"I mean, I can. If you want."

"No, no… I'd probably just lose my nerve or something."

She pulls a gold piece out of her pocket and fiddles with it.

"I'm gonna start at the beginning. So, the Greysky City Thieves' Guild. It's a pretty crappy organization. Which is probably just what happens when you take a bunch of thieves and robbers from a terrible city and have them run a business."

Nod.

"You know, I think I stayed in Greysky City once. Before I met you. I used to work for this paladin guy, and he was investigating all the hives of scum and villainy."

"Sounds like he had a lot of investigation to do. Anyways, I quit the Guild almost a year before we formed the Order."

"That's good, right?"

"I mean, it's not like I quit because of how much everyone there was an asshole. I quit because the guy in charge was taking like 99% of my earnings and I needed to save up a bunch of cash, fast."

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the letter. It's been folded and unfolded so many times the writing is starting to fade at the creases.

"My dad got imprisoned by this guy called Tyrinar the Bloody who wants two hundred thousand gold pieces to let him out."

"Oh no! Is that why you're so obsessed with money?"

"I mean, partly? Part of it is just that, you know, it'd be pretty great to be rich. Luxury, security, pits full of gold coins that you can swim in…"

"And do other things!"

"Yeah, that too."

"So… does Roy know about your dad?"

"What? No, are you crazy? I can't tell Roy! I can't tell anyone!!"

"… I mean, I'm telling you. But that's because you're really important to me and I feel like I can actually trust you."

"Oh. That means a lot. But why don't you trust Roy? He's super responsible."

"I mean, he's not a bad person or anything, I just… I dunno, it feels obvious that you can't trust most people. Because you don't know what they're gonna do with that trust. Plus, Roy's so… Lawful. What if he thinks that it'd be wrong to rescue my dad?"

"From a guy named Tyrinar the Bloody, absolute master of Tyrinaria?"

"Okay, point. But we're headed to the Western Continent after all this, right? I don't want him to think that I'd drop the saving-the-world quest for this. I mean, I hate leaving my dad behind, but he can take care of himself. And the world is important, you know? But I'm pretty sure Roy still sees me at least a little as a greedy, unpredictable rogue who he can't count on. I don't want to give him more reasons to think that."

"I guess. Who knows, maybe once we're all done we'll go to Tyrinaria and it'll turn out he did a daring escape. Since he's your dad."

"Yeah, that's the spirit!"

Haley puts the letter back away.

"I think that was basically it, really, and you can say your thing now. Unless you want me to go into more detail about what Belkar and I did since we split up first?"

Elan shakes his head.

"I can go. I don't have any secrets, but… some pretty messed up stuff happened. I still don't know what to do when we go back."

Haley nods encouragingly.

"So there was this noble from Azure City, Kubota. He didn't like Hinjo and wanted to take his job. He spent months sending monsters after the fleet to try and get Hinjo to die in a way that looked like an accident."

"… And there was this ninja girl who worked for him. Therkla. She was a half-orc and she had a really big crush on me."

"What happened?"