A young European traveler calling himself Mogor dell Amora, the Mughal of Love arrives at the court of Emperor Akbar. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbars grandfather Babar, Qara Koz, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery. It brings together two cities that barely know each other - the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalias boyhood friend il Machia - Niccolo Machiavelli - is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogors story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if hes a liar, must he die?