"I deny you!" Aveline hissed as the leader of the Invisible Sisters succumbed to a vicious pommel strike to the side of the head. The Hightown promenade was now empty, except for several bodies strewn around the gardens and Brennan and Donnic picking over them for evidence. Aveline bent down and opened the gang leader's pockets, methodically laying out the contents on the ground. Lyrium… a couple of small bags of dried madcap… jewels… a playing card. Aveline turned it over, sneered at its pornographic content, then suddenly held it up to the light.

"What the…?" Even without the unique white tattoos, the profile was distinctive. What was disturbing about the image was not that it was explicit – pictures of lithe elves in minimal covering were ten a copper in Kirkwall – but that it was such a good likeness of Aveline's close friend Fenris. Well, she assumed it was a good likeness, having not had the privilege of… Was that how he was supporting himself on the side?

Aveline determined to Have A Word.

Tramping down the Wounded Coast behind Varric and Hawke, Aveline slowed down, drawing Fenris' attention to a particularly attractive bird perched on a shipwreck. Moving on, but still staying well behind the others, she changed subject with the subtlety and grace of a Qunari dreadnought.

"Fenris, are you… well? Financially, I mean?"

Fenris stiffened, anticipating another well-meaning lecture.

"I do not pay rent. Between you and the Hawkes, I need never buy food again. If this is about working for the guard, I have already made my intent clear."

Aveline sucked her breath in through her teeth. She was socially awkward at the best of times, but how do you tell a close platonic friend Look, I'm pretty sure I've seen your cock?

Aveline "found" the second card in a raid. Or, strictly speaking, after a raid.

"Oi, Brennan," one of the guards called out. "Present for you."

"Wot's this? … oo-er, how'd you know it was my birthday?"

Brennan and a couple of other guards stood huddled around in a circle, carefully examining an apparently valuable treasure. Aveline sometimes let them have trinkets from raids, if it wouldn't ruin their case, but something about the way the guards were talking made her interrupt loudly. "Is that evidence?"

"No!" Brennan snapped, a bit too abruptly to a senior officer. "Just a bit of rubbish. Nothing that will get us an arrest." She clutched the item to her chest.

"Then you won't mind sharing." Aveline put her hand out expectantly. Brennan looked like an owl in the firelight.

"It's – it's mucky, ma'am."

"Mucky? Give that here, guardswoman."

To be fair to Brennan, Aveline didn't realise that when Brennan said mucky, she meant it. Literally. Aveline thought she caught her gasp of shock before letting it out, but the sudden desire of the guards to look everywhere but at her suggested otherwise.

"Well. Someone out there really hates the Qunari."

"With all due respect, ma'am, I suspect someone really loves them."

"Are you volunteering for a tour of the Wounded Coast, Brennan?"

"No ma'am!... er… can I have that back?"

"Are you insane?" Aveline folded the card into her sheaf of notes. "If this gets back to the Arishok we'll have an insurrection on our hands." She patted Brennan on the arm as she headed into her office. "Just use that fabulous memory of yours."

Nothing else of interest showed up for quite some time. It was not as if Kirkwall didn't have adequate supplies of explicit pornography, especially of high-profile figures like the Arishok and the Grand Cleric. The next find, however, was more like the first in that it was someone Aveline knew well. More to the point, it was the one person who needed a "high profile" even less than Fenris did.

Aveline had never worked up the courage to show Fenris the card she had found with his likeness – they were very close friends, but showing him that would have taken their relationship to a level of intimacy where Aveline really didn't want to go. Anders, however, was owed no such discretion.

"I know you do good work on a shoestring, but is it such a good idea to raise funds with intimate portraits?"

Aveline and Anders were not close, and Aveline left him alone because she knew no-one else was going to look after desperately ill slum-dwellers. She didn't cover for him the way she would for Fenris, but if Anders was flogging (ha-ha, considering the subject of the card) pictures of himself to lonely Lowtown fishwives, she might have to get involved, which was a suboptimal outcome.

("Suboptimal"? Try spending less time with Bran, she thought.)

In any case, Anders merely looked blank. "Funds? Are you offering me a windfall?"

She handed the card over, and watched as Anders went through several distinct facial expressions, including befuddlement, shock, anger, and finally a kind of wistfulness. "It's been a long time since I looked like that. Now that I think of it, it's been a long time since I've done–"

"SO YOU AREN'T PRODUCING SMUT AS A CHARITABLE EFFORT?" Aveline interrupted, anxious to not hear anything at all about Anders' personal life.

