Second paragraph of third section:

Port, five gods be thanked. Maybe.

Another of the great sequence of novellas featuring novice sorceror Penric and his possessing demons, this time kidnapped by pirates and thrown together with two young parentless girls. Bujold is one of the very few genre authors who can convincingly take parenthood (in this case, surrogate parenthood) as a major theme of her stories, and makes the relationship between Penric and his unexpectedly acquired wards drive a well-structured narrative. I had forgotten also how complex the World of the Five Gods is, with varied languages and cultures. It’s also, as usual with Bujold, very witty. Recommended. You can get it here.