I wasn't sure the senior enchanter would bother to notice.

[A joke, though also... he's still trying to tease out the threads of the conversation they've just had.]

He had a reputation, you know, even before I was at Kirkwall. Not one that I imagined terribly compatible with mine.

[Just because he'd stayed away from the Mage-Templar war didn't mean he'd ignored it; if anything, the reverse, a mix of guilt and pragmatism making him keep his ear to the ground.]