Varric didn't jump as a voice suddenly manifested over his shoulder, but it was a near thing. He was fairly perceptive but, honestly, he hadn't heard him approach, not over the general din of Skyhold. No, the reason he hadn't jumped was fairly simple: he'd been friends with Hawke for ten years. It took some real effort to startle him, and probably a reasonable amount of fire as well. Effort and fire, yeah, that sounded about right.

"Depends," Varric said as he finished reading the dull, stilted script of Dunner Mills. The man was as boring as his name and, all in all, only owed Varric a small favor. They'd exchanged the better part of ten letters now and he still hadn't convinced the fellow that selling two dozen long-tables and twice as many rounds would be worth the trek up the Frostbacks.

"Do you charge less than this guy's asking and just how many laws are we talking about breaking?" Varric finished and held the letter aloft.

He didn't usually share his correspondence but he was feeling especially cynical today. After a beat he glanced over his shoulder and, all at once, found an Antivan elf...thief? No, probably not, maybe a bard or smuggler. He was holding himself with casual certainty. Whatever he did, he was good at it.

Damn, if he was going to start hiring people to lean on his contacts directly, Dunner Mills was a waste of coin.