"Two," said Rojire. "What shall I put in them?"
Sanat Ji Mani paused thoughtfully, considering the gems he had stored in his simple wooden chest. "Perhaps the chalcedony egg and the pale-blue sapphire, the one with the elongated star; it is impressive and the color is unusual," he said at last. "Yes, that should complete the offering well enough."
"The sapphire is a fine gift on its own," said Rojire.
"Yes. And the Sultan will know that, when the box is finally presented to him." Sanat Ji Mani ran his hands through his hair, this action acknowledging the increasing heat.
"You may rouse the jealousy in many of the Sultan's relatives, and your generosity may cost you dearly," Rojire warned.
"It is a risk I am prepared to take," said Sanat Ji Mani, nodding to show he understood. "I will bathe when I have rested, and then I suppose I must prepare for my meeting with the Sultan's kinsman. I will need to decide how best to present myself. Firuz Ihbal is not a man to stint on ceremony."
"Particularly when the ceremony adds to his wealth," said Rojire sharply.
"True enough," Sanat Ji Mani agreed.
"And you are willing to make concessions to him," Rojire accused.
"As long as we are foreigners here, of course I am willing," said Sanat Ji Mani. "I am grateful to you for bearing my indignation, old friend. Otherwise, I might not be able to speak to that rogue Firuz Ihbal without being galled."
"I am pleased to be of service," said Rojire sarcastically. "I would prefer to waken you to the hazard of your circumstances."
"Oh, do not fear: I know them well enough. Yet I am grateful for your concern on my behalf." Sanat Ji Mani looked around the chamber. "It would be unfortunate if the Sultan should receive an unfavorable report of me. He may be a weak man, but that makes him dangerous, for he is more likely to strike out than a stronger man; he
would need to see proof of his power as another, confident of having it, would not. I, being a foreigner, am weaker than he by definition, and therefore I am apt to be a target of his spite." He glanced toward the door. "Avasa Dani is supposed to come this afternoon."
Rojire nodded, aware that Sanat Ji Mani would not discuss the Sultan any longer. "I will have her taken to the library."
"Yes; if you will." He sighed once. "If only all this were easier," he said quietly.
"How do you mean easier?" Rojire asked, trying to keep any criticism out of his question.
"I mean that we are hemmed about with sets of laws and customs on all sides, and often they contradict one another; what the Hindu accepts, the Moslem will not; what the Buddhist venerates appalls the Zarathustran. We, being foreigners, and no part of any of their causes, are caught between them all." He turned toward Rojire. "Oh, I know, I know. We could return to the West, or go east, into China. It might be safer to leave while we can, or it might be changing one set of difficulties for another. But the very things I chafe against also interest me. There is a vitality here that commands my interest, and a satisfaction that makes me endure the difficulties. Difficulties are everywhere."
"True enough," said Rojire. "But you are willing to accept more of them than most."
"Because one of my nature must," Sanat Ji Mani reminded him. "I have not the luxury of the living, to be at home among humanity."
Rojire shook his head. "No one knows."
"I should hope not," Sanat Ji Mani said with feeling. "Avasa Dani may guess, but even she is not certain." He stared at the windows. "I will retire now. If I am not awake by noon, rouse me."
"Noon. I will," said Rojire, continuing to prepare the box with its gifts.
As he went to the door, Sanat Ji Mani said, "You are very patient with me, old friend. I am most grateful, but occasionally I wonder why."
"Whom else should I serve in this world, my master?" Rojire asked mildly.
"You might not need to serve at all," Sanat Ji Mani pointed out.
"Possibly," said Rojire. "But it is my habit, and a task I know how to perform, and it pleases me to think myself useful. You ask none of the questions any other master would: you know why I never age, and why I eat only raw meat." He took a step back from the table. "I don't know what to make of these fits of humility you sometimes indulge in."
Sanat Ji Mani laughed once. "Yes, they are fits, are they not, my friend?" He managed a rueful smile.
"There is no other way to describe them," said Rojire. "Go. Rest. You will be more yourself when you waken."
"That I will," said Sanat Ji Mani, and went down the narrow stairs into the cool, dim recesses of his great house. His private quarters were at the rear of the building, shaded by the upper floor, and somewhat apart from the rest of the house. A sitting room made for receiving guests, elegantly furnished with fine woods and glowing silks, was the first of a suite of three rooms; the second contained a small Roman bath, ten hand-spans deep, ornamented with mosaic tiles and elaborate brass fittings as well as a marble couch beside the pool piled with pillows and cushions for resting after bathing; the third was his bedroom, and it was as austere as the other rooms were lavish: a narrow bed atop a long chest of his native earth and an old red-lacquer chest were the only objects in the room, which was significantly smaller than the other two. No paintings adorned the walls, no carpet lay on the floor. The small window over the bed was screened with woven reeds, reducing the illumination to twilight. Three clothes-hooks on the back of the door were simple, utilitarian objects, where Sanat Ji Mani hung his kalasiris before he climbed onto his bed and pulled the single cotton sheet up to his chin. In a moment he had fallen into a profound slumber that was more like dying than rest.
By noon all Delhi sweltered; in the markets the vendors pulled down the curtains of their stalls and began the mid-day rest after the followers of Islam had completed their prayers. Near the river half a dozen gangs of older children left off their rough-housing to seek the shade of the trees along the bank, where asses drowsed, their long ears drooping in the stultifying heat. A humming stillness enveloped the city under the remorseless glare of the sun.
