[AGRA]
Nadir Sharif leaned uneasily against the rooftop railing of his sprawling riverside palace, above the second-floor zenana, and absently watched his Kabuli pigeons wing past the curve of the Jamuna River, headed toward the Red Fort. They swept over the heavy battlements at the river gate and then veered precisely upward, along the sheer eastern wall of the fort, until they reached the gold minaret atop the Jasmine Tower, the private quarters of Queen Janahara. They circled her tower once, then coalesced into a plumed spear driving directly upward toward the dawn-tinged cloud bank that hovered over Agra from the east.
Imported Kabuli pigeons, with their flawless white eyes and blue-tipped wings, were Nadir Sharifs secret joy. Unlike the inferior local breeds of the other devoted pigeon-fliers along the west bank of the Jamuna, Agra's palace-lined showplace, his Kabulis did not flit aimlessly from rooftop to rooftop on their daily morning flight. After he opened the shutters on their rooftop grillwork cage, they would trace a single circle of his palace, next wing past the Red Fort in a salute to the queen, then simply disappear into the infinite for fully half a day, returning as regally as they had first taken wing.
Nadir Sharif was the prime minister of the Moghul empire, the brother of Queen Janahara, and the father of Prince Jadar's favorite wife, Mumtaz. Even in the first light of dawn there was no mistaking he was Persian and proud. The early sun glanced off his finely woven gauze cape and quickened a warm glow in the gold thread laced through his yellow cloak and his pastel morning turban. His quick eyes, plump face, and graying moustache testified to his almost sixty years of life, thirty spent at the Moghul court as close adviser to Arangbar and, before that, to Arangbar's father, the great empire-builder Akman. In power and authority he was exceeded only by the Moghul himself.
Nadir Sharifs palace was deliberately situated next to the Red Fort, just around the broad curve of the Jamuna. The Red Fort, home of the Moghul, was a vast, rambling fortress whose river side towered over a hundred feet above the western curve of the Jamuna. From Nadir Sharifs rooftop the view of the river side of the fort and Arangbar's darshan window was unobstructed.
Darshan was the dawn appearance Arangbar made daily at a special balcony in the east wall of the Red Fort, next to the river gate. It was strict custom that the chief officials of Arangbar's court also appear daily, on a high platform just beneath the darshan balcony, where along with the Moghul they greeted the well-wishers who streamed in through the river gate and provided visual confirmation that India's rule was intact.