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roasted, water boiled, wine warmed. Their voices were subdued. A thickness hung around them. When one of them moved, on the sixth day after the Empress’s death, they all turned to him with some hope. He could do something. He was the Khan-i-khanan.
    Mahabat Khan was the Commander in Chief of Shah Jahan’s armies, in some senses the most powerful man in the Empire after the Emperor himself. He was a soldier, and the Empire, through all the years of its existence, had been forged by the sword, dyed by the blood of fallen princes and commoners, wrought into existence by wars and not diplomacy, and so Mahabat had more authority than the Grand Vizier himself, who was merely the Prime Minister of the Empire.
    He had tarried under the shade of the canvas awning of his square tent for six days, eating and drinking in the courtyard with the other nobles, as he awaited the summons from his Emperor. Now it finally came in the form of Ishaq Beg, Mir Saman, or Master of the Household, to Empress Mumtaz Mahal.
    “His Majesty commands your presence, Mirza Mahabat Khan,” Ishaq Beg said, standing behind Mahabat, to his right. From the corner of his eye, Mahabat saw that Ishaq Beg’s back was a little too stiff, the tilt of his chin too arrogant. He had not the demeanor of a man who had just lost his employer—and so his employ—and his very means of existence. The Khan-i-khanan set his wine goblet down on the table by his side and nodded. He rose, and the entire assembly of nobles around him rose also, their gazes firmly upon him as though he could tell them already what he would find when he entered their Emperor’s presence.
    Mahabat Khan rinsed his mouth with some water and waited while his servants combed back his hair, ran their hands over his shoulders and his peshwaz, straightening out creases and ironing wrinkles between their broad fingers.
    Ishaq Beg stood back, and when Mahabat passed him, he raised his eyes in a sly, almost condescending glance. Mahabat worried about that look all the way into the fort, beyond the Ahadis who parted to let him through, the eunuchs slinking in the outer reaches of the zenana, the stolid Kashmiri women who guarded the Emperor’s most private moments. These women were told to shield their tongues as jealously as they did their Emperor; one slip, one misplaced word, one frivolity and their tongues would be cut out. They were rewarded richly for their services and punished without a thought if they failed even a little in rendering those services. As Mahabat Khan approached Shah Jahan’s apartments within the fort on the banks of the Tapti, he could feel the coolness wafting from the river’s fragrant waters through an open window. He paused when a Kashmiri guard barred his way with her spear.
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    Despite his standing in the Empire, Mahabat Khan did not make a murmur as the guards searched him. They shook the turban from his head and, deftly holding the aigrette in place, fingered the folds of cloth. They ruffled his hair—a sliver of a blade could bring harm; his clothes were agitated, his cummerbund examined, the soles of his bare feet (he had removed his footwear outside the main entrance) rubbed. Then they stood aside, and Mahabat wondered if they had not been too meticulous in their search, if the other nobles commanded to his Majesty’s presence were subjected to a similar indignity each time. But then he also remembered his long and checkered past with his Emperor and thought briefly that if their positions had been reversed, he would not have trusted himself either.
    When he entered Shah Jahan’s chambers, Mahabat lingered, struck into blindness by the gloom around. The windows were all sealed with tightly woven khus mats, and silken drapes covered the edges to shut out all light. A breeze whirled around the room, caught and tossed about by the punkahs held by the fifteen slave girls standing in the corners and against the walls. There was a little light from a