User talk:Johnspeed/tigerclaws/chapter1

(Imperial Palace, Agra)

Lit only by the pale gleam of a crescent moon, Basant hides in shadows cast by marble walls.

The wavering light of the butter lamps sparkles in the gemlike mirrors of the golden ceiling, dances like fireflies across the mosaics in the marble floor, and stops in a line just short of the toes of his jewel-encrusted slippers. He has studied that line of shadow, studied its start and end a hundred times, measured the depth of its darkness, finding the exact place where his enormous bulk can be completely hidden.

It pleases Basant to linger in the dark just so, ignored by the palace guards, unnoticed by the sentries; in the damp night to press against the palace wall and feel the day's heat locked inside the flesh-smooth marble. The brothers say the only cure for fear is pleasure. Such tiny pleasures are the only pleasures Basant has, but they are not enough, not enough to stop the fear.

He stands with one jeweled slipper placed before the other, holding the collar of his black embroidered robe with a dimpled hand just so, drinking in the shadows and the crescent moon as a poet might, as if to say: I don't hide here! I stand in many places around the palace. Now I stand here; it is nothing special. It is my right to be here.

No one sees him glancing in a hundred directions. No one sees that drop of sweat creeping down his smooth cheek.

Anyone who saw him would think: Basant is dreaming again! He is such a dreamer, that one.

His eyes gaze at the crescent moon in the blue-black sky, or sweep across the Jumna where the domes of the starlit 'Taj rise from the river mists like pale bubbles.

The brothers say that pain is but a dream. And like many of the brothers, Basant's dream is of when he had a name. Basant's mind slips into his pain, his dream. He tries once more to recall a single word; a name; his name.

Like a raga's relentless drone it is always out of reach; like a gnawing sharp-toothed worm it is never far away.

He remembers when he had his name: he is a child, an orphan. He is thirsty for he hasn't been given even a sip of water all day. He sits uncomfortably on the floor of his tent, with his hands tied to a post driven into the ground behind him. He thinks he must be a very bad boy indeed to deserve such cruelty.

Then the gentle men come in. Their hands are soft as they bind the heavy cords around his torso and thighs. Then they speak to him with cooing voices, voices like doves, patting his hair with their soft hands as they tighten the cords.

The cords cut into his soft child's flesh, and he cries out, and the gentle men shush him and call him sweet names. One of them holds a cup to his lips, and with some hesitation he drinks: it is wine, spiced wine or maybe something else. It smells all wrong, and its bitter taste numbs his tongue, but he drains the cup because he is so thirsty.

His mouth grows dry, and his memory swirls in mist, twisted by some strange drug he has drunk: his lips feel heavy now, and numb; and the smells inside tent - canvas and dry wool and dust - converge like music, harsh and grating; and the flickering flame of the lamp above him dances with eerie complexity.

The slavemaster enters his tiny tent, and with him a strange-smelling man with pale skin like a pig's, and gray eyes. Basant thinks (the way little boys think, with astonished excitement) he must be a farang! Basant is sure he will never forget this day.

The tent grows crowded. Never have so many people been in my tent, the boy thinks with pleasure. The cramped air is hot with hot breath. The gentle men, at a grunt from the slavemaster, tie the boy to a wide flat board, this time tying his little hands and feet with great care, but firmly.

The farang's eyes, gray like Satan's, sparkle like a madman's.

From within the folds of his robe, the slavemaster takes a magic wand (or so it seems at first to Basant) like a crescent moon of silver on a stem of jasper, and the slavemaster shows it to the farang, who admires it, and then both men touch the moon, and drag their thumbs across its curve and confer in hushed, excited voices, and Basant realizes it is a knife, that the men are testing its silver blade, its blade shaped like the crescent moon.

The gentle men ignore the blade and the whispering, and look at the boy, and pat his hands and face, and one of them begins to cry. Basant sees the thick dark trails that glisten on his cheeks. He has never seen a man cry before. There, there, he says, trying to make the man stop his tears, smiling as bravely as he can. There, there, he says. He doesn't know what else to say.

Then the slavemaster takes the knife, and with a quick and sudden sweep, the blade whispers through the thin white cotton. The gentle men tuck the tatters away, exposing the boy's smooth skin. Basant can feel the soft touch of their cool hands, and he can feel the hot breath of the slavemaster on his bare stomach and his bare thighs, right next to the cords that bite into the flesh of his legs and chest.

He looks down to see his tiny lingam exposed in the flickering lamplight; the slavemaster tickles it until it tingles and begins to stiffen and grow. He and the farang exchange sneering comments in a language the boy can't understand. The gentle men look away from them and from Basant. Their faces are solemn and totally elsewhere.

The crying one whispers that Basant shouldn't worry, that the slavemaster is an expert. He says this to a wall of the tent, and it takes Basant a moment to realize the reassurance is meant for him. I'm fine, he says. The crying one, without looking at him, bites his lip and tries to smile.

His hands now careful and deft, not rough like before, the slavemaster's thumb probes slowly along the root of the lingam and also the testicles; these he rubs between his fingers with great care. The slavemaster takes the farang's hand and pushes his fingers into those same places he has touched, and the farang's eyes grow even wider and he nods, but his touch is not so deft as the slavemaster's.

Then with expert quickness the slavemaster slides the silver moon's razor edge across Basant's round belly.

Suddenly Basant feels his lingam come loose, and roll across his belly, and then it falls and he feels it lodge between his thigh and the board he is tied to. He looks down to where his lingam had been and sees a tiny fountain of blood.

With his free hand the slavemaster places his thumb firmly on the fountain and his fingers curl beneath Basant's testicles. This seems to happen very slowly. The moon blade flashes once more and Basant watches it slide (this time between his legs) in an expert silver arc.

Basant thinks: someone in this room is screaming. Someone in this room is in pain. He looks around the room for the source of the screams, but the gentle men are not screaming, they are busy, pressing clean cloths on Basant's bloody groin. And the slavemaster and farang are not screaming, for at this moment Basant can see the slavemaster's bloody palm, and on it are his testicles in the tiny sack that used to hang between his legs. (Basant wonders, how will the slavemaster get them back on?) The farang is staring at him silently, his eyes wide and his face pale.

With the curved point of the silver knife the slavemaster teases the sack, deftly slipping the testicles onto his wide palm.

Basant can see them. Ever after he remembers that moment: for his screaming stops as he stares at his tiny testicles on the slavemaster's palm: in the lamplight they look like living gems, and he is fascinated by their colors, pinks and grays and blues, and by how they pulse, still alive in the slavemaster's hand.

Then the farang bends his head to the slavemaster's palm.

Basant hears him slurping. Once. Twice.

Basant sees him straighten, face taut, eyes aflame; sees the flecks of blood on his thin lips and yellow teeth.

The slavemaster drops the empty sack of flesh on the floor, as one might drop an orange peel.

The gentle men lift Basant, still tied to the wide board, and bandage his wounds with cloth. Basant feels his lingam slip from beneath his thigh, and wonders what will become of it. He never sees it again.

Later he is bandaged, and the gentle men place him upright in a hole dug in some nearby sand and they bury him up to his neck. He is so little, the hole is not very deep.

He stays buried there three days. He gets a fever. He becomes delirious, drifting between anguish and pain and dreams of anguish and pain. He sees people walk by; he sees the slavemaster and the farang walk by, avoiding him, glancing at him with guilty, sidelong looks.

From time to time the gentle men visit him, and feel his fevered head (for the rest of him is buried in the sand), and they exchange worried glances, and wipe his mouth with a cloth and give him a sip of the bitter wine (but only a sip, never a drink), and sometimes they wash his head with cool water, whispering sweet words to him in their high, reedy voices.

On the third day, the gentle men dig him out, using only their hands. With great care, they brush the sand from his torn clothes and bandages. They unwrap the bandages with some anxiety, but seem relieved when they see the wound.

One of them produces from his turban a thin silver tube, like the quill of a goose's feather. While the other one holds Basant's arms reassuringly (his hands and feet are still tied to the board, the cords still cutting into the flesh), the gentle man slowly pushes the silver quill into the hole where the lingam used to be. To Basant it feels cold and enormous, but he does not cry out.

Then he feels it pop into place, somehow he knows it is in place, and Basant begins to pee. He pees and pees, the stream passing through the silver quill and forming a puddle at his feet. Some blood is mixed with the urine. The gentle men examine the stream carefully and seem relieved. They release the heavy cords and untie him from the board. One of them carries Basant to the eunuch's tents.

From that day, he lives among eunuchs, travels in the eunuchs' cart, sleeps in the eunuchs' tent. The gentle men who cared for him are there, and others like them. He thinks they all must be very old. He is the only child in the tent. The slave children he used to play with aren't allowed.

Also the eunuch's skin is dark, nearly black, but his skin is like cream, golden like a lightly roasted kachu nut. He wonders if he will grow dark when he gets old.

The eunuchs smile whenever they see him, and pat him and hug him and bounce him on their plump laps. When they stop in a new town, they hide him from the slavemaster and from the farang. He makes friends with them. When one of the eunuchs gets sold, he misses him.

They give him a special name - Basant, which means Springtime - and after a while, he forgets the name he used to have.

Later he tries to remember that other name. In dreams he hears it, but when he wakes, it's gone.

Basant's wounds heal clean, and the scars look not so bad, the eunuchs tell him. He carries the silver quill in his turban. He thinks it is fun to pee through; although he misses his lingam a little, he likes the silver quill nearly as much.

As they travel, rocking on the rough road under the warm cover of the cart, the eunuchs tell him stories. Basant thinks the stories are strange. Mostly they are stories in verse, and the verses are about lingams. How to rub them, how to lick them, the pleasures one can give. How odd, thinks Basant, now that I haven't got one, to discover how pleasant they might be. The first time he hears a new verse, he laughs and laughs; they each seem so silly and so clever.

In time the eunuchs become more pointed in their stories, and they tell them straight with no verses at all.

The stories become more like lessons. The eunuchs teach him and ask him questions and get upset if Basant fails to answer properly. When they camp at night, they show him dances and for Basant these are simple to learn: shaking his bottom, mostly, back and forth and side to side. They teach him to sit on a funny painful seat for hours at a time; it hurts at first, but not as much as the knife, and then it scarcely hurts all, even when they enlarge each day the nasty part that squeezes into his little bottom.

Basant sees the eunuchs speaking often with the slavemaster, who eyes him strangely. It is the look the slavemaster gets when he speaks of money, and Basant thinks it odd that the slavemaster should look at him just so, as though he were a sack of gold to be emptied onto the slavemaster's wide palm.

He sees the farang sometimes, hiding behind a wagon or a tent, snatching glances at him as he walks to the field.

One night they set up camp in a cool town with a huge domed mosque, the biggest he has ever seen. The eunuchs dress him differently, in velvets and silks; they rub his golden skin with perfume and stain his eyes with kohl, and all the while, they sing in a language Basant doesn't know. When he is dressed they lead him to a tent he has never seen before, one with walls of fine red silk, and velvet cushions inside, and butter lamps, and they place him on its soft bed with rich cushions (not at all like his bedmat in the eunuchs' tent). It is the finest tent he ever has seen. One by one the eunuchs kiss him on the forehead and duck (without looking back) through the tent's curtained door until he is alone and a little scared, with only the flickering butter lamps for company.

Somewhere in the tent incense is burning, but he can't find the source of the wisps of smoke that curl through the tent's still air.

He is puzzling about this when the farang comes into the tent.

It is not pleasant.

Soon Basant finds he understands the answers to many mysteries that have puzzled him. He understands with great suddenness, as one understands a fall down a well, or a fist to one's nose. He understands the verses, the lessons, the painful seat, the dancing. He understands it all.

But to understand is not pleasant.

Then, after what seems an eternity of night, he falls asleep, and thankfully he has no dreams. He wakes the next morning and the farang is gone, and only then does he weep.

After he dries his eyes he walks with some difficulty back toward the eunuchs' tent. He hears them inside, but none of them come out to greet him. He stands near the entry, staring at it, unable to will himself to go in. Instead he walks to the bathing place, and washes himself, using bucket after bucket of cold water.

In time the eunuchs come to him and try to smile. For many days he ignores them.

Night after night Basant sleeps in the soft bed of the rich tent. He has many visitors. First the farang comes, then other men, many other men, in town after town after town. He remembers how they smell but not how they look; he remembers their lingams not their faces.

But that was years ago. So much has changed since then. How odd, he thinks, to be hiding here, in the shadows of the Private Palace, the Khas Mahal of marble and mirrors and gold. He gazes at the sky, at the sliver crescent moon, and tries to breathe. He has struggled so to get here - the very heart of the Emperor's palace. He has recently joined the eunuchs of the First Rank of the Private Palace, So why does he risk everything on this foolishness? Why?

If you asked him, of course, he would turn aside and say nothing; such is his way, and the way of all the mukhunni- but if you could lift the curtain of the tent of his heart and peer inside, you would soon understand: he does it all for love; for the love of his mistress, for the Princess Roshanara.

