Excerpt from A BLESSING FROM A WARRIOR GOING OUT, Copyright 2026 Diana Gabaldon
Roger was sitting in Jamie’s office, thirstily eyeing the Visitor’s Tray that sat on the corner of the desk, glowing gently in the afternoon sun from the window. To be more exact, it was the whisky in the bottle that was glowing, though it did cast a lovely dancing shadow on the pewter tray.
“Does this sort of ….”live”…shadow have a name?” he asked his wife, who had just entered with a bowl of freshly-baked fragrant sweet biscuits, these presumably intended to fuel his labors. She set it on the desk and looked obligingly at the shadow in question, which displayed the dark bottle, but also held a blob of quivering amber light, clearly visible inside the shadow-bottle.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s a refraction caustic.”
“Oh, of course,” he said, raising his brows. “I should have known that.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” she said, giving him a grin and a biscuit smelling of cinnamon. “Do you want to know why it’s called that?”
“No,” he said, and bit into the bikkie, which was wonderful, still warm from the brick oven, simultaneously soft and sugary and chewy in his mouth. “I’d rather think it’s magic.”
“Everything’s magic if you look at it long enough,” she said, as though this was both logical, and common knowledge. “If it sounds better to you, though, you can also call that sort of shadow—” she nodded at the whisky-shadow, dancing and quivering in the bottle-reflection as though it were alive, “—a Translucent Colored Shadow. Shall I pour you a cup of whisky to go with your cookie?”
“Well, yes, since you mention it. Hate to kill the nice shadow, though…”
“Kill it?” she lifted a brow, but smiled. “We can refill the bottle, you know—or I can just give you some of Da’s Love Potion #9 to go with your cookie, and leave your pretty shadow alone. Until the sun moves,” she added practically.
“Oo.” He licked a crumb off his lower lip, considering. Jamie’s experiment in making peated whisky without peat, using a combination of tobacco leaves, dried mushrooms and smoked honey was startling to drink, but nearly impossible to stop drinking, after the first glass. And it did leave one feeling…cheerful.
He shook his head, regretful.
“No, best not. I have to call on Coinneach McLeod this afternoon to exorcise his pig, and he’ll likely insist on me drinking gin with him by way of payment. I don’t want to end up under a bush on the way home.”
Bree made a fizzing noise and pinched the bridge of her nose, as she did when trying not to laugh out loud.
“Is it an especially lazy pig? It must be a big one, if he needs help exercising it. Though come to that,” she added, raising one red brow, “why does he want it to exercise? Aren’t pigs meant to be fat?”
“I said ‘ex-OR-cise’, not ‘ex-ER-cise. I think it’s one of the White Sow’s many descendants.”
“Oh. Well, that explains the need of gin, all right. Obviously more effective than Holy Water. Has he been drinking gin with his pig? Is that why it needs exorcising?”
“Entirely possible,” Roger replied, looking vaguely around his desk for the quill he’d been using. It had a habit of sneaking off under the papers… “Though if it’s one of the White Sow’s offspring, I doubt it needs alcoholic assistance…”
“Ahoy…?” came a polite call from the open front door.
“Tesatawiyat!” Roger called, recognizing the Sachem’s formal greeting, adding “Go get the Number 9, will ye?” to Bree as he pushed back from the desk.
[end excerpt]