The Gunpowder Tax

A single oil lamp. Rain ticks on a tin cup. CAPT. SILAS CROWE scrapes Bengal mud from a boot with a bayonet tip.

ASHA MUKHERJEE slips in, soaked under a shawl, clutching a folded ledger page like contraband.

They don’t steal powder. They tax it twice.

She lays the page on Crowe’s trunk. Columns of figures. Red ink. A wax smear where a seal was torn away.

“Saltpetre—issued. Saltpetre—lost to damp.” Same week.

And the “damp” is always paid out. To men who never lift a barrel.

A knock. Immediate, sharp. Crowe palms the page under his coat.

LT. TOM KESTREL enters, wet-eyed from the rain, trying for authority and missing.

Captain. Sentries say the depot lanterns are being covered. Again.

They’re afraid of moths?

They’re afraid of eyes.

Asha watches Kestrel. Crowe watches the door.

Get me three men who can walk quiet and won’t faint at paper.

Paper?

Powder’s useless without it.

Asha pulls the ledger page back out—open defiance now.

If you don’t see the storehouse, you’ll only ever fire what they allow.

Kestrel hesitates—then nods once, hard.

Midnight, then.

Midnight.

Monsoon mist. The river breathes. The depot squats like a dark crate, guarded by two half-asleep sepoys beneath an awning.

Crowe, Kestrel, Asha, and THREE MISFITS from Crowe’s gun crew—WILKINS (one eye), RAMU (bare feet), and O’BRIEN (shaking hands)—move through grass slick as oil.

Crowe signals: WAIT.

Asha whispers, translating the distant guards’ mutter.

They’re counting the “losses” aloud. Like a prayer.

Crowe slides a small pouch of coins to Ramu.

Softly.

Ramu pads forward, vanishes into the mist. A moment—then one guard’s lantern dips, snuffed. The other guard turns—

Kestrel’s hand clamps over his mouth. O’Brien’s bayonet hovers. The guard goes limp, lowered, not dropped.

Kestrel looks at Crowe: We’re doing this.

Crowe nods: We are.

They slip to the depot door. A heavy Company padlock.

Wilkins produces a bent nail and a strip of wire like he’s been born with them.

I was a locksmith in Bristol. Before His Majesty improved my prospects.

The lock CLICKS.

Inside—blackness, dense with saltpetre tang. Powder barrels stacked. But the stacks are wrong: empty spaces where full casks should be.

Asha lifts the lantern just enough to read chalk marks on the beams.

“ISSUED—FOURTEEN.” But there are… nine.

O’Brien touches an empty ring stain on the floor.

O’BRIEN

They moved ’em recent. You can smell the roll.

Crowe finds a ledger book on a desk—Company stamp on the cover. He flips—numbers, signatures, then a page with a LIST of “DAMP LOSSES” and payments.

There’s your war. In ink.

Kestrel leans in, sees a familiar signature. He stiffens.

That’s… headquarters.

Crowe tears out the incriminating page—clean, precise. He hands it to Asha.

Hide it where men don’t look.

Where?

Crowe taps his own chest, then points to hers.

In language.

They slip back into mist. But a HORSE SNORTS nearby. A COMPANY RIDER silhouette, lantern swinging—too close.

Crowe freezes the group.

Down.

They crouch in mud. The rider’s lantern passes over their boots—misses by inches.

Asha’s breath is controlled. Kestrel’s is not.

The rider moves on.

Crowe waits until darkness returns—then motions them away, fast, silent.

A leaking roof. A cannon wheel half-rotted. The misfits gather as if for punishment.

Crowe lays the torn ledger page on an upturned crate. Asha stands beside him, guarding the words.

Kestrel watches the door, jaw tight.

This paper will get us hanged if it breathes in the wrong room.

O’Brien’s hands still tremble, but his eyes are steady.

O’BRIEN

Then we don’t let it breathe.

Ramu spits mud and smiles like it’s a vow.

Brotherhood, then. Not Company.

Wilkins wipes his one good eye.

What do we call it, Captain?

Crowe looks at each of them—men the Empire forgot, now holding its seam.

Nothing. Names travel.

He takes a strip of oily rag, wraps the page tight, and hands it to Asha.

CROWE (CONT'D)

If I fall, you run it to whoever still knows shame.

Asha tucks it inside her waistband, beneath the shawl, as if she’s sheathing a knife.

And if I fall?

Crowe glances to Kestrel. A beat—then Kestrel steps forward, surprising himself.

Then I run.

Crowe’s stare softens—just a fraction.

Good.

Outside, the first pale light. Inside, a quiet pact hardens like powder in a dry barrel.