“Och, ye’re in his book?” Ian straightened up, and Jamie made a negative gesture.

“I dinna ken, that’s the trouble. It might be me, and it bloody well might not be, too. He mentions my name fourteen times, but never makin’ enough of it to be able to tell whether it’s me or someone else. He never comes right out and says, ‘Jamie Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,’ or ‘Broch Tuarach,’ or anything o’ that sort.”

“Why are ye worried, then, Uncle?”

“Because he says there’s going to be a battle nearby us—at a place called Kings Mountain. And Jamie Fraser’s killed in it. Will be, I mean. A Jamie Fraser.” Saying it aloud actually steadied him a little. It seemed ridiculous.

Ian wasn’t taking it that way, though. He gripped Jamie’s arm, close in the darkness.

“Ye think it’s you he means?”

“Well, that’s the devil of it, Ian. I canna say, at all. See—” His lips were dry, and he licked them briefly. “The man kent about me, and he had nay reason to love me. We—Claire and Bree and I—think Frank Randall knew that the lass would come back, to find her mother and me. And if he looked, in—in history—he’d maybe find us.”

Ian clicked his tongue in consternation—in just the way his father had, and Jamie smiled involuntarily.

“And if he did …”

“No man is objective about Claire,” Jamie said. “I mean—they’re just not.”

Ian made a wee fizzing noise of assent.

“Which isna to say everyone loves her …”

“A lot of us do, Uncle,” his nephew assured him. “But aye, I ken what ye mean.”

“Aye. Well, what I mean is—and I ken this sounds as though I’ve lost my senses and maybe I have—but … I’ve read his book, and by God, I think the man is talkin’ to me.”

Ian was silent for quite a while. The dim shape of a nightjar rose from the ground near their feet and shot off into the dark with a high, clear zeeek!

“And if he is talkin’ to you?” Ian said at last.

That scared him.

“If he is—and if the Jamie Fraser who dies at Kings Mountain is me … I just … I …” He couldn’t ask it. And for God’s sake, he was not afraid of dying, not so many times as he’d looked Death in the face. It was only—

Ian’s hand slid into his and clasped it firmly.

“I’ll be there with ye, Uncle. When does it happen? The battle, I mean.”

Relief coursed through him, and the breath he took went down to his feet.

“In about a year. October next, it will be. Or … so he says.”

“That’ll be plenty time enough for me to do whatever needs to be done in the North,” Ian said, then squeezed his hand and let it go. “Dinna fash.”

Jamie nodded, his heart full. In the morning he would bid them all farewell, but he would take his leave of Ian Òg now.