She bowed her head again, suddenly uncertain.

He sighed, the sound bearing more of quiet contentment than pain. He took her hand. “What is it, beloved daughter?”

“Father, I would show you a picture.”

“Oh?”

“But first- you remember sending Baram Khan on his errand?”

Shah Jahan’s grip tightened on her hand. “To the village the Jesuits reported had sprung into being someplace in Europe?” he asked, a little sharply.

“Yes, Father,” Jahanara answered, wondering if she had not chosen the wrong entry to the conversation. The Jesuits and their hosts, the Portuguese, were only recently returned to, if not favor, then the tolerance of the emperor. The Portuguese and their priests had proved faithless when Father requested their aid in his rebellion against Jahangir and his step-mother, Nur Jahan. Possessed of a long memory, Shah Jahan had ordered punitive raids into the Portuguese colonies along the coast almost as soon as he took the throne, taking many prisoners.

“What of it?” he asked, more calmly, gaze already drifting over her shoulder to the distant site of her mother’s tomb.

She took a breath, dove in. “It did come from the future, as mother’s astrologers claimed.”

His gaze snapped to her face, locking her eyes to his like chains of hardened steel as he snapped questions at her. “And where is Baram Khan? Where is that craven supporter of the pretender to power, Nur Jahan? Does he think to avoid my eternalanger by telling my daughter his report in my stead? I am not the broken man I was when his perfidy was discovered. I will not fail to punish him this time!”

Jahanara, shaken by the heat of him, spoke quickly, “Dead, Father. Baram Khan sickened and died in that far-off land that is host to the village from the future.”

Shah Jahan looked away, sniffed.

Released from his gaze, Jahanara felt as if she had stepped from a cold darkness into warm sunlight. Remembering her purpose, she gathered her tattered calm and summoned her body-slave to bring forward the ‘postcard.’

Father’s anger was not entirely gone. “Who brings his lies before us, if he is dead?”

She took the card. “I beg your indulgence, Father. Decide after you have seen the proofs before dismissing the claims.”

“Who?” he asked, still insisting, but more gently.

“No one you know, Father. He is another disciple of Mian Mir, one who has proven an honest and loyal servant to the living saint and, by extension, your person. He took great risks-at hazard of his own life-to bring word ahead of Baram Khan’s remaining servants.”

Clearly still skeptical, the emperor opened his mouth to ask another question.

Greatly daring, Jahanara spoke over him. “This, Father, is one of the proofs.” She lowered her head and presented the postcard.

His hand left hers, pulled the photograph from her outstretched hand.

She left her hand extended, hoping he would take it again.

Long moments passed in a silence Jahanara barely dared breathe into.

A tear struck her palm.

Jahanara looked up.

Shah Jahan, emperor of the Mughals, cried a river of tears in total silence, postcard in hand.

Grantville, Early Spring 1636

"I got a letter today from Wolmirstedt. They wanted me to know that Otto Schmidt died. His shop is sitting empty. They are asking if we're coming back. And, they want to know what we're going to do about Anna," Arnulf Meier announced to his family, and everyone else at the dinner table.

The dining room table seated all ten members, eleven counting the baby, of the three families who shared the house when they were all there at once, which they usually were at supper time. Everyone except Madde and the baby had jobs. Not that Madde didn't work. She had a baby to take care of, plus she kept the common areas of the house and cooked most of the meals for all three families.

All four of the boys worked full-time, or part-time before and after school, in the old mine they, along with Officer Lyndon Johnson of the Grantville police department, leased from the government. They still had not gotten around to mentioning to their parents just how much money they had in the bank from selling the large stash of aged moonshine they had originally found in the mine where they now grew mushrooms, aged cheese, and processed copper for wire. Nor had they ever mentioned what they were doing with that money in the way of investments and business start-ups.

Herr Meier looked at his eldest son Paulus. "You remember Anna. When you were apprenticed to Herr Schmidt we assumed you would one day marry her. She was his only living child so you would eventually take over the shop. You couldn't take over the shop now even if you wanted. You aren't a shoemaker, and you have no interest in being one. And even if you were and even if you did, you aren't old enough.

"But that still leaves Anna. On the one hand, there never was a formal betrothal agreement. So we have no legal obligation to see the two of you married. And, her dowry is a shoemaker's shop which doesn't have enough business to make a living and isn't going to, the way things are. This means, she doesn't really have any other prospects.

"On the other hand-" Arnulf looked at his oldest son. "-the letter made it clear that some people there are still assuming you will marry Anna. The letter also made it clear that some people there feel we have some obligation to take care of the girl. Which, I suppose we do. As much as there was a shoemaker's guild in Wolmirstedt, we are what is left of it.

"So, Paulus, what are you going to do about Anna?"

Paulus looked back at his father. The blank look on the boy's face caused Arnulf to suppress a smile. He knew he had caught his son in an unguarded moment. He was sure his son's face completely and exactly reflected the boy's state of mind. It looked like the thought of marrying Anna, or anyone else at this time, for that matter, was, to his son, a completely unparsed sentence. Arnulf felt certain that, regardless of what things were like here in Grantville, the boy was still used to the idea of men getting married around thirty to women around twenty.

Shortly Paulus spoke, "Father, that is not for me to say!"

Arnulf worked hard at keeping a smirk off of his face. "Son, you can't have it both ways. When I suggested you help me out in the shop and finish learning the trade, you told me you were over eighteen and therefore an adult. You told me you've got a good job working in Officer Johnson's mine with the mushrooms and the cheese. You said that as long as you're paying your share of the rent and expenses, which I have to admit is true for both you and your brother, I don't have anything to say about how you spend your time or your money. I am still trying to figure out how Ebert managed to apply the same logic to stay out of the shop. He isn't eighteen yet. But, now you want to turn around and tell me you are too young to take on an adult's responsibility when it comes to dealing with the hard questions of life. Well, make up your mind. Are you an adult or aren't you?"

Arnulf continued with a solid demeanor and a straight face. "You're legally an adult only because we are in Grantville. Anywhere else in the civilized world, you would be right. It would not be for you to say. But, here in Grantville, up-timers see nothing wrong with a boy getting married as soon as he's out of high school as long as he can make a living. You're out of high school. You've got a good job in Officer Johnson's cheese mine. You can afford to support a wife and kids."

Herr Meier lost the fight at keeping a straight countenance. His face glowed with a smirk like a pig with a secret stash of apples. The three men at the table had figured out, at least in general, what their sons were up to, even if they had no idea just how much money the boys were worth or just how many different businesses they were shareholders in or how much property they owned (besides the house they all lived in), or even where exactly the money had come from in the first place. The boys were paying a reasonable amount of money every week to the support of the families and the three families were enjoying what they all considered to be a very comfortable standard of living. So Herr Meier and the other two fathers had agreed amongst themselves to sit back and wait for the boys to bring it up. But, since he could put his son in an uncomfortable spot without breaking the secret, it amused Herr Meier to do so.