Vincent Pillai lived in a house that was one size too large for his spirit. He wore prosperity like a borrowed coat — gold watch, amber ring, a smile that arrived late to his eyes. He was Meera's mother's brother, the only family she had left after her parents died of fever the same winter, two years apart. He had taken her in at fifteen and called it charity. She had called it something else, in private, to Arjun.
"He lent money to my father before he died,"she'd told him once, her voice flat as still water."And then he charged interest on the grief."
Arjun arrived at the card table on the third Friday with a press card and a borrowed flask of arrack. He did not have to wait long. The man with the amber ring — fat-fingered, red-faced, a merchant named Damodaran — arrived at nine and proceeded to lose three hands in a row with the cheerfulness of a man who knew he would never truly lose.
It was the fourth hand that broke the evening open.
Damodaran leaned toward Vincent and said, low and wet with drink:"The girl settled in nicely, then? The one you sent north?"
"Arjun felt the room tilt. His pen went still in his coat pocket. He breathed through his nose and did not move."
Vincent's eyes swept the table like a lighthouse beam — sharp, sweeping, looking for witnesses. He found none he recognised. His voice dropped to a hiss:"She'll marry Krishnaswamy's son by month's end. The debt clears. We don't speak of it."
Meera had been traded. Like a ledger entry. To clear her dead father's debt.