"Daroga?"

"I am getting too old for this," Nadir proclaimed, sleep-addled and muzzy. He could not have possibly articulated what this was, but he knew it was waking him up and he did not wish to be awoken.

"Daroga?" Darius continued on valiantly, "I made tea, Daroga."

"The Shah should give out medals for that," Nadir mumbled.

"Daroga?" This time, the poor boy simply sounded confused.

Nadir forced his eyes open and sat up. "What is it, Darius?"

There was a pause as the boy tried to order his thoughts, which gave Nadir a good idea of how this story would start.

"I went this morning to Mojgan Banu's house to drop off the sour cherry preserves," he began.

"You mean, to see the kitchen girl," Nadir cut in, half-amused.

Darius's lips thinned in something suspiciously close to annoyance, rather than the anticipated embarrassment. Nadir found himself waking up more. "Yes, I saw Parastoo. She was in quite a state, and wanted me to speak with Mojgan's woman. Khadija then told me that the household was very worried, because their lady did not return home last night. They thought perhaps she had stayed here and the messenger was detained."

Nadir took a sip of tea, cutting off such pointless exclamations as Mojgan is missing! or I will kill Erik! "What did you say?"

"That I was personally unsure Mojgan Banu's whereabouts, but that I thought it likely you knew where she was."

"I do not," Nadir answered the unasked question. "What else?"

"I mentioned that I had last seen her in the company of the Sultana, and suggested that she might have stayed with the harem."

"And?"

Darius paused again. "The suggestion was roundly and loudly discounted by the kitchen staff."

"And the handmaiden?"

"Looked like she would be sick."

"Ah." Nadir took a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. It did nothing to fend off his growing headache. He took the time to finish his tea, fatalistically sure in the knowledge that it would be the last quiet minute of the day. "Saddle the horses, Darius."

Somewhere between his front door and Nowshahr Palace, Nadir became the Daroga. The familial affection he felt for his dead cousin's wife cooled into a detached sense of curiosity. Simple, professional questions were easier to deal with than nagging personal concerns. In that spirit, he set about composing an outline of events, letting the strong and steady—but not frantic, never frantic— gait of his mare set his mental pace.

He had one (possibly, probably) missing woman.

He had seen the woman with his own eyes a little over sixteen hours previously, and it was quite likely he could find someone who had seen her more recently. Some harem guards had more loyalty to the institution of the palace than the women and would gladly speak to an imperially appointed Daroga. And if not one of them, then perhaps some worker of Erik's.

She had been over an hour's distance away from her home. Would she have gone without an escort? Oh, yes, and as Cousin Nadir he could not help but despair over that. He cursed how leniently he had viewed Mojgan's independent spirit. She had no business being out of the house without so much as a slave girl to attend her. He should have put a stop to that sort of behavior weeks ago—but that was neither here nor there. Business and facts: Mojgan, an hour or so away from home, alone.

It was a familiar route, and she rode well, but an accident might have occurred along the way. Or, an accident could have befallen her before leaving Erik's construction site—

Or, it was entirely possible that he would find Mojgan at Nowshahr Palace, drinking morning tea with the Sultana.

He forced both trains of thoughts away. He had too little information to start making well-considered conjectures, after all. For a short while, he was able to maintain his equanimity.

That vanished soon after he arrived at the Palace. He left Darius to deal with the horses and set a brisk pace through the palace grounds. He nodded at personal acquaintances and colleagues, but did not halt until he reached the harem walls. He expected reticence. He expected polite taarof.

He did not expect to be turned away. It was a given that he would not be admitted to the inner courtyard—but that he would not be permitted a word at the outer-most gate was unexpected in the extreme.

For an instant, something like outrage overcame him. By Imperial appointment, a Chief Inspector of a major province—turned away in the course of an investigation! But 'outrage' was not an emotion that sat naturally with Nadir, and it soon altered into a more reasonable sense of unease. He demanded to see the steward on duty.