Of course he would deny this. And if you challenged him, he would ask you how a eunuch might love a woman, let alone a princess? And if you pressed him, he might make some joke about the speed of his fingers, or the deftness of his tongue, and wink and leer at you, as if to say: When they can't get what they really want, then they want what I can give. For isn't it said the mukhunni all are heartless? So Basant would have you believe as well, though his heart is a shrine to Roshanara, the princess he has served for nineteen months and four days.

As he waits, sweating in the darkness, Basant hears each sound from Roshanara's apartments. At his command, tonight the drapes hanging over the entrances and windows and breezeways all are lowered and secured; and he has chosen drapes of the densest velvet, lined with quilted muslin, winter drapes though it now is spring. Despite the drapes, Basant hears every whisper, every grunt, every squeal, every stifled scream. Each noise increases his anxiety; his heart beats wildly like a tabla at the end of a raga. Bad enough to hear Roshanara, but Basant can also hear her partner's words, his grunts and gurgles, his moans, deep and hoarse. To explain such sounds would take time, and baksheesh: and he's had no chance to make such arrangements; for Roshanara had tossed together this meeting with unexpected haste.

Basant wonders desperately whether these sounds are so loud as they seem to his anxious heart; whether they are heard throughout the palace; whether the Emperor who snores in a nautch girl's arms not twenty yards away hears every word and every groan; he wonders if the guards will burst in.

He can barely keep himself from running away, particularly when he hears the frantic squealing of the princess in her ecstasy, and the growling of her partner like a bull; that ancient song that Basant can hear but never sing.

Then, as if Allah in his mercy had not yet piled enough anxiety upon his servant, Basant hears a sound more frightening than the pleasure grunts of the Princess and her mate: the sentries calling the hours from battlement to battlement; and he recognizes the voice of Muhedin, second captain of the palace guards, the smartest of all the captains and the most suspicious.

Basant curses his fate that Muhedin should be keeper of the watch this night, of all guards the most attentive. He wonders if he should alter his plans. He considers what he knows of Muhedin's nature and habits, what things might catch his eyes and lead him to investigate. Basant hopes that he can keep himself and Roshanara's lover in the shadows and out of sight of the sentries so no alarm will be raised. It is not so far to the tunnels.

Act, he orders himself. Now! But of course he can barely move.

Basant creeps to the edge of the shadows and glances toward the battlements. The sentries are looking away from the courtyard, out across the river. Within the harem, the only guards are two Tartar women who stand outside the Emperor's bedchamber - strange pink women from a place where it is always cold.

Hesitating in front of the entrance to the Princess's apartments, imagining what he might find within, Basant at last pushes aside the velvet entry drape. Heavy with jewels and golden thread, the thick drape rustles, and of course he fears even this sound will attract attention. He ducks inside, now nearly in a panic. As the drape falls behind him, his fear mingles with pleasure. To be in her presence, in the heart of her home, amidst the flickering lamps, amidst the incense, amidst the flowers and leaves carved in the walls and burnished with gold! He feels such pleasure as a lover might.

Basant's eyes grow accustomed to the dim light and he makes out the clothing strewn around the room; the bed in attractive disarray with cushions haphazard everywhere; the princess's thick long hair spread wildly across her pillow; the tip of her nose and the edge of her pretty ear peeping through her hair; her arm with its silky skin poking out from beneath a satin cover. And he sees the body of her lover: the man's dark limbs sprawled on the bed; his bare ass, sagging in his sleep. Maybe jealousy clouds Basant's heart - but not the way a man would feel it.

Oh, he knows that he can never possess her, not as a man might possess her. But he can give her pleasure that a man cannot, for he has been trained to use his tongue and fingertips in ways that only eunuchs know.He can exhaust his sweet Princess, thrilling her until she weeps, until she begs for mercy. What man can say that? Even so the sight of her lover irritates Basant, and his eyes narrow with something akin to jealousy: the envy and pain that only eunuchs know.

Suddenly Roshanara's lover swings the bedclothes back and crouches by the bed, facing him with dark malevolent eyes. Even naked, even with his fat old lingam hanging down for all to see, the man looks deadly. The flickering lamplight traces the bright edges of an ugly dagger, one designed for use, not for show. Basant nearly faints.

"I need some light," the man growls. He speaks quietly and clearly, his tone suggesting that he is used to being obeyed instantly. As Basant brings an oil lamp, the man paws through the bedding, looking for his clothes. The musty smell of sex rises from the cushions. Roshanara sleeps like an exhausted wrestler, like someone who has ridden hard.

"Get dressed, uncle," Basant whispers. "We must go quickly." The man scowls at him; he has found his inner turban and he begins to wrap his long hair in it; Basant thinks he is moving deliberately slowly. Hurry, hurry, you old oaf, Basant thinks, the harem soon will wake. The man then pulls on his trousers, without any underwear (Basant can barely keep from rolling his eyes). On the man's chest Basant sees a patchwork of livid scars. One runs across his whole body, from his left shoulder to his right hip.

Basant looks away embarrassed as the man puts on his robe; it hangs down nearly to his ankles, Bijapuri-style. He gathers his underwear, turban and belt and rolls them into a tight ball, then stands and pushes them roughly at Basant. He is used, it seems, to having others care for him. Basant takes the bundle while the man begins to search for his cloak.

The Princess stirs but doesn't wake - her hair falls back from the fine features of her round face, and she hugs a pillow to her perfect breasts. Basant watches her, fascinated.

Suddenly he yelps at sharpness in his side. The man has crept up beside him silently and now prods him with his dagger. The dagger is sheathed. But to Basant the point of the sheath is as unpleasant as the point of the dagger.

"Let's go." The man pokes him again with the sheathed dagger, and Basant manages to hold his tongue. "No, wait," says the man. He pulls Basant roughly by the arm, turning to face him. The man is short, not much taller than Basant, and his black eyes are empty and terrifying, like a tiger's eyes. "Let's get one thing straight. You take me to the Delhi Gate. Understand? No tricks. And no tunnels!"

Basant looks startled. "No tunnels, uncle? How shall I keep you hidden?"

"I know all about the tunnels. And about the well. You get me? No tricks. No tunnels. No well. Understood?"

"But what well, uncle?" he replies, although even Basant can hear that his response is unconvincing.

The man lets out a long hiss. "The Delhi Gate. Now."

Again the dagger probes his ribs. "But uncle, how shall I take you there safely?" Basant asks.

"I'll tell you how, hijra," he responds. The cruelty of the term is not lost on Basant. "We'll go to your rooms. You do have rooms nearby, don't you? I'll put on clothes like a eunuch and we'll walk right out, our heads held high. Understood? Like men, except..." The man chuckles at his own wit.

Swiftly Basant considers his options, finds none, and nods agreement. With one last glance at his sleeping princess, he steps to the entry drape, draws it back and steps outside, walking swiftly to a shadowy corner. The man follows him step for step.

Basant looks for the next shadow, and the next, tracing a zigzag path that leads to the eunuchs' apartments. He becomes almost confident. There are no guards at the doorways; once the Emperor has retired, his Tartar women only guard his bedroom; the harem women are considered above suspicion and beyond attack. So the compound is protected only by sentries and only along its outer perimeter, and the sentries are easy to avoid by sticking to the shadows and creeping silently along the walls.

They come to the mezzanine overlooking the enormous water tank at the foot of the stairs of the Khas Mahal. By a trick of the light, only the edge of the tank is in shadow; the rest of the walkway is lit by the lamps in niches along the walls of the Fish Building. Basant is disgusted to have to live in a place called the Fish Building; he is sure it has been named that just to insult the eunuchs who live there. It is well known the nautch girls of the harem call the eunuchs "fish". They step swiftly along the edge of the mezzanine. Basant now sees his door, and hurries toward it.

Too quickly. His foot strikes a bucket some fool has left at the edge. He stumbles. The bucket clatters and rolls along the edge; it falls, clanging twice with a sound like a broken gong that fills the night. The echo takes forever to fade.

Basant fears he will die, and wants to. Then he feels a rough hand grab the collar of his robes; his collar bites his neck, strangling him so he gasps for air. The man drags him along the edge of the tank. If there are any more buckets here, Basant thinks, this will a good way to find them. But the man moves furiously, without a care. "Where? Where?" he whispers through clenched teeth. Basant points miserably toward his door.

The man shuts the door behind them. "You were drunk and you stepped out to pee. Understand? You were drunk and you stepped out to pee!"

At that moment Basant's heart jumps as he hears a soft knock. There is a flash of sharp steel as the man draws his dagger and steps to the edge of the doorway. He nods; when the door opens, he'll be hidden behind it. Basant cracks open one side of his double door. "Evening, Basant," says Muhedin, the sentry captain. "Everything all right?"

"Certainly, Captain," Basant can scarcely believe his voice works. "I was a little drunk and went to pee, and..."

"Mind if I come in and have a look around?"

"Actually, it's not too convenient, uncle. I'm afraid I had a bit of an accident. It happens to us mukhunni sometimes: just a splash of urine, but so unpleasant..." Basant tries to give a laugh, but it sounds more like a groan.

"Is anyone there with you, Basant?"

Of course there is, Basant wants to say. Can't you hear him breathing, noisy as an old dog? Can't you smell the garlic? "No, uncle," Basant replies.

"The thing is, someone thinks they saw two persons out there, Basant. Someone thinks they both came in here."

Basant grows still. Perhaps, if he played it right, he could manage to have Muhedin kill this awful smelly man. For to enter the private palace without permission there was but one fate. I saw him coming from the palace, uncle! he threatened me! he forced me to bring him here, uncle! See his ugly dagger! And Basant was good at lying.

As he considers this, he feels a sharp jab beneath his arm; not blunt like before; the tip of that nasty, incessant dagger, now unsheathed and sharp as a needle. Basant wonders how long he has been silent...did it seem unnatural? "No, uncle, I'm fine, all by myself, just a fat old eunuch nobody cares for..."

"Sorry, Basant, but we must come in. Regulations." Basant hears "we", and peers through the crack until sees a second guard behind Muhedin. Good, he thinks. "Oh, two of you," he says pointedly, glancing at the man as if to say, you are finished now.

He opens one of the doors, the one that will hide the smelly man -Basant doesn't wish to die too soon, after all. Outside, Muhedin is smiling pleasantly; a skinny guard with a drawn sword stands behind him. Basant bows and steps aside, waving them through. But just as Muhedin steps across the threshold, Basant finds himself roughly pushed across the room. He lands sprawling on the floor, pain searing through his right shoulder where he falls.

He looks up to see Muhedin's startled face. The captain starts to unsheathe his sword, but even as he does so, the dark man sweeps forward, swinging his dagger.The blade slices through the tendons of Muhedin's wrist. Blood spurts from his arm, but even before the captain can make a sound, the man has slashed again. This time the blade flicks across the captain's neck, making a wet slapping noise, like a cleaver cutting cabbage.

Basant sees the captain stop short and stand up tall, his face registering a look of utter surprise. As he stands there, a necklace appears around the front of his neck, like a thin scarlet thread. Then Basant watches in horror as the captain's head flops backward, and a jet of blood gushes from the exposed neck. The captain's legs buckle, and he falls to his knees; with his torso still upright and his head flopped back, it seems as though he is praying. Then a shudder runs through his body and he falls convulsing to the floor, his heart still pumping.

From first step to shuddering death has taken less than a second.

His dagger still in his hand, the man now lunges through the door and instantly lurches back, the hand of the other guard locked in his grasp. The young guard stumbles into the room, startled.

The man yanks the guard's arm so hard that for a moment his head heaves back, chin toward the ceiling. The man thrusts his dagger through the soft spot under the guard's chin and drives the point into his brain.

The guard's head snaps forward, and Basant sees his astonished eyes, his mouth still open, pinioned on the dagger, the tongue still squirming on the blade like a pink slug on a skewer.

Then with vicious force the man wrenches the blade from the guard's head. The body crumbles to the floor next to the captain. Other than the sigh of the dagger and the soft thuds of bodies hitting the floor, there has not been a sound.

"I am Shaista Khan," says the man, wiping his blade on the robes of the guard. "I must not be found here."



Basant feels liquid warmth at his feet and thinks he has soiled himself, but when he looks down he sees it is the puddle of Muhedin's blood seeping through his slippers. His stomach heaves and he swallows back bitter bile.

Shaista Khan goes to the door and glances up and down the mezzanine. Satisfied, he closes the door tight, quietly, carefully, and heaves the bolts. Then Shaista Khan arranges the bodies on the floor, forming a sort of dam to contain the blood and shit that is seeping from them. He takes Basant by the arm and with unexpected gentleness moves him aside. He bends down, removing Basant's jeweled slippers with his own hands, and tosses them into the puddle of blood. He takes a pillow from the bed (Basant's favorite) and uses it as a mop, pushing it along the floor and collecting as much blood as he can. Basant stands mute, his hands dangling at his side like dead things, unable to react.

