The market square smelled of spice and dust and the ordinary commerce of lives that did not expect to be historic. That morning a square of bright cloths sheltered stalls of sugar and dates, brass lamps, bolts of dyed wool. It was the busiest hour and the busiest place in Rohtak. And in the middle of it, beneath a borrowed canopy, a table had been set with a ledger and a small heap of gilt.
A town crier stepped forward. His voice struck the market like a bell.
"By order of the Faujdar," he called. "Any citizen holding suspected coin may bring it to the treasury and receive a genuine coin in exchange. No shame. No questions. No punishment. Exchange only. All coins assessed. Trade without fear."
For a moment the market held its breath. Then a woman at a cloth stall began to clap—slowly, incredulously—then two cloth sellers, then a thin line of voices quickened and moved.
They came not as supplicants but as merchants with dignity to protect. They laid coins upon the ledger, watched clerks for a moment, and accepted in turn the brighter ring of true metal. A poor family approached hesitantly: a mother with a single fake mohur clutched in her palm, her children wide-eyed behind her. The clerk tested it gently, nodded, and handed her a genuine one. She stared at it, then hurried to a grain stall. For the first time in weeks, she bought enough rice to fill the pot that night. The small act rippled outward—others saw, and the line grew steadier.
That was the first aim—restore the everyday.
Raghuveer stood at the margin of the crowd, not beneath the canopy but watching its edges. He did not speak. He watched how hands moved, which faces steadied the ledger, which eyes flicked toward exits. When a soldier shoved a coin into a clerk's palm and grunted that he would take grain instead of pay, Raghuveer saw less the coin than the man's calculation—how fear bent a soldier's pride. The market was learning to trust again. That was a small miracle.
Zafar's ledger table, however, was a different stage. Men came by and willingly turned coins in—voluntarily, as advised. Clerks tallied the exchanges, stamped receipts, and pushed piles of suspect metal into a guarded chest. Ink-stained fingers moved quickly; the growing pile of fake coins glinted dully under the sun. For the first day, the treasury saw crowds who would not have come for any other cause. That, too, was success.
But Zafar watched more than he tallied. He recorded names.
He had his clerks write them as they came: the stall, the buyer, the time. People who turned single coins. People who turned armfuls. He crossed those names with other lists—traders who had purchased metal in odd quantities, caravans that had come through at strange hours, buyers who had been seen at late-night docks. Where most saw redemption, Zafar saw pattern.
By midday he had scrawled a list long enough to worry him: names that repeated, too often—same hand returning false coin after false coin. He pushed the scratchings together and let the small letters blur. He began to see the repeat names as personal failures—of the system he had helped build, of the oversight he had promised Kalyan.
A clerk leaned in. "Sir," the man said quietly, "he's here again. Same family. Third time."
Zafar closed the ledger with a quiet click, the sound small and terrifying.
"This was supposed to reassure," he muttered, "not show us our own rot."
He did not tell the market. He smiled and spoke bright words about courage and order. But one honest man—a potter with a modest pouch—hesitated at the edge of the line, fingers tight around his coins. He feared being mistaken for a counterfeiter, feared the ledger marking his name forever. He turned away once, then forced himself forward, face flushed. Zafar noted the hesitation, but said nothing.
That evening, in the privacy of his office, Zafar took the ledger and arranged the names under a heading. A named list. Each repeat offender noted with a dot. Name. Stall. Number of coins.
Raghuveer, who had not been invited in officially, found his way beside Zafar's table by the time the sun tilt had softened.
"You found what you needed?" Raghuveer asked, without surprise.
Zafar's laugh had no humor. "I found confirmation," he said. "Not as I wanted."
"What does the list say?" Raghuveer asked.
"Some go to the treasury in good faith," Zafar said. "Most of them. But a handful—three, five—turn false coins more than once. They come back to swap. Either the maker is careless, or the maker uses agents who return batches for profit."
Raghuveer read the names. One had the air of a small-time trader recently seen boasting of new wealth. Another led to a caravan house. One was a clerk who dealt with coin shipments. The name that turned in the most fake coins—repeated seven times—was a petty trader whose stall sat near the eastern gate, always quick with a smile and overconfident boasts.
"And?" Raghuveer asked.
"And outward traders." Zafar tapped the paper with a thin finger. "Caravans. Foreign exchange houses. These are not just misers trying to cheat beggars. This reaches lines of trade."
Outside, the market closed into a wary hush. People began trading in sacks and grain again, only the day's small courage remaining. Gold became a ceremonial thing, taken out only for weighing and testing. A woman proudly counted genuine coins in her palm, the soft clink of true metal a rare sound. For the first night since the beggar's bowl, a kind of everyday business limped along, but the hum of trust had been replaced by the quieter work of counting.
Bhairav's men did not stand at ledgers. They did not clap at proclamations. They watched. Bhairav himself took no account book. He had his own method: observation, pocketed notes, a mind like a hunter's trap.
That afternoon a small group of his men returned and laid their reports at his table. "A trader at the eastern gate," one said. "He tried to buy sweets with a crown and asked for change. The shopkeeper refused and sent the man away."
Another said, "A caravan house sent a cart through the southern road late at night, with copper cans. The driver said he repaired boilers for a madam in the fort."
"That man," Bhairav said simply. "He is the shape of someone avoiding daylight."
