“Come one, come all! Come and see the amazing powers of the Ashes of Andraste! Cure all ills! Enhance those bedroom skills!”

Anya blinks. "What."

"Can I get a volunteer from the audience!" The man cries.

A woman coughs, and raises her hand.

She very much doubts he actually has the Sacred Ashes. Also, this feels very scammy to her.

"I'll do it!" She says loudly to draw attention to herself.

The man seems extremely confused, and his eyes dart back to the lady who coughed.

Who also seems panicked. 

"The young lady seems healthy! Perhaps I should pick this sickly soul?" The man announces, less confident than before.

"Just because I don't look sick, doesn't mean I'm not, in fact, very very sick. She can go afterward."

"I- uh..."

The lady who had simply coughed before, glared at Anya, and then gasped, and fell to her knees. "Oh! The pain! It is unbearable!"

The man seemed to recover. "Oh, my lady! I shall heal you!" He begins to walk forward, but in the pouch he opens, Anya can identify only elfroot and maybe Vandal Aria.

"Are you actually serious? You're both terrible actors. Even worse con artists. I'm pretty sure I can go to the coast and make that in, like, five minutes."

"Listen, babe-" The man creeps in close to Anya, fury on his face, his accent heavily Ferelden, "- we're just tryin' to make a livin', yeah? So back off!"

She stands straight, showing her full height. "Do it some place else. Or not at all. Ripping people off, fucking over the vulnerable, is disgusting. You're scum."

"We're just as vulnerable as them! Even more so, they hate our kind out her-" The man stops speaking as a young woman in guard plate comes up. 

"Something the matter, sers?" Her face is severe.

"Do you regularly allow con artists to run their game on your streets?"

"No," she says, glaring at the man. "No, we don't."

The man summons up a charlatan grin for her. "Madam, we only mean to sell our wares-" 

"Yeah, I heard your speel. Everyone with a lick a sense knows the ashes ain't real. You spend a single minute more trying to sell them, I'll have you and your accomplice dragged up before the magistrate."

Anya nods approvingly. "Thank you. Sorry I got in the middle of it."

The guard nods, smiling approvingly at Anya. Her face then turns hard, and she grabs the man by his lapel. "You will tell me the name of your friends, and you will lead me to them."

The man is still spluttering excuses, even as she leads him away. 

Approval! Weird. But then again, she does know how to suck up to authority. So not that weird.

The street seems to clear after the charlatans were arrested, and Lowtown seems to settle into normality. 

Aaand that's enough broody alone time for Anya. Maybe now she can snuggle up to Tabs and nap a little. If her brain will let her. She heads back in the direction of the Alienage.

A dwarf, face covered and armoured in vaguely familiar symbols blocks her way.

"You like sticking your nose in where it don't belong, human?"

Aaaaaa? "Uh. No? I was just minding my own business."

"Sure you were. Even if minding your own business meant not interrupting a legitimate sales pitch."

Many more dwarves emerge behind him, all of them wielding wicked looking knives.

"He was a shitty salesman," she replies, a little weakly.

"Oh, was he? And that meant you should call the guard?"

One of the dwarves gets close enough to lay a knife across Anya's throat.

"She was already here. I didn't call anyone."

The dward laughs. "Sure you didn't, I'm-"