"Change of plan," Shaista Khan whispers. "Straight to the Delhi Gate. Dressed as we are. We go, right now." He goes back to the doorway, quietly unlocks and opens it, quietly looks for trouble. "Come on. The fools came alone." He steps behind Basant and urges him forward, his strong hands on Basant's waist. "I need you, eunuch. I'm lost here. Which way?" whispers Shaista Khan. Basant turns almost imperceptibly and they start off. Like two odd dancing partners, Shaista Khan guides him, clinging to the shadows, until at last they come to the Delhi Gate.

(Servant's cantonment, Agra Palace)

Basant wakes, bathed in sweat.

He looks around: he's in his servant's tent. Tiny streams of light leaking through pin-sized holes in the old fabric punctuate the brown darkness.

Outside the muezzin sings the call to dawn prayer. Haridas, his servant, is already gone.

Soon, too soon, Basant recalls the horrors of the night that led him to hide here. He hears the end of the muezzin's call: Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than sleep!

No it isn't, Basant thinks, and turns over on the bed mat, squeezing his eyes tight.



Again Basant opens his eyes. Fears descend on him like biting insects. Though it seems to him he has not slept, through patches of the tent the sun now shines so bright that the room is filled with light. Basant hears the muffled sounds of life going on outside: the calls and chatter, the clangs and rattles of a typical day on servants' street.

He creeps to the entry, opens the flap and blinks at the brightness. He realizes he is barefoot; and in a sudden horrible memory remembers Shaista Khan tossing his blood-soaked slippers on the broken bodies in his rooms. He passes his hand across his brow hoping to drive that image from his mind forever.

He steps behind the tent and takes the silver quill from his turban. He eases it into the scar in his groin and pees copiously into an open ditch that acts as sewer. But even as he sighs with relief, the dark image of dead men in his room closes over him like sudden night.

Haridas, his servant, walks toward him, his freshly shaved head bare in the morning sunlight, his old face lined, but bright and eager.

"I have brought you clean clothes, son," he says. "Bathe quickly and put them on." He motions Basant to a bathing area near his tent. The alley is alive with people, mostly low-level servants and servants of servants, and they stare at Basant as he passes: what is a eunuch of the first rank doing here? they wonder, glancing over their shoulders at him as they pass by.

Basant walks beside Haridas. "Where did you get these clothes?" he asks.

"From your rooms, son," Haridas replies.

"My rooms? You were to my rooms?" Basant licks his lips, considering what he is about next to say. "Was anything...amiss?" he asks, as casually as he can manage.

"I found them as you left them, son."

I hope you did not, Basant thinks. His mind churns with panic and with hope. What is going on? His knees feel weak. He sits and tries to catch his breath.

"Tell me what you did. Everything you did and everything you saw." Basant's reedy voice seems unusually tense; Haridas sees the panic in his eyes. He sits next to Basant, the clothes in a neat pile on his lap, and pats the eunuch's shoulder.

"When I woke, I saw you would need new clothing for the Audience today." (Both Prince Dara and Prince Aurangzeb would be attending the Emperor today, and the palace was aflutter at the prospect.) "So I went to fetch some clothes for you."

"Didn't the guards try to stop you?" Basant asks.

"They seemed a bit nervous, now you mention it, but I am well known in the Fish House, son. It is my great honor to be known as your servant, and people accord me the respect due the servant of a eunuch of the first rank, and so these guards were polite enough as soon as they recognized me."

"But did no one ask your business?" Haridas shakes his head. "No one challenged you?" Again he shakes his head. "No guards around my rooms?" Haridas looks uncertainly at Basant, but again shakes his head. "No bodies? No blood?" Basant blurts out at last.

Haridas sighs, as if suddenly relieved. "You are making a joke with me, son. You will have your fun with your old servant."

Basant holds his head in his hands and begins to laugh. Or perhaps to cry. He can no longer tell the difference. Haridas looks on, confused, his shaved head cocked at a quizzical angle, uncertain about what he should do.

At last Basant stands, and passes his plump palm over his face. He licks his lips and draws a deep breath. "Come, I need to bathe," he tells Haridas.



Twenty buckets of cold water later, Basant feels clean and sweet. His fresh clothes gleam in the brilliant morning sun, his jewels catch fire in its light.

The palace shines like a jeweled casket, the walls glisten like wet pearls, like diamonds: the jasper and carnelian embedded in its surfaces flash in the bright sun as he passes; the carvings in the marble, covered with silver leaf and gold, sparkle.

Basant hears the muezzin from the Moti Masjid, the second of the day's five calls to prayer but suddenly his call is overwhelmed by the harsh roar of war horns, the clash of cymbals, the booming of elephant drums, a thunderous cacophony. Basant stops where he is and begins to pray: touching his ears, touching his knees, even bowing (carefully) in the dusty street, but he cannot hear his own words: the force of the martial music drives all sound but its blaring from his brain.

It is the sound of Dara arriving: the Prince spent the night with his armies across the river, and now comes to his father's audience in full pomp. Basant scurries toward the Diwan-i-Am. Not only will he lose face if he is late for the arrival at the Hall of Public Audiece, but he wants to see the spectacle.

As he hurries into the courtyard of the Diwan-i-Am, the sights and sounds assault him with such immense profusion that all his worry disappates. Musicians by the hundreds spill in through the immense Delhi gate, pushing and shoving in enthusiastic confusion, and as they enter, the blare of their music echoes and reechoes through the courtyard, growing ever louder.

He sees the nobles and bureaucrats and a group of newly honored merchants (who have just received grants of land) crowding into the immense Diwan-i-Am. Though the hall is vast, designed to accommodate thousands, today there is scarcely an inch of space to be found. The crowd bumps and shoves so much that people drop from the edges of the dais in a constant human waterfall.

Finally all the musicians have entered: They blast their instruments mightily as they shove haphazard toward the edges of the courtyard. Behind them come row after row of riflemen, their matchlocks gleaming, their turbans ridiculously high (it is their regimental mark to wear those sensational turbans); next come five hundred horsemen, their energetic stallions prancing and pawing, crabbing sideways as they look for somewhere to stand.

The courtyard is already crowded with common folk: townspeople who have come to see the spectacle; they shove forward in a scramble to find a place, and the crush increases the sense of chaos. By contrast, the nobles stand on the dais near the throne softly clapping, but in the blare of the trumpets and drums and throaty cheering, no one hears them.

Mounted by fierce riders from the mountains and deserts of Rajputana, the war camels enter in stately ranks through the gates, small cannons gleaming on their humps.

One by one, the elephants enter as the cheers increase and the drums beat louder. Painted and caparisoned, stately and terrifying, heavy brass war spikes fixed to their brilliant tusks, the elephants are daunting, enormous; they lumber slowly as if utterly unconcerned by the noise and chaos.

At last Basant glimpses Dara, son of the Emperor, the heir to the Peacock throne, a regal figure on a gold and red velvet howdah carried by a giant Ceylon elephant; he looks like an angel, like a god; the sun explodes in radiance as it finds his brilliant golden turban laced with diamonds and rubies, and his face is no less radiant.

The common folk in the courtyard rush toward his elephant like bees to a flower: they drive through the honor guard in a frenzy; they call and wave as the music crescendos even louder. Dara is another Akbar, another Timur!

Dara throws gold coins from his howdah above them, and the people roar with delight and paw through the dust to catch them: the people call out Lord! and King!, but Dara in his splendor seems not to hear. His face is resolute, calm, almost bored as he motions his driver to guide his elephant closer to the hall.

Basant has been screaming Dara's name with the rest, though he has been unconscious of doing so. As the elephant moves with glacial pomp toward the hall, and bends its knees before the steps of the dais, the music stops and the crowd grows quiet. In the sudden silence, Dara slips gracefully from the howdah's height to land with a bouncy spring, like an athlete. With stately dignity he approaches his golden chair at the foot of his father's throne. The nobles on the dais, a sea of bobbing heads and faces, sweep their hands across the ground and motion toward him, heads bowed.

Dara slides through the crowd. His Rajput bodyguards push along beside him, pikes held sideways, clearing a path for the prince, but he pretends not to notice them, and instead walks closer to the crowding nobles, touching a hand here, a face there, smiling and nodding at everyone he sees. He moves with easy grace through the tumult of faces. When he reaches his golden chair, lifting his hands in humble acknowledgement of the nobles' presence, he sits gracefully and shuts his eyes, as if in contemplation.

Basant glances back to Dara's great Ceylon elephant. The mahout guides the beast away and a number of horses move toward the dais. Basant admires the richness of their livery: jeweled headpieces and saddle cloths, bright silver bridles, manes braided with gems. The riders, he supposes, are Dara's generals and advisors; but these were not the usual ones that Dara typically brings to an audience with the Emperor.

Basant recognizes few of the faces.

Then he sees one he knows.

No, he tells himself. But it's true.

A compact man slides from his horse and briskly mounts the dais. Basant recognizes not so much his face, but by his walk: he moves like a coiled spring. His dress is simpler than the others but no less elegant: few jewels (but large ones), simple cloth (but expensive). From his silk sash hangs a sword in a plain leather scabbard, its handle of ivory, not gold, and the ivory is brown with sweat from the times the sword had been used. And there's a dagger, a dagger in a sheath, and Basant knows the feel of both.

The general looks at Basant as he passes, and seems about to nod, then shakes his head subtly, as if he had made an error. But Basant's blood has frozen at the sight of him: Shaista Khan, the general; Shaista Khan, the seducer; Shaista Khan, the murderer.



A volley of trumpets rings out from the Delhi gate. Basant looks back; three lone horsemen ride toward the dais. Two are mounted on elaborately liveried stallions. Their silk jama robes flutter in the morning breeze, jeweled headpieces and sword hilts glitter in the sun. But on the dais, no one seems to notice their arrival. They dismount and wait for the third rider to come.

The last man rides in calmly, more slowly than the other two, his eyes lowered as if lost in thought and unaware of the tumult around him. From time to time he strokes his graying beard as if he were in a room somewhere by himself, lost in a book or in prayer.

At the steps of the dais he dismounts, cavalry style, kicking his leg in front of him, over his horse's neck with a hand on his sword hilt.

His white horse, so fiery and full of pride that now it can scarcely be led away by the attendant, wears no fancy livery, just a plain war bridle and simple saddle. Its rider too dresses simply: white cotton pants, white jama, white turban, plain shoes, a green belt with a simple wooden-handled sword in a green cloth scabbard, a sword such as any field soldier might carry.

It is Aurangzeb, Dara's brother, the Viceroy of the Deccan.

The Deccan is an unpleasant area, hot, volatile, a place that is always causing trouble. The Emperor Shah Jahan could not subdue it, Dara tried and failed; now it is Aurangzeb's fiefdom. But Aurangzeb, according to Dara's reports, cannot keep his fiefdom under control. Always the Emperor must turn to Dara to bail out Aurangzeb when things go wrong.

Aurangzeb is a man not given to pleasures; he is a man who copies out the Koran while he eats. Basant is glad this sour prince comes so rarely to the palace; he is like rain on a funeral.

Alone of all the princes, Dara, the emperor's favorite may sit in the Presence. Aurangzeb makes his careful way to stand beside his brother. At that same moment, the Emperor's musicians stream across the dais, raise their silver trumpets and blow a fanfare. Basant squeezes his bulk through the nobles crammed around the golden rail close to the Seat of the Presence, threading his way to the jali screens cut into the wall of the Diwan-i-Am.

The Emperor emerges through the golden doors of the Darshan platform. A cheer goes up from the nobles, who bow low from the waist and sweep their hands across the marble floor, bobbing up and down three times as is customary, and their cheers echo from the hall across the courtyard, and in the courtyard the common people join with shrill shouts, and then the soldiers and attendants begin to cheer as well as they catch sight of the King of the Earth, and even the mahoots strike their beasts just so, making the elephants stand on two legs and lift their trunks and bellow and trumpet with thunderous joy, and the whole courtyard seems to be a sea of wild and joyful noise.

The Emperor, leaning on the arm of his ancient Khwasjara steps to the edge of the darshan platform and turns his head slowly from right to left, sweeping the entire scene with his gaze Lowering himself to his cushioned throne (one of the lesser thrones, of course, as this is the hall of Public audience), he arranges the cushions to his satisfaction, spits his wad of pan into a jeweled spittoon held by a black eunuch boy, adjusts his clothes with the help of the Khwasjara, takes a leisurely draw on a hookah mouthpiece proffered to him by another black eunuch boy, and speaks to the Khwasjara, smoke pouring from his lips.

Basant pauses to watch them talk: the Khwasjara is Basant's boss and his mentor, a dry and shriveled eunuch the brothers call Master Hing. Then Basant looks away, and moves quickly toward his proper place, behind the jali screen, in purdah with his mistress the Princess Roshanara, hoping Master Hing won't notice that he hasn't been there to begin with. Master Hing's eyes are failing quickly, so Basant has little to fear. In fact, he is so caught up in the moment he has become much too confident, as though the events of the previous evening never happened.

Carefully Basant enters the dark purdah chamber, a wide but shallow room beside the throne room where harem women watch the goings-on in the Diwan-i-Am. He sees Roshanara, looking radiant as always. She has dressed simply: a maroon sari of heavy silk satin, its dark surface dense with gold embroidery. A few dozen ruby-studded bangles clunk heavily when she moves her arm. A gauze veil is fastened around her head with a rope of pearls the size of chickpeas. Her thick, long hair is pulled tight and sleek against her head; the part is stained with vermilion.

