Before the sun had cleared the canal trees, the bungalow yard was already full: women with their dupattas pinned carefully, children clinging to skirts, old men leaning on sticks, a few wide-eyed railway labourers who'd heard rumors from the station colony.
The new rules were visible even to the most illiterate eye.
Two Farabis stood at the outer gate, checking bags with the brisk, bored efficiency of men who had practised this for days. Another pair—this time Farabi wives in clean cotton, faces uncovered but jaws set—sat at a low table, taking names and murmuring questions as they glanced into cloth bundles and tin boxes.
Inside, the big ceramic filter tank in the clinic yard stood under its awning, a quiet monument to Evelyn's temper. Its spout trickled slowly into brass lotas and enamel mugs.
Bilal's idea floated right over it.
Just a little, he had said earlier that morning. Not too much. You're not making sherbet. You just want their tongues to miss it when it's gone.
So now, as Mary supervised like a general, a Farabi wife dipped a small ladle into a covered jar and let a thin thread of Sandalbar honey fall into the tank's mouth. Barely a spoonful for the whole vessel—vanishing as soon as it hit the clear water.
"Stir," Mary ordered. "Properly. If I see it sitting at the bottom, I'll make you drink the sludge yourself."
The woman grinned and obeyed.
From his vantage point on the verandah steps, Jinnah watched the little ritual, arms folded.
"I remain unconvinced," he murmured inwardly, "that bribing palates is a respectable form of public health."
This isn't bribery, Bilal said. It's branding. They already get clean water here. Now their mouths will remember that, at Jinnah's clinic, the water tastes a little better than anywhere else. Children imprint on impressions like this. So do their grandparents. You're etching the idea of 'safety + sweetness' in one gesture.
"Addiction seems an odd foundation for trust," Jinnah replied.
You are not selling opium, Bilal snorted. It's a hint of honey. If you stop doing it, they won't riot. But they'll notice. And they'll talk. "The water at the big house—have you tasted it?" That's how you spread a habit that's actually good for them.
At the gate, a little boy tugged at his mother's sleeve as he took a sip from her mug.
"Amma," he whispered, eyes widening. "It tastes… nice."
"That is because," his mother said, rolling her eyes, "the memsahib filters it instead of letting you drink canal mud."
But she took a sip herself, hesitated for a heartbeat, and then smiled despite herself.
"Hmm," she said. "It does taste… different."
Wordless approval rippled down the queue as mugs were passed, shared, refilled.
Mary Returns to Her Battlefield
Under the canvas awning, the clinic benches were arranged in neat rows. A notice in Urdu, Punjabi, and English was nailed to a post:
CLINIC RULES
NO WEAPONS
NO SHOUTING
NO JUMPING THE QUEUE
MEN ENTER WITH GUARD
WOMEN ENTER ALONE
"Who wrote that?" Jinnah asked.
"I did," Evelyn said, adjusting her stethoscope. "Mary insisted we put 'no shouting' as high as 'no weapons.'"
"They're equally dangerous," Mary said, emerging from the consulting-room doorway, one hand still resting unconsciously over the faint pull of the healed scar beneath her sari. "Noise spreads panic faster than knives."
"Also," Evelyn murmured, "she enjoys telling people to keep quiet."
"Occupational necessity," Mary sniffed.
The first patient of the clinic stepped through: an old man from the far village, his eyes rheumy, clutching a cloth bundle of crumpled prescriptions from Montgomery hospital.
He stopped as he crossed the threshold, glancing—slightly startled—at the Farabi standing inside the room, back to the wall, rifle slung but ready.
"Do not worry, Baba-ji," Mary said briskly. "He is here to keep everyone well-behaved, not to shoot you. Sit. Show the doctor your medicines. You remember the doctor, na? The one who shouts less than I do."
Evelyn smiled faintly and patted the edge of the bed.
"Come," she said. "Let's see what nonsense they've been giving you for your chest."
The line moved again. A child with a cough. A woman with swelling in her legs. A railway porter with a smashed thumb from a loading mishap.
Under it all, the whisper ran: She's back. The clinic is open. They came back after the knives.
Outside, in the shade near the filter, Krishan watched the steady, orderly flow with a satisfaction that was almost paternal.
"You see, Sahib?" he said when Jinnah joined him. "They were afraid you would close it forever. Today…" He gestured with his chin at the queue, at the children licking the last drops from their brass cups. "Today, they will sleep easier."
