Inclito drove up in a carriage, as I should say, and I got into it with him as soon as I had written arm, still waving the sheet to dry the ink. "You have the bird, " Inclito said. He sounded pleased.

I said something about not being able to escape him, to which Oreb himself contributed, "Bird stay!"

"When I saw you at the river you had the bird, but it flew away. I thought I was wrong. It was not your bird."

"I'm his, if anything," I told Inclito, which is the simple truth.

"The people here, " he laughed self-consciously, "they think you're a witch. It's because of your bird. They believe these things."

I said that they had been very kind to me, and that although I had been among them only two days I was already very fond of them. "People here enjoy their lives, " I explained to Inclito, not particularly clearly, "and people who do are always good people, even when they're bad people."

"They like you too, but your clothes frighten them. The black color."

"This?" I was about to tell him it was an augur's robe, but there seemed little point in saying so.

"They think it means you hurt people if you want to. Your bird's black, too. Red like blood."

"Good bird!"

Inclito smiled. "That's what they hope. A good bird. Witches got pet animals. Cats mostly only not all the time. Familiares. You know?"

He looked at me inquiringly, and I shook my head.

"It means the animal's in the witch's family. Sometimes it's really his father or his mother. Something like that. You think it's funny. So do I. I got a pet too. A horse. Not one of those. He's not my father, just my horse."