He did not shout or detain. He kept dossiers—folds of parchment with names, hand slashes, small sketches. He kept them to himself; he knew the power of scattered fear and the danger of appearing to hunt ghosts. A public arrest now would send the rest into deeper hiding and scatter the trail.
"Observation only," he told his men. "Report to me. Let the court catch itself on the hook."
This was restraint, not weakness. It made him angrier than any quick blade. He wanted to cut; he would not, because cutting in the dark would sever his own men.
The minister who had pressed for immediate harshness strode into Kalyan's private chamber with the flame of indignation still bright. "We have been made fools," he said. "We should hang the first man we find. Public punishment restores faith faster than coin."
Kalyan's face was a practiced mask—calm, patient, not yet brittle.
"Punishment ignites panic," he said quietly. "Hang one man and lose the trail to ten. We will be seen to strike. But we may kill the wrong man and lose our hand on the true rope."
Raghuveer, who had been sitting back, listening for the moment to step forward, did so now. He spoke quietly and with a care like an archer that sets his foot.
"Punish quickly and you bottle up fear into rage," he said. "Offer reward and fear reveals itself. The greedy will bring their own undone."
Bhairav, summoned into the chamber, said nothing at once. The candlelight threw his face into planes of shadow. When he spoke, his voice was low and certain.
"I could end this tonight with ropes and questions—but you want them to hang themselves."
Zafar, who had watched the ledger in the corner like a man watching a fevered pulse, folded his hands. "We have lists," he said. "But these names hide themselves among honest men. Punish one and the rest scatter with their secrets."
Kalyan weighed his words then, and they were heavy. He was fully committed to Raghuveer's subtler path—brute force would shatter his vision of Rohtak rivaling Delhi. "We will not be theatrical," he said at last. "We will be effective."
Raghuveer inclined his head. "Phase Two," he said softly. "Increase the offer. Let greed undo the guilty. Announce reward; announce fourfold return at the treasury."
The minister's jaw tightened into a thin line. "You mean pay them to turn themselves in?"
"No," Raghuveer replied. "We mean place a value upon their cowardice. Greed will call them."
They made the plan small, precise, and public. A herald would go to market the next morning with a new proclamation. The treasury would promise, in public, that any counterfeit coin, if brought in without intent to deceive, would be exchanged for a genuine coin at quadruple the face value. The language would be warmer, more patriotic: "For the honor of Rohtak, for the strength of our trade, bring your coin and receive fourfold in true metal—proof of our unyielding trust in every citizen."
They agreed to allow nobles and princes to bring coins for exchange—but with the same eye as everyone else. Let pride meet paperwork. That was part of the trap too.
Before dawn the next day, the proclamation was everywhere: painted on shutters, read at mosques, hammered into the market like a promise.
People came. Most came honestly. Some came with bundles. Most of the bundles were small. Many were traded quietly, put through the chest, and replaced with honest metal. The market regained a cautious hum. Foreign traders, who had been turning their wheels toward other towns, paused to watch—some returned eagerly, seeing profit in the fourfold exchange.
Yet at the edges, as the day lengthened and the sun climbed, men began to whisper of larger sums. One man watched as a petty noble tried to slip a packet to a clerk under the ledger. Another saw a clerk's son with a new thread of gold in his hair—too much for a clerk's wage. Zafar noted patterns and recorded them. Bhairav tucked them into a private pouch of suspicion.
No one announced the failure. No man in high place admitted that Phase One had not shown the maker. But they all knew the truth that lay like a faint scar: the treasury had taken in many fakes and the list of names had shown the trail pointed outward as much as inward. Phase One had restored trust to the market; it had not undid the maker.
That evening, after the ledgers closed and the clerks had staggered home with inked fingers, Raghuveer asked to see Kalyan, Zafar, and Bhairav together. He did not speak loud. He rolled out a small map and a ledger extract, and pointed to the name that had turned in the most fake coins—repeated seven times—the petty trader near the eastern gate, always quick with a smile and overconfident boasts.
They listened. Kalyan folded his hands. Zafar sharpened the pencil of his thought into policy. Bhairav ground his teeth with the thought of the men who would come out of the dark to take their reward.
"Make it public tomorrow," Raghuveer said. "Make it generous. Make it sound like mercy. Greed will be our informer."
They agreed.
At dawn a new proclamation went out: fourfold exchange. It was couched in language of trust and duty and the dignity of trade, but the meaning reached every corner of Rohtak: come to the treasury, bring your coins, and be paid four times their face value in genuine coin. The chest that had held false metal was now bait—shining with the state's confidence.
Bhairav watched the market from his post, eyes like a net. He had dossiers in his pocket—names like loose stones. He feared the trap would let the biggest fish slip away while catching only small agents, but he held his ground.
Raghuveer stood at the edge of the crowd and felt a small, private satisfaction. He had turned greed into a diagnostic tool. He had not promised safety as a moral thing. He had promised a mechanism.
And somewhere, in a dim room where the die-maker polished his art, a hand paused over a newly impressed piece of metal. The maker—a man with a taste for new wealth—felt greed override caution at the promise of fourfold profit. But his hand trembled over the die, just for a moment.
Trust had a price, Raghuveer thought. He had just raised it.
If greed brings them out, will it also expose the foreign hand—Abdali's agents, Maratha spies, or a rival faujdar already inside the walls?