The tavern was old, damp, and dimly lit — the kind of place where secrets were born and never spoken aloud again. Outside, the plains of Northern India simmered under a dying sun, but inside the tavern, the air was thick with the stench of smoke, gunpowder, and greed.
At the farthest corner of the room sat Ali, the short, rotund pirate with a great curling mustache and eyes like shards of coal. His thick fingers drummed against the wooden table as he stared at the map spread before him. The parchment was patched with stains, torn at the edges, but the ink lines that stretched northward — toward the Himalayas — burned into his sight like a promise.
“So it’s true then?” growled one of his lieutenants, a lean, sharp-nosed man with an eye patch. “The foreigner went north? To the mountains?”
