Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty Amina al-Sirafi’s quest to track down magical artifacts brings her to the island lair of a sorceress whose woven enchantments are impossible to flee. By Shannon Chakraborty | Published on April 14, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Tapestry of Fate, the second installment of the Amina al-Sirafi Adventures by Shannon Chakraborty—publishing with Harper Voyager on May 12th. Amina al-Sirafi thinks she’s struck gold. Tasked with hunting down arcane artifacts for the council of immortal peris, she can savor the occasional rollicking adventure on the high seas with her cherished criminal companions while still returning home to raise her beloved daughter, Marjana. But when Raksh, the spirit of discord with whom she is reluctantly wed, provokes the council’s wrath, Amina is charged with a seemingly impossible quest: steal a spindle capable of rewriting fate from a mysterious sorceress on an island no one can escape.Forced to leave Marjana—who is increasingly frustrated at being peddled what are clearly lies about her mother’s life and her own past—Amina finds her mission almost immediately thrown into peril. But deadly storms, an erratic poison mistress, and old enemies are the least of her worries. For the peris’ story is unraveling, hinting at a far deadlier game whose rules Amina must swiftly puzzle out. A game that sets her against an adversary more cunning and powerful than she has ever faced.A game that not everyone on her crew wants her to win. There are a great many things one can credit criminals with, but the one trait that truly distinguishes the middling from the successful is simple: discretion. And it is discretion that gains you admission to Sarilaglag. You will find Sarilaglag on no map, glean not even the slightest mention in a text. Its name sounds like nonsense and may very well be—for its origins are a mystery. Sarilaglag might have been there in the days of the Persian shahs or perhaps it was only dreamed up in the more recent heyday of the Abbasids, God alone knows best. Indeed, I am likely the first to speak of its existence to an outsider, a betrayal for which a great many bandits would cut my throat—so perhaps keep this account to yourself until I have returned to my Creator. But I suspect the time of that great criminal metropolis on the sea is fading, and it seems a remarkable enough wonder to be remembered despite the anonymity that kept it bustling for so long. As to its location, ah, but the old vow tugs at my heart. You have no doubt worked out that it is in the Persian Gulf, but I shall say no more. There are certain quirks of geography that enable Sarilaglag’s existence, the tides and terrain and deeply inhospitable hinterlands all combining to create a unique gem: a hidden floating town made entirely of boats. Some are ancient and primitive: vast reed platforms that have been built over and decayed so that they are more island than vessel. Others the flashiest racing boats from Iraq and the newest sailing junks from China. However, the majority are houseboats, like those you see in Baghdad, intended to spend their lives tethered in place, a residence more than a mode of transport. They are painted and decorated mostly gaily, with proud banners indicating the type of outlaw they host and boasting their grandest accomplishments. There are hundreds of such boats, tethered to stone columns that jut from the seabed like a drowned forest. It is a maze of dwellings that feels almost like a city—save that the ground bobs without warning and one needs to take a skiff to get from place to place. This mobility is by design; if you’re going to have a central meeting place of brigands, you’re asking for trouble. Order is kept by ruthless agreement and necessity in Sarilaglag, but it is a messy affair, and feuds, duels, and murders run rampant. But the boats allow bands to move apart if they fall afoul of one another and keep the pecking order of power fluid. If a navy or other lawful strangers ever came sniffing, the town could be broken apart, everyone sailing away. And if true order is deteriorating, violent calamity beckoning, there is always the overarching threat of arson. My grandfather told me of such a blaze when he was a youth; those in charge of Sarilaglag deciding its denizens needed to learn how valuable such a safe harbor was the hard way. Either way, it was a notorious place with no notoriety outside its denizens, one where you were watched and studied, judged and made ally or competition. I had visited a handful of times in my prime, taught the route by a smuggler who deemed me worthy when I saved his crew and cargo from a patrol in Bahrain. Pirates occupied a snobbish rank in Sarilaglag, preferring to keep their precious ships apart from the crowded morass of bobbing old houseboats “captained” more often than not by men who couldn’t