He took her face in his hands and held it up to him. "You have as much strength as anyone, including Samad. And I want to get you away from here before your strength makes you do something foolish. I love you more than my own life." "And I love you. Like I've never loved anyone." "Not even the Great Moghul? When you were in his _zenana_?" She laughed. "You know that was very different. I was scarcely more than a girl then. I didn't know anything." "You learned a few things somewhere." He remembered the night past, still astonished. The way she had . . . "In the _zenana _you learn everything about lovemaking. But nothing about love." She rose and took his hand. Together they walked to the open portico of the palace. Around them the red pavilions were empty in the early sunshine. The morning was still, save for the cries of the green parrots who scurried across eaves and peered down impassively from weathered red railings and banisters. His gaze followed the wide arches, then turned to her dark shining hair. He reached out and stroked it. "Tell me more about it. How did you learn Turki?" "In the _zenana_. We had to learn it, even though Arangbar speaks perfect Persian." She turned to him. "And how did you learn to understand it?" "In a Turkish prison." He laughed. "It seems about the same to me. I had to learn it too." "Will you tell me about it? Why were you in prison?" "Like you, I had no choice. The Turks took a ship I was commanding, in the Mediterranean." "Tell me what happened." He stopped and looked at her. "All right. We'll trade. You tell me all about you and I'll tell you everything about me. We'll leave out nothing. Agreed?" She reached and kissed him. "Will you begin first?" CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The imminent wedding of Prince Allaudin and Princess Layla was a momentous event in the history of the Moghul empire. It represented the final merging of two dynasties. One, that of the Moghul Akman and his first son Arangbar, was in direct assent from the Mongols of the steppes who had conquered India by the sword less than a century before, melding under one rule a disorganized array of Muslim and Hindu states. The other dynasty, that of Queen Janahara, her Persian father Zainul Beg, her brother Nadir Sharif, and now her daughter Layla, represented a very different kind of conqueror. At court they were called, always in whispers, the "Persian junta."