The road to Delhi was a wound of dust and marched feet. Antaji Mankeshwar rode at the head of it with a hand on the pommel and the sun making a small, honest heat across his shoulders. Behind him the army moved in a long, patient column: banners that had smelled of smoke now snapped clean air, sepoys kept the pace, and a war-drum beat like an ordered heart. From a distance the city hung under a rim of haze — roofs and domes shorn into geometry by the morning light. Flags, some new saffron and some shredded, stitched to poles, marked the walls. A torn royal banner hung limp over the eastern gate, its colors eaten by sun and flame. The sight did not bring the extravagance of triumph but a simpler satisfaction: they had arrived; the work that followed would be counting, not only charging.
He had come to Delhi for glory, in the way a man comes to a strong house to make it pay his name, but Antaji's pleasure was the sober kind. Glory, in his practice, meant that the roads stayed open for trade, that soldiers were fed, that collectors could send figures home without being embarrassed. The drumbeat stirred some old hunger for honor; the ledgers he imagined were the less showy thing that would make those drums useful. He did not confuse thunder with architecture.
They entered the city without a tumult. Antaji liked that: occupation with decorum. Soldiers kept to the periphery of markets; they stood where they could be seen and not felt. Too many conquerors made the mistake of letting a boot on a bench and watching coins stop ringing. He made a small note to himself — keep the soldier in the guarded place, keep the clerk in the dim room, keep the market to its business. He had learned in the Deccan that men would resent the boot but accept the ledger if the ledger's lines were honest.
The first thing he did was to see the papers. Imperial books do not lie out in the sun; they prefer shade and time. He walked the offices where Mughal clerks bent over ink like priests and let a small suspicion settle in his chest. The clerks were used to the shape of tribute and the weight of names. They could be invaluable. Or they could be conduits. Antaji had watched a clerk hide a sum in a margin once and set a city to relieve him with a public flogging. There were ways to keep a city quiet and ways to make it hum with resentment. He wanted the hum.
He did not expect to act like a foreign brute. He would be a steward of accounts in a new name. His proclamations must read like continuity, not conquest. Keep the rate of tax the same as before, the logic went; keep the granaries stocked and the market open; leave the clerks at their desks but place Maratha inspectors where the ink met the sack. In practice that meant he would not uproot everything at once. He would plant watchers at the edges.
There was the problem of the clerks. Antaji had a dislike not for men who kept the books but for the idea that a man with a pen could make or break an army by hiding a page. "Unreliable clerks," his quartermaster had called them in a private voice. Antaji had smiled, not at the insult but at the quiet truth. He would keep the clerks — Mughal men had the muscle memory of the region's accounts — but he would break the secrecy. Where they wrote, his men would watch. Where they counted, his men would tally.
At dusk he sought a different counsel. Not generals or revenue officers; that was the safe and ordinary thing. He had learned that in the north a guru's weight carried deeper than a captain's yell. The old man who taught in the temple yard — the village elder who had fed teachers and kept the prayers in order — knew what villagers told one another over water and under the lee of a wall. He might not have the statistics, but he would have the human arithmetic: why men lied, where they hid things, which whispers were true.
They found the guru sitting cross-legged by the temple, a thin ribbon of smoke drawing up from a lamp at his feet. He looked older than the city itself seemed to, and when he turned his head to Antaji his eyes had the steady stillness of a man who had watched states come and go.
"You have a hand that steadies a man's back," the guru said quietly as Antaji dismounted. "You will need him who counts. Men with ink fear different things than men with blades. Learn those fears."
Antaji thought of the ledger and the ledger's uses. "I will keep the clerks," he said. "Their knowledge will be used. But they will be watched."
"You must do more than watch," the guru warned. "You must give the merchant a reason to trust the coin. You must make the man who writes wish to be seen honest."
The phrase lodged in Antaji's mind like a coin into a palm. It was not only punishment the city wanted; it was a reason to be loyal. He listened as the guru spoke of small mechanisms — visible supervision, the steady paying of soldiers, protection around the granary gates. He had thought policy. The guru spoke of psychology.
When Antaji returned to the command tent he wrote orders with the steady hand of a man who had spent nights over maps. Keep the tax at the same rate as had been payable to the old court, he wrote; keep Mughal clerks in place but place Maratha overseers at counts; protect granaries and markets; do not let soldiers walk the market table. Make visible proof of continuity. Let them keep their ledgers and show them light under a new eye. The line of his proclamation would be precise: stability, not seizure.
He sent scouts to secure roads and to track the caravans. Merchants had been whispering of changed routes — of caravans that avoided passes and moved under covers of night. Antaji would know the lines by which coin and grain ran, and if those lines were interrupted he would trace them. The scouts should not be seen as predators; they must be seen as men who repaired bridges. That too was a kind of authority.
The city received the first proclamation like a measured breath. Antaji watched while clerks pinned the posted laws by the gate; he watched while the market absorbed the news with small looks and carefully folded hands. He had the Maratha watchers stand at the granary gates but inside the storehouse the Mughal clerks continued to count. The rhythm had to feel like continuity: the same numbers, new eyes.
