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I t took a while for the guard to return. Jai paced, brimming with anticipation, such that Winter had been stirred from her sleep, and watched him with a bewildered gaze from his throne.

Finally, they came. Jai saw the guard helping a wizened old lady through the door, even as she belaboured him with her walking stick.

‘Let me go! I’ll walk before my khan, unhand me, you imbecile...’

The guard abandoned his efforts, as a young girl followed behind him, her eyes wide as she saw the grandeur of the tent.

‘Meera,’ Jai said, hastening to the old crone’s side. ‘I had not meant to wake...’

‘You think the Kidara’s memory keeper would miss a chance for an audience with the khan?’ she asked, waving away Jai’s help much the same as she did the guard. ‘I would not dream of it.’

Meera struggled with the next few steps, and this time allowed her disciple, with some grumbling, to help her to the audience cushion at the foot of Jai’s throne.

Jai hastened back to his seat, and caught the disciple motioning at her ear, even as Meera pulled an ivory ear trumpet, one as white as her hair, from the folds of her moth-eaten robes.

Understanding, Jai took a seat opposite her, the pale orbs that were her eyes boring into him. He smiled at her, and took her hands.

Her face was more wrinkle than anything, creasing in a toothless smile as she leaned closer. Her wizened hands reached out to feel him, tugging at his hair, brushing his lips and nose.

‘Rohan’s boy,’ she said, nodding with approval. ‘You have his bearing.’

‘Thank... thank you,’ Jai said, taken aback. This had not been how he’d pictured the conversation.

‘Meera, do you remember the old times?’ Jai asked, speaking into the earpiece.

‘Wouldn’t be a good memory keeper if I didn’t!’ she cackled, before her laughter turned into a hacking cough.

Her disciple smiled awkwardly at Jai, as she patted Meera’s back.

‘My little birds tell me... all the goings-on of this... place,’ Meera said, still coughing. ‘I say, good! A return to the old ways. Why, it has been so long since Teji brought me here, even if it was only to hear his petty woes and foibles...’

‘I—’ Jai tried to interject.

‘It’s a dark day indeed when the memory keeper must rely on the prattling of her khan’s concubines instead of his testimony. A memory keeper’s as much a secret keep—’

‘Mistress, please,’ her disciple said loudly.

‘What?’ Meera said, turning her trumpet. Her voice had a slurping, slurring quality, a consequence of her lack of teeth.

Jai took his chance to speak.

‘Meera, do you remember my mother?’ he asked loudly.

Meera turned back, and nodded sagely.

‘A captive, from a Sabine baggage train,’ she said. ‘Near the middle of the war, after your father drove Leonid back west. A pretty one, or so I’m told. My eyes were never good, even then.’

Meera snapped her fingers, and the disciple hastened to a pouch at her waist, and stuffed a handful of jerky into her own mouth. Jai stared, confused, as the girl’s jaws worked busily.

‘What was her name?’ Jai asked. ‘Tell me everything you know.’

Meera snapped her fingers again, and the girl spat into her hand, before handing it to Meera. The old lady masticated thoughtfully with her gums, letting out a hum as her eyes rolled back.

Jai leaned forward. He had never dared think that he would know who his mother was. And while there was so much pressing in all around him, he found this was the only thing that mattered at this moment. Finally, Meera swallowed, and cocked her head.

‘Rohan,’ she said, raising a finger. ‘He was... well... he never gave much thought to captives back then. All men of war, you see. He kept them, traded them for the return of his own captives. All part of the game.’

Jai resisted the urge to simply demand his mother’s name. That would come. He’d waited this long...

‘Then, one time... it was all women. Concubines for the legions. A reprieve for the soldiers, sent for by Leonid himself. Rohan said the legionaries must have been close to mutiny, to attempt such an expedition. Hell, there had been so many Gryphon Knights and cavalry protecting that baggage train, your father lost a hundred men to capture it. Imagine his fury at his reward – no weapons, no gold or food. A bunch of frightened women, press-ganged into a perilous fate.’

