A scene from The Vermillion Ledger
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MysteryIndia

The Vermillion Ledger

ink, candle smoke, a guild keeping quiet

The world

A bookkeeper's forged column hides a death the whole guild agreed to forget.

Sindoorganj, a North Indian merchant bazaar town of sandstone havelis, spice stalls, and an old stepwell, where every trade passes through the accounts of the cloth and grain guild. Warm and crowded and a little too polite. Lamps come on early, the air smells of cardamom and hot oil, and the moment you ask about the dead man the smiles do not change but the answers grow careful.

You are an inquiry agent for the crown's revenue office, sent by an unsigned note that reached you the week the guild closed a dead merchant's accounts. You carry the note, a blank register, and a seal that carries no weight inside these walls. What you are here to do: Find out what truly happened to Ratanlal Anand, the cloth merchant whose death the guild recorded as fever and closed inside a single day.

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