But that road--east through bandit-infested Chopda to now-threatened Burhanpur, then north, the long road through Mandu, Ujjain, and Gwalior to Agra--was a journey of two hard months. The Moghul's seal meant less than nothing to highwaymen, or to servants and drivers whose loyalties were always for sale. It's a long road, Englishman, and mishaps on that road are common as summer mildew. He smiled to himself and took up the other silver-trimmed bamboo tube. It had arrived by the same runner. The date on the outside was one week old. It always amazed Mukarrab Khan that India's runners, the Mewras, were actually swifter than post horses. This message had traveled the three hundred _kos _south from Agra to Burhanpur and then the remaining hundred and fifty _kos _west to Surat--a combined distance of almost seven hundred English miles--in only seven days. Runners were stationed at posts spaced five _kos _apart along the great road that Akman had built to link Agra to the seaport of Surat. They wore an identifying plume at their head and two bells at their belt, and they gained energy by eating _postibangh_, a mixture of opium and hemp extract. Akman even conceived of lining the sides of the road with white stones so his Mewras could run in darkest midnight without lanterns. There were now some four thousand runners stationed along India's five main arteries. The only things swifter, Mukarrab Khan had often told himself, are lightning . . . and a blue, white-throated Rath pigeon. A distance requiring a full day for a runner could be covered by a pigeon in one _pahar_, three hours, given good weather. Arangbar kept pigeons all over India, even in Surat--but then so did everyone else at court. Recently, it seemed, everyone was training pigeons. Next to the date was the seal of Nadir Sharif, prime minister and brother of the queen. Mukarrab Khan knew Nadir Sharif well. A dispatch from Nadir Sharif, though it always reflected the wishes of the Moghul or the queen, could be relied upon to be reasonable. If the Moghul in fury condemned a man over some trivial transgression, Nadir Sharif always forgot to deliver the sentence until the next day, having found that Arangbar often tended to reverse sentences of death when musing in his evening wine cups. This order will be reasonable, Mukarrab Khan told himself, but it will have to be obeyed, eventually.