The Summer Bazaar in summer is not, as it happens, a sparsely populated square with one cafe and six merchants. The crowd throngs thick and sweaty, any cooling breeze off the Miroir de la Mère that might be felt around the perimeter blocked by the walls and buildings, milling around merchant stalls or gathered asymmetrically around the staging area at the center. A small, sedate audience for Lecelina Beauvais's oral exposition on historical tariffs, which is barely audible over the hooting and hollering for the adjacent display put on by Company Misdirect Theatre. Watching from the vestibule of the shop where Ness is seeing about some cushions, smoking and leaning one shoulder against the arch of the broad doorway, Bastien has a view of both, and beyond them the gallows.

If there had been a hanging scheduled, they wouldn't be here. He'd have sworn on his soul that Gracien Bazalgette on Rue Cyril could do her better for cheaper and said whatever else he had to say to avoid the walk across the Avenue. But they're empty, harmless, and he's looking at the platform more than either of the displays, because he's invented exposure therapy.

Or because he's invented jamming fingers into bruises. No one else in Thedas has ever done that. Just him.

The gallows are where his eyes are. But his ear—the one that still works—is on Ness and the saleswoman behind him. He's endeavoring not to interfere with her wheeling and dealing unless it sounds like she's being well and truly taken advantage of.