have hoisted a sail if their life depended on it. At the end of the day, however, it was a place of many, many eyes. Always watching, always waiting. For the law, for an old enemy, for opportunity. With everyone on the lookout, it was extraordinarily difficult to sneak around. There were youths who made a living by spying and selling secrets; boys who could swim like a fish, paint themselves to resemble mangroves, live in a gutter hole for weeks. So, when I poled a skiff down Sarilaglag’s main watery avenue at the height of day, the sun blazing to illuminate my famed leopard dagger and the straight sword at my back, my brightly colored robe of Yemeni ikat and woman’s turban, gazes were drawn, then snatched, so intent that I could feel their weight upon my shoulders. Which was my goal. Indeed, I began to whistle as I passed the outer houseboats, those belonging to lesser outlaws who feigned medical calamity to elicit sympathetic coin (between the animal bladders, the excited self-branding and binding, and the noxious substances they brew to imitate pus, they are a bunch of weirdos best avoided). I pushed my skiff languidly through the pale green water, as though I had few cares and all the time in the world. As though time were not a fragile, precious resource—the days I’d spent fretting and pacing in Baghdad, knowing each additional one made it more likely my ludicrous plot might bear fruit while also fearing it brought further risk to Dalila. I was alone, having rowed out here in the dead of the night to wait in the mangroves for just the right moment. My Marawati, little more than a speck on the horizon, would be along later but was under the strictest orders not to risk the rest of the crew and unleash burning arrows of Rumi fire should anyone approach. Then the first disbelieving whisper curled around my ear. “Is that… Amina al-Sirafi?” It was followed quickly by a second, a third, and then carried in hisses and epithets, both admiring and scornful. “Heard she was swallowed by a sea devil—” “—married a Socotran pirate.” “Fucked the caliph and retired on a pile of gold.” I let the rumors settle around me, feeling old annoyance at the more insulting allegations, but with age had come something else: pride. Vain and sinful, it was nonetheless pleasing to discover that although more than a decade had passed since I last took to the seas as a pirate, I was still remembered. As a terror, as unnatural, as a seducer—yes, but I’d left my mark among the rowdiest and most cunning criminals and that was not a thing lightly done. Buy the Book The Tapestry of Fate Shannon Chakraborty Buy Book The Tapestry of Fate Shannon Chakraborty Buy this book from: At least, that is what I tried to tell myself as I poled into my most daring gamble yet. The whispers continued. I made a show of ignoring them even as I kept a close ear for recognizable voices. For a gaze more vengeful than curious, for a familiar cloak, a profile I might have once stalked. I was both dependent on such hopes and at their mercy. The peri island might have blessed my speed and my senses, but I didn’t like the odds should a determined archer set their sights on my exposed back. They cannot see you sweat. Every part of my plan—from dealing with the Banu Sasan and their unknown aims, to confronting Raksh, to managing the impossible to foresee consequences of my scheme—depended on a level of confidence, nay cockiness, that was absurd. I took a deep breath, and in need of distraction, turned to appreciate the sights around me. It might be the wonders of God’s creation—magnificent mountains, the stunning ruins of ancient civilizations—that we are told to admire and contemplate, but I would argue the absolute ingenuity of charlatans must also be remarked upon. For I have never seen an impulse more creative than that of a huckster looking to part a mark from his money, and as the wonders of Sarilaglag opened up, I could not help but marvel. Canoes full of ingredients to manufacture every sort of counterfeit good, from rhino horn to ambergris, mother-of-pearl to camphor, flitted among the canal of the fraudsters, stopping at a safe distance from the false alchemists—whose madcap chemistry and metallurgy experiments were kept apart from anything flammable. The street entertainers were next: contortionists bending into knots and tucking themselves into jars while acrobats walked tightropes stretching from opposing ship masts and youngsters practiced folding parchment into trick squares and tying blindfolds so the bearer could secretly see. I steered clear of the canal of the beggars, its shadowed, sorrow-filled houseboats smelling of blood and scorched flesh, the desperate ways people maimed themselves and others—including children—to elicit sympathy and coins from strangers when feigned maladies did not work. Beyond were the forgers, the most talented in the world who could imitate any