Gold Dust sat in a birth chair, hollowed in the center, under which sparkled a bowl of ashes. The ladies-in-waiting wiped her brow with muslin soaked in the essence of jasmine and sprayed her face with rosewater. They puckered their mouths, blowing in the air to scare off evil spirits. Turquoise beads dangled from the ceiling to ward off the evil eye.

Gold Dust’s face turned the color of the garnet powder she used to pumice her body. Even in her worst nightmares, she had not imagined such pain. She was about to break in half. She would not survive. She had no strength left to push.

A hush fell over Pearl Hall. The women raised their heavy-lashed eyes in a prayer to the heavens. Although they had collectively put a curse on the infant, they had taken precautions to protect the mother. And the mother seemed to have surrendered. They cried out with terror in their voices. “For the love of the Shah, push harder!”

At the present, Gold Dust did not feel much love for the Shah. He had not allowed her mother to look after her at her time of need. Yesterday, in the glare of his stare, and before the first pangs of labor, with great clarity, she had realized that her only deliverance from a world where she constantly followed orders was to wear a queen’s crown and secure the privilege of defiance.

Yes. She would bear an heir. Make him proud of his lineage. Recount how his grandmother had single-handedly risen above the decaying conventions of her home, how she had struggled to earn a living, forced fate into submission, and with great cunning had introduced her daughter to the harem. She would remind her son that poverty was not a shame, embracing it was.

She would raise a warrior who would prepare his empire for the inevitable invasion. He would study the ways of the Tartars, Mongols, and Turks. Learn that wisdom eliminates fear. And that every warrior conceals a lover in his soul.

She would teach her son that he was fortunate to carry royal blood combined with Jewish blood in his veins—this she would whisper in his ear—the blood of a people who have mastered the art of survival.

No one would dare lock her son in the Cage.

Gold Dust invoked the names of all the prophets she had never learned to pray to and pleaded for one last surge of strength.

“Push!” she heard from afar. “Push harder!”

She inhaled deeply, held on to the sides of her chair, and thrust her strength along the straining muscles of her stomach.

The sigh of tearing flesh.

The baby fell into the bowl of ash that would insure against infection.

Entered the world in silence.

Guarded whispers. Dying tinkle of clown bells. Flutter of fans. Buzz of a fly.

Newborns are supposed to cry, Gold Dust thought, before panic had occasion to settle.