'After that a Marathan cavalry of thirty thousand marched on Delhi, picking up two hundred thousand Rajput volunteers as they moved north, and on the fateful field of Panipat, where India's fate has so often been decided, they met an army of Afghan and ex Mughal troops, in full jihad against the Hindus. The Muslims had the support of the local populace, and the great general Shah Abdali at their head, and in the battle a hundred thousand Marathas died, and thirty thousand were captured for ransom. But afterwards the Afghan soldiers tired of Delhi, and forced their khan to return to Kabul.

'The Marathas, however, were likewise broken. The Nazim's succes sors secured the south, and the Sikhs took the Punjab, and the Bengalese Bengal and Assam. Down here we found the Sikhs to be our best allies. Their final guru declared their sacred writings to be the embodiment of the guru from that point on, and after that they prospered greatly, creating in effect a mighty wall between us and Islam. And the Sikhs taught us as well. They are a kind of mix of Hindu and Muslim, unusual in Indian history, and instructive. So they prospered, and learning from them, coordinating our efforts with them, we have prospered too.

'Then in my grandfather's time a number of refugees from the Chinese conquest of Japan arrived in this region, Buddhists drawn to Lanka, the heart of Buddhism. Samurai, monks and sailors, very good sailors they had sailed the great eastern ocean that they call the Dahai, in fact they sailed to us both by heading cast and by heading west.'

'Around the world?'

'Around. And they taught our shipbuilders much, and the Buddhist monasteries here were already centres of metalworking and mechanics, and ceramics. The local mathematicians brought calculation to full flower for use in navigation, gunnery and mechanics. All came together here in the great shipyards, and in our merchant and naval fleets were soon greater even than China's. Which is a good thing, as the Chinese empire subdues more and more of the world – Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Turkestan, Annam and Siam, the islands in the Malay chain – the region we used to called Greater India, in fact. So we need our ships to protect us from that power. By sea we are safe, and down here, below the gnarled wildlands of the Deccan, we are not easily conquered by land. And Islam seems to have had its day in India, if not the whole of the west.'

'You have conquered its most powerful city,' Ismail observed.

'Yes. I will always smite Muslims, so that they will never be able to attack India again. There have been enough rapes of Delhi. So I had a small navy built on the Black Sea to attack Konstantiniyye, breaking the Ottomans like the Nazim broke the Mughals. We will establish small states across Anatolia, taking their land under our influence, as we have done in Iran and Afghanistan. Meanwhile we continue to work with the Sikhs, treating them as chief allies and partners in what is becoming a larger Indian confederation of principalities and states. The unification of India on that basis is not something many people resist, because when it succeeds, it means peace. Peace for the first time since the Mughals invaded more than four centuries ago. So India has emerged from its long night. And now 'we will spread the day everywhere.'

The following day Bhakta took Ismail to a garden party at the Kerala's palace in Travancore. The big park containing the little marble building overlooked the northern end of the harbour, away from the great noise and smoke of the shipworks, visible at the south side of the shallow bay, but innocuous at that distance. Outside the park more elaborate white palaces belonged not to the Kerala, but to the local merchant leaders, who had become rich in ship building, trade expeditions and most of all, the financing of other such expeditions. Among the Kerala's guests were many men of this sort, all richly dressed in silks and jewellery. Especially prized in this society, it seemed to Ismail, were semi precious stones – turquoise, jade, lapis, malachite, onyx, jasper and the like – polished into big round buttons and necklace beads. The wives and daughters of the men wore brilliant saris, and some walked with tamed cheetahs on leashes.

People circulated in the shade of the garden's arbours and palm trees, eating at long tables of delicacies, or sipping from glass goblets. Buddhist monks stood out in their maroon or saffron, and Bhakta was approached by quite a few of these. The abbess introduced some of them to Ismail. She pointed out to him the Sikhs in attendance, men who wore turbans and were bearded; and Marathas; and Bengalis; also Africans, Malaysians, Burmese, Sumatrans, Japanese or Hodenosaunee from the New World. The abbess either knew all these people personally, or could identify them by some characteristic of dress or figure.

'So very many different peoples here,' Ismail observed.

'Shipping brings them.'

Many of them seemed to crave a word with Bhakta, and she introduced Ismail to one of the Nazim's 'most trusted assistants', in the person of one Pyidaungsu, a short dark man who, he said, had grown up in Burma and on the eastern side of India's tip. His Persian was excellent, which was no doubt why the abbess had introduced Ismail to him, as she dealt with her own press of conversants.

'The Kerala was most pleased to meet you,' Pyidaungsu said immediately, drawing Ismail off to one side. 'He is very desirous of making progre ss in certain medical matters, especially infectious diseases. We lose more soldiers to disease or infection than to our enemies in battle, and this grieves him.'

'I know only a little of that,' Ismail said. 'I am an anatomist, attempting to learn the structures of the body.'

'But all advances in understanding of the body help us in what the Kerala wants to know.'

'In theory, anyway. Over time.'

'But could you not examine the army's procedures, in search of some aspects of them that contribute perhaps to diseases spreading?'

'Perhaps,' Ismail said. 'Although some aspects cannot be changed, like travelling together, sleeping together.'

'Yes, but the way those things are done.

'Possibly. There seems to be a likelihood that some diseases are transmitted by creatures smaller than the eye can see 'The creatures in microscopes?'

'Yes, or smaller. Exposure to a very small amount of these, or to some that are killed beforehand, seems to give people a resistance to later exposures, as happens with survivors of pox.'

'Yes, variolation. The troops are already scabbed for pox.'

Ismail was surprised to hear this, and the officer saw it.

'We are trying everything,' he said with a laugh. 'The Kerala believes all habits must be re examined with an eye to changing them, improving them as much as possible. Eating habits, bathing, evacuation – he began as an artillery officer when he was very young, and he learned the value of regular procedure. He proposed that the barrels of cannons be bored out rather than cast, as the casting could never be done with any true smoothness. With uniform bores cannons become more powerful and lighter at once, and ever so much more accurate. He tested all these things, and reduced gunnery to a set of settled motions, like a dance, much the same for cannon of all sizes, making them capable of deployment as quickly as infantry, almost as quick as cavalry. And easily carried on ships. Results have been prodigious, as you see.' Waving around complacently at the party.

'You have been an artillery officer, I suppose.'

The man laughed. 'Yes, I was.'

'So now you enjoy a celebration here.'

'Yes, and there are other reasons for this gathering. The bankers, the shippers. But they all ride on the back of the artillery, if you will.'

'And not the doctors.'

'No. But I wish it were so! Tell me again if you see any part of military life that might be made more healthy.'