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going to bleed to death on the road before morning and leave him alone with everything that had gone wrong.
     
    No wizards.
     
    He only wished—
     
    But that was the trouble. He could do too much by wishing, and he dragged himself back from that terrible wish he had, that something should bring Pyetr Illitch to his senses.
     
    "There
aren't
any wizards," Pyetr said from across the road. "The bogeys won't get you."
     
    "Stop it!"
     
    "If the bogles are anything, they'd have come after me long since. It's not stealing to take what people are setting out for the cat—unless you count the cat."
     
    Sasha stood up and faced him. "We're in enough trouble, Pyetr Illitch. Making jokes isn't going to help it."
     
    "It does help it. It helps not to be fools." Pyetr staggered to his feet. "It helps us that the thieftakers are probably suspecting the haystack or the horses, and the gate guards who let us out aren't going to admit they were tricked off their post, they're going to say they were 'witched, and
they
aren't going to come out here in the dark looking for wizards and shape-changers who walked right through a locked parley-gate. So be grateful that
they're
fools."
     
    "Where are you going?" Sasha asked, for Pyetr was leaving the roadside, heading off through the meadow, eastward.
     
    "To blazes," Pyetr said. "Come with me or go back and explain to the thieftakers how you were 'witched, too."
     
    "I can't!" Sasha cried.
     
    But Pyetr kept walking, slowly, and there was nothing to do but run after him.
     
    They came on a road in the dark, or at least a memory of one, so overgrown and weedy it was almost more trouble than the open field, but better, Pyetr thought, to be on it, since a road, however old, promised a sure way through. The god knew he was in no way for climbing or rough ground, and from time to time he would come back to himself with the feeling that he might have been wandering—except for the road, which at least kept them on a course for somewhere, at least guided them away from Vojvoda, and steered them clear of dead ends and drops over banks—one hoped.
     
    "Talk," he said to the boy finally, because he knew that his wits were drifting.
     
    "About what?" Sasha asked.
     
    "Anything. I don't care."
     
    "I don't know anything to talk about."
     
    "God.—What do you want to do, where do you want to go in the world, what have you always wanted to see?"
     
    "I don't know. I never thought.—I thought we were just going to hide a while, till your friends—"
     
    "Don't be naive.—Did you plan to work for old Fedya for the rest of your life?"
     
    Silence.
     
    "Did he pay you?"
     
    "No," Sasha said in a small voice.
     
    "That old skinflint.—Mischa spends him blind and you're jack-of-all-work, is that it?"
     
    "Mischa's his own son."
     
    "And you call
me
a thief." He had no wish to argue, he had not the strength, but the boy's docile gullibility infuriated him. "He took you for a fool, boy, he worked you like a tinker's donkey, so his son could squander his money in every inn in Vojvoda, and you make excuses for him."
     
    "He didn't have to take me in."
     
    "Oh, he took you
in
, boy." He felt the pain come back, riding every step, and he wanted to drop the whole conversation, but the argument called up old, disturbing resentments, and he wondered if he had ever understood the boy. "You should have beaten Mischa's head in—years ago. It might have done both of you some good."
     
    "I couldn't."
     
    "Mischa's soft—soft, and you aren't, if you ever added it up. You let people push you, they get used to it and they don't even think about it. Same with Mischa, same with your uncle, not mentioning your aunt. You want a witch, boy—"
     
    "That's the trouble!" Sasha said. "That's the trouble. You don't believe in witches. But I might
be
one."
     
    "You might—bee—one."
     
    Perhaps Sasha comprehended that that was sarcasm. Several moments went by in silence.
     
    "Boy, everybody