"I need attention like this like I need a pack of bored Templars beating my door in. Although it's always possible that they're the source." He looked bitter. Then, "Can I keep this? It would hardly do to have hardcore wanted posters floating around the city."

Aveline shrugged. "Sure." As she turned to leave, she got the distinct impression that Anders was starting to get weepy.

By the time a card of Varric showed up – Varric! – Aveline was slapping herself for not realising the obvious.

"All right, all right" yelled Isabela from behind her locked door at the Hanged Man, "form an orderly queue."

"I need to speak to you about your publishing empire, whore – Fenris?"

The elf, who had answered the door clad only in a long towel, closed it quickly in Aveline's face. When he re-opened it, he had rearranged the towel around his shoulders, apparently not realising that this left him even more exposed. Aveline tried to stomp down the thought that the artist who drew his card had underestimated him.

"I – look, I need to speak to Isabela privately."

"Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of him, big girl. You might start by complimenting Fenris on his –"

"DOWNSTAIRS. FIVE MINUTES."

"Fine, but you're buying."

Aveline realised she was being stupid, but she couldn't fight down a burning feeling in the back of her neck as she watched a now fully-armoured Fenris follow Isabela down the steps to the main bar. It wasn't as if she wanted him herself – their relationship was too much like brother and sister (be honest, mother and son) for such a thing to work.

Still, why did it have to be Isabela?

"Three plates of your finest burnt bread and animal intestines, Corff. The Guard-Captain will of course pay for everything," yelled Isabela. Corff glared, but disappeared into the back room to perform unmentionable acts with stray animals.

Aveline paused, considering carefully how to approach the situation. Finally, she took the Fenris card out of her notebook, slid it carefully across to Isabela away from where Fenris was sitting, and said "Could you please be more discreet in your advertising?" Fenris leaned over to look at the card as Isabela picked it up. Aveline started, and waved her hands at him in an inane attempt to shoo him away.

"Aveline! I'm so sorry, big girl, I didn't know I was cutting your grass." Isabela smirked. "Look, Fenris, I told you people think your markings are beautiful. When life gives you lemons, pick them up and hurl them right back."

Fenris scowled and glared at Aveline. "Is this the reason for your sudden interest in my financial dealings?"

"Well, it's hardly sudden, Fen-fen," (Aveline bristled – Fen-fen?) "if Aveline was any more invested in your personal life she'd have to legally adopt you. Then you'd be Fenris Vallen, heir to absolutely fuckall."

"I want you to stop producing this shit," snarled Aveline. "For someone who is so affectionate with Fenris, you don't seem to have much concern for his safety."

"She didn't do this, Aveline."

"She didn't do this? The author of 'The Captain and the Naughty Longshoremen' didn't do this?"

"Hey!" interrupted Isabela. "All resemblance to Guard-Captains living or dead is pure coincidence."

"No. I've seen her drawings." Fenris shook his head. "If Isabela had done it my safety would be in no way compromised. For a start, my eyes are on the front of my head."

"It's artistic licence! – no, he's right. I'm afraid my creative ability is firmly limited to the written word." Isabela sighed with mock sadness. "Anyway, why are you so concerned about a little bit of elf porn?"

"It's Fenris. Do you really want to lead his hunters right here?"

The way Fenris and Isabela simultaneously shot back "She/I didn't do it" was almost musical.

Aveline didn't think Varric would be stupid enough to distribute pornographic playing cards featuring the likes of Fenris and Anders, let alone of himself. He may have had a mouth on him, but he did understand the value of discretion. Still, he probably knew every artist, writer, bard and chap-book maker in Kirkwall – if not the entire Free Marches – and so Aveline paid him a visit, bringing a bottle of Starkhaven uisghe beatha as a hostess gift and tongue loosener.

"Not that I don't like you, Aveline, but a more suspicious man might assume that gifts of expensive spirits have some kind of unspoken motive behind them. So you won't mind if I save this for a special occasion."

"Well, someone out there likes you a whole lot." She flicked the Varric card over the table to him.

Varric picked up the card, peered at it, and burst into a gale of chest-rattling laughter. After several minutes, he wiped his eyes and said "Aveline. I didn't know you care– eeeeh hee hee he he…"

"Very funny. I'm thinking you're not the artist, but you might know who is."

"No, this is a new one by me. I've never seen that particular way of inking. Black and white, too. I wonder, is that a stylistic choice, or necessity?"

"I was too startled by seeing my close friends stark bollock naked to notice." She followed up with the Fenris card. "Our friend the healer got his own flattering portrait as well."

Varric, bless him, immediately understood why this was a problem.