A merchant, an old toothless man who had sold copper lamps at the crossroads for longer than Antaji had walked the world, grunted past the proclamation board and muttered under his breath, "Coin does not ring the same round here." The words were small and meant for markets, but Antaji caught them and let them sink. There were always small signals — a mutter, a coin that sounded dead in a bowl. They were not rumors; they were instruments.
He had ordered one particular maneuver that night: place Maratha inspectors at customs and granaries, but keep soldiers at the periphery—no soldier's boot on the market bench. It was a compromise that suited the city's nerves. If men saw a blade on a tray they would hide their sums, but if they saw a clerk and a watcher they might come forward to be seen honest. The presence of the inspector would be an invitation to cleanliness rather than a threat of punishment.
He picked the inspectors from his own men and told them this explicitly: you are not to be feared as a tax man; be soap and light. Watch their hands, not their faces. Watch for the inked margins that appear when a clerk folds a month away. Watch to see who pays promptly and how they cough at the mention of scale. This was a fine art; it required patience as much as authority.
He also took to the small practicalities. A man called from the gate to say that a caravan had been delayed, suspicious loads re-routed with odd care. Antaji sent scouts to meet it. They were to be patient: note the numbers of coins, the merchants' names, the way sacks were bartered. Merchants could be frightened to the point of sabotage; they could also be bought. The first test was to secure the line where silver left the region. A dry flow in the coffers would mean weakness when a rival looked to buy loyalties.
That evening he walked parts of the city wrapped in the shadow of his own standard. The drums still beat, a steady heartbeat for the camp. Antaji allowed himself a small, remote pleasure in the order of it: tents set, supplies arrived, proclamation posted. He had given a soldier his task and a clerk his light, and for the moment the city had returned to its business. But he was not simple in his confidence. Men with pens could be more treacherous than men with swords for reasons a blade did not always see. The clerk who falsifies a receipt can seed a rebellion through paperwork in the time it takes to iron a shirt.
He sent a discreet message to Kalyan of Rohtak. The name had weight across regions — Rathod of steadiness. The dispatch was carefully composed: acknowledgement of the city's change of administration, assurance that the tribute demanded would be the same as under the previous court, notice of Maratha overseers to be present during counts, and an offer of guarded dialogue. The letter was deferential and precise. If Kalyan replied with cooperation, the hand would be velvet. If not, the hand could be iron.
Then the small mutterings became steadier. A clerk tucked a coin under his sleeve a little too quickly and then tried to blink apology into his face. A vendor lifted a handful of coin and tapped it against an anvil; the sound was a dull note and the vendor frowned. Antaji watched it all like a man hearing a tune he had to remember. The coin that did not ring true would be a warning.
He sent the scouts out to follow up on a particular rumor: caravans changing route to the north. The route was a thin line of vulnerability. If silver bled out along that line, if sacks of grain could be spirited away under the cover of night, then a rival could buy loyalties in villages with ease. The scouts were patient men; they would not be obvious. Antaji told them to note not the face of the merchant but the names that kept recurring in gossip. Repetition was evidence.
When the proclamation was nailed to the gate at first light, a small crowd came to listen. Antaji himself watched as a cleric read the lines aloud: stability maintained; tax held at old rates; Mughal clerks to remain under Maratha supervision; granaries protected; soldiers paid. The words were dry but meant. The market settled its breath as if tested. Antaji felt satisfaction like a ledger balanced.
Then, as the crowds dispersed, a rider from the south pulled up at the tent with a note for Antaji. It bore the neat hand of someone accustomed to formal channels. Antaji slit it open and read the words with a ruler's caution. The reply from Rohtak was not a simple obedient line. It was formal and deferential: Kalyan would receive the messenger but wished to discuss terms privately. There were hints in the phrasing — caution and consideration. It was the kind of response that could mean a civil alliance or a tactical delay.
Antaji folded the reply and looked out over the city once more. The drumbeat continued. The market smelled of smoke and incense and the civil breath of people returning to trade. The torn banner still hung, and the city still had the marks of recent violence. But for the moment the ledger lines could be kept tidy.
He liked tidy ledgers. They were signs of a hand that could be trusted. If he made the collectors seem benevolent and the overseers watchful, the city would nod and keep its sums. Yet the muttered coin and the merchants' quiet fear told him the work had only begun. For all his satisfaction at seeing his proclamation posted and clerks supervised, a question persisted with the weight of a stone in his chest: could Maratha authority in Delhi be held not just by force or promise but by method?
The answer would be measured in small things: an accurate weigh of grain, a coin that rang true, caravans that did not vanish at night. Antaji had plans for all of these. He also had the cautious knowledge that men with pens and men with blades make different kinds of war. For now he would play the part of the civil administrator, the generous conqueror. In time, if the line of tribute was challenged, he could be something else.
As the sun rose higher over the gate of Delhi, the drums rolled once more and a new order began to make its small, pragmatic sound. Antaji folded his dispatch to Kalyan and sent a rider to fetch the faujdar's envoy. He had made his proclamation. He had placed his watchers. He had asked the clerks to be seen honest. The band of men around him felt the first day's small success.
Still, as the tent flap closed and the city continued to breathe around him, Antaji kept the last thought like a mark in a ledger: can Maratha authority hold Delhi? The ledger would tell the truth before the trumpet. He had the books; now he would keep them.