Her veil is so light, since she is hidden from public view by the intricately carved marble jali screen, that through it Basant can discern all of Roshanara's elegant features, her moon-round face, her charming nose, her small, even teeth. She glows to see him, and extends her hand to him. Even her arm is shapely, thinks Basant, as he gently takes her hand, and allows himself to be pulled to her side, like a favorite pet. He nestles in the cushions as she pulls her skirts around her, giving him room to sit close.

There are only a few other of women in this room; hostage wives mostly, who hope to catch a glimpse of a husband or a son while the audience goes on.

Roshanara leans over. "I can barely walk," she informs him. "It's as though I rode a camel all the night." Her eyes flash, only for him. "Bareback," she says with emphasis, her smooth teeth gleaming behind perfect lips. She sighs, with a soft but meaningful groan. Basant chokes back his feelings and forcing an agreeable expression, squeezes her hand. She giggles when she looks at him, then turns away and giggles some more. Basant feels his heart grow heavy and cold, but he says nothing, he just smiles and smiles.

Basant looks out through the jali screen at the spectacle in the audience hall, at the throbbing mass of people jostling beneath the rich velvet canopies embroidered with gold and semiprecious gems.

He has spent years pursuing a place amidst that grandeur, years desiring it, years seeking it, thinking of it as a dream he might someday gain; but he now sees it, for the first time, as something he might lose. The thought strikes him like a cold wind, just so. He sees that even the dear Princess will at best be part of his life only for a little while, and he wonders for how long that little while will be. His feelings stir within him, and he nearly kisses Roshanara's hand, but he masters himself, and allows himself simply to thrill at the touch of her fingers as she grasps his hand, as meaningless to her as stroking the fur of a pet cat.

She leans this way and that, trying for a better view. "There! There!" she whispers - it doesn't matter who hears her. "Do you see him? Isn't he beautiful?" Basant assumes that she is speaking of Shaista Khan; the thought galls him. But that vile man is nowhere to be seen - perhaps he has slipped behind one of the Dara's other generals.

Instead Roshanara is straining to get a better look at her brother...not Dara, sitting smugly on the golden chair at his father's feet, but rather at the modest face of Aurangzeb, who stands nearby, as a beggar might stand waiting for the bread thrown at the end of a royal procession.

"I think he's lovely. He looks well, don't you think Basant? He looks rested, in spite of his journey. He looks well in spite of the war. You know he sleeps on the bare ground in the battlefield, like a common soldier! But still he looks well!"

Basant glances at Aurangzeb, who seems to him simple and plain. "Oh yes, such a fine looking man," he says, "a lovely man." He's learned to agree promptly.

"Yes lovely, but more than lovely," she whispers, as if suddenly aware she has been speaking out loud. She glances around the room, and leans close to Basant's ear. "Have you heard? It's too wonderful. He's to be the next Emperor."

She looks at Basant knowingly; she glances at Aurangzeb and nods slowly. "Yes, dearest love. Dara is through." She whispers this to him quickly, looking at the other women in the room as if daring them to overhear. Then she leans back and giggles at Basant, whose mouth hangs open in surprise. "Yes it's true. All true."

She nods again, and moves her mouth so close that her sweet breath tickles his ear, "And sooner than you think!" Again she glances hastily around her. "So be ready," she says aloud. "Be ready."

Basant's eyes seems to bounce uncontrolled from the Princess, to Dara, to Aurangzeb, then back. He is more than startled; he is speechless. Dara is through? What can she mean?

Basant is too fearful of treason even to consider what this whispered news might mean. And as his troubled brain is sorting out her secrets, he peers through the jali at Aurangzeb who looks calmly downward as the ritual of the audience bustles all around him.

Then, as if he needed more confusion on this day, Basant sees the dark face of a tall man in a gray cloak staring at him, as though Basant's face were clearly visible in the black shadows behind the marble screen.

"Let's go," Roshanara unexpectedly tells Basant. Basant is used to these sudden changes: her mood spins like a tailless kite in the spring breeze. With some effort, he hoists himself from the cushions, then extends his hand to help Roshanara. He scoops up her outer veil and helps her drape it across her head, adjusting it so she can see through the eye-slit just so. When she is covered, they walk to the door opposite the jali, the door that leads from the purdah chamber to the private, inner palace of the Emperor.

Basant knocks and the bolt slides and the door swings open, revealing a tall dark eunuch guard, complete with shield and pike who nods them past. The climb is hard for Basant, who loses his breath easily: the steep, high stairs of the narrow passage designed for easy defense; the palace, after all, is but a small part of Agra's vast, impregnable fort.

Emerging breathless at the top of the staircase, where another dark and heavily armed guard indifferently nods them through, Basant notices that there are many guards today, positioned in clusters along the mezzanine of the Fish House: all of them watchful, all of them armed, and all of them eunuchs.

For a moment he feels a sense of panic...something bad is up. The image of the dead guards haunts him, flashing past his eyes so he cannot see his steps; he nearly stumbles. He glances at the door to his rooms across the mezzanine, trying to appear casual and unconcerned. Two eunuch guards stand there. He pretends not to notice. The Princess has been talking to him as they walk, he realizes, although he hasn't heard a word.

"I said there was some trouble here last night. Did you hear anything about it?" Basant tried to think what to say, but before he could answer, Roshanara had stopped in mid-stride and wheeled on him. "Well? Do you know anything about it?" she says again. Behind the dark and heavy outer veil, her eyes are angry and a bit scared.

"I think I must know very little, Princess," he replies.

"If you are in trouble, you must look to your own welfare, dear friend," she whispers fiercely. Some note in her voice, some look in her eyes disturbs Basant. His stomach churns as though he were staring into a deep, bottomless well. But Roshanara unexpectedly pats him on his shoulder, as if to comfort him, and he wonders if he had simply misunderstood.

"I need you to do a favor for me, Spring Blossom," she coos. "You are the only one I can trust in all the world. Will you make me beg?" It seems to Basant that he can actually hear her pouting.

"You know you have only to ask me. Anything," he answers, his voice strangely husky.

"I have a letter for my brother. For Aurangzeb. You must deliver it. Please my sweet darling say you will," she says. Her hand presses his plump fingers as they walk. How can he say no? "But, darling, you must promise: not here. Not where anyone can see."

"Where, then?"

"Cross the river. Take it to his camp, in the Rambagh." Her eyes stare out from the veil, pleading with him silently. Basant, of course, agrees.

She looks relieved. "When you see him, Basant, dear, tell him everything. Leave out nothing." She nods meaningfully to the guards around the Fish House, toward his heavily guarded rooms. "He can help you, or no one can."

"I'm not sure that I need help, Princess." But the lie falls from his lips and lands at his feet with a clang. Basant grows serious. "Besides, Little Rose, I can't see how even Aurangzeb can help me."

But now they were nearing the Diwan-i-Khas, the hall of private audience, and already many of Shah Jahan's closest advisors were gathering. It was here, not in the public audience downstairs, that the real issues would be discussed and real decisions would be made. Quickly Roshanara changes the subject. "It looks quite a crowd gathering, Basant," she remarks, casually. "Can you imagine why?"

"No, Princess," he answers, honestly mystified. He fears that somehow the answer has something to do with him, with the bloody deaths of the guards, with Shaista Khan, but they pass the Diwan-i-Khas and no one, not even the captain of the eunuch guards, seems to glance at him.

"Why are all these hijra here?" Roshanara wonders. Basant winces at the word: hijra was a commoner's word for eunuch, for eunuchs who dressed as women and did many unclean things, and it hurt Basant to hear the brothers called this name, especially by his Princess.

Like most of the brothers he preferred the gentler name, the politer, proper Muslim name, mukhunni. For the Prophet knew of eunuchs, and accepted them (not like the Hindis who drove them from their homes and forced them to live on the streets like dogs). So Basant worships at the Mosque, Basant says his prayers (when he manages to remember) with full confidence; he is one of Allah's mukhunni, one of Allah's own. The brothers like the word because it meant "short-tusked"; they like being compared to elephants.

Yet despite his annoyance at her use of the word, Basant wonders the same thing: What were all these eunuchs doing here? The eunuch guard had many formal functions, mostly to protect the harem in the imperial caravans. Rarely were eunuch guards seen in the palace, and never in such numbers.

He glances over the Princess's head, and sees far off that same tall gray-cloaked man he saw before now talking to the two eunuchs guarding his rooms. "Look," he whispers to Roshana. "Do you know that man?"

Roshanara looks over Basant's shoulder, but before she can answer, a small, dark eunuch boy in sumptuous clothing comes running up and grabs his hand. "Uncle, uncle," he pipes, tugging at Basant, "Please come quick. Master Khwasjara wants you right away. Come, come, uncle!" the boy insists.

"Go, my dear," Roshanara says sweetly. "Duty calls you. I am nearly at my room." The door to her apartments is but steps away. "Don't forget my mission for you, darling," she adds, nodding meaningfully. "Come and see me soon."

Basant allows himself to be dragged by the eunuch boy. "I will see you at the private audience if I can break away," he calls to her.

"If!" she replies and giggles.



The boy takes Basant's pudgy hand in his tiny, nervous fingers, fingers awash in jewels, baubles lent by Master Hing. Who has more jewels to lend than Hing? The Emperor is lavish in his gifts to the Khwasjara. And why not? When Hing dies, he leaves no heirs; all those gifts fall back in the Emperor's lap, just so. But the Khwasjara appears not to care: he is generous with his borrowed wealth, and lends it freely to his favorites.

The boy leads Basant across the chowk, a vast courtyard filled with sunlight that dances in the jets of a hundred laughing fountains. At last they come to a set of tall, stately doors and remove their jeweled slippers.

Together they enter the apartments of the Khwasjara, the most trusted of the Emperor's deputies, for he is the master of the Emperor's private life: his home, his harem, his meals, his leisure. Nowhere is the Emperor more vulnerable; and knowing this, the Emperor places his trust in one most fiercely incorruptible. For Shah Jahan, that one is Hing, the fading, wrinkled eunuch.

Basant frames a calm face for himself, though his mind is filled with turmoil. The boy holds his hand as they step into Hing's apartments.

In a makeshift circle on the floor of the main room, surrounded by cushions and pillows of rich velvet and much gold, a dozen eunuchs sit quietly surrounding their master.

Hing looks up. He wears heavy spectacles tied with satin ribbons around his head; these make his eyes seem to float beyond the plane of his wrinkled face, aged and scaled as an old lizard; his withered, wrinkled lips sneer around yellow teeth, worn and stained. He is old for a eunuch, for the brothers tend to die young. The odor of decay clings to his breath.

"How good of you to join us, Basant," he whispers, his voice like a rasp. "Please take your place."

Basant approaches with humility and deference; he is prepared to grovel, but has not yet felt the need to so. The eighth and tenth eunuchs of the first rank scuttle sideways, clearing room for him, and he sits between them.

"And these are extraordinary times, brothers," Hing says. His eyes, spectacled like fishbowls, sweep around the circle. "Last night two members of the Palace Guard went to the rooms of one the brothers, but they never returned." Basant shifts uncomfortably. No one looks at him.

"Basant!" Hing calls, lifting his wet, spectacled eyes. Basant bows his forehead as near to the floor as he can. "What do you know of what happened last night? Of the disturbances that alarmed the guards? Of their fate?"

Basant lifts his head. His chin begins to tremble. A twitching pops over his left eyelid. His groin is clammy with cold sweat.

He opens his mouth, but nothing emerges except a tight squeak. He's about to confess everything when Hing speaks for him:

"Nothing." Hing looks around the circle significantly. "Our brother knows nothing. For most of the night he was with the Princess. Giving her an energetic ride, no doubt, on the tongue camel."

Hing pauses to allow the snickers from the brothers to fade. "Then, for some reason - and heaven knows I don't want to know why - he spent what little was left of the evening in his servant's tent."

Hing glares at the circle as if inviting them all to share his cynical incredulity, and then his eyes rest calmly on Basant, staring deeply at him, as if directly into Basant's fearful heart.

"Perhaps he needed his servant's help to massage his exhausted tongue. If so, we must all be grateful for his present silence. There are other ways to become a eunuch of the first rank," he says coldly, "than with the fingers, or with the tongue."

"For example, with the ass," whispers one of the eunuchs, and though Hing scowls at them, it is clear he has no idea who has uttered this mockery.

"I mean, with the mind!" Hing retorts angrily. He glares at the brothers, but his eyes are too weak to see the hidden sneers: for what unites this brotherhood most, Basant knows, is its careful mocking of its master.

"So the eunuch guard is here, Rampfel," Hing continues, as if in answer to a question, "Until I feel confident in the Palace Guards again. There's an investigation under way. Until then, the Palace Guards are relieved. Understood?"

Rampfel, the fifth eunuch, bows his head. Then realizing how futile such a gesture maybe to half-blind Hing, he says quietly: "Yes, sir."

