Still holding the gem, Humayun returned to his chair to think. He sat brooding and alone until the sound of the court timekeeper, the ghariyali, striking his brass disc in the courtyard below to signal the end of his pahar — his watch — reminded him that night was falling.
This was his first major test, he realised, and he would rise to it. Whatever his personal feelings — at this moment he’d like to take all of his half-brothers by the neck in turn and throttle the life from them — he must do nothing rash, nothing to show that the plot had been betrayed. BabaYasaval’s request for a private audience would have been noticed. If only his grandfather Baisanghar, or his vizier Kasim, who had been one of his father’s most trusted advisers, were here. But the two older men had accompanied Babur’s funeral cortege to Kabul to oversee his burial there. They would not return for some months. His father had once spoken to him of the burden of kingship, the loneliness it brought. For the first time, Humayun was beginning to understand what Babur had meant. He knew that he and he alone must decide what to do, and until then he must keep his own counsel.
Feeling the need to calm himself, Humayun decided to pass the night with his favourite among his concubines — a pliant, full-mouthed, grey-eyed young woman from the mountains north of Kabul. With her silken skin and breasts like young pomegranates, Salima knew how to transport his body and patently enjoyed doing so. Perhaps her caresses would also help clear his mind and order his thoughts and thus lighten the road ahead, which seemed suddenly and ominously dark.