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definitely not considered either of those. She had walked that path so many times she hardly thought about it any longer and she only looked at the house out of idle curiosity, not desperate longing.
    The manor wasn’t an ugly place, but there wasn’t anything truly lovely to recommend it. Everything about it was designed to attract attention and lead anyone looking at it to believe that the lord who lived there was very important indeed. She thought it overdone and garish, but what did she know? In truth, she preferred a clean stable and a fast horse. She hardly cared where she laid her head and she had no desire to impress anyone who might be examining her flowerbeds for weeds.
    She considered that for as long as it took her to leave the manor behind. She turned the corner toward town, then paused in mid-step. It wasn’t a lad with less-than-chivalrous thoughts on his mind, or a dog eyeing her leg purposefully, or even a clutch of nettles that left her frozen in place.
    There was something there on the ground.
    She took a step backward, made a fruitless grasp for her good sense, then surrendered and simply stared at what lay there before it. It was a hint of shadow where there should have been none.
    That might not have seemed so strange save that it was barely past noon, there were no clouds in the sky, and there was nothing around her to cast any hint of darkness on the ground.
    She frowned thoughtfully. She realized with a start that it wasn’t the first time she had seen something odd in the vicinity of her uncle’s house. When had it been—oh, aye. A pair of fortnights past. She’d seen something similar on the ground but dismissed it as her having had not enough sleep, because shadows cast on the ground by nothing at all, in broad daylight no less, were impossible.
    She was tempted to step on it and see what happened butsomething stopped her. Good sense, perhaps. A finely honed sense of self-preservation, assuredly. She took a deep breath and walked around the patch of nothing, giving it a very wide berth.
    She decided that perhaps the best use of that rather long walk into town would be to spend the time chiding herself for being a fool. Her imagination was getting the best of her. She might as well revisit her thought of wishing for a decently executed rescue as to give any credence to what she thought she had seen.
    She would go to town, procure what Doghail wanted, then spend the rest of her day mucking out stalls.
    It was obviously her only hope of having any of her good sense return.

Two

    I f penance was best done in Hell, Acair thought he might have arrived at the right locale for it.
    Sàraichte was without a doubt the ugliest place he had ever seen. He stood on a small bluff on the edge of town and examined what was to be his prison for the next year. It was a typical port town, only it didn’t seem to have the usual niceties most port towns boasted such as a decent pub, a bustling market, and a stiff breeze to wash away the lingering odor of fish.
    He wasn’t sure how any of the ships in the harbor managed to escape its clutches once they were in them, but perhaps magic was needed to save the day. Why he couldn’t have been saddled with that sort of work for the duration of his sentence, he surely didn’t know. He could have stood on a hill and directed the ships in and out, offering a helping hand occasionally, collecting exorbitant fees always. It would have been altruistic from stem to stern, as it were, aiding those who couldn’t aid themselves and pocketing a bit of coin in the bargain. Yet with all his magic simply begging to be used, where was he going?
    A barn.
    Somewhere, Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn and Soilléir of Cothromaiche were having themselves a right proper chuckle over the thought.
    He could only muster up a lackluster amount of enthusiasm over the thought of murdering them both, which would have alarmed him if he’d had the