He was first sent a junior officer of the harem, but Nadir quickly cut through his pretensions of officiousness. He sent away another such man, and another. Each attempt at diversion simply helped turn what had been a supposition into a conviction: something was being concealed.

At last he was presented with a man he knew, Shir Hosseini. A calm, reasonable man, but today his dark eyes shifted and darted. Nadir kept his own gaze fixed.

"There is no point in going in," Shir said. "They say you seek the widow of Feridoon Ali Jah, may God have mercy on his soul. She is not here."

Nadir believed that. "I seek those who last saw my cousin." He used the title to calculated effect. There were born eunuchs, and content eunuchs, and angry eunuchs—and then there were eunuchs like Shir, who had a paterfamilias soul and loved his siblings and cousins and their offspring like the dear children he would never have.

His eyes darted. "The Lady of the harem denies you entrance."

"I don't need entrance, I need audience," Nadir pressed. He added, "By Lady, you mean the Sultana Soraya."

Shir looked shocked that Nadir had actually spoken the woman's name. He replied with a nod.

"She is not a chief wife," Nadir said. "The Shah gave her no privilege of oversight." He could have gone on. She was young, foreign, and irresponsible—but it was best to let Shir think those things for himself.

"She has an evil eye." He said that with great finality, as if it explained everything.

"Then burn esfand," Nadir retorted. "I will speak with her."

Shir dithered. Shir faltered. But, ultimately, Shir would not yield.

Nadir sighed. If he could not convince Shir to admit him, on perfectly reasonable grounds…

Then he would lie.

Perhaps it was actually dissembling, in fine old courtly fashion. Perhaps it was simply giving misleading information. But untruth of all sorts was anathema to the Daroga, and so he felt obliged to acknowledge, if only to himself, that he was lying.

He reached into his satchel, were he kept the official licenses and records he might need in the course of an investigation. With great deliberation, he pulled out a heavy letter, its seal first broken years previously.

Its message was simple. The Daroga of Mazandaran was to be allowed access to the outer courtyard of the harem in the course of his official duties and to speak with the women (provided that they were attired with full modesty.) It was signed and sealed by Naser al-Din.

There was nothing about the paper to indicate that it was a decade old order that it had been issued in regard to one specific case. That case had long since been put to rest, but the imperial order had been set kept with the rest of the Daroga's meticulously filed records. Some years previously, he thought of the vague wording of the Shah's fiat and kept it in reserve. He had often carried it on his person when engaged in one investigation or another. He had never used it.

Why he handed it over to Shir Hosseini now was almost beyond his understanding. He knew that he would have never dared use the letter if the Shah had been in residence. There were other lines of investigation still open to him. And even if there were not, why risk everything for Mojgan? It was a thought he examined even as Shir examined the paper.

But while Nadir could not come to a satisfactory conclusion, the eunuch had no choice but to accept the Shah's written words. He had a curious look on his face as he handed it back to Nadir—not quite disbelief, not quite resignation.

Be this on your own head, his dark eyes said.

And so it had to be, Nadir silently agreed. A man must carry his own burdens.

"You are impertinent," the Sultana declared, sitting on a mass of silk pillows and swaying from side to side. For some reason, Nadir had expected her to be shrill. She was a little harsh and a little maniacal, but her voice never peaked to the girlish high he had heard from her before. Maybe he was not her desired audience. "You have no right!"

Nadir swept into a low bow before her. "Madam, I come on official business."

"Madam? Madam? What am I? What am I that you call me Madam?" Her little slippered foot, peeking out from her mass of robes, twitched. Perhaps she would have stomped it, had she been standing.

"Sultana, then," Nadir said. "Sultana, my questions are few and easy. Please answer them."

She glowered at him. "I have no answers for you, Daroogha."

What magic did this creature weave in the Shah's bed that she was allowed to stay? Nadir found himself glowering back at her. "Our paths crossed yesterday afternoon, Sultana. We parted, but you kept company with Mojgan Banu. When and where did you last see her?"

The Sultana shrugged. "Does it matter?"

