“We dinna want to say anything to her about this.”

“No, we don’t,” Ian agreed, and a faint shudder went over him at the thought.

“From curiosity,” Jamie said, returning to the Gàidhlig, “why did your mother tell ye about the mhic an diabhail?”

“If it might be that you needed my help in the killing, a bràthair mo mhàthair,” Ian said, with the trace of a smile. “She said I must not offer, but if ye asked, I must go with you. And I would have done so,” he added softly, his eyes dark in the lantern’s glow. “Without the telling.

“What do you think?” he said then, changing subjects with a nod at the stranger. “Plainly, it is not the same man. That man is dead?”

“He is.”

Ian nodded, matter-of-fact.

“Good. Do we think this one might be his kin?”

“I dinna ken, but this one is also dead, and I canna think his death”—Jamie nodded at the corpse—“can have aught to do with the other.”

Ian nodded in agreement.

“Then I think it hasna anything to do wi’ us, either.”

Jamie felt air in his chest, light and cold and fresh.

“He has not,” he agreed. Then, struck by a thought, asked, “How do ye come to ken what the—other—looked like?”

“The same as you, I expect. Went to Beardsley’s and asked after the man wi’ the birthmark. Dinna fash,” he added. “I didna make a meal of it; no one would remember.”

“No,” Jamie said flatly. No one would remember, because no one would ever see the man again, or think to look for him—he wasn’t the sort of man who had real business with anyone. He was the sort of man who lived and died alone. Save for his dog.

And even if someone thought to visit him, they willna find him. It wasn’t unusual for solitary men to disappear in the backcountry, their passing unremarked. Killed by accident, died of untended illness, wandered away …

They stood together for a moment, scrutinizing the stranger’s face. Jamie felt Ian relax, his decision made, and a moment later, Jamie also shook his head and stepped back.

“No,” he said, and Ian nodded and, leaning forward, blew out the lantern’s wick, leaving them in darkness with the smell of the dead man.

“Ye’re sure, yourself?” Jamie asked, not moving. Ian hadn’t asked him that, but he couldn’t help himself. Ian touched his shoulder.

“I’m sure this man is no concern of ours,” he said firmly. “Ought we to leave him with a blessing, though? He’s a stranger.”

They stood close together and murmured the short form of the death dirge. Jamie’s eyes were accustomed now to the dark of the shed, and he saw the words come out of their mouths in white wisps, insubstantial as the soul they blessed.

They left, and Jamie closed the shed door quietly behind them.

THE MAN WAS still in their minds, though, as they walked down the street. Not the dead man they had just left. The other.