Unused to being spoken to in this manner—and from him, for whom she had sacrificed so much—Jahanara felt her own anger rising. Still, it would not do to show it. Not while there were any witnesses. She must remain the Begum Sahib.
“I know you have been”—his angry gaze darted about, presumably assessing who could hear him, as he at last lowered his voice—“meeting in secret. It will stop. Now.”
“But—”
“But?” he snarled. “You dare challenge my command?” he barked, grabbing her wrist in a painfully tight grip.
“No, I—”
“Good! Because I will take away your salaries and prerogatives. Do not think I won’t!”
“But, Dara! I—I—” she spluttered, tears of frustration welling. He’d not spoken to her like this since they were children.
“Don’t you ‘but Dara’ me! You presume too much! I cannot afford to ignore such behavior, now, when everyone already watches me. When courtly tongues already mutter of my weakness!”
His words alarmed her as much as everything he’d said thus far. She’d been so sure they’d put a stop to such talk, and Nadira had confirmed that her detractors had been silenced. “Who—”
He interrupted her once more, shaking his head. “It does not matter. They see their Sultan allowing, even encouraging, you in the discharge of duties that are more rightly Nadira’s, and find fault, calling me weak behind my back.”
He shut his eyes tight.
She was too angry to recognize the warning sign.
“It is not weakness, Sultan Al’Azam. It is only sensible—”
He cut her off once more, shaking her by the arm he held. “So you don’t deny that you have met with Salim, alone, and in secret?”
He must have taken the glance she cast at her hennaed toes for confirmation of his suspicions, because his next words struck cold fear deep in her heart: “I will send him away. Your willful disregard for how your wanton behavior would reflect on me might have cost me the throne, sister!”
“Wanton?” Jahanara protested. “I have done nothing—”
“Nothing?” he scoffed. “You have ruined m—”
“Dara!” Shouting his name stopped his tirade before it could truly begin, but she found her own tongue failing her, fearful of continuing, of what her anger might lead her to say. He’d always had difficulty with accepting that his thoughts on a matter might be incorrect, and woe to the man or woman who corrected him. There was much that might be used to wound him, and so little that would correct his mistaken impressions. He had not ordered her from his presence, yet, so there remained a chance to convince him. “I have done nothing to deserve such recriminations!”
He did not answer, only sat there, staring at her.
She could see his anger was so vast that it had stopped his ears, and tried again: “More importantly, your faithful friend and supporter, Salim Gadh Visa Yilmaz has only ever acted with all honor! He would never imperil your cause! These rumors are a poor reflection of what actually transpired.”
“And?” he asked at last, face so flushed and angry it dawned on her he might be on the verge of another fit.
“We did meet in secret,” she admitted, hoping to mollify his anger.
“Alone?” he demanded.
Jahanara nodded reluctantly but hurried on: “But only to ensure the secrecy of our discussions, Dara.”
He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “How could you be so stupid?! Can you not see how the appearance of impropriety is, for our purposes, as bad as the thing itself? No, I shall send him away and restrict your allowances…”
Knowing she must preserve Salim’s position at court, whatever the cost to herself, she pretended surrender. “I am sorry. I acted foolishly and dangerously. I will suffer whatever punishment you wish to levy upon me in silence, but do not banish Salim in our hour of need. It was I who organized the meeting between us, and did not tell him we would be alone. It is I who must be held responsible.”
His angry flush was, by now, impossibly dark. “And what was so important you could not discuss it with me…or even Nadira present?”
“Plans I hoped to keep from our enemies, Sultan Al’Azam.”
“You will make me ask again,” he said, eyes flashing dangerously as he pulled at her wrist.
“No, I—”
He struck her—or so she thought, at first. It was only as she was blinking away tears of pain that she began to understand what had happened. He was lying on the floor between his cushions, arms and legs spasming in what Priscilla termed a grand mal seizure. Her stunned brain working again, she realized his arm had twitched uncontrollably as the seizure began, savagely throwing the arm he’d held by the wrist into her face, striking her nose. She straightened, wishing she could check if the blow he’d struck her would leave a visible mark. After a single touch of her stinging nose, she put both pain and political concerns aside to order the nearest slave to fetch Rodney or Gervais.
Her brother’s seizure was already slowing by the time the woman, whose name escaped Jahanara, ran from the garden. While the woman was reliable, it would only require one moment’s slip of the tongue to unravel everything. She considered having the slave silenced, but had her hand stayed by the guilt she still carried over the murders she’d ordered in the first hours after Father’s death. She consoled herself with the knowledge that news of a falling out between the two of them was unlikely to be believed by their opponents, as long as Dara did not carry out his threat to order Salim into exile.
Hating the need, she sent another slave to fetch Nadira. His wife would not suffer Dara to commit such folly as he’d spoken of before collapsing.
She knelt next to Dara, praying for him, for herself, and, not for the first time, a change in the way that God saw fit to bind the threads of
