Despite his need for her mother, the inquisitiveness of Gold Dust irritated him. She asked too many questions, heard too much, saw with many eyes. “Stop staring at the river. These waters are dangerous,” he said. “No human has survived them.”

“Then why is it called the River of Dreams?”

“Don’t let the name deceive you. These are dreams of death.”

Death, she imagined, must be a form of escape like the river that snaked away into a world of no boundaries over which kings held no power.

They entered the private way to the Shah’s bedchamber. At the threshold, she clung to the eunuch’s sleeve. What if the Shah was as ugly and as cruel as Div, the white giant in her mother’s tales? Act as a woman of substance does, her mother reminded. Gold Dust loosened her grip and raised herself to her full height. She fought to calm the child in her, evoke the woman.

The eunuch stepped back into the halls.

Gold Dust stroked the partitions that would unfold into the king’s quarters. The mother-of-pearl and cabochon emeralds inlaid in silver filigree felt smooth to her touch, the netting of silver irregular. Like her feelings. Radiant in her delight to appear, at last, at the Shah’s threshold, uncertain and scared of the outcome. Her fingers traced the silver latch, lifted it from the cradle, and held on to it.

She released the panels.

The chamber was draped with velvet curtains, their vermilion hue casting an illusion of blazing dusks. Carved furniture of oak and banyan were immersed in the same ruby shade. Black rose petals overflowed bowls of jade and agate. Fans of silver lacework agitated the petals. Three mahogany trapezes swung next to a divan. A brazier smoked idly. The Shah was absent. She was thankful for the chance to quiet her bones.

A potent and exhilarating aroma of black roses wafted toward her. A stirring came from a beaded lattice.

The Shah emerged from behind the curtain of beads.

He stood on the central arabesque of the Esfahan carpet, looming over her. Two hooded peregrine falcons perched on his shoulders, a gyrfalcon on his gloved arm. The sable trimming of his cape fluttered under the fans. A cluster of pearl-shaped diamonds flashed from the center of the snowy aigrette on his turban.

She harnessed the clamor in her disjointed bones. Yes. He was tall. She would have identified him the very first time she set eyes on him—even among a throng of men as massive and as olive-colored as he. His shaven brows, drawn with coffee sticks into perfect arcs, framed restless eyes. These were the eyes she had imagined of the man in the Cage, the man Moon Face would kill for, the man who sighed behind partitions.

He extended ringed fingers, the index crowned with a sharp cap of silver.

Her eyes acquired a will of their own, staring at his arrogant cheeks, fleshy mouth, large teeth that had inherited the flaxen tinge of his diversions: tea, coffee, and opium.