Evelyn watched the scene on the verandah—Madho clutching the sack of lentils, Varun returning to his post with a conflicted expression, and Jinnah standing like a statue that had just learned to breathe.
She walked over as Krishan led the child back to one of the new beds.
"You realize," she said quietly, "that you have just invited a wolf into the sheep pen."
"A starving wolf," Jinnah corrected. "There is a difference."
"Perhaps," she said. "But as long as the Sheriff of Nottingham runs this district, you will never stop the Robin Hoods. Men like that Zaildar create outlaws faster than you can feed them. It's better not to give them the chance to become Robin Hood in the first place."
"That," Jinnah said, "is the intention of the root system."
"Good," she said. "But you need to cement the soil before you plant the root. Your Farabis… Varun obeyed you, but he didn't like it. You challenged his worldview."
"He will adapt."
"Don't make him adapt alone," Evelyn advised. "Ahmed goes back to Montgomery this weekend, doesn't he? To see his family and file with Harrington?"
"Yes. He leaves Friday evening."
"Then on Saturday," Evelyn said, "you should host a dinner. Here. For the Farabis and their families. Not a formal inspection. A meal. You, me, Mary if she's walking, and them. Break bread with them. Let them see you sitting on a charpai instead of a dais. If you want them to accept ex-bandits as brothers, they first need to feel like they are your family."
Party morale event, Bilal noted. Unlock loyalty bonuses.
"A communal dinner," Jinnah mused. "In the shadow of the wireless mast."
"Why not?" Evelyn smiled. "It's harder to mutiny against a man who has fed your children sweets."
The Grim Equalizer
Later, while checking the inventory of the new medicines, Krishan approached the table where Jinnah and Evelyn were reviewing ledgers.
"Sahib," Krishan said, his voice heavy. "Madho's boy will live. But his wife… she died two months ago."
"Fever?" Evelyn asked.
"Childbirth," Krishan said. "The child did not survive either. That is the other thing I wanted to say. We talk of bandits and fevers, but the thing that kills most in these villages… is giving life."
Evelyn stopped writing. She took off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
"It is the same everywhere," she said softly. "It is the great leveller. Even the Memsahibs in Civil Lines face it. Why do you think so many British women travel back to London for their confinements? It is expensive, it is emotionally torturing to leave their husbands for months, but they go. Because here, a complication usually means a funeral."
"And the women of Chak 17 or Bhagatpur cannot go to London," Krishan said. "They cannot even go to Montgomery."
"We will expand the antenatal program," Jinnah said, making a note. "Once the security situation stabilizes, we will have a dedicated day for expectant mothers."
"We'll need a midwife," Evelyn added. "Someone local whom they trust, trained by me. I can't deliver every baby in three villages."
"We will find one," Jinnah promised.
The Dinner Without Spies
Saturday night, with Ahmed safely in Montgomery and no official eyes in the compound, the Canal Bungalow transformed.
Large cooking pots bubbled over wood fires in the yard. Mats were laid out under the stars. The fifty Farabis, their wives, and their children gathered not in formation, but in clusters of laughter and chatter.
Jinnah sat not at a head table, but on a charpai in the middle of the yard, a plate of biryani on his knee. He looked slightly out of place in his suit among the kurtas, yet he ate with them. He listened to an old havildar tell stories of Mesopotamia. He nodded as a Farabi's wife shyly thanked him for the water filter by the handpump.
He watched Varun break a piece of naan and hand it to a new recruit—one of the men from Krishan's "desperate, not vicious" list.
Integration successful, Bilal whispered. Faction friction dropping.
Mary, wrapped in a shawl and banned from standing for more than five minutes at a time, sat with a knot of children who stared at her bandage as if it were a medal. She made them wash their hands before touching her plate, which they obeyed with scandalised delight.
It was a night of peace.
It was the last one they would have for a while.
The Stress Signal
Two nights later, the air in the wireless room changed.
It was 2:00 AM. D'Souza was on the night watch, headphones over his ears, half-dozing over a mug of tea gone cold.
Static hissed in his ears. Then, suddenly, it sharpened. A rhythmic tapping broke through.
Dit-dit-dah-dit. Dit-dit-dah-dit.
D'Souza sat bolt upright. He jammed his pencil onto the logbook.
"Sahib!" he shouted, forgetting protocol. "Signal! From Chak 17!"
Jinnah, who had been working late in his study, was in the doorway in seconds, dressing gown over shirt and trousers.
"Code?"
"Stress signal, Sir," D'Souza said, hand flying over the key to acknowledge. "Bandit code. Large group."
"Sound the alarm," Jinnah ordered. "Mobilize the Quick Response Unit. Lorry, twelve men."
Within minutes, the tranquillity of the Bungalow shattered. The estate's only lorry coughed awake in the yard. Twelve Farabis, fully armed with the new long guns, clambered into the back, boots thudding on planks.
The havildar, helmet askew, saluted.
"Ready, Sir."
"Go," Jinnah said. "Drive fast. And keep your heads."
The Tower Defense
At Chak 17-M, the drill was already paying for itself.
The attack had come swift and hard—about fifteen men, emboldened by rumours that the "lawyer's estate" was mostly talk. They had swarmed the outer lanes, expecting panic, scattered huts, and the easy plunder of a grain store.
