Three hours later, Humayun lay back naked against a silk-covered bolster in Salima’s room in the haram. His muscular body, scarred as befitted a tested warrior, gleamed with the almond oil she had teasingly massaged into his skin until, unable to wait a moment longer, he had pulled her to him. Her robe of transparent pale yellow muslin — a product of Humayun’s new lands where weavers spun cloth of such delicacy they gave it names like ‘breath of wind’ or ‘dawn dew’ — lay discarded on the flower-patterned carpet. Though the pleasure Salima had given him and her response to him had been as intense as ever and Humayun had relaxed, his mind kept drifting back to Baba Yasaval’s revelations, re-igniting his anger and frustration.

‘Bring me some rosewater to drink, Salima, please.’

She returned moments later with a silver cup inlaid with roundels of rose quartz. The water — chilled by ice carried down in huge slabs from the northern mountains by camel trains — smelled good. From a small wooden box beside the bed, Humayun extracted some opium pellets and dropped them into the cup, where they dissolved in a milky swirl.

‘Drink.’ He raised the cup to Salima’s lips and watched her swallow. He wished her to share his pleasure, but somewhat to his shame he also had another purpose in doing so. His father had nearly died when Buwa — mother of his defeated enemy Sultan Ibrahim — had tried to poison him in revenge for the death of her son. Since then, Humayun had been wary of anything untasted by others. .

‘Here, Majesty.’ Salima, lips lusciously moist with rosewater, kissed him and handed him the cup. He drank deeply, willing the opium that in recent weeks had helped blunt his grief and lessen his anxieties to do its work, uncoiling softly through his mind and carrying him to pleasurable oblivion.