It was so hard to know what to say the Sultana. She wore her veils like Erik wore his masks, and her moods were just as variable. One word might make her rail, another sew her lips shut. And who knew what word would have which effect? Something like giddiness overcame Nadir, a sense that he had already risked too much by invoking the Shah's outdated permission. What else could he lose now that he had not already lost? "Madam," he said, with great deliberation, "you are far from irreplaceable."

The Sultana stilled. Her eyes smoldered. "Do you threaten?" She laughed. "Oh, Daroga, do you threaten me?"

"Yes," he said. Such a simple word, such a damning sentiment. What was wrong with him?

The Sultana seemed not to mind. She laughed again. "Daroga. Daroogha. How can you threaten? What blade is at your disposal?" She paused, her eyes raking over Nadir's face. "If he had to, who would he choose? Do you think he would choose you?"

"He is not a material point here," Nadir said evenly. "Where is Mojgan?"

"Of course he is! How else can you threaten me, except with his hand? What a fool you are!" She laughed long and loud. "Will he side with the grumpy old man who says, do this, do not do that? The one who holds him back, who shames him? He will not."

"And what makes you think he will side with you?" Nadir asked quietly. "You, who pushes him to desperation, to evil, who humiliates. What can you give him to offset this?"

She fluttered her eyelashes.

Nadir snorted. "Will you bed him, Lady? No, I can see that you would not. Will you rise him up as a prince? No, for it is not in your power. Will you love him, Sultana? No. Because, while Erik's heart is dark, yours is dead. Your charms will fade for him—and for the Shah. And then where will you be?"

The fluttering of her eyelashes changed into staccato, shocked blinking. "Yet, you say stay and he goes. You say create and he creates destruction. He never chooses you and he will never choose her." She rose to her feet and turned away. "Look in a mirror, Daroogha, and see where his loyalties lie."

The Daroga puzzled over her parting comment for brief moment. Then he ran.

He found Darius still near the stables, unusually unsociable.

"Take your mount," he commanded, "find Erik. Look everywhere. Do not stop searching until he is found or you receive word from me."

"And if I find him?" Darius asked, looking (surprisingly) undaunted.

"Send him to his construction site, to his workroom. Go!"

There was not time to tell Darius that Nadir hoped to find Erik already at the newly built palace—or did he? If Nadir was correct in interpreting the Sultana's words and he found Mojgan in that hell of mirrors, Erik might be the only way to save her. But if he was already there… could Nadir ever believe him ignorant?

Too little information. Too much conjecture. Nadir clenched his jaw and set a punishing pace for the seaside.

It was noon when he arrived at the seaside palace, but the sun was subdued by thick clouds. There were no workers in the main building and Nadir raced through them unimpeded.

He came to the large dining room, the sight of the Shah's show-stopping supper. Even across the massive space, Nadir could see what he was looking for. A sliver of light blazed at the edge of the large velvet curtain running along the back wall. It was too intense of a light to come from any normal source.

He pushed aside the corner of the curtain and scanned the dizzying reflection-of-reflections in the torture chamber. The forest of metal trees baffled his eye, the light blinded him. He forced himself to look away for a moment, to calm his heart and to look again with a clinical eye.

There. Perhaps she was in a corner. Perhaps she was in the center of the room. But that was certainly Mojgan, a veil pulled over her face, slumped in the torture chamber.

Nadir pounded on the glass for a minute, but it did not give way. Nor did she stir. He ran the length of window, running his hands along the glass, looking for some purchase in the wall. He found none.

But there was at least one door he knew of, and he decided to waste no further time in using that one.

He wondered for a moment if Erik would be in his workshop. And, if not, what sort of booby traps might await him? But he did not let these concerns hold him back from forcing the door and seeking out the entrance to the mirrored room.

It was shockingly easy to open. Nadir paused before entering, trying to get his bearings.

He called out, "Mojgan?"