Jai’s gaze drifted to Leonid’s diary, where it sat upon the armrest of his throne. He wondered if Leonid would have cared enough to mention this shipment’s capture.

‘Your mother... she was Leonid’s concubine first,’ she said. ‘Or one of his generals’. That was what Rohan thought. She rode in her own carriage, with her elderly mother. And your father knew more than most: lusty loins loosen lips.’

She savoured the last phrase, a devilish grin tugging at her lips as she nudged her protégé. The nudges persisted until a forced, weak chuckle slipped past the girl’s mouth, her eyes offering an apologetic smile to Jai.

‘Thus, he would summon her to his private quarters, questioning her about the man who was his adversary. Striving to know how he thought... how he fucked,’ she said, tapping her temple with a wink.

Jai cleared his throat, sick of hearing what seemed tantamount to gossip – particularly about his own mother. Then Meera caught herself, and lowered her head respectfully.

‘Rohan learned all too well,’ she said, after Jai allowed a few moments of silence. ‘A seducer of kings, that one. Wasn’t long before she was Rohan’s concubine too.’

‘Her name,’ Jai said.

‘Miranda, her name was,’ Meera said, closing her eyes as if straining to remember. ‘He only let her name slip once in my presence. He forbade it spoken, you see. Kept her secret. Arjun and Samar’s mother... she was a jealous one, even then. His interrogations became more intimate. He loved her, and she him – that’s all he told me.’

She sighed, and gathered her robe closer about her.

‘Who can say if a love can spring between captor and captive? The poor girl must have been frightened to death. But even with her last breath, she called for him. For you. I hope that gives you some solace.’

Jai sat back. He didn’t know what he had expected to hear. Certainly, he had known some of it. But... he had never known she had been a captive. That she had once known Leonid.

To hear of her death... that she had wanted him. That perhaps she had loved his father. That meant something. He could feel it in his chest, the unwinding of something coiled tight.

‘I know this is not what you wish to hear,’ Meera said, perhaps taking Jai’s silence as anger. ‘But she was a secret, even to me. Your birth too was hidden. It was only when your father died, and Teji negotiated terms, that your existence came to light. By then, your mother was dead, and you were just another chip to trade, another hostage for peace. That’s how Leonid wanted it.’

Jai wiped at his eyes, for they pricked and watered. He had always wondered why Balbir had known so little of his mother. Even believed her to be lying. Now he knew.

‘How did she die?’ Jai asked.

Meera sniffed deeply, and then lowered her chin into her hands, huffing.

‘The Crimson Death,’ she said. ‘It came from the east. Took your mother, and her mother too. Arjun and Samar’s mother. And many, many others. Some say, it was the Crimson Death that forced Rohan’s hand to fight the final battle. He knew, in time, the plague would reach his armies.’

Jai stared, digesting the news. So much kept from him. So many years.

‘I hear it made its way west, years later. Perhaps you remember it.’

Jai well remembered the terrible disease that had wracked Latium when he had been a young boy. That red rash that crept up people’s bodies, sucking the life from them until their ravaged bodies fell where they stood.

‘Anything else?’ Jai asked, his voice hoarse as he pushed himself to his feet.

‘She was pale of hair, skin and eye,’ Meera croaked, reading Jai’s cue and grasping at her disciple’s arm to struggle to her feet. ‘Her mother too. But Miranda is a Sabine name. Mayhap some Dansk in her, I saw. Or Samarion.’

Jai turned, so that the disciple could not see the tears that now readily messed his face, running down the henna that still dried there.

‘If that’s all, then,’ Jai said.

He heard the thud, thud, thud of Meera leaving.

‘We buried her, as we guessed was her people’s custom,’ Meera called. ‘Her grave lies in the Blue Mesa. She said... it reminded her of home.’