"Good," says Hing. "Anything suspicious - anything even slightly out of place - is to be reported to me at once. Or to Ali Khalil Khan, a man most trusted by me - he is a cousin of the Emperor." Clutching the dark eunuch boy's hand, Hing struggles to his feet. "You may all go."

Rampfel taps Basant's shoulder. "What do you think got into him?" he whispers. Basant shrugs, unable to think of anything except escaping from this uncomfortable place. Before he reaches the door, however, he hears the sound he has been dreading: "Basant! Come here!"

Turning with all the courage he can, Basant walks back to Hing, who stands unsteadily, leaning heavily on the eunuch boy. Rampfel hesitates for a moment, then catches up and joins Basant as he stands near Hing.

"I didn't ask for you, brother," Hing says to Rampfel coldly. "Never mind. You can stay." Hing turns his spectacled eyes to Basant and stares at him for a long time.

"You have such friends, my dear," the old eunuch says. "Such friends to care of you. Do you think you are fortunate in your friends? With such friends caring for you, you should take even more care, my dear." Basant stares back silently, uncertain how to respond. "Ah, yes," Hing continues, "You don't know what I mean. That's good. That's a good plan, not to know what I mean. I'm old and will be dead soon anyway." Hing shakes his head wearily and whispers to Rampfel, "Here's a brother you should cultivate, my dear. He has so many friends."

Then Hing turns to Basant, and asks, as if as an afterthought, "Tell me, Spring Blossom. Have you been to the tunnels lately?" The question surprises Basant, and he hesitates, causing Hing to lose patience. "Well? Have you?"

"No, sir." His answer sounds false, even to himself. "I nearly went last night, but..." He breaks off, uncertain of how to proceed.

"But?"

"But...I didn't. I didn't need to."

"No, of course. No need. All you needed was to clatter and clang through the Fish House. Do you think no one saw you?"

Basant stares at Hing helplessly, unable to speak. "I wouldn't know, sir," he mumbles.

"Rampfel, you see that you learn from this brother," Hing sneers. "To get along in life you need neither knowledge or friends. Just quick fingers, I suppose, and an agile tongue." Hing draws up so close that Basant sees with overwhelming clarity Hing's lined and spotted face, the eyes now huge in Hing's round spectacles. "There's a body in the well. Yes, a new body. Ask him," Hing says, nodding at Rampfel. "He found it. Found this morning." Hing's breath wheezes, the only sound in the room. "Well? Rampfel didn't put it there. Know anything about it? Ring any bells for you?"

Basant shakes his head.

"Well what about your precious Princess? Think she knows anything? Think she ever speculates? In between her climaxes, I mean?" Basant knows better than to answer. "Never mind," says Hing. "It's no one's fault. It's just a clerical error - a number that slipped into the wrong column and spoiled all the sums. I don't suppose we'll ever know who he is." He gives a long sigh; it smells musty, like air from a cave. "But who knows about the well, eh? No secret is more secret. You two, myself, perhaps one or two others. So how can there be a body in that secret well if none of us knows how it got there?"

Basant shakes his head, but even he notices the exquisite dark eunuch boy who holds Hing's hand. How much has he heard? How many other boys have stood in that same place, their turbans dripping with Hing's borrowed wealth? How many others have heard Hing's secrets, long after Hing has forgotten them? Until this moment, Basant has hated Master Hing, but trusted him. Suddenly he realizes that Hing is dangerous in many, many ways. He finds himself thinking of Hing's cryptic remarks, and wonders who his real friends are.

Hing shakes his head. "Go now. Surely you have better things to do than to listen to a pathetic old eunuch." He turns away, holding the eunuch boy. "All my friends will not desert me," Leaning on the eunuch boy, he walks away with slow and painful steps.

"What was that about?" whispers Rampfel when Hing is out of earshot. "Such nonsense! Did you understand anything he said?"

Basant shrugs. "I must join the Princess at the audience," he says.

Rampfel chatters on, hardly noticing how Basant has moved away. "I doubt that we will join you. The Princess Jahanara goes less and less. I think it saddens her to see what her father is becoming. Odd that your Princess Roshanara doesn't mind, eh? They are sisters, yet they are so different."

But by now Basant has slipped through the doorway to the chowk, leaving Rampfel standing by himself, as mystified as ever, and now insulted as well.



"Basant, what luck. May I walk with you, sir?"

Basant, somewhat blinded by the sunlight takes a moment to find the owner of that honey-smooth voice.

A tall man, exquisitely groomed, steps beside him. Basant sees the deep dark eyes, the trimmed beard, the silver turban. He sees the sweeping dark gray cloak that swirls majestically as the man matches Basant's padding footsteps with his smooth and flowing tread. "My name is Ali Khalil and I have the honor of being a distant relative of the Lord of Light himself, may he live in peace forever. Perhaps you have heard of me?"

Basant nods silently. His voice has suddenly fled. The man smiles, smooth lips pulling back to reveal pearl-white even teeth. "As chance would have it, I attended the rising of the Lord my cousin this morning, may his name endure forever. At that time I was asked to look into certain discrepancies that have caused our dear Lord some concern, may his light shine on us like a thousand suns. It seems that two guards disappeared last night while on duty, and no one knows where they have gone. Our lord is worried some treachery may be afoot, may he endure beloved forever. Unworthy as I am to receive the honor, it is my task to discover what may be discovered."

"Whatever help I can give is yours, uncle. You need only ask," Basant answers. He bows calmly, but his heart races. So this is the face of my death, he thinks. I'll be arrested instantly, then carted off and executed.

To his own surprise, Basant finds that he is calm. Perhaps he is too tired to care. All he feels is hunger. All he hopes is that he'll get a last meal before the end.

"I knew I could count on you, Basant," the man replies, all courtesy. With a beautifully manicured fingertip, he smoothes one of his moustaches. "Perhaps you know that there was a disturbance last night in the Machi Bahwan?" Basant is amused to hear the Fish House called by its proper name. "The guards thought it might have come from near your rooms."

Basant tries his best to look noncommittal. "What then?" he asks.

"What then indeed?" Ali Khalil, now stops completely, facing Basant. "There's a disturbance. The captain and another guard investigate. Then the captain and the guard disappear."

Ali Khalil's dark eyes stare calmly into Basant's round face. This is a contest, Basant thinks, and the first one to speak will be the loser. A glimmer of hope rises in his heart, and he wills himself to hold his tongue, that tongue which is the source of his troubles and his triumphs. He faces Khalil and stares back, silent.

In the end, it is Ali Khalil who speaks. "But then what could you know? You were, it appears, with the Princess Roshanara, for much of the night. And, if your servant is to be believed, you joined him at his tent near dawn." Basant says nothing: Silence, so far, has been his friend. "I thought that part odd," Khalil says. "To sleep in an old tent instead of the palace."

Basant says nothing. "It is as I thought," Khalil continues, satisfying himself with his own answers. "You had some business, but you are discreet. A eunuch of the first rank, I told myself, will keep his own counsel." Khalil inclines his head, inviting Basant to agree with this compliment.

Modestly, Basant nods. "I see I can have no secrets from such a one as you, Ali Khalil."

"You flatter me," Khalil says, bowing. "By the way, Basant, do you know anything about any tunnels in the palace?"

Basant's heart stops, but he tries as best he can to keep his face serene. "Tunnels, uncle? For what purpose, sir?"

"I can't imagine. The guards tell me that the eunuchs use secret tunnels to bring visitors - men - to the harem without being seen. Sounds like a lonely man's fantasy to me." Khalil laughs and with an inclination of his head invites Basant to laugh with him. Of course Basant joins in.

Still chuckling, Khalil bows deeply to Basant, more deeply, strictly speaking, than Basant deserves, and swirls away majestically, his dark gray cloak sweeping behind him, leaving Basant to stand squinting in the bright sunlight, like a rat smoked from its tunnel.

After watching him go, Basant turns his feet to the Diwan-i-Khas. He moves like a deer dazed by a hunter's near miss: not wounded, but confused. Basant hopes to see no more people today: he has had enough of people. His heart yearns for the safety and the quiet of the purdah chamber, for the gentle voice and hands of Roshanara. He hurries on.

He looks over the dais of the private audience hall as he passes it. The Diwan-i-Khas is like a jeweled miniature of the Public Audience hall. Only the greatest noblemen, those most dear to the Luminous Presence, may enter this pavilion, and see the King of the World seated on his Peacock Throne, the golden peacock's tail that spreads over his head so studded with jewels and gems that it seems about to collapse from its own weight. Within a silver railing stand those who have permission to speak; inside a golden railing those closest to Shah Jahan, his sons: Dara (who sits) and Aurangzeb (who stands), also his ministers and secretaries, and kneeling at the foot of the throne, his Vizier Assaf Khan, who truly controls the Empire in Shah Jahan's name.



Basant, having lived in the palace for nearly twenty years, thinks with some pride that he has become astute about affairs of state. Sadly, he is wrong. At this very moment a battle is raging in front of the Peacock Throne that will shape the nature of the Empire for the next fifty years. Basant, however, walks past it without a second glance; he hasn't even noticed.

Perhaps if the warriors wielded swords, Basant would see better the battle in its fury. But these two warriors use words as weapons only - Prince Dara, and Aurangzeb's general, Mir Jumla.

The heart of the matter is this: Each of Shah Jahan's four sons controls a quarter of the kingdom. That at least is the theory. In practice, Aurangzeb's quarter, the Deccan, might scarcely be said to belong to anyone at all.

Mir Jumla is angrily explaining the situation (supposedly to Shah Jahan, but actually to Assaf Khan, who will make the final decision). Ten years ago the Deccan belonged to Dara. In five years, Dara had all but lost it. The local kings first reduced their tribute, then stopped paying it altogether, then openly rebelled. Dara retreated, Jumla explains with flowery words, and became Viceroy of Bengal instead - a docile and agreeable place that gives little distress.

Aurangzeb was then made Viceroy of the Deccan. For five years he has set about winning back the lands that Dara lost. One by one the rebel kings have fallen, one by one, their tributes have returned.

The wealth of the Deccan, Jumla continues, has been underestimated. The wealth of some of those small kingdoms rivals all the rest of the Empire combined. Shah Jahan, hearing this, lifts an eyebrow skeptically.

It is time for Jumla to make his point. He calls for his servant to bring a box covered in black velvet. He takes the box, and with a sweeping bow, places it in Shah Jahan's quivering, outstretched hand. "From Aurangzeb and all your faithful servants," Jumla intones.

Shah Jahan fiddles with the small box, unfastening its clasps, and finally lifting the lid. His eyes grow wide. "It's not real," Shah Jahan whispers. He is too fascinated by the contents to notice Jumla's assurances that it is, indeed, real. At last, Shah Jahan with great delicacy lifts from its velvet casket a stone clear as glass, a diamond bigger than an egg, faceted and brilliant, the largest ever seen. Except for the startled gasps of some of the courtiers, the hall is silent, as they marvel at its size, its clarity, its fire.

"This jewel beyond price," Jumla says, "this diamond beyond compare, was captured by your son, Aurangzeb from the Golcondan king. It is named by the Golcondans Koh-i-noor, the mountain of light. And this gem is but a fraction of their treasure, a mere hint of the wealth of that kingdom." Shah Jahan seems lost in fascination (for he has already taken much opium that morning), but Assaf Khan is listening hard, as is Dara.

"Aurangzeb is now breaking down the very door of Golconda. Our armies have laid siege for months. Wealth such as you see is within inches of your fingertips."

Now Dara speaks, again pretending that the audience is Shah Jahan, but stealing obvious glances at Assaf Khan all the while. "But General, our dear friend the King of Golconda has written us. He begs to know why our brother Aurangzeb storms his gates. He has promised tribute and sued for peace. And what, we would know, should we tell that poor man? We are at a loss why our brother should attack a man so ready to yield. Unless his purpose is at odds with our dear father's?"

Aurangzeb stands silent on the other side of Shah Jahan, his head bowed slightly, his eyes half closed, as if praying. Mir Jumla responds "The Golcondan king thinks that he can get a better deal from you than from your brother." His eyes narrow. "I think he's right."

The courtiers nearby are shocked by this exchange, and expect that Shah Jahan will intervene, but the Emperor is so intrigued by the brilliance of his new plaything, he seems to hear nothing.

Dara, recovering, replies, "It is our father's will that all his dominions be at peace. Lift the siege at once."

Jumla responds, "When I hear it from your father's lips."

Dara answers, "We speak for him." Assaf Khan nods. Jumla expects the court to be shocked at this statement, but looking around discovers that Dara's assertion is not news.

Jumla glances at Aurangzeb for guidance. Perhaps he finds it in Aurangzeb's impassive face. He wheels on Dara angrily. "This is your will, Dara, not your father's. You are fearful of Aurangzeb and wish to spoil his victory. You fear his radiance will outshine yours."

Dara looks at Jumla, pleasantly, but slightly irritated, like a man tiring of the games of a favorite child. "General, you have been in the company of one who cares little for ceremony, and, in truth one who cares little for our father. He has proven this a hundred ways. Here in Agra, you would be wise to think before you speak."

