The late-afternoon light had turned the Governor's council chamber into a room of long shadows and restrained faces.
The table was broad and polished, more symbol than furniture—built to make every man seated around it remember where authority was supposed to sit. The tall windows stood open just enough to let in air from the garden, carrying the faint scent of jasmine and the distant sound of birds. Normally, those sounds softened the room.
Today they felt irrelevant.
The Governor had agreed to the personnel. On paper, it was a concession. In reality, it was an investment—a controlled one. But he had given ground, and any seasoned administrator knew the danger of giving ground without immediately reminding the other party who controlled the map.
He did not want this meeting to end with Jinnah leaving as the clear victor.
So he reached for a folder.
It was thick. Clean. Official.
A red wax stamp and the crest of the Punjab Military Command sat on the flap like a warning sign: this is not your arena.
He opened it slowly, with deliberate calm, letting the weight of the documents speak before he spoke.
"The War Office," he began, voice smooth again—steel returning under the civility—"has agreed to the composition."
He looked down as if reading, but he was not reading. He already knew the numbers. He wanted Jinnah to hear them as if they were bullets counted into a magazine.
"Ten commissioned British officers," he said. "Ten corporals and sergeants. Ten personnel from the Royal Army Medical Corps."
He closed the folder softly. Not a slam. A tap. A quiet assertion of closure.
Then he lifted his gaze, and the warmth left his eyes.
"But there is something else you must understand, Muhammad."
He leaned forward slightly—an administrator's invasion of personal space, a controlled push that said: I may have signed, but I am not subordinate.
"These men are not only for oversight," the Governor said. "They are also a safeguard."
The air in the room changed at that word. Safeguard was what governments called restraints when they wanted the restrained to accept it politely.
The Governor continued, carefully, as if reciting a clause that had been crafted by cautious minds.
"If—heaven forbid—we ever suspect mutiny… misuse of weapons… or any sign of an unauthorized militia forming under your Farabis…"
He let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished, like smoke that refused to disperse.
Then he finished it.
"…these officers are empowered to take control."
There was a stillness that followed—one of those silences that felt like a room holding its breath. Even the scratch of a pen seemed too loud. The faint birdsong outside, which had been a comforting presence, suddenly felt distant, as if the garden had moved away.
No one in the room mistook the intent.
It was not an accusation—yet.
It was not a threat—openly.
It was the Empire's instinctive caution made into policy: We are allowing you to build, but we will keep a knife close.
The Governor watched Jinnah closely, searching for the smallest flicker—offense, anger, pride, even fear. Any emotional reaction would be useful. Emotion could be managed.
Jinnah gave him nothing.
He did not stiffen. He did not blink hard. He did not perform indignation.
He simply unclasped his hands, rose with unhurried precision, and stepped forward—one step only.
It was a small movement, but the effect was immediate. In a room built to place the Governor at the center, Jinnah had shifted the center of gravity.
"Governor," Jinnah said, and his voice had the strange effect it often had in hostile assemblies—it cooled the room without changing volume. "Allow me to remind you of something you already know."
The Governor's jaw tightened slightly.
Jinnah's gaze did not waver.
"I am," he continued, "a member of the British Empire's Privy Council."
He did not say it as a boast. He said it as a fact—like stating the law of gravity.
"A representative," Jinnah went on, "who can stand before the Judicial Committee itself in London."
The words were polite, but their implications were brutal.
His voice did not rise. It sharpened. The tone turned into the one that had made men in the Central Assembly feel as if their own arguments were being undressed in public.
"Any accusation against me," he said, "especially one as grave as mutiny, must be backed by proof so airtight that even London cannot pierce it."
A pause—just long enough for the room to understand the trap being set.
Then he walked, slowly, toward the Governor's desk.
He removed his gloves finger by finger, not hurried, not dramatic—methodical, like a man preparing for cross-examination.
"And if such an accusation were made without evidence," he said, "if a single officer of yours steps out of line based on mere suspicion—"
He placed the gloves on the table.
Leather met wood with a soft thud that sounded louder than it should have.
"—then I, too, would have recourse," Jinnah said. "Legal recourse."
He held the Governor's gaze, and for a moment the Governor was not looking at a subject in the Empire.
He was looking at a man who understood the Empire's skeleton better than most of its own servants.
"And Governor," Jinnah said, quiet now, almost conversational, "no one in India can beat me in a courtroom."
He paused.
"Not even the Crown's own counsel."
The Governor inhaled sharply through his nose. It was an involuntary reaction—a momentary loss of composure that he regretted instantly.
Because Jinnah's counter was devastating precisely because it was not revolutionary.
He was not threatening violence. He was not threatening mobilization. He was threatening the one thing administrators feared more than rebellion:
Procedure.
He was threatening to drag the Empire into its own legal machinery and force it to follow its own rules in public—where discretion died and precedents were born.
To a Governor whose power relied on quiet authority and invisible pressure, that was far more dangerous than any rifle.
The Governor leaned back slowly, reassessing.
For the first time in the meeting, he looked less like a commander and more like a man recalculating a risk he had underestimated.
"Muhammad," he said at last, and there was something like grudging wonder in the tone, "you argue as if the law itself bends to your will."
Jinnah allowed the faintest smile—so slight it could be dismissed as a trick of light.
"No," he said. "I argue within the law."
He let the sentence settle, then added the knife's twist.
"It simply happens that most men do not understand it as deeply as I do."
Another silence fell—different from the earlier one.
The earlier silence had been caution. This silence was recognition.
The Governor saw the shape of the reality: the oversight unit would not be guarding Jinnah. Jinnah would be guarding them—binding them inside a web of legality so tight that any rash movement would become a career-ending scandal.
The Governor's eyes stayed on Jinnah's gloves, resting on the desk like a final punctuation mark.
Finally, the Governor nodded once, slow and controlled, the way a man nods when he cannot deny a truth.
"The unit will be dispatched," he said. "Within a month."
He spoke more quickly now, moving back to the practical—because practicality was the only safe place left.
"Officers will bring families. Quarters will be arranged. You will receive the seed shipments, the wireless equipment, and the radio permissions soon after."
Jinnah inclined his head—respect without submission.
"And in return," the Governor added, making sure the exchange remained symmetrical, "you will ensure Sandalbar remains a model of Crown-assisted order."
His voice hardened slightly on the last phrase.
"Not Crown-defying ambition."
Jinnah's reply was immediate and smooth.
"You will have that," he said. "A model."
He turned to leave, and the Governor watched him in the way one watches a man depart who has won without raising his voice.
As the door closed behind Jinnah, the Governor remained still for a moment, staring at the empty space where he had stood.
The room's sounds returned slowly—the faint birds, a distant footstep in the corridor, a clerk shifting outside.
But the Governor felt none of it.
What is this man building? he thought.
What vision requires such layered discipline—security, medicine, wireless, legality, optics—woven together like a net?
He pushed the question away, the way administrators pushed away thoughts that did not fit into their reporting format.
Yet a warning flickered somewhere behind his ribs. Not the crude warning of rebellion. Not the melodrama of conspiracy.
A colder warning.
A civilian who understood administration better than administrators.
The Governor's mouth moved, and the words came out almost silently, as if he feared even the walls might record them.
"God help us," he murmured, "if he ever decides to turn that mind against us."