"Shit. Well, I guess the old headshot style of wanted posters just wasn't working anymore."

"Exactly. I need to shut this down."

"Solely out of concern for your friends, of course. Not because Fenris' lithe muscular body makes you all wibbly."

"…fuck you. Anyway, I prefer great big bears…" Her face became wistful as she thought about one particular great big bear. Then she remembered where she was. "Are you going to help or not? If nothing else, not having naked wanted posters will save you on protection money for the mansion."

Varric didn't bother denying it. "I'll put the word out. Hopefully, whoever's doing this is a reasonable person. Cracking heads for porn seems like overkill to me."

The answer to Aveline's puzzle came much earlier, and much more easily, than anticipated.

Varric, Isabela, Merrill and Aveline were gathered next to the fire at the Hanged Man. It was relatively early, a bit before sundown, and the place was nearly empty except for a few old soaks who had never actually left. Aveline was trying to get a report from Varric, but kept being derailed by Isabela, who wanted to debate the relative merits of line art vs colour, neat and solid vs rough and messy, and most important of all, whether you should leave a bit to the imagination or let everything all hang out. Isabela's votes were for line art, neat and letting it all hang out. "Everybody says you should leave something to the imagination, but it's a picture! You have to use your imagination, it's not like it's going to move. Kitten, can you make pictures move?" Kitten could not.

"I asked everyone I know, Aveline. I asked people I don't know, and I asked people that I really shouldn't be asking about dirty elf pictures. No-one recognised it. They all loved the Arishok picture, though."

"And rightly so. You'd need weeks of convalescence, but it would be so worth it."

"Shut up, Isabela. No-one wanted to claim responsibility, Varric? Offer to sell you a Treviso bible?"

"No, and none of these guys have got anything to hide. If we asked nicely – or shit, if we waved Fenris under their nose, they'd back off and find someone else to draw filth about. They were all, no, but if you see any more I'll give you five coppers each."

Merrill tended to blank out during conversations with Aveline. Not that she didn't like Aveline, but the tall lady talked about swords and the law and politics and it all went over her head. She sipped her little cup of ale and pulled a small card out of her purse, discreetly holding it under the table so she could peek at it in privacy. A dreamy smile transformed her face, and the noise of her companions dulled to an irrelevant fuzz.

"Five coppers! How's an artist supposed to make a living in this town? Whoever they are, our anonymous elf-fancier deserves way more than a shitty five coppers—"

"Does this have anything to do with the miserable sales of the latest instalment of Naughty Longshoremen, Rivaini?"

"I resemble that remark. And sales weren't miserable, I'm being censored by the forces of oppression—"

"If you don't want your efforts confiscated and burnt, try disguising your sources better, whore."

Isabela became animated at this totally warranted slur on her discretion. "It's about a hopelessly repressed ginger Guard-Captain with a stick up her arse this big. What could that possibly have in common with anyone we know?"

As she swept her hands apart to illustrate just how big the stick was, she brushed her hand against Merrill's ale mug, causing it to wobble perilously. Merrill shrieked and grabbed at the cup, and the card she had been making moon-faces at flipped into the air and fluttered to the table like a wounded butterfly.

"What's this?" said Isabela, snatching up the card. Merrill was too slow to stop her presenting it to Aveline and Varric like a plaque for regular Chantry attendance.

"Well, well," she whistled admiringly, "our anonymous artist has given Junior the royal treatment this time. And I do mean royal – look at that mace…"

"Give me that!" snapped Aveline. Sure enough, Carver Hawke had been immortalised in mucky playing card format, not in his imposing Templar armour, but in the farm gear he was wearing when he first came to Kirkwall.

Or, strictly speaking, not in the farm gear he was wearing when he first came to Kirkwall.

"Merrill," Aveline said, trying to sound kindly, "where did you get this?"

"None of your business! Give it back!" The poor girl's face was as red as a lunar eclipse.

"Merrill, I'm not judging you. He is very… substantial." If life had gone differently for Aveline, she would certainly have liked to have closely investigated Carver's fitness for battle, so to speak.

Too bad he was an utter arse.

"It was a present."

"Who gave it to you?"

"That man over there."

Merrill pointed to the sad, drunk, but very well-dressed redhead in the shadows at the back of the Hanged Man. The one who, when deep in his cups, kept insisting he was the King of Ferelden.

"He does them for everyone. Well, everyone who buys him an ale. You have to be early, though – they're not very good once he's had too many."

Varric wrinkled his nose. "That guy? He doesn't look like he could hold a fart, let alone a pencil."