"Until the next crisis," Jinnah said.
Krishan shrugged. "We are peasants, Sahib. We count good days like coins. Today is one."
Bilal, listening, dipped briefly into silence.
He's right, he said at last. From your vantage, it's a system test, a patched vulnerability. For them, it's 'the place where my child stopped burning.' You don't have to enjoy that power. You do have to wield it carefully.
"I am painfully aware," Jinnah replied, eyes lingering on Mary as she raised her voice to scold a woman about soap.
By midday, the worst of the crowd had thinned. Evelyn declared an hour's pause before the afternoon patients. Mary marched off to bully the Farabi wives about boiling cloth, and Jinnah allowed himself to be dragged by Ahmed toward the back of the compound.
"You have not inspected the livestock properly, Sir," Ahmed said. "If you are going to complain about the goats in future, you should at least see them at the beginning."
Behind the neat row of Farabi houses, the estate now sounded less like a barracks and more like a village that had decided to grow talons.
Long fenced runs stretched behind each house, fifty in all. In every run, a small storm of feathers and movement: hens scratching, pecking, flapping, fussing around clay feed dishes and water pans. Children leaned on the low walls, supervising with the solemnity of junior officers.
"How many?" Jinnah asked, eyebrows lifting despite himself.
"On paper?" Ahmed said, with the fatal cheerfulness of a man who had done the sums. "Each household has thirty hens and two roosters. Fifty houses. So—"
"Do not finish that sentence," Jinnah said. "I can multiply."
Bilal whistled in his head.
That's… a lot of birds. Egg economy unlocked.
"The hens came in batches," Ahmed continued, undeterred. "We staggered the ages, so they will not all stop laying at the same time. Every house also has a small corner coop for quail—ten birds each. Easier for the children to manage. They feed them grain sweepings and kitchen scraps."
He pointed to one run where a girl of eight was carefully scattering chopped greens, watched by her mother.
"Eggs are counted every evening," Ahmed went on. "Each family keeps what it needs first. After that, they are required to sell a portion back into the estate system—through Krishan's shop, with our seal stamped in wax on the end of each basket. The surplus goes to the clinic and to the railway colony."
"Quality control?" Jinnah asked automatically.
"The seal is fixed on the basket," Ahmed said. "Your estate mark. No one in the bazaar can pass off their eggs as ours without stealing the basket itself. Krishan keeps the books. If a household lies about its numbers, it will show in the accounts."
You've just created a branded egg cartel, Bilal said, impressed. Jinnah & Sons: Law, Clinics, and Poultry.
"And the goats?" Jinnah asked.
Ahmed pointed again.
Between the houses, small tethered shapes moved under the sparse shade of trees: sleek, short-haired does with bright, curious eyes. Children sat near them, plaiting grass and watching as the animals pulled at their allotted patches of scrub.
"Three nanny goats per Farabi household," Ahmed said. "Milk for their children and for sale in the village. Manure for the gardens. One shared male goat for every four houses. We rotate him with a schedule even the Commissioner might envy."
"You have turned my security force," Jinnah said slowly, "into a dairy and egg co-operative with attached militia."
"They fight better," Ahmed said simply, "if their own children are well-fed. And if their wives have their own flocks and milk lines, they do not have to beg the zaildar's men for anything. Also, goats and chickens do not wander as far as bored soldiers. It keeps the men tied to their own thresholds."
Bilal laughed softly.
He just out-designed you, he said. You laid the rails, he's running extra trains on them.
"Costs?" Jinnah asked aloud. "Feed, medicine?"
"For now, the estate provided the first stock and basic fodder," Ahmed said. "After that, households are responsible to maintain their numbers. Any offspring beyond an agreed limit—goats or birds—must be sold back through our books. No private deals with the zaildars' brokers. I have been very clear about that."
"No goat mortgages," Jinnah said dryly. "No hen mortgages either. I have no desire to see Sandalbar reinvent the same petty usury in feathers."
"Exactly, Sir," Ahmed replied.
He hesitated, then added, "You should see the lake, while you are in an approving mood."
"I did not say I am approving," Jinnah said. "I am merely… not yet disapproving."
"Same thing," Ahmed murmured under his breath.
Bilal chuckled.
He's learning.