signature, write in rare, nigh forgotten tongues, and who kept parchment and inks from all over creation. They shared space and ingredients with the poisoners, Dalila’s brethren, though she had foresworn earlier visits to Sarilaglag at my side and dismissed these practitioners as incompetent. Across was the avenue of the animals, where an assortment of apes was being coaxed to wear human garments and trained to do everything from pray to “read,” in hopes of one day being passed off as ensorcelled princes in need of money to undo their foul enchantment. On another boat, bears were being berated into dancing and snakes being either defanged and/or charmed depending on their temperaments. Yet even criminals in the abode of deception—where they trained their protégés and took refuge from the law—abided by a code, a form of respect if not fear, and Sarilaglag’s was this: the deeper one delved toward the murky shore of mangroves and razor-sharp rocks, the more lethal the arts taught. Past the mewling bears and contract forgers was the alley of the stranglers, marked by barbed garrotes and silken cords hanging from banners, tallies marking successful kills. The armory boats, those selling blades, bows, and other assorted weapons, were next—along with their deadliest masters. The arsonists followed, those who killed without aim and without care, their deadly conflagrations responsible for scores of murdered souls. In large gondolas cunningly and mockingly made up to appear like temples and hermit dens were the false preachers, those who did not fear God and thus pretend to be any variety of holy men—Sufi mendicants, Christian saints, reincarnations of various Indian deities—to prey on the devout and damn their souls. Beyond—and I wish I was making this up—was the island of women. Yes, all women, for apparently even female forgers are as deadly and distrusted as those who proudly decorate their vessel with bloodied garrotes. It wasn’t a true island but rather a great number of floating platforms whose age had anchored them to the seabed, along with a cluster of houseboats, all overgrown with weeds now tall as trees and mangroves on the western side, throwing it into shadow. There had never been an enormous number of female bandits when I visited; as you might imagine, Sarilaglag attracted violent men, and the code of safe conduct that kept the peace among men did not always extend to the women they often looked down upon. The ones that did make a life for themselves here were thus a ruthless group. I’d been told the Marawati had a standing offer of a berth, but I’d yet to consider it. Even I was afraid of the women of Sarilaglag. Keeping my gaze low, I poled past a floating garden of courtesans practicing card tricks and counterfeiters spreading their tools in the sunshine. A gondola of hijras gawked in recognition and then started laughing. “It is the Sea Leopardess. Aye, Amina al-Sirafi, come sit a spell with us!” “Nay, she best keep going. That bitch cost me my shares in a merchant vessel!” I poled faster. Finally, with another turn of the skiff, I passed the island of women and approached the sole structure not dwelling upon the water: Sarilaglag’s famed meetinghouse. Here deals were struck, gang wars settled, the marriage of crime lords negotiated, and the assassination of princes plotted. The meetinghouse sat high upon a sea wall constructed of green-tinged coral at the foot of a watch tower staffed by a group of extremely well-paid Mamluks who risked death if there was even a whiff of bribery. The building was not overly large but was marked rather dramatically by the severed halves of an old Rus sailing vessel. Legend had it that a crew of the strange northerners once attempted to take over Sarilaglag, dragging their distinctive ships with iron nails and rearing, curled dragon heads across the Sinai, down the Red Sea and into the Persian Gulf, only to be met with the combined force of criminals from Guangzhou to Timbuktu. Their boats were broken and their crucified bodies hung as a warning from the berthing posts. An elder pirate once swore to me that you could still see a fragment of skull with its moldy blond locks plastered to the top of one, though all I could ever make out were some long-dead mollusks among a bird’s nest. The tide had been pulling me toward the eastern bank, but as I glancedup at the watchtower, trying to tamp down my fear, it abruptly gentled. A pleasant breeze tickled my face as a cloud crossed the sun, alleviating the afternoon heat, and the ache in my knee vanished. A whisper—somehow soundless, more like a caress upon my very heart—curled around my nape. Ah, I thought. So you are here. Excerpted from The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty. Copyright © 2026 by Shannon Chakraborty. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Tapestry of Fate</i> by Shannon Chakraborty appeared first on Reactor.