Isabela got up and stalked across the room. "Hey. Hey, your majesty."

His majesty had already gotten a respectable head start on the day's drinking. "Wha' you want?"

"My friend over there said you do portraits. Intimate portraits."

"Yeah? Well bu'er off. I am pleasantly wasssssssssteddddddd." He clutched his ale and swayed demonstratively.

"I'll buy you a drink."

"Alrea'y got a drink." He demonstrated by drinking it.

Isabela pulled a playing card and a silver out of somewhere unmentionable.

"With this silver you can buy many drinks." She slid the card towards him.

His bleary eyes widened, just the tiniest bit. "Need pen. Pencil. Poo stick."

Aveline stepped forward with a pencil. "Will this do?"

The King squinted at it, then rubbed it on the table. "Bit soft. 'oo do you want? That cocksucker Marlowe? I get him every f'kin' week."

A hubbub broke out, with every pissant in the bar pitching in.

"Knight-Captain Cullen!"

"The Viscount!"

"Ooh ooh! Do me!"

"Nobody wants to see you naked, you old sot."

"ISABELAAAAAAAAA!"

"But we already know what Isabela's fanny looks like. Look, there it is-OW!"

Among the noise, Aveline stepped forward and spoke quietly to the "King". He listened, finally made an "Ah!" of recognition and began scribbling. Punters yelled "helpful" suggestions as the figure began to take shape. Aveline leaned over him, blocking the audience's - and more importantly, Isabela's - view.

After about fifteen minutes he stopped and turned the card towards Aveline. She pointed at it, making a kind of scratchy gesture, and he added a series of quick, short strokes to the card, stopping when she waved at him in a "whoa!" motion. As Isabela tried to peek over her shoulder, Aveline took the card and, with an almost-graceful pirouette, removed herself from the pirate's reach.

Sometimes, it was good to be tall.

Aveline stuffed the card in her notebook. Whatever was on it had confirmed the truth of Merrill's statement, however improbable. She sat down next to the drunk man and slipped him a couple of silvers.

"Now... er..." He glared at her, challenging her to remember his real name. "...your majesty, your little drawings have been causing quite a lot of trouble."

He raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"Some of your… subjects need to remain covered up. So to speak."

The King swayed in his seat. "I just draw wha'm told. Dunno who they are half the time. Tha' stripy elf's keeping me nicely pickled."

Aveline snapped around to glare at Isabela, but the rogue's upturned hands and expression of surprise were genuine, for once.

Shit. What to do now – bring out the threats, or bribe the sad bastard to stop drawing? As Aveline painfully contemplated her options, a pair of massive brown orbs hove into view as a husky voice said "I have an idea."

"So we agree, my card of the Seneschal and the Arishok for your elf cards."

"I still don't get the catch, Isabela. Why are you swapping high quality filth for cheesy elf pics you can get on every street corner?"

"I collect them, sweet thing. You see any more of these, bring them straight to me."

"Will do! …you know I could get a hundred elf cards for the money I'll get for this, right?"

"That would be the point, yes. Are you complaining?"

The "King of Ferelden" had whinged a bit when Isabela detailed her commissions ("People don't really do that! …do they?" "Oh your royal highness, let me lend you my membership to the Blooming Rose if you need references"), but he quietened down when the pirate added him to her bar tab. Even with her revoltingly marked-up terms – common-as-muck elf porn aside, Isabela could and did make an obscene profit from the cards – the King was looking marginally less malnourished than he had been, and was able to knock out more obscene drawings before collapsing in a haze of alcohol.

For her part, Isabela was delighted at her idea for getting back the Fenris cards (interestingly, the Anders card Aveline had found seemed to be the only one, and it was generally agreed that Varric, Sebastian Vael and the Hawke brothers didn't really need to be protected), and even more delighted that it had been Aveline who had given her the idea. She'd never thought of herself as having a publishing empire as such – maybe a small arling – but, with the addition of the King's illustrations to her stories, Isabela thought she had a small chance at knocking Varric off his perch as Kirkwall's Viscount of Smut.

In fact, Isabela was so grateful to Aveline for inspiring the idea that she'd returned the card of Donnic that she'd stolen from the Guard-Captain's pocket, slipping it back into her notes during one of Hawke's visits. Any day now, the Guard-Captain was sure to grow a spine and request Donnic to give her a full internal body search, and Isabela fully intended to celebrate – or if necessary, pre-empt – this momentous occasion with epic friend fiction. Settling in for a productive evening of writing, Isabela fed the cards into the fireplace.