Gold Dust held the sides of the birth chair and raised herself up. Her unyielding stare checked the wet-nurse. “Give her to me!” she ordered. Blood flowing down her legs, she took two weak but determined steps down and grabbed her daughter, securing her against milk-swollen breasts. “I’ll nurse her myself.”

And against all the vehement protests of her reasoning, she named her daughter Raven.

20

Narcissus took a deep breath, pressed his hand to his galloping heart, and began his journey to the king’s quarters. He had no choice but to follow decorum and announce the birth of another daughter. This one colorless. The guardians of cannons awaited the king’s acknowledgment of the birth. The eunuch passed the Hall of Lanterns, the Prayer Room of the sultanas, the Courtyard of the Favorites, past the Secret Passage and knocked three times on the door.

He threw himself at the Shah’s feet.

The Shah gazed down at this half-man who roused a rare cruelty in him. He both hated and admired this eunuch. Detested him for his ability to grovel shamelessly, liked him for his ability to spark his anger. Anger, which he would later learn he mistook for courage, and which momentarily eased his grief at not having inherited his late father’s valor. But since Gold Dust had begun voicing her sentiments, he started to question his outbursts. “My shah,” she had whispered, “don’t confuse cruelty and anger with courage. Irrational anger stems from weakness.”

Raising the eunuch’s face with his satin-clad toe, the Shah aimed his metal-capped finger at his right eye. “Why so late at a time of happiness?”

The eunuch kissed the king’s slipper. His glance swept past the Shah’s well-shaped thighs, the broad chest, to the royal eyes. He squeaked with the voice that never ceased to embarrass him, “Your Highness, may I be sacrificed for you. I have bad news.”

A flutter disrupted further the disquiet of the king’s heart.

“Crown of my meager head,” the eunuch muttered, “the favorite gave birth to a little stranger, a veiled one.”

The Shah struggled to smother his shock. Not another girl. How could Gold Dust fail him like the rest?

He stared at the mumbling eunuch, prostrate at his feet. “We can’t hear a word. Raise your hairless face.”

“The princess has no color. She is white … like a swan.”

Hazel-Boy notified Gold Dust that the Shah had decided to visit her.

Gold Dust inserted a smoothly filed seashell inside her to plug the trickle of blood. She faced the emerald-framed mirror and examined her swollen breasts and protruding belly. Her waist had almost disappeared, turning her young body into a woman’s. Soaking muslin in ambergris, she washed her underarms, rubbed almond oil on her elbows, and brightened her cheeks with the concentrate of peaches. She bathed Raven in milk of donkeys, groomed her white hair, and painted her lips with cherry extract. With a duster of ostrich feathers, she powdered herself and Raven with crushed gold.