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candle on a low table in the center, which flung shadows around. Mahabat took in all of this when his eyes had adjusted somewhat painfully from the glare of the outside. He heard the rustle of a woman’s skirts and saw the back length of a ghagara slip around the door to his right and a hand with glowing diamond rings pull the door shut, but not before she had hesitated for a while. The oldest princess, he thought, Jahanara Begam. Now they would all depend upon her, lean upon her slender shoulders for counsel, advice, strength. Who else was there? Satti Khanum, perhaps. But Satti, for all her intimacy with the members of the Emperor’s zenana, was in the end a retainer, and she would remain in that capacity. The Emperor’s own mother was dead; and he had not been close to his father’s other wives—especially Mehrunnisa, the last one—so which woman could help him carry his burdens other than this child of his?
    Mahabat then became aware that he had been lost in musing and had not yet been noticed by his Emperor. He peered around the room, his eyes going from the slaves at the walls (to whom he paid little attention; they were akin to the furniture) to the bed in the center of the room, which was empty, the two steps leading to a raised indoor verandah with arches that looked out over the Tapti. And here, leaning against a pillar, he found Shah Jahan clad in the white of mourning. Mahabat padded over the length of the room, and, as he approached his Emperor, he stopped and performed the chahar taslim, bending with some difficulty from his waist, laying his right hand on the ground and raising it to his forehead four times. When he had completed the salutation, he straightened his back with a groan, which he hoped was inaudible. Then he waited again, his gaze to the ground. He could not speak until Shah Jahan chose to begin the conversation.
    When his Emperor’s voice came to his ears, Mahabat felt a deep sense of shock.
    “You are here, Mahabat,” Shah Jahan said, so hoarse as to be almost inarticulate.
    “Yes, your Majesty. At your command, always.” And now Mahabat looked up at the man seated on the stone steps and felt his heart stop. Even in the room’s dimness, he could see the ravages of six days of constant weeping and no eating. Shah Jahan’s frame had wasted away, the skin was carved tightly over the bones of his face, his eyelids were swollen and puffy, and his back was stooped. But what astounded Mahabat the most was the white on his head and his face—almost overnight, or so it seemed to him, the Emperor’s hair had grayed. Mahabat would not have thought it possible if he had not seen this for himself. He almost reached out a hand to Shah Jahan’s clasped ones, then stayed that comforting action. What was he thinking? He could not dare to touch his sovereign.
    He could not speak any words of solace either. What could he say? That the Empress would be missed by all of them, that she had indeed been the brightest light in Shah Jahan’s palace, that her loss was so great as to cause them all grief? Mumtaz Mahal had been the most precious jewel in Shah Jahan’s zenana, and it was not Mahabat’s place to comment, even in such an innocuous manner, about a member of the imperial harem. This much he had learned well. Many years ago—frustrated, without paying heed to any advice—Mahabat had cautioned Emperor Jahangir about the immense power he was granting his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa. For his pains, he was trounced in a chess game by that Empress (and that still rankled) and sent to Kabul, a frozen fringe of the Empire, to serve as ‘governor.’ Mahabat Khan was a tired old man, now in his seventh decade, and no longer stupid. He kept quiet, his head bowed, his heart knocking against his rib cage.
    Finally, Shah Jahan spoke again. “I am going to give up the throne, Mahabat.”
    Caution was forgotten, etiquette damned.
    “You cannot, your Majesty,” Mahabat cried. “You are a young man yet,