Rebekah guided Venus toward the pit and Soleiman the Agile’s shack. A bitter smile stuck on her lips as she freed a curl from the fringes of her chador and stared at the golden strand. The color was vibrant and without a trace of gray. The skin on her face and body was smooth, the brand between her breasts had not lost its vigor, and the shine of her violet eyes had not diminished. It pleased her to look in the mirror and confirm that the natural ravages of time sped past her. But today her insides felt old and a blanket of gray enveloped the flowers, the leaves, even the sun. A palpable gray she tasted.

“A few hours of harmless entertainment would lift Gold’s mood,” she had pleaded with the Shah.

“What kind of entertainment?” he had asked.

“Performing acrobats,” she replied, while thinking bitterly of the Ancient Zoroastrian’s assurance of the acrobat’s love for her daughter. But would Gold Dust still want that sun-baked man she had last spurned behind the baths?

“Nonsense!” the Shah thundered. “Who proposed this strange remedy?”

“The Ancient Zoroastrian, who witnessed the fall and rise of many Shahs.”

“Absurd.”

“To divert her mind from her body.”

“Foolishness!”

“My lord, only a few hours of solitude. Pearl Hall must be emptied of the sultanas and their eunuchs.”

He directed his amazement at her. “Why?”

“To feel she is the sole inhabitant of a temporary dream world.”

The king fell into deep thought. “Is it not enough that she rules as our favorite?”

Rebekah’s voice cracked. “Because of you, my lord, Gold has everything a woman could desire. Please don’t consider me thankless when I say this life was imposed on her rather than chosen by her. I am to blame.” She had been on the brink of kissing his hand and begging for compassion, but she had looked him straight in the eyes and had assured him that the favorite would remain behind curtains and no stranger would see her.

He had paced the hall, the aigrette on his turban flashing. At last he had approached her, towering over her. “We will allow this nonsense on the condition Raven be present at the time.”

“Yes, my shah,” Rebekah had promised, marveling at Raven’s ability to have established herself as the king’s agent.

Now, with every gallop closer to the garbage pit, Rebekah’s dream died a little. But she could not blame Gold Dust, who had been tutored in the importance of love by a mother who did not believe in the alliance of marriage and who was ignorant of the convoluted ways of love. How often had she cuddled her daughter on her lap and, feeling utterly helpless and defeated, whispered fantastical lies: “Love is not what you see or have seen in this home, not the way Jacob was, not the way these men who come and go are. Oh, no! I’m talking about men whose touch is soft, whose words are sweet, whose heart is tender.” Yes. She had known, in the back of her mind, long before it had happened, that Gold Dust would one day feel in her marrow the need to experience the man in her mother’s fairy tales.