, Silver paused, unnaturally evasive-they had been delayed, forcing Silver to complete the errand.

But that didn't prepare Toast for the ice-water feeling of some magic sliding off her skin, did not stop her from wailing as she looked in the hallway mirror and saw a wretched green-skinned stranger staring back. A creature her size with big tear-filled red eyes and giant fawn-like floppy ears that came to points and fluttered like broken wings as she cried.

That door had shut. And the Market had opened on her new life.