There was no reply and he stepped in. "Moj—"

The door swung shut suddenly and firmly. Nadir could hear a cascade of locks fall into place, and when he spun around he was confronted with what appeared to be unbroken mirror. He reached his hands out desperately and touched the glass. It burned with the retained heat of the bright lights. He blinked and turned again, keeping his palms flush with the wall.

A hundred Mojgans sat around him, veiled in ghostly white. After a beat, her back straightened and she lifted the veil from her face. Then a hundred Mojgans peered at a hundred Nadirs. She rose slowly to her feet, stumbled, and then leaned back.

"Can we get out?" She asked. Her voice was a whisper, but it carried and echoed. A mere second elapsed before she spoke again. "No, we can't. Can we?"

"I wish I had something better to tell you," Nadir spoke slowly, his head spinning with the mirror images. It was a lurid forest of steel trees and panicked faces, a scene right out of a nightmare. "But the door seemed to be weighted— it swung shut." And locked.

"At least you walked through a door to get here." She half-dropped her veil again, and Nadir was confronted with the unpleasant truth that the panicked face was his.

Nadir could clearly remember the sweat on the brow of the condemned man, that gleam of madness so common amongst men lost in desert dunes. Would that be him soon?

"Stay there," she whispered again. "Perhaps you can open the door?"

He wanted to say yes, but found himself shaking his head. He took a step away from the perimeter—a gross mistake. Any sense of equilibrium vanished in an instant.

The Mojgans stared at him with bloodshot eyes. He tried to walk towards her, but quickly lost the way.

He heard her sigh. "Close your eyes." She followed her own advice, and slumped a little again.

"Mojgan? Joonam?"

"Keep your eyes closed, and walk. You'll find a wall." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Eventually."

He first found the tree, which earned him a nasty bump on the head, but finally came up to the edge of the room. He worked around slowly, eyes still closed, until he came to Mojgan. He lowered himself to the floor without grace.

He shed his coat and pulled out a flask of cold tea. This he put into Mojgan's disturbingly weak hand.

He did not bother to warn her to drink slowly—she took a small sip, and then another.

"The light is getting brighter again." She commented. "It is about to become… very uncomfortable."

"How long?" Nadir asked after a moment.

"Does the light last? I don't know."

"No. How long have you been here?"

Another pause. She heard her take another drink. "I don't know. I slept. I slept until I thought I'd never wake. But wake I did. Again and again." She laughed briefly and then seemed to deflate. "Good night, Nadir. I'll tell Feridoon you came to call."

He wanted to stir her, to make her stay conscious and alert. But her breathing was unlabored, and after days and nights and days again, Nadir felt himself drifting away as well.

He floated above the sand dunes of his homeland, just as in his dreams. He wound his arm around the amber-eyed princess he had called his wife, and thought of his sons. His golden-eyed boy intruded on his thoughts more than once, pestering him with dissonant setars and tasteless jokes and his wild ways.

...At least Darius never gave them trouble.

True night came. The sounds of the metal jungle vanished, and all went dark. A voice called to him, melodious and furious.

"You idiot! You damn fool! Why didn't you get someone—anyone— to accompany you!" Something cool and wet was thrust against Nadir's lips and he found himself opening his eyes.

It was dim, but he could make out Erik crouched before him.

"Mojgan?"

"With your errand boy."

"Alive?"

"Seven hells, yes! Drink—slowly, jackass!" Erik helped Nadir to his feet and supported him with one scrawny arm. He continued to curse, a multilingual tirade Nadir could only guess at.

At last, Nadir spoke to stem the flood of profanity. "This is not my fault."

"Isn't it? Isn't it?" Erik sulked. "You should have told me."

"I did. I sent Darius." Nadir coughed, sputtered. He knew he should have stayed silent, but he could not. "If I had not come when I did, things might have gone worse. She was not well when I did find her. Would you have liked that? For her to die thanks to your folly and your mistress's wicked heart?" They exited into the main courtyard and Nadir was shocked to see stars.

Darius was sitting with Mojgan on a blanket. A hodgepodge of snacks was set before her, along with tea and water. Erik deposited Nadir next to her and left without a word.

