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you use the stone when there is sun. Can you make it correctly this time?”
    It took all of Fia’s will not to speak against this, but she was intrigued by Kieron’s approach and let him finish with Annis.
    “I made it correctly this time!” Annis said, but now she did not meet the eyes of either of them.
    Fia gasped, but covered it with a cough. The stone, milky when Kieron had handed it to Annis, now had faint dark ribbons running through it, as if it had been colored by the refuse of the privies.
    Kieron shook his head. “She lies.”
    “Nay, I do not,” Annis said, holding the still darkly ribboned stone out and shaking it as if that would force Kieron to take it. Fia looked at the stone, then at Kieron, then back at the stone. Brown, almost black, and he said she lied as if he knew it for a truth.
    “Did you use exactly what I told you, and in the exact amounts?” Fia asked, testing her theory.
    “Aye,” Annis replied, holding out the still dark hued stone to Kieron who made no move to take it from her.
    “Annis, you did not,” Fia said, still not sure that what she saw in the stone reflected what she thought it did. “Why?”
    Annis closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed. “I spilled the willow in the fire. ’Twas all burned up before I could think what to do.” Annis scrunched up her nose, as if she smelled something rotten, clearly displeased that her lie had been uncovered.
    The stone shone a faint pink now, but still a thread of brown woven through it. Pink, like when Elena and she had held it before…truth? But with a lie still woven into it?
    “Why did you not get more from my supply?” Fia asked, determined to find the whole truth.
    The lass swallowed hard and laced her fingers together so fiercely her knuckles turned white. “I was pouring it directly from the bag when it spilled, though I ken well ’tis not the way you like it done. I sneezed and the entire bag emptied into the fire. There is no more.”
    Still pink with a thread of brown.
    Fia narrowed her eyes at the girl, trying to figure out where the lie still lay. She considered the chief, and how he seemed in more pain the last few hours than he had been before. She had thought it only that his condition worsened, for it clearly had not improved, but perhaps…
    “When did you burn up the willow supply?” she asked, sure now that she had found the heart of the lie.
    Annis looked at her feet and spoke so softly Fia almost couldn’t hear her. “When I went to make the brew in the middle of the night.”
    Pink. Clear pink.
    Kieron plucked the stone from Annis’s fingers and it was once more milky. “Did she cause the chief harm?” he asked Fia as he tucked the stone into the pouch at his belt.
    “I do not think so. More pain, aye, but ’tis my fault for not checking her brews more carefully. I know better. I am sorry, Kieron.”
    “You are not the one to be sorry. If she had told you the truth, there would be no need to check.”
    “Still, I must take some of the blame. I will not let it happen again.”
    “Nor will I,” he said. “Would you mind terribly if I had her kept under watch in the cottage you have yet to use?”
    “Will she be punished?” she asked.
    “If Tavish discovers her perfidy? Aye, but I think ‘twould be more fitting to return her to Kilmartin and let Lady Elena mete out her punishment, do you not?
    “She will not believe either of you,” Annis said, sidling toward the door.
    Kieron did not turn around. “If you so much as touch that door I shall break your hand. Fia, what do you think? Turn her over to Tavish who is not known for holding his temper, or give her to Elena for judgment?”
    Fia weighed her options far longer than necessary, enjoying watching Annis quake for real for a change. But she could not let the woman be harmed by Tavish, no matter how much she deserved it. “Confine her to the cottage. She shall return with me to Kilmartin and Elena will decide her