Page 104 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

If she found the situation unusual, she didn’t show it. Not that he expected anything else.

“You don’t seem very worried,” he said. Maybe he was hoping for her to calm his own nerves. He kept thinking about what could have happened to Crow. He didn’t know Patros well enough to know what he would do to her when he got her back, and his imagination was filling in the blanks.

Sarna waved a hand. “She gets herself into these sorts of situations fairly often, as far as I can tell.”

“Have you known her for a long time?”

Sarna nodded. “Since we were teenagers. She was one of my first clients after I set up shop in Valtos.”

He arched an eyebrow. “She doesn’t talk about you much.”

She shrugged. “Neither of us is the sociable type. But we get along well enough, when we see each other. Back then, we were both solitary kids who buried ourselves in our work, and both from odd families, so we bonded right away. I left home to get away from my parents and start my own life here. And Crow had her situation with her mother, and then with Patros.”

“What situation?”

She glanced back at him in surprise, as if she’d expected him to have already known. “Her mother’s addictions, for one. To anything and everything. Drugs, alcohol, gambling. And her father disappeared a year or so after she was born. He had trouble acclimating to life in Ardani, I understand. It must have been hard, for an Ashara. Their culture is so different from ours. I’m sure you can relate.”

Vaara frowned. He couldn’t imagine having to live in Ardani permanently, but he would never have abandoned his own child.

He’d thought Ashara were supposed to be all kindness and generosity and emotional depth. Perhaps that was a lie. Or maybe Crow’s father had been an exception. She must have inherited her ruthlessness from him.

“Her mother eventually sold her to Patros,” Sarna said. “I don’t know what happened to her after that, or if she’s even still alive.”

There was a whisper of rustling branches from the woods that encroached on the side of the road. Sarna whirled toward it, raising her light higher. They both listened. The wind continued to shake the trees.

She inched a little closer to Vaara. He glanced down at her, amused.

“You can see in the dark, can’t you?” she whispered. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

She looked relieved. “I hate the outdoors.” She motioned toward the sword on his hip. “You know how to use that, right?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so, since you’re Varai and all. Never heard of a night elf who couldn’t kill people.” She kept walking, clutching her cloak closer around her. “How did you meet Crow?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

She shook her head.

They walked in silence for another dozen steps before he answered. “She rescued me from a malevolent mage and a sadistic prison warden.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound like something she’d do.”

“It doesn’t?”

“It seems like a lot of work and a lot of risk, for a stranger. What did you do to get her to help you?”

“Nothing.”

She smirked up at him. “She must just like you, then.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you? Why?”

He realized he no longer had a clear answer.

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