At that moment, all the hall again grows quiet, anticipating some great outburst, some outpouring of emotion. Even Shah Jahan grows still; placing the Koh-i-noor in his lap, he looks up, slightly dazed.

Dara lifts his head, looking wise and confident. Jumla is about to reply, but he stops when Aurangzeb raises his head. Aurangzeb glances at his brother, and then looks away.

The courtiers shift their glances, from brother to brother, taking each man's measure. They look at Dara in his silks and jewels, the eldest, the favorite, and at Aurangzeb in his simple robe, the plainest of men.

Then Aurangzeb speaks. "I am but a beggar on this earth," he says quietly. "In this as in all things I will obey my father's will. Is it my father's will that is spoken, brother?"

"It is," Dara replies, looking directly at him. Again Aurangzeb shifts his gaze, and stares unblinking at some point in space, giving the appearance of someone disappointed and a bit sad.

"I would hear my father say so," Aurangzeb whispers, almost to himself. He looks to his father. The Emperor faces his youngest son with some confusion, then turns helplessly to Dara - who says nothing though his face seems full of rage - then to Assaf Khan.

Assaf Khan glances at the Emperor and speaks, "It is your father's will that the siege of Golcanda be raised." Shah Jahan eyes drift elsewhere. "As his Vizier, I speak with the Emperor's voice."

Aurangzeb nods. "I will then obey my Emperor." He looks around the room, glancing at the faces of the courtiers who stand, scarcely breathing, watching him with anxious fascination. He bows with excruciating slowness and taps the floor with his hands three times. He lifts his head, nods to Dara, then to the Vizier, and turns and walks slowly from the hall. Jumla follows, neither bowing or nodding. Dara seems dazed as he watches them go.

Basant enters the dark shelter of the purdah chamber. In the dim light he approaches Roshanara, kneeling on her cushions "What's going on?" he asks.

They stare through the jali at the scene in the audience hall. The nobles have begun to breathe again, and now are whispering with one another. Assaf Khan is speaking anxiously with Shah Jahan. Only Dara seems unaffected, sitting in his golden chair, alone; it seems odd to Basant that no one is talking with the prince. "What did I miss?" Basant asks again.

Roshanara turns to him, tears streaming from her eyes. To Basant's surprise, she throws herself on his shoulder and weeps. A bit embarrassed, he puts his plump arms around her and pats her back. "There, there," he whispers. "There, there." He doesn't know what else to do.

With Basant's chubby arms around her sleek shoulders, Princess Roshanara sobs like a child, pressing her moist face into the hollow of his neck.

For the first time that day Basant feels something other than dread. Holding the princess, Basant dreams: If only I could be rocked in one of those enormous swings, holding a woman in his arms.

Basant knows the touch of women on the boil, churning with the heat of their expectations. He knows them by the fierceness of their passion. He knows the smell and taste of their desire. He knows the thrashing and squealing, as they clench his head between their thighs and melt into moaning, throbbing delight.

But he never feels their softness, never feels their yielding, pliant bodies molding around him. Such gifts, thinks Basant, are what they save for men and not for beggars like me. For what has he, deformed and maimed, to offer a woman? Cut off a man's leg, and even though it is gone he can feel it itch. What happens if you cut off his lingam? Can it be that Basant feels something like desire? Is this why, when he holds Roshanara just so, he begins to dream of serving girls and pillows and swings?

Here is a secret he would never tell: sometimes he dreams of being Roshanara's husband, of being cradled in her arms (sometimes she is naked in these dreams; and sometimes so is he); and she feeds him sweet milk full of sugar from an ivory cup. Now his dream is close as he holds her. Thoughts of pleasure fill his head; he floats as on a cloud of some unnamable desire.

But sadly, his pleasure is short: He is not with some daydream but with the real Roshanara - and Roshanara shares no one's dreams. She twists out of his embrace and pushes him away. "Remember your place," she snaps, though his shirt is wet with her tears. "Come, fool. We have work to do."

The familiar twisting dread returns.

Roshanara wipes her eyes with the back of her hands, like a child. Basant gives her an encouraging, sympathetic nod, and she shoots back a devastating look as if to say, you do not see me in this condition. A princess does not cry and you, Basant, are a fool if you think I do.

She stands, smoothing her skirts. She flips back the gossamer veil that covers her face, and peers into a miniature mirror that she wears as a ring on her right thumb. Patting a wayward lock of hair, she scowls at her reflection. The kohl around her eyes is smeared.

Angrily she replaces the whisper-thin veil, and lifting the end of her sari over her head and face, strides to the door of the purdah room. The marble walls echo as the backs of her sandals clap against her heels. Without a word, she exits.

Basant, forlorn, forgotten, watches her shadow disappear through the door. He blinks and follows. A taste like acid burns the back of his throat, making his eyes water. A fool might say that I've been crying, he thinks.

They step into the light-drenched hallways of the harem. After the shadows of the purdah room, the bright sunlight of the seraglio bruises his weary eyes. The warming air is already heavy with damp smells of beauty - of hot bath water, of attar of roses and sandalwood oil, patchouli and musk. Soft breezes from the river carry the sweet breath of orange blossoms and the laughter of splashing water from the scented courtyard fountains. From someone's room float the hollow tones of a bamboo flute.

The harem is buzzing - maidservants, serving girls, eunuchs of the third and fourth ranks, all walking quickly here and there; ill-mannered children dash between them, giggling as the sour-faced grown-ups shout at them. The wives complain softly to their ladies-in-waiting, who turn and scold the maids, who scream at the serving-girls.

Basant is barely conscious of the scene - all his attention focuses on his fear and dread as he feels the stares of the eunuch guards burning the back of his head. Since these guards are suddenly important, brought in to cope with unknown danger, their eyes are especially watchful. And because they are eunuchs, laughed at by the regular guard, they are more watchful still.

The eunuch guards are everywhere, halting people, asking them embarrassing questions - acting in the same intrusive way that drove Shah Jahan to command their removal from the harem in the first place. The eunuch guards scrutinize even the Tartar women, Shah Jahan's most trusted guardians. It is clear from their pink, angry faces and bitter, unintelligible grumbling that the women despise the eunuchs guards.

In fact it seems to Basant, as he watches the comings and goings, that everyone and everything in the harem seems upset, off balance. He has never seen the harem like this. It would be hard for him to say exactly what strikes him as wrong. Perhaps it is only his own anxiety that he projects around him - yet it seems that every eye he sees darts fretfully away, every face turns furtively aside.

A sense of apprehension pervades each breath that Basant takes. Anxiety perfumes the air as though something terrible is about to happen.

Roshanara, walking purposefully, veiling her face with the sari - although here in the privacy of the zenena, veiling is unusual - moves quickly toward the wing of concubines of the first rank. Basant follows at her heels.

He can remember only one other time when he has seen her as deliberate and cold as this: she was playing cards one day, when suddenly she dropped her gentleness and giggles and coy remarks. The spirit of a hungry dog had entered her. Each deal fell her way - and with each new deal, she slapped her queen on the table, saying "Thus!" and won. It seemed to Basant that she shrieked the word. Those women never played cards with her again.

Why has Roshanara come here, he wonders. Whose rooms are these now? He steps tentatively inside, not abruptly the way Roshanara did.

In this room the world moves at a different speed. Sunbeams float through the room, lazily catching the incense smoke spiraling from braziers hanging from the ceiling, drifting to the polished marble floors.

Two young and beautiful women are bathing, assisted by attentive serving girls and eunuchs who at this moment are pouring salvers of steaming water over their heads and backs.

The sunlight glistens on their smooth bodies and dances in wisps of steam rising from their hair and shoulders. It sparkles on the surface of the bath water in the twin, swan-shaped tubs, on the girls who look impossibly beautiful. Basant feels like a dervish glimpsing paradise.

Though he has never entered these particular rooms before, Basant of course recognizes the two women who are bathing. They are Shah Jahan's favorite nautch girls, gifts from the Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar: twin sisters, barely sixteen, and though they are not identical, they are so similar in looks and temperament as to be indistinguishable.

I'd forgotten they moved in here, Basant thinks.

Their nautch names are Sun and Moon. The wags in the court call them Breakfast and Lunch. From all indications they are insatiable.

What a shame they are so stupid.

Around them Shah Jahan has no self-control. Master Hing loves to recount how the Emperor actually commanded that they both be brought to his bed at the same time. Hing, of course, was horrified, and although he expected to die for it, he refused to obey. Later - as Hing recounts at every opportunity -the Emperor apologized to him for this sinful lapse and sent to Hing a robe of honor for his steadfastness, and, no doubt, to buy his silence.

Hing subsequently had given vehement and explicit orders to assure such a scandalous act never occurred. Such a sinful act would destroy the Emperor's authority to govern.

Basant winces at the rude and disdainful greeting Roshanara gives the twins. The twins raise their sleepy beautiful faces to her - round, wet and innocent of any disturbing thoughts, or of any thought at all. Though the servants pointedly bow to Roshanara excessively long (one even says 'highness' very loudly, as if to give the sisters a hint), the two girls gape at her with their dark, blank eyes, giving no sign that they recognize her.

Without raising her voice, Roshanara commands all the servants from the room; they scramble to their feet and dash for the door before she finishes speaking. Then she turns and orders Basant to bring Tambula the apothecary to her immediately.

Basant is stunned, not only by the command, but by its unexpected tone - stately and demeaning. But he gathers his wits, and moves to obey. As he leaves, he looks back hopefully. Maybe she will call him back, say that she was only teasing her dear Spring Blossom - but as she turns with a scowl to the twins, Basant thinks she looks angry indeed.



He hurries down a long hallway, to the red sandstone archway that separates the harem from the rest of the palace. Guards patrol this gateway: on Basant's side of the gate stand eunuch guards who nod at him as he passes, on the other side stand a few of the now disfavored palace guard. Once he steps beneath the arch, a palace guard calls out "Hey! Hey you! Stop!" and drops his tasseled lance across Basant's path.

Basant toys with the idea of running. For a moment he remembers being five years old, with all his parts intact, and he wishes he had run then when he could run. Cursing silently, he halts.

"Aren't you Basant? Basant the eunuch?" the guard demands.

If he is to die, he will die well, Basant decides. "I have the honor to be a servant of the Emperor's household, a eunuch of the first rank, and I am personal attendant to Princess Roshanara Begum Gorkha, second daughter of the Emperor. By her am I called Basant, and by my friends."

"Right, that's enough," the guard sneers, unimpressed. "Wait here, hijra." The words land with a thud in Basant's ears, like heavy rocks heaved into a shallow pool.

Across the bright sunlit courtyard Basant sees a door open, and the guard who stopped him leads a familiar looking man toward him.

It takes Basant a moment, but then he remembers: It is that same man, Ali Khalil - the friend of Hing, the cousin of the Emperor, the pain in the ass. He looks the just the same as earlier, and Basant hates him for it, hates that he should be smiling and friendly and impeccably groomed when Basant sweats in cold panic.

"Good day, Basant," Khalil says, stepping toward him. They bow subtly to each other.

"He don't like that name," says the palace guard, pretending, as soldiers do everywhere, to be stupider than he really is. "That name be only for his friends, he says." The guard sneers at Basant with smug amusement.

Khalil thinks this over, and fixes the guard with his charming smile. "But you see, sergeant, I am his friend." And he beams radiantly at Basant. "Am I not your friend, Basant?"

Like it or not, Basant finds himself beaming back, thankful to have something to do besides perspire.

Basant notices that the other palace guards have moved closer. They are watching Khalil- waiting for his subtlest sign before stepping into action.

"How mysterious is fortune, Basant. That you should come this way at this time..." Khalil says, letting the thought drift off. Though he smiles his eyes look empty.

"Ali Khalil," Basant replies, giving the appearance, he hopes, of bored annoyance, "I am come on an errand at the order of my dear mistress, the Princess. Already she will be asking for me, awaiting my return - I dare not delay."

"Do me a service, Basant?" Though he phrases it as a question, Khalil speaks it almost like an order. He takes Basant's arm and draws him aside, pulling him away from the archway.

Khalil's hand on his arm feels hot, like the hand of a man hot with desire. Surely that's impossible! Basant thinks, as Khalil's hand moves over his arm with heavy strength.

Khalil puts his face close to Basant's ear. Basant can feel his smiling breath. "What a lot of trouble you have made for me," Khalil whispers, the words blowing warm and soft in his ear, like a caress. "And for yourself, Basant," Khalil whispers. The sound curls in Basant's ear like a snake.

Basant wants to flee, but where can he go? "Could you look at something with me?" Khalil says, peering into Basant's face with his glittering eyes and plaster smile. "It may be something that concerns you."

Basant's knees are shaking - actually shaking so much that he can feel his silken pant legs quivering.

"This way, Basant," Khalil says gently, and then he motions to his palace guards. They step forward, almost offhandedly forming themselves together into a tight unit. This subtle action nearly undoes Basant; he thinks he must collapse. Instead he walks beside Ali Khalil to a small storeroom not far from the archway. Khalil stands by the door while one of the guards slips forward and pushes it open.

