Aside from the ropes Varric was forced to admit that his time spent with Horacious had not been all that bad. His own brother had done worse on the Deep Roads, he thought, and yet the chilling encounter with the fat Tevinter had shaken Varric to his very core, imparting a paranoia that shadowed his every step. When he had returned to the Hanged Man he eyed each patron nervously, then checked and double checked the door to see if the enormous man with the tattoo on his face was following in after him.

He had hardly even realized that he was still clutching Bianca, his finger twitching against the trigger until he noticed that all eyes in the tavern were upon him, looking at the Dwarf as though he were a desperate mad man. Could he blame him?

That night he had slept fitfully. What was it about the Tevinter that had unnerved him so? Varric had always been capable of sizing people up in a glance and knowing exactly what cards they were holding. To serenade their secrets from them may take time, but he had grown comfortable being able to guess what side of the line a person stood on within seconds. Somehow, Varric thought as he lay restlessly in bed, he would have felt better about the entire altercation if he had received some sort of beating for his troubles. The pot bellied man had spoken of Hawke as a friend, adding to the myriad of riddles that were pouring through his mind.

The next day he felt better. Not his old self, he realized, but to have made it through the night without a red smile imbued him with a sense of his old confidence as he wheeled the shelf away from the door, a crude barricade that in hindsight would have done nothing to stop Titus.

That must have been the man who killed the crew of the Nautilus, Varric thought to himself, trying to put the pieces together in his head as he ran through the interrogation several times in his mind. He had spoken of Varric's "brothers" in the same breath as the slain Templar, leaving a sour taste in his mouth at the thought of the association. It did not take a marathon of thought to realize just who precisely Horacious was hinting at.

Varric's throat was still dry, feeling like cotton from Horacious's potion. He ordered a water from the barkeep, who eyed him with amusement as he slid it across the bartop.

"A water for messere?" he joked, his voice full of mockery.

"For now," Varric said, swallowing the fetid, warm liquid, though his throat sang like larks at the touch of the water. "Get me a beer while you're at it. A cold one if you have it."

"If but I could, messere," the barkeep said sadly as he popped open a keg behind the bar and poured one of Varric's favorite stouts. Varric grumbled as he drank it, leaving a few silver crowns before heaving himself away from the bar and leaving the Hanged Man.

Despite the fear that had swept through Lowtown on the day of the murders the gangs had shown no signs of themselves and the men and women there had decided to return to their lives, if with an air of caution about them. The well to dos of Hightown were likely still shitting their loins at the thought, but no one in the slums of Kirkwall shied away from the sight of a little blood.

At the far end of Lowtown, tucked away between a decrepit tavern of no great repute and an abandoned shack was a discreet door tucked into the wall. At a glance it looked more like an ornament hanging on the wall, perhaps an abandoned part of some long destroyed building meant to patch up a hole at very little expense. A closer inspection would reveal that it was fully functional, however, and was even well maintained on the other side with a strong, metal lock, to which Varric had the key.

It was a perfect example of hiding in plain sight, though he still wasn't sure why that was necessary. Another attempt, Varric reasoned, of the Dwarven merchants trying desperately to pass themselves off as Carta bosses, doing little more than upsetting, sometimes even offending, those that they would mimic.

The door led to a tunnel that dipped under the ground with a guard posted every dozen or so feet. He suspected there was some sort of Dwarven poetry involved in a group of casteless surface dwellers returning beneath the earth to hold their meetings, but Varric thought it was a load of horse shit. The guards regarded him with a passing interest until he reached the end of the hall, where the armored warrior for hire stuck out his hand expectantly, no doubt for Bianca.

"Not today sweet cheeks," he warned the guard, his tone laced with sarcasm but filled with venom. The Dwarf leaned forward, intending to threaten Varric, but a sudden jerk, unslinging Bianca from his shoulder and aiming one of the bolts dangerously at the guard's eyes was enough to cause a sudden pause in his movements. "I said not today."

Varric was in no mood to be trifled with and the guard became wise enough to back away, palms up in a sign of surrender. Nodding, Varric pushed open the door and kicked it shut behind him, all eyes on the council that sat about their table upon him, wide and confused. He paid them no heed as he slung Bianca once more around his shoulder, his paces a confident strut as he walked up to the empty chair reserved for House Tethras and sliding it away with a loud creak of its metal against the stone floor. Unceremoniously he plopped down into it then reached across the table for some grapes, throwing them into his mouth without so much as a word.

