Thank you for reading!

"'I'm doing fine! Please don't worry about me. With love, Bethany.'" Hawke sighed and folded the piece of vellum. "Easier said than done."

"Maybe it's true. Maybe she is doing fine," Varric offered.

"Yes, maybe she is. Or maybe she was told what to write. Or maybe my mother doesn't care what she writes," Hawke snapped.

"Any of those are possible. But what we know is true is that you can't do anything about it, anyway."

Hawke glared at him across the table. "Very helpful, thank you."

"You think that was helpful? Wait until you hear my news. You might want to be sitting down for this." He met her eyes, realizing that she was sitting. "Oh, good, you are. Nothing breakable near you?"

Sighing long-sufferingly, Hawke drummed her fingers on the table. "What is it, Varric?"

"I've had an ear out for Bartrand. Apparently after the Deep Roads, he ran to Rivain, hoping I couldn't track him there."

"I take it you had some pirate help with that one?"

"Some, yes. I know he left Rivain, and I've heard he might be back in Kirkwall. He called in loans from a few of his contacts in Hightown."

"Staying here, or just passing through?"

"If my information is good, he has a house there."

"Well, your information is pretty much always good, so I think we can safely say he's staying." Hawke's green eyes softened as she studied him. "You all right?"

"Who, me? My no-account backstabbing brother may be practically in arm's reach. I couldn't be better." The blackness of the rage that boiled up in him when he thought of his brother's betrayal actually scared Varric. He wasn't a man given to deep emotion, he didn't like it, and he didn't want to feel it. But he couldn't help it where Bartrand was concerned. Or where certain other people were concerned, he thought, taking a surreptitious look at Hawke as she drained her pint and called for another one. Those feelings were more pleasant, but no less disturbing.

Leaning back in her chair, Hawke narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Why would he risk coming back here?"

"Bartrand? Has to be coin. He lives for it. There's a much better market here for that trinket he took, and all his contacts are in Kirkwall."

"By all means, let's go drop in to his housewarming. I'm so looking forward to seeing Bartrand again. I've missed him so."

Varric laughed. "I'm sure he'll welcome us with open arms."

"All the better to properly place my blade."

"Or Bianca's quarrel."

"Exactly." They smiled at each other across the table.

Hawke cast about for something else to talk about. Most days, she and Varric were able to chatter away with no trouble, just as they always had, but sometimes the memory of that drunken kiss would descend between them and leave them in an awkward silence. Since she tried to forget she had ever been such a fool as to think someone as removed from such things as Varric would be interested in her, she liked to avoid these silences.

Then she laughed, remembering what she had wanted to tell him. "Seen Aveline recently?"

"You mean, after she tried to tell you that you were wasting your life and should join the guards?"

Grinning, Hawke shook her head. "Can you imagine? In no time I'd be as sour and dour as she is … although she may not be much longer."

"Oh? Do tell."

"Remember that tall, dark, and handsome guardsman we saved on patrol some time ago? Donnic? She had me deliver him some kind of picture—copper flowers or some such thing. He didn't get it; I didn't get it. Fenris, of all people, figured out it was some kind of courtship attempt."

"Will wonders never cease. Maybe there's more to that broody bastard than meets the eye."

"So then she asked me to ask Donnic to the Hanged Man—which he declined, thinking I was asking him for me."

Varric didn't comment on that, and she hurried to finish the story.

"So Fenris and Isabela and Merrill and I agreed to shadow her patrol on the Wounded Coast—we'd kill the bandits, so she and Donnic could talk. Even that was almost too much for her. Fortunately for Aveline, Donnic was more than willing to take matters into his own hands."

"Say no more. Really," Varric said hastily.

Hawke laughed. "No details involved. But I thought you might want to know. In case it affected anything you had in mind."

"With Aveline?" His eyebrows flew up, and then he realized what she meant, and grinned. "I might have to alter the guard serial a bit. 'Happy in Hightown' doesn't have quite the same ring. Still … a good noir could use some sex appeal."

"You know that if she realizes that thing is about her, she'll come down on you like a ton of bricks."

"Aveline? Her bark is worse than her bite. She already figured out that I planted a fake cousin on the board of Tethras Brothers, Ltd., in order to get out of Merchants Guild meetings."

"What wouldn't you do to get out of Merchants Guild meetings?"

Varric gave that one some thought. "Write poetry."

"Liar. If it got you away from the Merchants Guild once and for all, you'd compose an epic to rival the Chant of Light."

"Hawke!" He pretended to be shocked. "Blasphemy."

She shrugged. "The Maker could have used a better editor, anyway." Looking around to make sure no one was listening, she leaned across the table, lowering her voice. "I spoke with our friend in Darktown yesterday." By mutual accord, they tried to avoid mentioning Anders' name in public.

"Did you?"

"Yes. He said the gangs from the Undercity are ignoring him, and it's freaking him out."

"I knew he liked the attention." But Varric couldn't meet her eyes, and Hawke sighed.

"You're still paying them to look the other way."

"Now, Hawke, they're busy people. Places to go, throats to cut. Maybe he's slipped their minds."

"It's not their minds I'm worried about. He and his … friend are growing increasingly intertwined—and increasingly less stable."

"He's fine, Hawke."

"He's not, Varric." Anders carried a spirit within him, and as far as Hawke could tell, every day he was a little more spirit and a little less Anders. "I told him he was getting in too deep and I couldn't follow him down that rabbit hole."

Varric winced. "You don't think cutting him off will just make him worse?"

"I think playing into his fantasies of persecution is bad for him—and I can't let him drag me into believing in all these conspiracies in the Gallows, or I'll go crazy worrying about my sister."

"She'll be fine, Hawke."

Sighing, Mina looked at the letter on the table. "So she says, Varric. So she says." And she would have to accept that … even if she didn't quite believe it.