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painters’ atelier in the fort. I wanted to see too.”
    Sharif watched as Mahabat rolled the portrait carefully and slipped it inside his qaba. “She is still just a woman.”
    “I wonder,” Mahabat said, exhaustion crumpling his sunbrowned face. The stubble of his unshaven beard was flecked with white. Age had come to Mahabat too, in the graying of his hair, in the lines on his face, only it did not matter so much. For he was a man, and his importance was not based on his physical appearance or the ability to bear children. Mahabat had the advantage of Emperor Jahangir’s ear. Now Mehrunnisa, Jahangir’s twentieth wife, had it too. He leaned back onto the divan. “Do you remember that Empress Jagat Gosini did not want her in the imperial harem?”
    They were silent, looking up at a low crescent moon still hanging over the horizon, stubbornly refusing to fade. Empress Jagat Gosini, Jahangir’s second wife, had met with Mahabat in secret, several times over, in the past few years, flaunting the rule that she not be seen by any man from the outside world. Mahabat had not actually seen her, although he had been close enough to touch her, to smell the essence of camellias in which she bathed, to see the flash of a smile under her veil. Every single meeting had been about Mehrunnisa.
    “How many years have passed since the Emperor first saw her?” Sharif asked.
    “The first time? Seventeen, I think,” Mahabat said. “She was seventeen then, not yet married to Ali Quli, although her betrothal had been finalized.”
    Sharif rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The Emperor tried to dissolve that betrothal. And did not succeed.”
    “And years later, he tried to invalidate her marriage.”
    And that was when Empress Jagat Gosini had come to Mahabat Khan for help. Mahabat, curious and intrigued at the summons, had responded. He had needed an ally in the imperial harem, for he knew that in fatigue or moments of weakness, a woman could get anything she wanted from a man. So Mahabat had gone to see what the Empress had had to say.
    The command had been a simple one. Make sure the Emperor forgets Mehrunnisa. He must not bring her into the royal harem. Mahabat had almost smiled that first time, thinking Jagat Gosini absurd, thinking himself half-witted to have agreed to meet her, risking disfavor from Jahangir. And all this over a romantic alliance; Mahabat had thought he was being commanded for some other reason—a political one, or something related to court matters—something in which he could be of use. Then he had paid heed as grants of land had been bestowed on Ghias Beg, for he was Mehrunnisa’s father. He had seen Jahangir’s unwavering resolve to marry Mehrunnisa even after her husband had killed Koka.
    Mahabat, Sharif, and Koka had grown up with Jahangir, brought into the imperial zenana to provide the young prince with male companionship. They had played together, slept in the same room, shared food from the same plate, untiring of this constant intimacy as only children can be. They were Jahangir’s closest friends, and when he had become Emperor he had rewarded them for their loyalty with governorships and ministries. Koka had wanted to go to Bengal as governor, and there, he had died at the hands of Mehrunnisa’s husband. To Sharif and Mahabat’s astonishment, it had only seemed to make Jahangir more determined to have her.
    Sharif, his eyes shut, asked softly, “Empress Jagat Gosini was right in not wanting her in the imperial harem?”
    “She said Mehrunnisa would be a threat even to us.”
    “Yet the Empress allowed this marriage to take place.”
    “Four years after her husband died, who could have foreseen that the Emperor would see Mehrunnisa in the palace bazaar and that he would marry her?” Mahabat smiled, though with a touch of cynicism. “His Majesty is not known for constancy, Sharif . . . so we grew slack too.”
    Sharif touched Mahabat’s chest with light fingers where the picture lay