Excerpt from Every Rising Sun by Jamila Ahmed, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I must admit: the Khatun frightens me. The Malik can praise her sweetness and beauty to Paradise and she can win the people's hearts by endowing mosques and madrasas, but since her earliest days in Bam, she has held herself aloof, aware that she is a creature of ground pearls and gold dust, too fine to associate with those of us formed of clay.

Still, at the Malik's order, I search narrow halls and wide chambers, the cool, dim baths and the sun-hot gardens, the harem's shaded corners and the wide-open polo fields. I even hesitantly knock at the door of the quarters Fataneh Khatun shares with the Malik, as a pair of guards, armored in shimmering chain mail, look on stonily.

I trail from one end of the Arg-e-Bam to the other, passing servants and clerks and secretaries, all those who power the citadel, until finally, I stand before a door of sweet cedar etched with interlaced stars. I push into the room.

Empty, save for scattered rugs and dusty benches.

A closed door stands in the back. A bubbled glass window looks onto a courtyard where pink flowers and green leaves are aflame against an adobe wall. From the courtyard garden, I hear leaves rustle, wind sigh.

Once, there was a pari queen, fair as the moon, who possessed all she could desire. She possessed one more thing: a festering secret that could destroy all she held dear …

A thud against the courtyard door snaps me to the present.

Copyright © 2023 by Jamila Ahmed