Free Shadow Princess by Indu Sundaresan

was, on the rocks that lay strewn over the thin lip of the island. Now that he was finally here, his haste cooled and his breathing slowed. For a few steps away, under the stone awning of the baradari, lay his mother, a woman who in life had enchanted him, as she had so many others, a woman who in death he had not yet had the time to mourn.
    The island in the middle of the pond in Zainabad Bagh was little more than a gathered mound of mud carted over in boats and flung on a bedrock of boulders and gravel that the Emperor’s engineers had carefully designed. The foundation for this island was so solid that a tiny pavilion had been built upon it—that had been the original intent of the island for Mumtaz Mahal—as a place of repose where she could lie down on a blistering afternoon with the breeze swinging through the open arches. As time passed, she opened her baradari to her husband, and they had a quiet dinner here on some evenings, with the slaves stacked against the baradari ’s pillars, or to her children when she brought them here to listen to music on moonlit nights or to the sounds of the dark—a partridge startled from its rest; a jackal’s brusque and childlike howl, intended to entice other animals to it for slaughter. And so, Dara, her favorite son, the one upon whose shoulder she had rested a light hand so often, had come here enough times to have accumulated memories only of Mumtaz Mahal.
    He remained where he was, his head bowed in prayer. When he looked up, over the steps of the pavilion and into it, he saw Nadira kneeling in front of the smooth, flat slab of marble that was his mother’s gravestone. Whereas the rest of Zainabad Bagh was quiet, here, on the island, there was the melodic beat of the imam ’s voice as he chanted verses from the Quran. Day and night, this sound rippled out over Mumtaz Mahal’s remains by the Emperor’s orders. Every man chosen for this task sat facing west, toward Mecca, his eyes lowered only to the Quran by his side, not daring to look at the sheet of icy white marble, even though there was nothing to be seen of the woman herself and she was long dead.
    Dara recognized the sura the imam was chanting and joined in, and he saw Nadira’s lips move in a like fashion. When the imam continued on, Dara slipped off his thin sandals and climbed into the baradari to kneel alongside his cousin.
    Nadira was nothing if not practical, and even in the sight and presence of the newly dead, as soon as Dara had settled himself and bowed to touch his head to the stone under which his mother rested, she said, “The Emperor wishes to give up his throne.”
    He paused in the act of straightening his back and then continued until he was vertical. Nadira had spoken in a low voice, hovering somewhere over a whisper, but he knew that no one could hear them. Dara knew also that, although they had both come to Zainabad Bagh and met at Mumtaz Mahal’s grave as though by chance, even if they were seen, like this, close to each other, their knees and thighs touching, there was nothing in the least inappropriate. Nadira was his cousin, his uncle Parviz’s daughter, and Parviz had been their father’s half brother. A brother, Dara conceded realistically, who had done little good in his life and had conveniently drunk himself to his death before the Mughal throne became vacant again. Even this little fact was in Nadira’s favor, and in the past year and a half, during the time they had been at Burhanpur, Dara had discovered anew this cousin of theirs who had been born here and brought up here, a woman, a girl, who knew nothing of politics and whom he would not have thought possessed of much intelligence. Until now.
    He did not question her statement. Here, finally, was a reason for the thick solitude and quiet that had surrounded them all in the past few days since his mother had died. Bapa was considering dispossessing himself of the crown of Hindustan, which he had fought so bitterly, and for so