"To understand the trouble now, you must understand about the queen. Her story is almost amazing, and already legends are growing around her. It's said she was born the day her father, Zainul Beg, left Persia as an adventurer bound for India. He ordered her abandoned in the sun to die, but after the caravan traveled on his wife lamented for the baby so much he decided to return for her. Although the sun was intense, they found her still alive. It's said a cobra was shading her with his hood." Shirin turned to Hawksworth, her dark eyes seeming to snap. "Can you believe such a story?" "No. It sounds like a fable." "Neither can I. But half the people in India do. Her father finally reached Lahore, the city in India where Akman was staying, and managed to enter his service. Like any Persian he did very well, and before long Akman gave him a _mansab _rank of three hundred _zat_. His wife and daughter were allowed to come and go among the palace women. Then, when she was seventeen, this little Persian girl of the cobra began her plan. She repeatedly threw herself across the path of the Moghul's son Arangbar, whom she rightly guessed would be next in line for the throne. He was no match for her, and now people say she won his heart before he knew it himself. My own belief is she cast a spell on him." "And he married her?" "Of course not. Akman was no fool. He knew she was a schemer, and when he saw what she was doing he immediately had her married to a Persian general named Sher Afgan, whom he then appointed governor of Bengal, a province in the distant east of India. Akman died a few years after that, still thinking he had saved Arangbar from her, but he hadn't counted on the spell." "So how did she get back to Agra, and become queen?" "That part I know very well." Shirin laughed bitterly. "I was there. You see, Arangbar never forgot his Persian cobra girl, even after he became Moghul himself. And he found a way to get her back. One day he announced he was receiving reports of unrest in Bengal, where Sher Afgan was still governor, and he summoned the governor to Agra to explain. When no answer came, he sent troops. Nobody knows what happened, but the story was given out that Sher Afgan drew a sword on Arangbar's men. Perhaps he did. They say he was impulsive. But the Imperial troops cut him down. Then Arangbar ordered Sher Afgan's Persian wife and her little daughter, Layla, back to Agra and put them under the protection of his mother, the dowager queen. Then, just as we'd all predicted, he married her. At first he was going to put her in the _zenana_, the harem, but she refused. She demanded to be made his queen, an equal. And that's what he did. Except now she's actually more. She's the real ruler of India." "And you were in the harem, the _zenana_, then?" Hawksworth decided to gamble on the story he had heard.