Tipu Sultan is dead. Seringapatam has fallen. Mysore has been broken, but victory has opened a dangerous vacuum across southern India.

Captain William Culpepper of His Majesty's 33rd Regiment of Foot is sent into the unstable year after Mysore's collapse. At twenty-two, he has already survived brutal campaigning in Europe and India, including the storming of Seringapatam. Now he faces a different kind of war.

Loyalists of the old regime turn to raiding. Convoys vanish on roads that should be secure. Villages hedge their loyalties, paying whoever arrives with the nearest threat. Fever weakens the garrison, patrols are stretched thin, and the East India Company must prove that Tipu Sultan's fall was more than a passing victory.

At the center of the unrest is Dhoondia Waugh, an insurgent leader who fights with speed, rumor, and the desperation of men who still believe the British can be driven out. William's orders sound simple: keep the roads open, keep the countryside quiet, and learn how far the rebellion has spread.

But the roads are only half the battlefield. In Madras and Fort St. George, power is fought over in offices and drawing rooms, where altered orders, missing stores, and private ambition can be as deadly as musket fire. As William is drawn toward the city, he discovers that the struggle for Mysore's future involves not only rebels and princes, but enemies hidden inside the Company itself.

In the aftermath of conquest, William must fight to hold a broken province together before the next war begins.