Red Ledger Night

A ceiling fan chops humid air. Maps sweat on the walls. Outside, distant cannon THUMPS like a heartbeat.

CAPT. SILAS CROWE stands mud-stained among polished boots. LT. TOM KESTREL is rigid beside him, eyes forward.

Behind a vast desk sits MR. HOLLIS, Company accountant—linen spotless, smile gentle as a knife. A ledger lies open like a mouth.

Captain Crowe. Bengal suits you. You’ve turned waterlogged guns into profit.

He slides a paper across—an “AWARD OF COMMENDATION” stamped red.

My men ate rat rice for three days.

And yet the village still pays its arrears. Splendid arithmetic.

Kestrel twitches—wants to speak. Crowe’s hand stops him.

HOLLIS (CONT'D)

I’m authorizing an extra ration of rum.

And I’m filing your… irregular firing solution as “initiative.”

Initiative is what you call it when it works.

Precisely.

Hollis’s smile widens. He taps the ledger’s margin—numbers, neat as prayer.

HOLLIS (CONT'D)

There is, however, a small stain. Powder requisitions. Missing charges. Missing shells.

We fired what we were issued.

Then the page lies.

And pages do not lie without a hand to guide them.

A beat. The fan squeals.

HOLLIS (CONT'D)

A court-martial is such a cumbersome thing. London loves paperwork. So do I.

Kestrel can’t help it—

Sir, with respect, you can’t invoice a battlefield.

Oh, Lieutenant. We invoice everything.

Your loyalty, for instance. Very cheap, given your… circumstances.

Say it plain.

Deliver results. Quietly. Don’t ask why the powder vanishes. Don’t ask whose signature replaces yours.

And you’ll keep your command.

And if I ask?

Then you’ll keep your honor.

In a cell.

Hollis closes the ledger with a soft THUD—sentence passed.

HOLLIS (CONT'D)

Dismissed, Captain. Do send my regards to your brotherhood of misfits.

Crowe’s eyes narrow: Hollis knows.

Crowe turns, boots leaving wet prints on the marble.

A cramped room behind the grandeur. Ink, sand, sealing wax. ASHA MUKHERJEE bends over a stack of receipts in Persian and English.

A junior CLERK sleeps in the corner. Asha works in silence—until she notices a repeated mark in the margins: tiny red dots beside certain payments.

She flips to a letter—“SALT PETRE, TRANSPORT”—and sees the same dots. She pulls a thin strip of paper from inside her sleeve: a copied cipher table.

Not theft. A route.

She aligns dot patterns to the cipher. Letters emerge. A NAME: FARZANA ALI. Another: “PRINCE—” and a location near the river.

The door creaks. Asha freezes, palm over the papers.

Silas steps in, shutting the door behind him. His face carries the polished cruelty of the meeting he just survived.

They rewarded us.

They threatened you.

She slides the decoded strip across. His eyes scan—focus tightening.

Princely courts.

Payments dressed as powder. Money moving with our ammunition.

Someone is buying a war, Captain. And selling you the smoke.

Crowe looks at the sleeping clerk, then at the door—calculating danger.

Hollis knows my crew’s name.

Then he knows you’ll try to do something honest.

Crowe takes the strip, folds it into his cuff like a concealed blade.

Tonight.

Tonight what?

We find where the red dots lead—before they turn my men into a column in his book.

Asha meets his eyes: fear, resolve, and something like relief.

Then we don’t walk through the front doors.

Crowe nods once—decision made.

Outside, a cannon BOOMS—closer now.