The Saurshead Inn was an angry beehive of activity for several hours as the residents of Northwatch prepared for a battle the likes of which the city had not seen in centuries. It's a great deal different to prepare for a raiding party--your weapons are what you can carry or haul at a reasonable speed relevant to your goals. But when you're preparing a fixed defense against marauders? Anything goes and remember, the town was meant to be a fortress for just this sort of event. 

Local blacksmiths kept the forge busy, forging swords and spears. Wheelwrights and ware-housers set about taking every scrap of barrel, every broken wheel and turning them into barricades. Farmers moved food into the center of town--which happened to be effectively the inn, and the bartender, Rob, suddenly became the coordinator for the whole affair. 

"Put the food in the basement. Barricades on the west side, outside. It's not time to nail the windows shut yet, Charlie. Thanks."

The town had other leaders, but somehow everyone deferred to the kid at the bar. Strange. The mayor--a woman named Margaret Crumbscratch, was busy making sure that noncombatants were safely sheltered in the foundry, and then the heavy iron doors of the foundry were closed. Nothing short of explosives or cutting torches was getting through there. 

What was weird was the Kinden family was completely absent from all this. 

Sasha had taken Brock to the compound and hadn't returned. I expected they wanted a report from her, but that left Raven and I--two people ill-trained for siege preparations--to sort of hang out and do nothing besides lift the occasional beam or run messages back and forth. Not exactly exciting. 

And all of this was done before dawn, which was really impressive. Then, with several cooks in the kitchen, the Saurshead became a mess hall and Raven and I were dishing out eggs and hash browns and, apparently, freshly-killed chicken to the hundreds of men and women watching for the Smokers. 

I was nervous. It was not so much that I felt useless as it was that I wondered what was going on  with Sasha. She wasn't responding to her calls, which, frankly, was par for the course there. But as we served the last man and fixed ourselves a plate, I told Raven that I wanted to go to the Kinden place and find out what was going on there. 

"Seems right, you having the connections and all."

"I just hope they haven't taken Sasha prisoner."

"They liable to do that?" Raven asked between bites. It's true what they say about goblins eating--they are gross. 

"Well, I wouldn't think so, but maybe." I hadn't told her about how, yesterday, I was abducted by them. No need to make it awkward.

"Well, you could take a horse up there right now." 

My tailbone still hurt. "Not likely. I still hurt from the last time I rode a horse."

Raven waved a fork at me. "If you're waiting for me to offer to take you, you can stop. The mayor wants me doing airborne patrol for the day and she's paying."

I chuckled and dug into my eggs, over easy. Yellow ooze flowed like lava on my plate. "Well, I was hoping, but." I left the end of that sentence to die as I ate a bite. "I wonder if I can get someone else to take me?"

The bartender's nice. He let you borrow his horse. You could ask him. I wouldn't mind riding with him, if you're reading my signals." Raven raised her eyebrows suggestively. I rolled my eyes. 

"Not interested. The last thing I need is a boyfriend from a nowhere town."

Raven put her fork down and stared into my eyes. "Have you had a boyfriend?"

Well, now, that was personal. "Yeah," I mumbled, stuffing my mouth so I wouldn't be able to say more.

"Me too. He died a year ago on a hunting trip."

I choked, and caught my breath. "I'm so sorry to hear that. But you're, what, nineteen?"

"Twenty," she smiled. "Just turned." 

"Pretty young for romance." 

"Goblins are kinda...young...in that regard," she nodded. "We tend to not live long lives, so we make the most of our short ones."

"Wow," was all I could think to say.

Raven suddenly seemed embarrassed. "So...yours?" Now she stuffed her mouth to give me a chance to talk. 

I sighed. "Broke up a month ago. It's why I'm here instead of Landfall. Needed a change of scenery."

"You're from Landfall, originally?" she asked, still chewing. Geez. Manners!

"Yeah. It's a rich town, full of rich things but it functions on the sweat and blood of the poor classes--and that's where my family comes in."

"Your family was working class, so you ended up a thief to pay the bills?"

I sighed. "No. In fact, they're pretty well to do for working class. In fact, my dad is a highly sought-after security expert and my mom's a security guard for a large firm."

Understanding dawned. "Oh--OH." 

"Yeah. You might say I come by it naturally."

"How do your parents feel about this?"

"Well, let's just say that I haven't been allowed to see them in public since I was arrested."

Raven's eyes opened wide. I'd seen it before. "You were arrested?"

"Yeah. I was a kid, though, so the very nice, wealthy woman dropped the charges with a very sincere apology from me and even offered to pay for my tuition at an exclusive Xinyan college, which my parents gladly took her up on."

Raven gulped her food down. "Wow. That's amazing! So you've been to Xinya?"

I stared at the twenty-year-old. She was a lovely example of everything I could have been if I were other than I was: the beauty of youth, the naivete of innocence, the skill of a expert craftsman. There are few times when I compare myself to others, but this was one of those times, and on the whole, I was a monster. 

"Er...no. I, uh, met Q before I got there and never went to Xinya." As lies went, it sufficed, but only because Raven was still gullible. Clearly, her understanding of Q was different than mine. "Speaking of, how did you meet Q?"

"Advertisement," she smiled, her mouth full of food. I was rapidly losing my appetite. "It's pretty common among the spotters to get ads for people--some want courier services, like this one, others want to set up a hunting party." I nodded. "So I answered this one and Q asks me if I'm interested in helping people, and I'm like, 'Sure.' And then she tells me the kind of help we'll be doing, and I'm like, 'That sounds like fun, sign me up.'" And here I am. Gotta say, last night did not disappoint."

"We could have gotten killed!"

Raven smiled, and within those shark-like teeth, I finally got a sense of who she is. "Yeah. It's a rush, isn't it? All the Spotters talk about it--the feeling you get when you take off, knowing that one wrong move, one bad decision, one magical wind going the wrong way and down you come, never to rise again." She threw the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. "Exhilarating."

"You live for the danger?"

"Every one of us. You can't fly if you're scared of falling. You just have to accept that as a possibility and say within yourself, "Yeah, that could happen, but while I'm in control, I'm going to do my best to make sure it doesn't and let's just see if that's not enough to get down safely."

"Well." I mean, what else is there to say to that? "I'm just glad you were there for us last night." Honestly, my stomach was getting kind of worked up just thinking about what she said.

Raven swallowed before reaching over and giving me a bear-hug. "Anything for a fellow Auntie!"

I hugged her back, in part to get her to let go before I threw up what little I had eaten. Looking past her, I saw her plate was empty. Mine was hardly touched.