Instead, they found a system.
The standard night watch of two Farabis was on the stronghouse roof when the first shouts rose. At the cry of "Dacoit!", the village elders—briefed for weeks—started herding women and children toward the central stronghouse. The heavy wooden doors slammed shut and barred from within.
Outside, in the small walled compound, those same two Farabis took their positions behind the parapet.
"They are coming!" one shouted, seeing the torchlight bouncing between the fields.
"Hold the line!" the other yelled. "Let them see the rifles!"
The bandits rushed the compound wall, firing wild shots from muzzle-loaders—old jezails with more noise than accuracy.
The Farabis did not panic. They had brick walls. They had bolt-action Enfields. And they had orders.
Crack. Crack.
Two controlled shots rang out. Two figures in the dark folded.
"They have guns!" one attacker screamed, faltering.
"Push!" the bandit leader roared. "It's only two men!"
Two men behind a wall with modern rifles are worth twenty in the open. The Farabis fired again, methodical, disciplined, counting rounds by feel.
Inside the stronghouse, women clutched their children, listening to the roar of the fight and the thud of bullets against thick mud brick. The grain upstairs sat untouched.
A fragment of metal grazed one Farabi along the upper arm; he grunted, tied a strip of cloth with his teeth, and kept firing.
For twenty minutes, the two-man watch held the line against fifteen.
Then, headlights cut through the darkness.
The estate lorry roared up the canal road, horn blaring once—a long, low note like a war trumpet. Twelve fresh Farabis poured out, deploying into a skirmish line with practised economy.
The bandits broke.
"Run!"
It was over in minutes. The Farabis swept the area, rifles raised, boots kicking discarded torches into the canal. Three attackers lay dead near the wall. Five writhed on the ground with injuries. Two had thrown down their weapons and surrendered the instant they saw the lorry crest the canal bank. The rest vanished into the night.
The villagers were shaken but unharmed. The stronghouse doors opened cautiously; faces peered out into a yard that held bodies, not flames.
The wall had held.
The Darogha's Displeasure
At 8:00 AM, when the bodies were cooling and the wounded were bandaged and tied, the police finally arrived.
Darogha Shafiq, a heavy-set man with a moustache that arrived a second before the rest of him, stepped out of his jeep. His uniform strained at the buttons. His eyes were the eyes of a man used to people flinching.
He took in the scene: three corpses, five bandaged prisoners, two more sullen captives trussed by the stronghouse wall, Farabis standing with rifles at ease.
He did not look pleased.
"Who fired?" Shafiq barked, marching up to the havildar. "Who authorized this slaughter?"
"Self-defence, Darogha-ji," the havildar said calmly. "They attacked the village and the stronghouse."
"You are private guards!" Shafiq shouted, jabbing a finger into his chest. "You are not the army. You cannot just shoot people and pile up bodies! I will arrest every one of you for murder. I will confiscate these illegal weapons!"
He turned to his constables. "Seize the rifles!"
"I would not do that," a cool voice said.
Jinnah stepped forward from a cluster of villagers. He had arrived an hour earlier, inspected the wall, the bodies, and the shot marks like a magistrate checking evidence.
Shafiq sneered. "Ah, the Barrister. You think your black coat works out here? This is a murder scene."
"This," Jinnah said, holding out a folded, stamped memorandum, "is a crime scene where a registered auxiliary security force—authorized under the Commissioner's 'rural security and uplift' order—repelled an attack on tenants."
He put the paper directly into Shafiq's hand.
"These rifles are registered by serial number in your own district files. Their distribution was supervised by your sub-divisional officer and my liaison, Mr. Ahmed. This engagement is already being logged for Mr. Harrington's office—with the names of the dead and those who survived."
Ahmed, standing just behind Shafiq, lifted his notebook in silent confirmation.
Jinnah took a half-step closer, his voice dropping to that icy, surgical register he used in the High Court.
"If you arrest my men for protecting these people, Darogha, I will not only have you suspended. I will stand up in Lahore and prove, on record, why you are so angry that these particular bandits failed. I will show which gangs have walked past your station untouched. I will call witnesses from three villages to describe which houses your constables never search. Then I will let Mr. Harrington decide how many years you should spend explaining yourself in a very small room."
Shafiq looked at the memorandum. He looked at the dead bandits—men he likely knew by name. He looked at the villagers watching him, at Ahmed's impassive face, at the rifles held with the easy discipline of men who were not afraid of him.
The bluster leaked out of him like air from a punctured tyre.
"I… was merely checking the regulations," Shafiq muttered, taking a step back. "If the Commissioner has signed… then it is a matter for the inquiry."
"Excellent," Jinnah said. "Take your prisoners. Leave my men."
The constables hesitated, then began hauling the wounded and the tied into the jeep. No one touched a single rifle.
As the police vehicle rattled away in a plume of dust, Bilal spoke in the quiet of Jinnah's mind.
Quest complete: First Siege. Stronghold design: validated. Local law: reluctantly updated.
Jinnah watched the jeep until it vanished.
"It worked," he said quietly. "The wall held."
For one night, Bilal thought, law was thicker here than in the town with the police station.
And on the wall of the stronghouse at Chak 17, the women of the village ran their hands over the bricks, already telling each other the story of the night the bandits came and, for once, did not get in.