A moist smell of damp wool emerges from the room, then the sour smell of old dust. The room is dark. "Show him," Khalil says, gesturing with his chin to something in the shadows on the floor of the storeroom. With a heave, two of the guards push the end of a big wet carpet through the door and into the sunlight. It lands in a tented heap in front of Basant's feet. A dark puddle forms beneath the wet carpet, spreading toward Basant's jeweled slippers.

"Seen this before?" Khalil asks.

It is the carpet from Basant's own room - a deep blue Persian carpet of Sarouk design. "Never," Basant replies.

"We fished it out of the moat this morning. Someone thought it might be yours," Khalil looks at him levelly.

"Someone is mistaken." Basant has lied for so many years that lying brings him comfort.

Khalil looks at him carefully, the way a man might watch a bubble, waiting for it to pop. Basant looks back, forcing his eyes to be soft, half-asleep. Whoever speaks next loses, Basant thinks.

"Well, that's what we told him. We looked in your room - the carpet's still there." Khalil seems embarrassed by the admission. "He said the one in your room was a new one." Basant sniffs, disdaining even to answer. Who is saying these things, he wonders, though he keeps his face blank. "Any ideas where this came from? How it ended up in the moat?" Khalil asks, almost pitifully. Basant shrugs. "Put it back," Khalil says to the guards.

"I'm stumped," Khalil confides. "Intruders in the harem last night. A guards captain and his lieutenant gone missing. A carpet in the moat..." his voice trails off. "The emperor so terrified of treachery that he removes his own guard in favor of the eunuch guards! Well, I don't expect you to help me. Sorry to trouble you." His smile is unchanged as ever, but there is a wan, defeated quality in his eyes. "I was sorry to hear about the death of your servant," Khalil adds. Basant stops in his tracks.

"Oh, you hadn't heard about it?" Khalil says, his eyes grave, though the plaster smile beams unchanged. "He died over there," he says to Basant's shocked look. "He fell down those stairs. They say he broke his neck."

Basant feels like a seedling ripped from the earth. "Haridas? When?" he croaks.

"A few hours ago. His family collected the body; he'll be buried in a few hours."

"He had no family."

Khalil seems not to hear. "You have good friends, Basant. You must be a particularly fine man. You'll get another servant. Be strong now. Be brave. All is almost over." Then Khalil steps back, and bows deeply to Basant, his sumptuous gray cloak slipping from his back and around his feet as he does so. Swirling his cloak back around him with a flourish, he quietly walks away.

The four palace guards look Basant up and down and then turn and follow Khalil down the hallway of the palace. Leaving Basant behind, quivering, gasping for breath, cold with sweat.

The herb gardens are not fifty yards away, but Basant fears to move, afraid that if they see him leaving, the guards will suddenly decide they really meant to arrest him all along.

In the neat gardens Basant sees Tambula's long, thin form bent over a row of tall plants.

At last entering the quiet herb garden, Basant allows himself to breathe. It seems he has hardly breathed all day. The garden air smells clean and ripe, full of tangy, pungent scents.

In the far corner Tambula picks carefully through the leaves of a row of plants held up by stakes and strings. He plucks and places them gently in one of a number of cloth sacks he has slung over his shoulder, dropping others less than perfect disdainfully to the ground. A eunuch about twelve years old stands nearby, holding out a wooden tray with mortar and pestle and an old, heavy book; Basant guesses this boy is Tambula's apprentice.

Basant and Tambula have been friends since childhood, since they were made brothers by the same slavemaster. They were sold to Master Hing at the same time, and they worked in the harem for many years together. Tambula had a keen mind and an infallible memory - unlike Basant, whose main talents are a pleasant demeanor and an artless willingness to whatever he is asked. So Tambula became apprentice to the imperial hakims. Ten years or so ago, Tambula, young though he was, became harem apothecary. Now of all the brothers in the harem, Tambula has the position of greatest trust. Only the Mir-Bakawal, the royal taster, has a post of greater trust, and he is not a brother and has never seen the inside of the harem. Tambula fears nothing.

Tambula straightens and lifts his chin in greeting. One of his two front teeth is much longer than the other, and gives him sweet and slightly dopey appearance, which, Basant knows, is entirely misleading but very appealing. Basant waves back, relieved for a moment to be in the midst of peaceful greenery, near a friendly face.

They exchange a few pleasantries, and almost immediately Basant tells him why he has come.

"But do you know what she wants, brother?" Tambula asks. "Is she ill? Fearful? Too sad or too happy? Are her menses uncomfortable?"

To each question Basant merely shakes his head and shrugs, unable to bear any delay. "Just come quickly, brother."

But Tambula moves slowly, carefully lifting each sack over his head and handing it gently to his apprentice, who sets the leaves tenderly on the marble walkway that surrounds the garden. Tambula then removes and folds his apron; he hands this to his apprentice as well.

Basant can barely contain himself. "Hurry, hurry," he says, glancing at the archway to the harem.

Tambula brushes the dust from his trousers and kicks the dry soil from his sandals. The apprentice brings him a fine old, wooden box: plain, about the size of a harmonium - the dark mahogany wood is rich with waxing - and he holds it out awkwardly to Tambula by its two silver handles - it seems heavy. Tambula throws back the lid and studies his portable apothecary kit - full of vials and potions arranged in neat rows of corked glass bottles. Running a jeweled finger across the display, he quickly tallies what he has and what he lacks.

"I have no rue," he says.

"Never mind, just come," Basant says. "We must hurry."

"It's for painful menses."

"It doesn't matter. Just hurry."

"But what if the princess has painful menses?"

"Send your boy if you must. We have no time to spare. Come quickly!" Basant insists. Tambula slips the embroidered strap over his head, and stands so the heavy apothecary box rests on his left hip.

Together they hurry back toward the concubines' quarters. Tambula long legs easily outpace Basant, who has to waddle extra fast to catch up.

"Sorry about your servant. I know how you loved him," Tambula mentions as they walk. "They brought me to him, you know. I was closest."

Basant can barely speak. "Did he suffer?"

"No, dear. He was dead when I got there. And the fall didn't kill him, you know. Somebody broke his neck for him and pushed him down the stairs. You could see his neck had been wrung like a washcloth."

Basant stops walking when he hears this. His world seems to go black. When he comes to himself, he has to run to catch up, and when he reaches Tambula's side once more, Basant is puffing hard.

"I could give you something to make you skinnier," Tambula offers.

"Perhaps some other time," Basant replies.

Never has Basant seen so many eunuch guards. All of them seem to be peering at him with accusing eyes. When they pass one, Basant positions Tambula between the guard and himself, and alters his pace carefully to keep himself hidden. But he knows he is being ridiculous; it is impossible to hide his quivering bulk behind the rail thin Tambula. Tambula looks at Basant quizzically.

They reach the door of Breakfast and Lunch. The scene is much as Basant left it: Roshanara is still standing near the two nautch girls, but they have left their baths and stand wrapped in muslin sheets.

The faces of Breakfast and Lunch, those empty-eyed faces so beautiful and serene a few moments ago now appear agitated and fearful. The twins cower together as Roshanara strides nearby, dark and powerful. Basant wonders what Roshanara could have said to frighten them so.

"Tambula!" Roshanara shouts, so angrily that Tambula is uncertain whether she was calling him, or simply furious at him. The princess then turns to Basant. "Fetch the servants," she says brusquely.

Basant bows, but Roshanara's attention is already elsewhere. She steps to a corner of the room and Tambula hurries to her side. She is already whispering to him fiercely when Basant steps out the door.

When he returns, he sees Roshanara watching imperiously as Breakfast and Lunch swallow potions handed to them by Tambula. They make wry, wrinkled faces and reach for cups of wine. With that Roshanara turns straight for Basant. "Now pay attention. This time nothing must go wrong. When these two...women are dressed, take them to the Diwan-i-Khas. Yes, the purdah room, of course. When they are done there, come to my room. I'll be writing a letter for you to take to Aurangzeb. Is that quite clear?"

It isn't until after Roshanara strides from the room, scowling, that Basant realizes he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with two nautch girls in the purdah room. He feels his cheeks growing hot and tears welling up in his eyes, but he refuses to let her see him cry.

He closes the door behind the princess, and turns back into the room. Tambula has come to his side. The apothecary's face is pale and his eyes are wide - Basant can see that Tambula too is shaken.

"I had no idea, brother," Tambula whispers hoarsely. "No idea at all. You are fortunate in your friends. Indeed, I hope you will remember our friendship in days to come." He seems to Basant almost to bow. "Even so, my dear, promise me that you will never say a word of this to Hing!"

"What can you mean, brother?"

"What if he finds out that I have had a part in this - the very act that he has so explicitly forbidden?" His face is ashen. "The princess is staking a lot on one throw of the dice." He gives a resigned shrug. "Anyway, I suppose my secret's safe enough with you. If things go wrong, I mean - why, you'd be the first one Hing would kill."

Tambula turns to watch the servants dress the twins, leaving Basant to sort this out as best he can.

"I've given them each dravanas," Tambula explains. "Double doses. Well triple doses, actually. I don't know what the Princess said to them, but whatever it was, I've never seen them so upset."

"What did she say to you?" Basant asks.

"You can imagine," Tambula answers, appearing disturbed just by the memory. "In any case, she was quite explicit about what I was to do with these two. They'll be as horny as lepers in a few minutes. Then you can take them to the purdah room." Tambula bites his lip. "I'm concerned they might have convulsions. I can't help them much if they do. I've never given anyone such big doses before. They're young, so they'll probably be all right. I'll just watch them for awhile, I think."

This day of dread gets no better, Basant thinks. Convulsions. He peers over at Tambula - Basant's eyes come just level with Tambula's folded arms. He notices that Tambula's hands have dark swellings, like thick pustules.

Tambula notices Basant's eyes on his hands. "Oh those," he says, as if answering the question Basant is too embarrassed to ask.

While they watch the twins being dressed and prepared by their serving girls, Tambula quietly tells Basant the story of those odd swellings. He speaks quietly and discreetly, slipping into Bengali, which all the brothers speak when secrecy is helpful.

It happened, Tambula says, after 'taj Mahal died - giving birth to their fourteenth child: what does that say about Shah Jahan's vigor? After a period of mourning, Shah Jahan called Tambula's predecessor, a eunuch hakim called Kela, for a consultation. At that time Tambula was Kela's apprentice.

Every man, of course, experiments with vardhanas at some point - every man wants to add an inch or two to the length of his lingam. But in this endeavor as in others Shah Jahan was determined to surpass all other men. He let Kela know he was prepared to tolerate any manner of torture to achieve his goal - to have the grandest lingam the world had ever seen.

Kela's method required enormous effort - Shah Jahan ended up lying face down in a hammock for more than a month. His lingam poked through a hole with lead weights suspended from its tip. The shaft Kela wrapped in wool soaked in mustard oil, into which he and Tambula had ground up the stingers of a thousand jalshuks. Since a man might swell up and die from a single jalshuk sting, Shah Jahan had to pay a rupee apiece for the brilliant green bugs.

Though they wrapped their hands in rags before they applied this ointment to Shah Jahan's lingam, no precaution was adequate. Touch even a few drops of the oil and their hands and fingers blistered and swelled to enormous size; and though they soaked their hands in dahi for hours, even that could not cool them. But Shah Jahan bore the treatment day after day, never sleeping for the pain, never uttering a sound.

At last, though more blistering oil was applied, the skin had become so thick and blackened that no more growth could be achieved.

For some weeks, the Emperor used to show the results to anyone who asked, and also to those who did not ask. Tambula says that the court called it the "Jahan-minar" - the tower of the world - just to please him.

Since Basant never saw it, Tambula describes it to him: The Emperor's lingam, is enormous - long and thick, but hideously misshapen; twisted, distorted, bulging and in some places black.

Nevertheless, the Emperor seemed delighted with the results. He only sees its size, says Tambula, not its deformity. Apparently he could make it function well enough, and that was the main thing.

He gave Kela a jama of honor and a casket of jewels. At that point Kela gave tearful goodbyes to all the brothers, and gave Tambula his apothecary box. Two days later he was dead. Shah Jahan could not bear thinking that Kela might help another man achieve such a masterwork. Tambula couldn't imagine who would want to attempt it.

Shah Jahan's wives and concubines quickly learned to bite back their horror at the Emperor's monstrosity: rather they learned to admire the results if they knew what was good for them.

As he listens to Tambula describe this lunacy, Basant wonders what Shah Jahan was like when 'taj Mahal was alive. He has only seen him as he appears now: old and sneering, overwhelmed by wine, opium, and endless vajikaranas. The brothers shake their heads when they speak of Shah Jahan and his drugs.

Basant asks Tambula about it. Tambula confirms the stories. Yes, Shah Jahan had congress thirty-two times in one night. Three or four times an hour! Think of it! Recently he collapsed on his eleventh partner and couldn't be roused, even with her screaming in his ear and the brothers rubbing ice on his hands and feet. Now Tambula's potions provide for only ten couplings.

