The Feast of Roses Read Online Free PDF Page B

latches and peered around the door. He bowed when he saw the minister.
    “Please come in, huzoor. ” He lurched back to allow Mahabat in. “I will inform the master that you are here.”
    “No need to do that,” Mahabat said. “Tell me where he is.” As he spoke, the low dull throb of a tabla came to him from within the house. There was no music in accompaniment, just the sound of the drums.
    “The inner courtyard,” the boy replied.
    “Asleep?”
    “No, sire.”
    So Sharif could not sleep either. Mahabat slipped off his boots and found his way through the maze of corridors and courtyards to the private sanctum. Sharif’s wives were not there with him, or the slave boy would have mentioned this, and Sharif would have come out to meet Mahabat. He entered the courtyard, stopped, and then leaned against a pillar looking at Sharif.
    The Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire was lying back on a divan, head pillowed on a cushion, arms resting on his chest. His short, stocky legs barely reached the end of the divan. Everything in his posture suggested repose and ease, even sloth. His eyelids were hooded, he looked indolent, but Mahabat knew that this was merely a pose with Sharif.
    A slave girl, clad in thin muslin skirts, bodice, and veil, swayed to the rhythm of the tabla ’s beat. The tabla player sat behind one of the courtyard pillars, out of sight, the sound of his drums filling the heavy air. Slow, insistent, compelling. The girl was slim, not particularly pretty, her nose spread over her face. But what nature denied her, cosmetics embellished to something akin to beauty. Her eyes were outlined with kohl, giving them depth and breadth, her lips were reddened with carmine, henna flowers tattooed her hands and feet. Her body hardly seemed to move, yet the cadence of the drums filled her gestures. The sound surged around Mahabat. His breath wedged in his chest as her hand touched the front of her bodice, her fingers undoing one wood button, then another, then a third, sliding against raw blue silk. She turned away from the Grand Vizier, and as she did, she saw Mahabat.
    She stilled, then, her hips still swaying lightly, her gaze holding his, she pulled off the flimsy piece of muslin that covered her breasts, slipping her arms out of the sleeves. Young as she was, she had been taught her skills well. Mahabat laughed out loud, his voice hoarse with relief from the building tension. Under the bodice, the girl wore yet another piece of muslin barely covering her breasts. He could see it; Sharif, more intent on watching the girl’s baring back, could not. Mahabat clapped his hands. “Well done! You had me wondering too.” He looked at Sharif. Sweat dotted his forehead and shone on his upper lip, drenching the quill-thin line of hair he liked to call a moustache. Sharif’s nostrils flared at the interruption, and when his eyes swung to the cause of it, they were already glazed with the anger that was quick to come to him. Then he saw Mahabat, and his face settled into smooth lines.
    “Mahabat,” Sharif’s tone was reproachful. “In another minute—”
    “You would have seen nothing, my friend,” Mahabat said. He went up to the girl and turned her around, his hand warm on her shoulder.
    Then he dug into his cummerbund and flipped her three gold mohurs, the coins arcing through the air. Her hands flew, swift with practice, palms enclosing the coins, one after another. She bowed to the two men.
    Muhammad Sharif waved her away. “Do not go too far.” He turned to his friend. “And what brings you here?”
    Mahabat Khan crossed over the marble tiles of the courtyard and sat down on the divan next to Sharif. A goblet of wine appeared at his elbow. He dismissed the attendant with a hand, then nodded in the direction of the tabla player. The music stopped as the servants bowed their way out on soft feet. Mahabat picked up the goblet and stared into the wine.
    “Is this new Empress cause for concern, Sharif?”
    Surprise