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shoulder and added, “You’re in excellent hands. Dr. Knox is the best physician I know. I’ve seen him save a man who lost a portion of his skull. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need, and if there’s anything I can do—”
    He stopped before the words “go ahead and ask,” regretting how ridiculously formal he had sounded.
    The victim answered with a blink, drooled into the basin, and looked at Benjamin with tears running to his jowls. Ichabod rubbed the man’s back, and the sight of them together, the lifelong mute and the one just created, was as torturously sweet as treacle-berry seeds.
    After a long, close inspection of the man’s severed tongue, Benjamin said, “The worst of the bleeding is over. The cut is very neat, exceedingly so. Your assailants, it would seem, used a well-honed blade. You will still be able to speak, at least in altered fashion. Consonants will be difficult and flavors may be lost. But all in all—”
    The man wept in earnest, sounding like a ewe. Benjamin propped him up, regretful but exhibiting a doctor’s firm support.
    “First you need fluids to restore what you have lost, blended with a tincture that will moderate the pain. Bring me a long-necked funnel,” Benjamin said to Tom, “and a mixture of cider and smoak, one cup each, a measure of powdered cranch root, a pinch of salt, a quarter cup of sugar, and a half pint of rum. Mull it with a red-hot poker. I will add my own draft once the mixture has cooled.”
    Tom nodded and winced—the cranch root alone was enough to turn his stomach—but Benjamin was quick to add, “Even without the funnel, he would not be able to taste it.”
    The patient cried anew. Ichabod consoled him.
    Tom went to the stairs and Pitt was coming up. Nabby had already left. The stairs were free of blood but Pitt had tracked another round of mud from outside, having failed to wipe his feet, let alone knock.
    “You here to question him, too?” Tom asked.
    Pitt stopped and squinted. There were eight steps between them in the stairway’s gloom.
    Tom refused to move and said, “I knew it wasn’t done. I told you they’d attack again as soon as winter was over.”
    “It isn’t your concern,” Pitt said.
    “The hell it ain’t. It’s scaring travelers, hurting business. There’s a man upstairs bleeding in my clothes. This is everyone’s concern, especially here in Root where we have to pay a sheriff who’s afraid to earn his coin.”
    Pitt took a step and seemed to painfully restrain himself. “I’ve ridden out a dozen times.”
    “And ridden home with nothing. If I kept the tavern the way you keep the law—”
    Tom hesitated, thinking he had made Pitt hiss. Rather it was Scratch, the cat who stalked the Orange. He’d been hiding on a step between the men without a sound and now he crouched, fierce and mangy, and defended his position. He was missing half an ear and had a milky left eye, and his decrepit coat was battle scarred and stank of rotting offal. Scratch vanished and appeared several times a week and threatened man, woman, and child with bites, sprays, scratches, and underfoot tangles that occurred too often not to be intentional. Tom had known the cat since time out of mind. According to Nabby, the oldest woman in Root, Scratch had been around since she was a girl. The sole explanation for the cat’s longevity—excluding the assumption that the creature was demonic—was that every ten or fifteen years for nearly a century, Scratch had spawned an identical heir, who presumably killed his parents and returned, by feral instinct, to terrorize the Orange.
    “Someone ought to shoot that cat,” Pitt said.
    “People have tried.”
    A drunk militiaman had done so once and everyone present had sworn he hit the mark. Four weeks later, Scratch reappeared, spry as ever, and stole a sausage before Nabby could impale him with her toasting fork.
    “I’m coming up,” Pitt said, seemingly to Scratch, who occupied the center of the