The expansion of Sandalbar was not just lines inked on a map; it was the movement of human bodies—boots and bare feet, carts and bundles, children clinging to shawls, men carrying tools as if they were weapons because, in Punjab, they often had to be both.
On the scrubby outskirts of the estate—land the revenue records casually dismissed as "waste," fit only for thorn bushes and snakes—new life was taking shape in straight, purposeful rows.
Not the chaotic sprawl of desperation, but something arranged: huts rising with a plan, narrow paths between them kept clear, a communal fire pit deliberately placed downwind. Even the latrine trench had been dug where it should be, away from the hand-pump site. It was small, but it was the difference between settlement and slum.
Madho's people.
The Root.
They were the kind of men who had survived long enough to look older than their years. Some had scars that weren't fresh. Others had eyes that didn't blink much. Their women moved with the fast, silent competence of those who had learned not to attract attention. The children were the strangest part—too quiet at first, watching every stranger like prey watching a hunter.
They had lived in the jungle margins, between the canal colonies and the deeper brush, where the law thinned out and rumors thickened. In older days, men like them stayed invisible because visibility brought tax collectors, police harassment, landlords, and hungry bandits.
But now, under Jinnah's instruction, they had stepped out of the shadows—into the open, into legitimacy.
Ahmed Khan stood with his ledger tucked under his arm, watching the arrivals with the expression of a man who understood that paper could be as powerful as rifles.
"Sir," he said, low enough that the nearby laborers couldn't hear. "Do we register them as labor?"
Jinnah's gaze moved across the new huts, the gathered bundles, the men squatting on their heels sharpening tools and speaking in short bursts.
"No," he said. "Not labor."
He paused, as if selecting the precise legal category from an invisible shelf.
"We call them displaced tenants," he said. "Men who lost land elsewhere, men pushed out by drought or debt or politics. They are looking for a fresh start. We provide the waste land. They clear it, they farm it, and in return…"
He looked at the boundary line where scrub met thicker trees—where the world could still turn predatory in a single night.
"…they watch the perimeter."
Ahmed's eyes narrowed. He followed Jinnah's gaze.
"They look rough," he said.
His attention fixed on a man with a pale scar across his cheekbone, crouched in the dust. The man was sharpening a farming hoe with slow, deliberate strokes—stone on metal—too methodically for a farmer who had never held anything sharper than a sickle.
Jinnah didn't flinch.
"Rough men," he said, "make excellent walls."
Ahmed shifted his weight. "And if bandits return?"
Jinnah's voice remained calm, almost clinical.
"If bandits try to cross into our territory," he said, "they will not meet soft clerks first. They will meet men who have already been hunted once, and have no desire to be hunted again."
Inside the mind they shared, Bilal's voice came with a tight, satisfied edge.
Buffer state established. You just legitimized your black-ops team. Now they have skin in the game. They aren't hired muscle anymore—they're defending their own roofs.
Jinnah did not respond aloud, but a faint tightening in his jaw suggested agreement.
"Log them carefully," he told Ahmed. "Names, family count, place of origin. Give each household a plot reference. If they are to be a wall, they must be anchored to the soil in writing."
Ahmed nodded, already opening the ledger.
That evening, the Gentlemen's Lodge by the lake hosted its first official dinner.
The building looked almost unnatural in its calm: clean lines, swept verandahs, lanterns placed where they actually illuminated instead of merely decorating. The windows were open to the cooler air rolling off the water. Somewhere outside, insects sang in a steady rhythm, but inside, the room belonged to polished wood, crisp linen, and the controlled hush of power being negotiated over food.
Roasted quail sat on the table—small birds, split and seasoned, fresh from the new poultry unit. It wasn't just a meal. It was a statement: Sandalbar was already producing order, comfort, and supply.
Commissioner Harrington ate with the relief of a man who had survived an administrative nightmare and was pretending it was all part of the plan.
The Zaildar crisis had put years on him. The correspondence, the emergency requisitions, the delicate balance of not looking weak while refusing to start a wider fire—it had hollowed him slightly. Yet tonight, with the lake breeze and the neatness of the lodge, he had something close to a second wind.
"The Governor is pleased," Harrington said, slicing into his quail with practiced ease. "He was terrified of a peasant uprising. The district was… on the edge."
He took a moment, as if the word "edge" was a cliff he'd stared over.
"The fact that order was restored without a full-scale military occupation is a relief. A considerable relief."
Jinnah ate sparingly. He listened the way a barrister listened—letting the other man finish his comfort speech before introducing the real matter.
"Order," Jinnah said, "requires maintenance, Commissioner."
Harrington's mouth twitched. He set his cutlery down like a man preparing to sign a document.
"Ah," he said. "There it is. I knew the quail came with a price list. Go on."
Jinnah did not smile.
"Water," he said. "The ten villages under my temporary charge are drinking mud. That is not sustainable. I need tanks. Filters. Pipes."
Harrington's eyes stayed on Jinnah, but his expression shifted from indulgent to attentive.
"And medicine," Jinnah continued. "Dr. Evelyn's clinic is overwhelmed. We are treating injuries from your Zaildars' little war—alongside fever, infections, and the normal sickness of the countryside. Supplies are not optional."
There was a brief pause—long enough for Harrington to consider whether he could bargain.
Then Harrington surprised him.
"Done," he said.
Just like that. No protest. No hemming.
Jinnah watched him carefully, as if verifying that the word was genuine.
"And," Jinnah added, "funding. My estate budget cannot sustain the policing of ten villages indefinitely. Fuel. Rations. Ammunition. Men's pay. It accumulates."
Harrington leaned back slightly. He dabbed his mouth with his napkin, the gesture neat and almost elegant, but something in his eyes had hardened.
"You can stop worrying about the bill, Mr. Jinnah," he said.
Jinnah's tone stayed neutral. "Oh?"
Harrington's contempt appeared suddenly—clean and sharp, like a blade revealed from inside a sleeve.
"The Zaildars," Harrington said. "Hayat Khan. Ratan Singh."
Their names landed on the table with an ugly weight.
"We are seizing their assets pending the investigation," he continued. "Grain stores. Cash reserves. Revenue collections. Property held under proxies. Everything we can legally freeze, we will freeze."
He took a sip of wine, and the calmness of the act made his next line colder.
"For years, the Crown tolerated their little aristocracies. We let them behave like warlords because we told ourselves there was no other way to collect tax. We let them strut, mistreating people, skimming off the top, because they kept the peace."
He leaned forward slightly.
"But they broke the peace," he said. "They burned the district."
His gaze fixed on Jinnah.
"So now I am doing what the Raj does best when it is offended: I am taking their money and using it to repair the mess they created."
Jinnah's expression did not change, but his attention sharpened.
"I am placing the confiscated funds under Ahmed's administrative authority," Harrington said. "You may draw upon them for the management of the ten villages. Buy your medicine. Buy your filters. Use the Zaildars' gold to heal the wounds they inflicted."
Inside Jinnah's mind, Bilal's voice erupted with the joyful vulgarity of a man who understood resource cycles.
Loot drop! A massive, gold-tier loot drop! We just unlocked the enemy's war chest.
Jinnah did not react outwardly to Bilal's outburst. He let silence sit for a moment—enough to acknowledge the sheer irony of it—then allowed himself a small, cold smile.
"That," Jinnah said, "is a poetic form of justice."
Harrington's own smile was not warm. It was the smile of a bureaucrat who had finally found a legal mechanism that felt like revenge.
"Poetry," the Commissioner said, "is rare in administration. Enjoy it while it lasts."