In his chamber, Sanat Ji Mani wakened easily and suddenly, alert without being alarmed. He rose, went into the outer room, and took a loose Roman dalmatica of black cotton from his clothes-chest, tugging it on over his head as he made his way to his bath, a mosaic-lined room with high, shaded windows and a large polished-granite bathing-pool sunk into a foundation of his native earth. He stood on the edge of the pool for a short while, his dark eyes fixed on the middle-distance. Then he removed the dalmatica and let himself into the pool, welcoming the still waters as they rose half-way up his chest. He extended his arms and leaned back, floating on the tepid water in the pleasant gloom of the bath-chamber; as he rested in the stillness, he thought about his present situation and considered the possibilities open to him: he could leave Delhi and go any number of places; he could remain in Delhi and continue to accommodate the increasingly greedy demands of the Sultan's deputies; he could join the caravan he and Rustam Iniattir were assembling, leave the city, and return to it; he could venture deeper into India, toward the south where the Sultans had not conquered and where he might find a more congenial place to settle for a time. He sighed, and let his feet drop to the floor of the bath. He did not want to return to Europe, still devastated by Black Plague; China was intriguing but offered too immediate a reminder of T'en Chih-Yu, dead less than two centuries; to the west and north-west was the turmoil of Timur-i's campaigns; in Africa, his alienness would be too pronounced to provide him any measure of safety— his years in Tunis had shown him that; the Land of Snows was remote enough to offer him some protection, but the routes there lay through disputed territory, and he had no wish to become embroiled in local wars; the south was filled with rivalries and machinations that exhausted the peoples and led the lords to see enemies at every turn. "So Delhi it is, for now," he said to the empty air.
A moment later a servant appeared in the outer doorway. "Did you summon me, my master?"
Sanat Ji Mani looked up from his place in the pool. "No, Hirsuma, I did not. But thank you for being so alert."
Hirsuma bowed and closed the door.
This time Sanat Ji Mani kept his thoughts to himself; when he rose from the tub a short while later, he had made up his mind on several
points and was preparing to put these decisions into action. He used a drying-cloth, pulled on his dalmatica once more, then went to his own rooms to get his sandals with the earth-filled soles and to drop a silver chain studded with rubies around his neck before going to the library to meet with Avasa Dani.
She was seated on a low rosewood chair piled with silken cushions; in her hands she held an open scroll, and she studied it with singular intensity, her concentration so intent that she did not hear him enter the library. When he spoke her name, she looked up sharply, her face darkening slightly. "I'm sorry, Sanat Ji Mani. I did not know you—"
"You have nothing to apologize for, Avasa Dani," he replied as he went to her side. "I did not mean to interrupt you."
She smiled up at him. "Still, I must thank you for your kindness to me, and not just for allowing me to study with you. You are a most generous man. So many would chastise me for failing to do them honor at once." Today she was dressed in gauzy silks the color of Egyptian lapis lazuli, and she wore silver rings on her fingers and had three of them hanging from both of her earlobes.
"So you have told me," he said, returning her smile fleetingly. "Yet you are the more generous of the two of us, I think."
Closing the scroll, she regarded him in bemused satisfaction. "We are not going to argue about this, are we?"
"If it would please you," he replied, and sank down on his knees at her side.
"Oh, my foreign friend, you are much too good to me," she said, a bit of regret in her voice.
"And how can that be?" he asked gently.
"My father would say you have indulged me beyond all reason, if he still lived. I have heard my half-sisters say it." She ran her finger along the edge of the scroll. "You have let me learn anything I wanted to learn."
He rested his hand on her arm. "Why should I not?"
"Because most men would not; it is not seemly for a woman to learn too much," she said, more abruptly than she had intended. "My husband was not entirely pleased when he discovered I was literate and had a gift for numbers. His family is very traditional, and they did not bargain on such a bride for him. But my connections were such
that they could not refuse the match, and so, we were married." She shrugged. "When he decided to become a monk, a few of his relatives said I had driven him to it."
"Do you think you did?" Sanat Ji Mani could see the trouble in her eyes; he waited for her answer with no sign of impatience.
"Sometimes I do," she admitted. "But mostly I believe it is his Path to be a monk, his karma, and I do not challenge his inclinations, though I do not entirely understand them." She put the scroll aside, onto a table ornamented with lavish inlays of wood making a pattern of flying birds. "He would have liked me to withdraw from the world, but I am no Buddhist, and such an act would have been unacceptable to the Buddhists."
"You say he is amenable to our arrangement," Sanat Ji Mani prompted her.
"Yes. You do not compromise his family or mine. You do not offend those who worship the traditional gods, nor do you offend the Buddhists." She turned her arm so that she could take his hand in hers. "I know I am very much in your debt, Sanat Ji Mani."
"No, Avasa Dani," he countered. "It is I who am in your debt."
She regarded him skeptically. "Why do you say that?"
His dark eyes met hers. "You know why," he told her, his voice low, melodic.
"No," she said, shaking her head so that her earrings rang softly against one another. "If you used me as men use women, that might be different, for you would be doing a wrong, but what is between us is not of that nature."
He held her hand more protectively. "Does it satisfy you? that which is between us?"
"Oh,
yes,
" she said with suppressed passion. "How can you ask?" She felt her face flush, for she had not yet been permitted to rouse him as he had her.
"I know you are fulfilled at the time, but later, you may have doubts, or regrets." He did not like to speak these words aloud, but they expressed the apprehension he had been sensing in the nine weeks since her husband had come and gone from her life.
"Not I," she said emphatically, then added with less certainty, "What of you? Do you have doubts?"
"No," he said, and knew it was not quite the truth, for they had lain together four times, and she would soon be in danger of becoming one of his blood when she died; one more encounter and he would have to explain this before they embraced each other again, or expose her to a risk she might not want to accept.
"But you are troubled," she said, aware that he was not wholly at ease.
