Narcissus felt his heart turn into a block of ice.

“We hear there is a threat to the favorite’s life.”

Narcissus clutched the scimitar at his side. His determined look, the click of his heels, and his clenched jaw assured the Shah of his continued loyalty.

“You will follow the favorite like a shadow. At night you will guard her door as if it were your own life. If the slightest harm befalls her, we shall behead you with our own hands!”

The eunuch released the hilt of his scimitar. The Shah had facilitated his task. He would watch Gold Dust’s quarters. He would guard her life as if it were his own. And he would let the eunuchs in at night. Their collective curse would produce such negative force that once liberated into her bedchamber, it would steal the fetus’s spiritual force, causing illness, deformity, producing a weakling with no soul.

But the favorite would not be harmed.

She would remain healthy to enjoy the rest of her barren days.

The eunuch’s eyes filled with consideration. “It may be wise, my Shah, to allow her to rest these last few months. She is deeply taken by you. It’s not prudent to raise her heartbeat and warm her blood with your presence. And God willing, the Empire will at last have an heir. If your honor desires, I shall choose for your amusement other sultanas.”

The Shah slapped the falcons from his shoulders, dispatching them to their perches. “For now, we shall do without women.”

Narcissus went straight to the kitchens and ordered the cook to add hashish and the nectar of poppy flowers to Gold Dust’s food.

18

A eunuch sat cross-legged next to Gold Dust’s mattress and faced the Bowl of Forty Keys—a bronze vessel with forty incantations carved around the rim, each one appropriate for a distinct predicament. His yellow-tinged fingers traced the etching on the bowl. May this child be devoid of faculties. May this child have no soul….

Gold Dust, under the effect of hashish and poppy seeds, dreamed of orchards where boys swam on foamy waves under a silver moon. Their laughter rang against a star-stricken sky ruled by an aging Shah, who concealed a vast emptiness beyond the surface of his rage.

She tossed in her bed.

The eunuch pulled his black robe over his head, throwing himself on the bronze bowl to cover the reflection of the moonlight.

Half awake, Gold Dust remembered her mother’s warning to first sit, then turn in bed, so the umbilical cord would not wrap around her son’s neck and choke him. She raised herself into a sitting position. She felt dizzy. Beyond the window the moon was the color of sin. Her eyelids were heavy. She must stop drinking those chamomile brews.

The eunuch heard the sultana’s tossing. He counted the beat of her breathing. She had gone back to sleep. He stole out.