He immediately recognized it as one of the birds he kept stationed in Gwalior, his last pigeon stage en route to Agra from the south. The cylinder bound to its leg, however, was not one of his own. Imprinted on its silver cap was the seal of the new Portuguese Viceroy of Goa, Miguel Vaijantes. Nadir Sharif waited patiently for the pigeon to drink. He knew well the rewards of patience. He had waited patiently, studying the _feringhi_, for a full week. And he had learned almost all he needed to know. The Englishman had been invited to durbar every day since his arrival. Arangbar was diverted by his stories and bemused by his rustic gifts. (The only gift that had not entertained Arangbar was the book of maps he had wheedled out of the Englishman, which upon inspection showed India as something far less than the greatest continent on the globe. But Arangbar found the map's rendering of India's coastline to be sufficiently naive to cast the accuracy of the entire book into question.) This was the first _feringhi _Arangbar had ever met who could speak Turkish and understand his native Turki, and the Moghul rejoiced in being able to snub the Jesuits and dispense with their services as translators. But most of all, Arangbar loved to challenge the Englishman to drinking bouts, as night after night they matched cups in the _Diwan-i-Khas _until near midnight. As Arangbar and the Englishman drew closer, the Jesuits had grown distraught to near madness. The hard-drinking Englishman bragged of the East India Company and its bold plans for trade, of the old Levant Company and its disputes with Spain over Mediterranean routes, of English privateering in the West Indies. Of everything . . . except when the next voyage would come. Nadir Sharif had listened closely to their expansive talk all those nights, and he had finally deciphered to his own satisfaction the answer to the question uppermost in Arangbar's mind. The Englishman is bluffing. England has no fleet. At least no fleet that can ever hope to threaten Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean. There'll be no more voyages, and no more presents, for at least a year. The Englishman is living a fool's dream. When his European presents are gone, and he's spent what's left of his money buying jewels and gifts for the Moghul, he'll be dropped from court. Arangbar plays him like a puppet, always hinting the _firman _will be ready tomorrow. But there'll be no _firman _unless Arangbar can be convinced the English king is powerful enough to protect Indian shipping from Portuguese reprisals at sea. And this the English clearly cannot do. At least not now, not without a fleet. The Englishman is living on borrowed time. And I'm beginning to think he suspects it himself. He drinks more than a man in his place should. He's always able to stay in control, but just barely. If Arangbar were not always drunk himself, he would have noticed it also.