"Why do you think I am so honored by the Emperor? He knows that no one can match my skill in vajikarna," Tambula says ruefully. "Without my help, he'd have a stalk like a limp radish."

Tambula speculates that all these drugs must be having an effect: He thinks that Shah Jahan's strength is being squeezed from his limbs and out through his lingam, leaving his organs shriveled and dry like dates. He and his apprentice like to guess about which woman will squeeze the last drop from Shah Jahan and toss his brittle husk aside.

And yet, Shah Jahan still rules the empire. Though he maybe is dying slowly, he rules, and wisely, and well, Basant thinks. The empire thrives, its people are happy. The beauty of Agra, of Lahore, of Shahjahanahabad; these reflect a sensibility and intelligence rarely seen in a king. Taxes are fair, he has been told, and collected with only minimal violence; justice is meted out with reason and charity - with only enough tortures and executions each week to make consequences apparent and memorable.

Basant likes to show a sophisticated interest in politics. But before he can consider matters further, as often happens, reality intrudes. The girls are dressed and ready, and showing no ill effects. Tambula places his long fingers first on the neck of one, then of the other, and pulls down their lower eyelids without a word. Appearing much relieved, he settles the phials in his apothecary case and slings it over his shoulder. "I've done enough damage here," he says. "Get them to a man fast or they'll attack each other. And pray to god he can stay hard for a month."

Turning to Basant as he leaves, he says, "You were right, brother - it wasn't her menses. I wonder if she even is a woman, the way she acts. Don't say I said so - though I imagine she'd take it as a compliment. Be careful, brother."



Basant soon finds himself walking the corridors of the harem with Breakfast and Lunch. At first they walk behind him, but they go so slowly that Basant makes them walk ahead of him.

At last they enter the purdah room. The girls' eyes are unfocussed, glazed, but burning with fierce, purposeful desire. They glide across the room arm in arm, heads close, whispering secrets to each other.

In the dim light that filters through the jali, perfectly visible through blouses of silk mesh, their heavy pearl necklaces slide across their perfect, perfumed breast -eyes dark and wild that both mock and invite; lips red and full, licked by nimble tongues; nipples painted with kumkum and opium; silk skirts whispering across sleek thighs.

The girls almost float to cushions at the edge of the jali screen, attracted by the light. Basant takes a seat in a darker corner, and nearly trips over the legs of someone already seated in the shadows.

It is Hing.

Basant mixes an apology and a greeting into an embarrassed confusion. "Well, well," Hing rasps, his red, rheumy eyes looking up at him through globe-like spectacles. "Spring Blossom, as I live and breathe. The very brother I wanted to see. And accompanied by two such fine-looking young women. Why are you with them, I wonder? Taking a step down, are we?" He casts a disdainful glance around the room. "Or maybe a step up."

"Let's see," Hing continues. "I gave my strictest orders that our beloved emperor is to be protected from his own oversized desires, to wit, one: No daytime visits from Breakfast and Lunch; two: Absolutely those two strumpets are to be kept out of the purdah room; three: Do not feed those animals aphrodisiacs before evening."

Basant feels like his head is being squeezed in a vice.

"But what have we here?" He looks around the room, as if surprised to find the twin nautch girls so close. "Really, how amusing you are, Spring Blossom. Why anyone might think you didn't care a fig for my orders."

Basant feels obliged to make some kind of defense, but he can't say a thing. Master Hing appears to enjoy Basant's discomfort.

"I am too old and sick, Basant. I enjoy so few things anymore." He stares at Basant with those wet, sick eyes. "You won't believe me, but it makes me laugh to see you gaping there. Makes me feel like a child again."

"So, darling, enjoy yourself. Disobey whenever you wish! Pay no attention to me." He looks seriously at Basant. "So little else amuses me." Hing's breath wheezes in the quiet room. "You see, that's the way of things these days. You can get by with almost anything if you amuse the right people."

Hing waves a shriveled, jewel-laden hand, and his eunuch boy suddenly appears from the shadows. He steps to Master Hing's side, and the feeble old eunuch begins the long process of standing. "I know better, Basant, than to be your enemy. You have too many friends now. I too shall be a friend. But, dear Spring Blossom, because I have been your master for so long, let me give you some advice: You would better have me as an enemy than a friend." He stares at Basant. "There now, which would you want me to be, my dear...your enemy or your friend?"

Basant scarcely knows what to say. "I would want you as my friend, Master, of course, unworthy though I am."

"Again you disregard my advice?" Hing retorts. "That's about what I should expect, Spring Blossom." "Look at this," Hing grimaces, gesturing toward the activity in the Diwan-i-Khas.

Among the nobles standing outside the silver rail, an attractive slim-hipped youth in a fine, sky-blue jama has stepped forward, calling upon Dara to recite. Dara agrees, glowing at the request until the youth turns aside, blushing. Without any preamble Dara starts to recite his latest work: a translation of the Hindu Upanishads into Persian. He lifts his head and closes his eyes, intoning his majestic words with artful solemnity. Those in attendance nod appreciatively, extending their hands at particularly poignant passages. Only about half of them understand Persian.

Shah Jahan looks as if he were about to be sick.

"Look at Dara, look!" Hing says. "Head over heels for a little boy who scarcely has a beard. Disgusting." Hing snorts. "In my day, a prince would be happy with his wife, or he'd take a concubine. Worse come to worse, he'd find a eunuch. What was wrong with that?" He scowls at Dara, shaking his head. "This modern custom of bringing your fancy boys to the palace - it makes me ill. And think of what he has given him - a mandsab of five thousand horses? For what, I ask you. For having long hands and a soft ass." He fixes Basant with a glare. "Remind you of anyone?"

Outside the jali, Dara lilts along in perfect Persian. Inside, Hing is struggling to stand. Basant puts a hand under his elbow, and Hing twists away. Then he relents. "I forgot you wanted me for a friend," he wheezes, offering his elbow. With Basant's help the old eunuch gets to his feet.

Hing is nearly to the door when he stops and looks down at Basant's feet. "Ever think about those shoes of yours, Spring Blossom? I think about my shoes, sometimes. Once I wore satin slippers. Now see! They are covered with jewels. Same as yours, my boy. I wear them wherever I want. I am the Khwasjara now, at least for a little while. The only place I remove my slippers is in the Emperor's own bedroom." He looks wryly at Basant. "And what about you? Where do you remove your slippers, Basant? At the Emperor's quarters, and at my door. And nowhere else! Think of that, Basant. What other people in this palace - slave, free, Princess or Prince, can say as much? We are so very fortunate, Basant. I thank Allah each day for my good luck."

He pauses, and Basant wonders if Hing might be dying. "How hard it is to be patient, Basant. Yet I would advise you to be patient. Though I am old, I still I have my teeth. Do you see?" He looks to Basant as if he wants pity. "I used to be young like you, my dear. Like this one, too," he adds, gazing at the sweet face of his bejeweled eunuch boy. Hing shuffles to the door. "Don't follow those girls when they leave the purdah room, not if you know what's good for you."

Before can Basant can answer, Hing has shuffled down the hallway.



The nautch girls sit next to the jali screen, snuggling close to the white marble, their heads cheek to cheek. Their hands caress each other through transparent silk.

And they are moaning.

Through the jali, Basant sees Shah Jahan's attention waver. He has heard the moans; of course: they were intended for his ears. The twin on the right slips her long, pink tongue through a space in the jali screen and wiggles it. Basant is amazed to see that it is long enough to pass clear through the cutouts of the white marble. The girls now can barely hold back their laughter. Their eyes glitter with the dreamy, manic light of opium and dravana.

Maybe Shah Jahan sees the moist red tip of that extraordinary tongue through the jali screen, or maybe his ears are tuned to the music of the moans and giggles of his favorites, or perhaps he senses their dark heat, which seems to spill through the jali and spread across the room like smoke.

Basant thinks, They'd never try it if Aurangzeb were around.

Even Dara can't restrain himself. He pauses in his endless recitation and reluctantly glances over to the jali screen; he looks away, clearly disturbed. Now all pretence of order in the hall has ceased; all eyes are fixed on that screen. Even the men around Dara stare at the jali with disgusted, envious fascination, trying to make out the shadows of Shah Jahan's women.

Without any explanation or fanfare, Shah Jahan stands. At his groin his pants tent out obviously, forcing everyone around to glance away embarrassed. Shah Jahan appears unconcerned. He leaves the velvet cushions of his throne and slips quickly through the door to his private apartments. He is gone with such suddenness, the pretty young eunuch boy who holds the peacock feather umbrella over his head must hurry to catch up.

A few alert courtiers manage to bow before Shah Jahan has entirely left the room, those less alert bow toward the door that closes behind him. Everyone in the room, however, shares a sense of gratitude that they no longer need to observe the Emperor's embarrassing behavior.

In the purdah room, behind the jali, the two sisters stand up to watch the Emperor head for his chambers. They nuzzle against each other, and then, unable to contain themselves, they kiss each other full on the lips, lingering long, tongues and teeth darting, gazing into each other's eyes; Then they leave the purdah room to join the Emperor. Basant watches with disgust and fascination. How much of what occurred was part of Roshanara's plan?

He heeds Hing's advice, and lets the girls go without following them.



When Basant enters her rooms, Roshanara is staring at the river, her back to him. Her hands play idly with something in her lap; Basant sees only a flash of gold and white - a miniature portrait. Of whom, he wonders. Without looking up, she dismisses her other servants, and asks him for a full report.

Basant sketches out the events. He speaks softly, barely loud enough for his voice to reach the princess's ears - someone might be listening.

As he speaks, he realizes that his feeling of dread and doom is growing. He finds it increasingly hard to speak. By the time he tells the story of the nautch girls and Dara's spoiled recitation, his throat is so tight his voice is husky and barely above a whisper. He just manages to tell the story of her father's exit before his voice seems to altogether fail him.

"My father. My father." She spits out the words, like a cobra spitting venom. And then Roshanara begins to shake with laughter. Or so it seems at first. But the shaking continues too long and Basant realizes that sobbing racks her slender body.

The sight of her tears overwhelms Basant; for a while he merely stares at her. His own troubles and uncertainties seem so ominous and large, but he realizes that something is working on Roshanara as well. He places a tentative hand on her shoulder. She turns to him, her face wet with tears.

"Basant," she says, her voice full of desperation, "do you love me?"

Basant blinks and his mouth drops. "Do you love me, Basant?" she demands. She clutches his pudgy hand.

"My princess, yes, of course!" He bends close to her. His voice is so husky, he wonders if she can hear him.

"Tell me. Tell me you do!"

"Of course, of course. How could you not know? I love you!" He strokes her dark hair. "I love you, little rose."

"Darling, darling," she whispers and kisses his hand. She has never done that before. Her eyes, dark as wet jasper, stare into his. "Would you still love me if I were bad, darling?" Basant uses his thumb to dry her tears on her cheek and shakes his head: the question is too ridiculous to answer. "I can be very bad, you know. I think I shall live in hell, I am so very bad." She grasps his fingers. Both their hands are wet with her tears. "Promise you will never stop loving me, no matter how bad I have to be."

Basant stares solemnly at Roshanara's anxious face. "I promise, Rose Blossom, oh my dear little rose, always, always, always."

"Darling, you must write a letter for me," she says when she has at last recovered her voice. Basant nods. He moves a small writing table near her and kneels before it. Taking a piece of paper, he chooses a quill pen from the table's storage drawer and dips its tip in the ink and waits.

Then she begins to dictate a letter. Basant transcribes her whispered words, which seem on their surface entirely benign - but of course he can guess for each a dozen deeper meanings.

When she is done, he dips his pen in the ink, but, she interrupts him. "Don't sign it!" she hisses. He nods, confused, and flips the paper over. "Don't address it!" she says. "And don't for heaven's sake seal it! Hide it. Give it to my brother only. Destroy it rather than let another read it!"

Basant places the letter in the folds of his shirt.

"Go quickly to my brother in the Rambagh. Take a palanquin." She crosses to him and pats his heart, where the letter lies hidden. "Go with God," she whispers. "Go with God." Basant is so touched he can barely respond.

"Remember!" she calls as he leaves her. "Remember the promise you made to your Rose Blossom!" For a moment he can't place the promise she refers to, but then he understands: to love her always, even if she is bad. Well, that shouldn't be too hard, he thinks. He lowers his head, walking from the room backward. He finds her maid-in-waiting outside the door, and tells her to have Roshanara's bearers ready a palanquin. He refuses to tell her the destination. While they are arguing, Basant looks up to see Roshanara slink through her door, head down. Keeping her eyes to the floor, she walks to the door of her father's chamber, like a condemned man going to the gallows.

She lifts her head to and looks to the door of the Khwabaga, her father's bedchamber, sighing deeply. The eunuch guards at the chamber door eye her uncertainly - she shouldn't be here, but she is the princess; what are they to do? Before they have time to act, she bursts forward and throws open the bedchamber door. Basant catches a glimpse of the Emperor, naked with the two nautch girls. Before he can blink, Roshanara slams the doors behind her.