Loot

In 1794, in the capital of Srirangapatna in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore, seventeen-year-old Abbas works as a woodcarver alongside his father, Yusuf Muhammad, and his brothers. Abbas has been secretly making moving wooden toys for Zubaida Begum, a consort of Tipu Sultan, the warrior-king of Mysore. The toys are delivered through a palace eunuch named Khwaja Irfan, who becomes a friend to Abbas. When Khwaja Irfan accidentally leaves behind an umbrella containing a hidden note in Marathi, the language of the rival Maratha confederacy, Abbas's father seizes it and walks away, leaving Abbas to wonder what he will do.

Abbas is summoned before Tipu Sultan, who reveals that Zubaida Begum and Khwaja Irfan were spying for a Maratha enemy and have been punished. Though Abbas faces execution for his association with the traitors, a French clockmaker named Lucien Du Leze intervenes, praising the boy's talent and persuading Tipu to spare him. Tipu commissions the pair to build a life-sized wooden automaton, a mechanical figure designed to simulate life: a tiger devouring an English soldier, complete with growling sounds and organ music. The automaton will celebrate the return of Tipu's two sons, who were surrendered as hostages to the British after a previous war.

Abbas moves into Du Leze's quarters at the Summer Palace. Du Leze teaches him to draw, explains the automaton's mechanics, and begins evening French lessons. Abbas carves the tiger's exterior while Du Leze builds the hidden organ and grunt pipe, a bellows device that produces the tiger's growl. Their bond deepens into mentorship, though Du Leze privately battles despair: He learns that France's Alien Act bars nonmilitary emigrants from returning home on pain of death, severing him from Blaque, a former student and romantic partner in France. Du Leze contemplates suicide on a hilltop, but a swarm of bees interrupts his attempt, and he resolves to finish the automaton before ending his life.

During construction, Abbas meets Jehanne, the young daughter of Monsieur Martine, a French engineer whose Mysorean wife died in childbirth. When the automaton is complete, Du Leze inscribes both their names on the grunt pipe's underside. At the grand unveiling, Tipu declares Abbas will continue as Du Leze's apprentice, but Du Leze refuses and sends Abbas home. That night, Tipu summons Abbas back to interpret a dream and orders the apprenticeship to resume. When Abbas returns to Du Leze's apartment, he finds the Frenchman unconscious, having poisoned himself with opium. Abbas revives him by grinding his knuckles into Du Leze's chest, a technique he once witnessed. Du Leze promises not to try again, though he is uncertain this is the truth.

Four years pass. Abbas, now past twenty, apprentices under Du Leze while his father, injured by a horse kick, declines into paralysis. Tipu commissions them to replicate Al-Jazari's legendary Elephant Clock, a two-story timekeeping automaton from a 13th-century mechanical treatise. They complete it for the Dasara festival, where Abbas encounters Jehanne again, now a teenager who gives him an embroidered handkerchief. Soon after, Du Leze learns his name has been removed from France's émigré lists and invites Abbas to follow him to Rouen. Abbas agrees but delays to be with his dying father. Du Leze sails from Pondicherry with Martine and Jehanne.

The narrative shifts to 1799 as English forces close in on Mysore. When General Harris's army breaches the fort at Srirangapatna, Tipu fires from the ramparts until he is shot and killed. English forces slaughter thousands and loot the palace. Abbas, who stayed behind as a stretcher bearer, survives by lying beneath a corpse for three days before staggering out through the Delhi Gate. In the aftermath, Colonel Horace Selwyn, attended by his Indian aide-de-camp Rangappa Rao, known as Rum, selects the Musical Tiger as his prize. Selwyn dies of dysentery weeks later, and Rum delivers the automaton to Lady Selwyn at Cloverpoint Castle in Twickenham, England.

Abbas's journey toward France is told through the journal of Thomas Beddicker, a young English sailor on the merchant ship Peppercorn. Abbas, who spent years begging in Pondicherry, endures discrimination and flogging aboard the ship. When a French privateer captures the Peppercorn, Thomas, delirious with scurvy, identifies Abbas as a French speaker, and Abbas is taken prisoner aboard the French vessel.

In 1805, Abbas arrives in Rouen to learn that Du Leze has died. Jehanne, now going by Jehanne Du Leze, takes him in. She struggles financially, running a curiosity shop, and they reconnect in Kannada, their shared mother tongue. Jehanne shows Abbas a newspaper clipping about a London exhibition featuring the Musical Tiger at Lady Selwyn's estate. When Abbas visits a clockmaker named Godin seeking an apprenticeship, Godin demands proof: Abbas must bring back the automaton or the bellows bearing his name.

Abbas devises a scheme. He and Jehanne will travel to Cloverpoint and trade forged Tipu artifacts, including cushions and a robe Jehanne embroiders with gold thread, plus Tipu's authentic agate ring, for the automaton. Abbas poses as her valet. At Cloverpoint, they are received by Lady Selwyn and Rum, now her land agent and secret lover. Jehanne stages a fall to extend their stay and grows close to Lady Selwyn over several days. Meanwhile, Abbas sneaks into the Peacock Room at night to examine the automaton, running his fingers over imperfections only he would recognize. Rum witnesses this from behind a pedestal.

Tensions mount during a fox hunt when Rum inadvertently shouts Lady Selwyn's first name before her son Richard and the hunting party, exposing their intimacy. In the garden, Jehanne confesses her love to Abbas, but he refuses her, insisting he did not endure so much to live on stale bread and love. Jehanne agrees to make one direct appeal for the automaton but refuses any theft.

At dinner, Jehanne asks Lady Selwyn for the automaton, but Lady Selwyn refuses and invites Jehanne to stay permanently as her companion, on the condition that she dismiss Abbas. Jehanne declines, accusing Lady Selwyn of wanting to add her to a collection, just as she has collected Rum. Devastated, Lady Selwyn orders Jehanne gone by morning.

That night, Lady Selwyn smokes her meerschaum pipe by the Peacock Room window. Embers fall onto gauze curtains, starting a fire. Abbas races to save Jehanne but finds her already safe below, having jumped from her window. Lady Selwyn drags the automaton into an adjacent closet before collapsing from smoke inhalation. Rum extinguishes the flames and carries her out, but she is dead. Jehanne confesses to Rum that Abbas is the co-maker of the Musical Tiger.

Back in Rouen, Abbas invents a crybox, a small bellows mechanism sewn inside cloth dolls to produce a crying sound. Jehanne sews the dolls and secures investment to begin production. Their partnership deepens into romance, and they marry. Abbas paints Jehanne's name in gold on the shop window, omitting his own. Rum arranges for the Musical Tiger to be donated to the East India Museum, ensuring both names from the bellows appear on the plaque, then accepts Jehanne's offer of a bookkeeper position in Rouen.

In a coda set in 1859, Ghulam Muhammad, Tipu Sultan's last surviving son, visits the East India House in London. Elderly and living on a meager English stipend in Calcutta, he pages through his father's confiscated dream register and encounters Tipu's Tiger on display. He rests his hand between the tiger's ears, feeling the vibration of Mysore and the people who are gone. When a clerk's presence reminds him of his place, he passes through the doors into the light, feeling not pain but relief.