"Never fully mapped," Aryan repeated, for the camera.
"And the methods," Tanya said, looking up from her phone. She had been listening despite looking like she wasn't. "You said the methods were interesting."
Kabir glanced at his notes. "The dacoits developed a set of techniques for operating in the ravines that were completely specific to this terrain. Communication by stone signals. Ambush positions using the acoustic properties of the rock faces — sound bounces in the ravines in predictable ways, and they knew exactly where to stand to hear things from half a kilometre away. Entry and exit routes that looked like dead ends from outside but opened into networks. And tracking — they could track a man through the ravines purely by looking at the dust on the rock ledges."
"Like a whole other science," Tanya said.
"A whole other science," Kabir agreed. "Most of it died with the last generation of dacoits. Not documented anywhere. Just — gone."
In the front, Vikram had not turned around. But Aryan saw, in the rearview mirror, the slight change in the set of his shoulders. A tension that had not been there before, or that had been there and was now slightly more visible.
He filed this information the way he filed all information on shoots — as potentially usable, without knowing yet how.
Outside the Innova, the Chambal ravines were opening up around them. The road had narrowed to one lane. On either side, the land dropped in sudden corrugations — the beehad beginning, the earth broken into its thousand folds and channels, red and ochre and the brown of old things, going down into shadows that the afternoon light did not reach.