Baric was the first to break their stunned silence with what was no doubt intended to be a stinging barb. "Twice now!" he howled, slapping his palm across the table. "Two meetings in a row a Tethras has sat at this table! Someone summon the master of records to note this!" One or two of the other Dwarves added their voices to laughter, but Varric noted angrily that Hestor and Uthras were not among them.

"What brings you here, Varric?" Hestor, ever the leader of the upstarts, asked poignantly.

Varric enjoyed the grapes and decided he would take another one. "The most curious thing happened to me yesterday," he said between bites, occasionally letting the spittle of grape juice fly from his lips in a sheer sign of contempt. "I was abducted by a Tevinter slave hunter that seemed incredibly curious about the dead Templar. All the while I walked here I asked myself, why in Andraste's name would a Tevinter bounty hunter give a shit about me?"

He delighted when he saw Hestor's color slip from his face, the Dwarf's blood visibly running cold. Varric took his time between words, leaning forward and plucking the jug of wine that was near Uthras and uncorking it. Rather than pour it into his goblet he swallowed a long gulp to wash down the drapes.

Finally Uthras cracked. "What did you tell this Tevinter?" he asked, stroking his dyed beard.

Varric took another swig, then let out a long, content sigh. He pounded his chest then belched. "What did I tell him indeed," he said, his voice full of mockery. "Oh, that's right. I could tell him nothing, precisely what this council here tells me."

Hestor had had enough. He slammed a balled fist against the tale top, sending the dishes and cups clammering as though they'd been struck by an earthquake. "We would hear everything you and this Tevinter discussed."

"Interesting, that," Varric said. He looked down at the bottle, a wry smile peeling his lips, spinning it around and watching the red contents swirl like a vortex. "I guess Uthras isn't hosting this particular meeting. This tastes like an Anderfel vintage. Probably a good year too. What were you celebrating?"

"This isn't a game," Uthras finally burst, throwing himself from his seat. "What did you two discuss?"

Varric slammed the bottle down angrily, half surprised that it did not shatter against the stone table top. "Don't lecture me on games, you horse's ass," he spit, "what did you all do with the lottery?"

The entire table burst into a chorus of arguments and Varric swore a few of them were ready to come to blows, grabbing one another's collars and jerking at their comrades like it was a bar brawl. Hestor called for calm before reaching down to his belt, plucking a sheepskin bag from it and throwing it across the table in Varric's direction. Varric eyed it curiously.

"What's this?"

"Your share and more," Hestor insisted, "we must know what this Tevinter knows if we are to act to countermand the damage that has already occurred."

Varric shrugged. "I don't even know what you've done, to be perfectly frank with you all." Feeling smug and confident, he took the bottle of wine again and took another sip. "It's so strange that none of you trust me enough to just...tell me."

"Your conclusions are true," Hestor finally said at length with a long sigh. "Our contacts at the dock knew precisely what the Templar was carrying. Three thousand golden sovereigns. The Tevinters would solve their feud with the Knight-Commander and we would cease sinking like a ship in a storm due to her mistakes." Varric had never seen the Dwarf so rattled, he was now visibly trembling.

"How did you do it?" Varric asked. "I'm so curious how you got him to abandon so simple a job as to just walk from the docks to the Gallows and not die in between."

"Templars are a stupid lot," Hestor explained, "they can't resist someone pretending to be a mage."

"Sad," Varric said as he rose from his chair, keeping the bottle of wine with him. "Really sad." When he turned his back to the council he could hear each of them jump to their feet.

"What do you mean to do?" Hestor asked, eyeing the conspicuously abandoned bag.

"Nothing," Varric said truthfully, "just like the part I played in the Templar's death." He finally turned around to regard them. "But between you and me this guy means business, so I would return the money if I were the lot of you. Who knows, maybe he'll just take your eyes."

Varric had nothing further to say to any of them, despite their demands that he stop, demands that he turn around and join his brothers, the brothers that shared nothing with him, that would not have batted a single eye if he had died for their foolish mistakes. His thoughts turned to the bag of gold that Hestor had thrown to him while he walked down the long hallway, occasionally sipping from the delicious Ander wine. To think, he thought to himself, that I would sully myself with bloody money I didn't even earn.