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slow—and he had made such terrible time that he’d been forced to spend the night at Shepherd’s Inn, a small but honest house ten leagues away from Root. Just after sunrise, he reembarked and was stopped by a group of riders halfway between the inn and the Orange. They were five in number—one more than last year’s reports of the Maimers—and wore identical black cloaks, tricornes, and masks. The masks were plain and hid their faces from their noses to their hats.
    One of the five, the only one who spoke, barred the way with two of his companions while the other pair of riders blocked the road behind. The speaker asked John his name and destination. The lawyer had heard of last year’s attacks and answered at length, offering not only his name but also the reason for his journey, his occupational history, how much money he was carrying—barely worth the trouble, they were welcome to it all—the name and pedigree of his horse, and everything else he could think of to make himself agreeable.
    One of the riders took his reins and guided him onto the ground. He was told to remove his clothes, which he did without objection, trying to smile in his nakedness and hoping, through his talk, to sensibly dissuade them from their infamous finale.
    The speaker raised his hand—it was gloved, holding tongs—and said, “It seems to me your tongue is worth its weight in silver.”
    The man behind Pale forced him to his knees. They held his arms, opened his mouth, and extracted the prize with the tongs. The speaker made quick work with a knife before depositing Pale’s most worthy possession in a bag and galloping away, with the stolen horse and the other four riders, off the road and into the forest.
    Pale staggered on, trying to stop the bleeding with his hands and fainting, more than once, on the long walk to Root.
    The Maimers had first appeared last year and quickly grown to legendary status—mysterious men who appeared and disappeared, like figures in Nabby’s most supernatural tales, after stealing everything a person owned and then, worst of all, the most valuable part of his or her self. In a single summer, they had taken an old man’s majestic beard, a lady’s golden hair, a scholar’s eye, and a nursemaid’s nipples. They had crippled a farmer’s leg, slashed a dandy’s face, and broken a blacksmith’s elbows. Their attacks had finally ended with the onset of cold, and it had been hoped throughout the winter they would not begin again. But now a lawyer had lost his tongue, and even though Molly had emerged from the river with no apparent mutilation, Tom and Benjamin had spent the day wondering whether she, and not John Pale, had really been the Maimers’ first victim of the year.
    “Molly and I discussed Mr. Pale when I returned to the house at midday,” Benjamin said, considering his pipe more often than he smoked it. “She inquired about the blood on my shirt, which I had neglected to change before entering her room. I explained what had happened and it left her quite amazed—as amazed, I would say, as anyone had been upon learning of the Maimers.”
    “Could the Maimers,” Tom said, “be something else she forgot?”
    Benjamin shook his head. “As I said to you this morning, she appears more frightened than legitimately fogged. My true purpose in inviting you this morning was not to jog her thoughts but to test another theory. I observed her when you came and saw what I expected.”
    “What?”
    “Trust,” Benjamin said. “I believe she may confide in you. Perhaps in you alone.”
    Tom leaned back with a quizzical expression. He drew upon his pipe until it crackled; he exhaled. “Why me?”
    “You saved her life.”
    “So did you.”
    Benjamin sipped his smoak, taking time to think. “She was not in mortal danger once you pulled her from the river. I can scarcely claim credit for the speed of her recovery. The cold should have killed her, yet she bore it and survived, clinging unconscious