The three of them sat in silence. Mojgan's eyes seemed sunken and Nadir finally noticed the rash of angry red across her face and hands. She ate and drank what Darius put into her hands—Nadir realized with a start that he was doing the same.

"A full day?" He asked quietly.

She shrugged. "No. Yes. Probably." She sipped her tea. "Does it matter?"

Perhaps it did not.

Erik reappeared with a cart from the construction area. Nadir and Darius's horses were hitched to the front, an inelegant but not terribly mismatched pair. The cart was obviously not designed for the conveyance of humans, but Erik had stuffed it to the brim with soft pillows and heaps of silk curtains. He alighted from it and said a quiet word in Darius's ear. The boy nodded and immediately went up into the driver's position.

Erik stood before them. He tensed like a trapped animal wishing to flee. But the moment passed and he bent to lift Mojgan up. She put one hand around his neck, and Nadir wondered at it. Surely she knew. She knew which tortured soul had conjured up the agonies she had just suffered. But that same tortured soul set her down gently in the cart and fluffed the pillows to best protect her from a bumpy ride. His hands shook, but Nadir had no desire to comfort him. Let him feel the weight of his wretched creation.

Nadir struggled to his feet and approached. Before he hoisted himself onto the driver's bench next to Darius, he shook out his coat and laid it over Mojgan. He caught the girl's hand—she wasn't more than a girl, now was she?—and clutched it. His throat was still parched and sore and his voice cracked when he whispered, "I love you."

The words shocked him even as he said them. He could feel Erik's yellow gaze locked on him. Mojgan smiled slightly.

"And I love you, cousin."

It was only later, after Erik had vanished into the night, after Darius delivered Mojgan to the care of her maid servants, and after Nadir had been placed in his own bed, that he realized that they had used different words. Mojgan had said doost, which was a very proper love to have for one's family and friends. But Nadir…

Affection, he had claimed, affection and tenderness. Not romance, of course. That was another word all together. But for the first time in a long, long time he cared. He desired to protect her solely because he held her in affection, not because it was his duty.

Nadir forced himself to admit that he might have used the same word and applied it to Erik as well.

His house was quiet, and dark, and empty.

But his heart was not. He slept.

There were no longer guards at the old ugly house. Their absence should not have surprised Erik. After all, they had been assigned to Feridoon, not Feridoon's little wife.

He kept a firm grip on the alabaster jar, and would have off-loaded it into the hands of some servant had one come. But there was no answer to his knock, and it was with chilled blood and a turning stomach that he let himself into the house.

It was the same quiet house he had had visited so many times before—the same soft light filtering in through fluttering curtains, the same scent of jasmine hiding in every corner—but it was not quite the same. Perhaps this was the difference between house and home. This was a building without a soul, a body without a heartbeat.

Erik did not, could not, like it.

He finally found her in the walled garden, sitting in the shade and looking out at the rose bushes. Her cheeks were red—her hands redder still. It was concerning, but less so than the hard set of her lips, the pained-pinch around her eyes. And we she turned and saw Erik—

Well, she smiled. She smiled kindly and politely and ever so wearily.

He thrust the jar into her hands without comment.

She glanced at it and then looked back at Erik. Her eyes should have been accusatory. She should have been angry. Instead, she looked amused. Tired, but amused. She opened the jar and took an experimental sniff.

"Camphor?" she asked. Even her tone was amused; not mocking, but mild.

It was also terribly unnerving. Erik shrugged as a reply. The jar contained everything that had more-or-less worked for the heat rash he had acquired in testing out the torture chamber, muddled together and hopefully harmless.

"Thank you," she said.

What a horrible phrase, Erik thought. What a profane, disingenuous sentiment. In light of all that had happened, of all of the pain that Erik had caused her both directly and indirectly, she could not mean to thank him—not even for something as simple as a healing balm.

Without another word, he fled.

Nadir's character went all kinds of unexpected places in this chapter. Hopefully, not too far off course.