It was already late in the day. The feast was in its last hours when the Toluid line members began its organized departure from the feast ground’s northern end.

Batu watched it from his position without turning his head. The movement was gradual, with the families departing, the senior household returning to the camp by its own timetable, nothing that announced itself.

Across the feast ground, at the Ogedeid section’s arranged tables, Guyuk’s men were still present and showing no sign of leaving. The contrast between the two camps’ rhythms was its own kind of information.

Batu set his cup down and stood.

The unmarked riding coat was in the Jochid camp’s supply section, the plain outer coat he had worn through the approach to Karakorum before the tumen arrived and the banner went up.

Suuqai had it ready when Batu arrived, which meant the man had spent enough time with him to know what he is thinking. He put it on over his camp clothes and tied it without ceremony.

"Just you," Batu said.

Suuqai nodded once. They went north through the camp’s outer side.

The Toluid camp was on the northern margin, its banner visible at the approach even at this hour with the late summer dark not yet complete.

A guard at the outer perimeter received them without challenge. Siban had arranged the acknowledgment in the days before the tumen’s arrival, and the man at the entrance simply stepped aside and pointed inward. Batu made his way to a discreet, large ger.

Sorghaghtani was already seated when they came through the inner entrance. She wore the plain coat she had worn in the provision quarter ger days ago, and still with the absence of jewelry.

A lamp at mid-level. Two cups already on the table.

"Are you this eager for this matchmaking," she said, before Batu had fully crossed to the table.

"I prefer to act early to avoid complications afterwards."

"I do wonder what kind of complications you mean." She picked up her cup.

"Undoubtedly it wouldn’t be that the mighty Batu Khan cannot find a bride."

She set it down. "Regardless. This is still a preliminary meeting. My condition hasn’t changed."

"Understood," Batu said.

She looked at him for a moment with a flat gaze. She was watching him, considering if he really was the kind of man she expected him to be. Then she reached to the side and said one word to the attendant at the ger’s inner partition.

Four women came through from the inner space.

Three younger ones ranged in age, and all three carried themselves in the way of young women who had been told precisely what this occasion was and had prepared for it accordingly.

They had a steady posture, eyes forward, a forced composure etched into the bones.

They arranged themselves in the space with the trained ease of a household that had done formal presentations before.

Sorghaghtani named them in order as they took their positions. Möngün. Altan. Öge.

The fourth came through last.

Her name was Saran. She was older, probably around twenty, with a far more mature body. She did not display herself when she entered the space. She found a position that suited her and stood in it.

Her eyes went to Batu immediately and did not perform the indirect courtesy the others had offered. She was observing him.

Neither with hostility nor with curiosity of the social kind. It was a gaze similar to Sorghaghtani herself.

Batu considered it and looked at Sorghaghtani, who was watching him watch them.

"Möngün is the youngest," Sorghaghtani said. "She speaks three languages and she’s been administering her minor household’s lower accounts since she was fifteen. She’s careful and patient and she does what she’s told."

"And the others," Batu said.

"Altan has a talent for people. She knows how to read them. Öge is a reasonable steward."

Sorghaghtani’s voice was consistent through all three descriptions, clear and unadorned, the volume she used when she named troop figures or alliance conditions.

"They’re both capable within the range of what they’re asked to do."

"And Saran."

Sorghaghtani looked at the eldest daughter present and then back at Batu.

"She’s refused two formal proposals herself," she said. "Without consulting me."

"A third withdrew before the conversation reached the formal stage, which I suspect she managed on purpose."

She turned her cup on the table once. "She’s been a problem for a while. Just take it as formalities for her presence."

Saran was still looking at Batu. She didn’t bat an eye at her mother’s description. At Batu.

The three younger ones kept their composure with focused effort. They knew the decision this day could change their lives forever, and it show in the little that slipped through their masks.

They were present and not present. Doing what they had been brought to do.

The would wait as long as necessary, and then they would return to their own concerns.

Saran’s posture was simply how she stood.

Batu looked at her, then he looked at Sorghaghtani. What three years of widowhood against a court that had tried to absorb her household by remarriage had created in the woman across this table from him.

The ability to understand a room before anyone in it had spoken. The confidence of someone who had learned that her own judgement of a situation was more reliable than what anyone else told her.

The absence of performance.

Sorghaghtani had not been born with these things. She had learned from experience. Which meant she had the ambition and the capabilities to match her position.

And opportunities had sources.

He had not been born with them either. He had brought them from somewhere else entirely.

Saran was still looking at him with constant appraisal. She had made a decision to not perform for this occasion and was waiting to see whether that decision had been the right one.

"I’d like to speak with your oldest daughter," Batu said. "Privately."

Sorghaghtani held the cup without moving it.

Her face gave back exactly what Sorghaghtani’s face always gave back, which was very little.

But she had been steering the conversation toward Möngün with the casualness of a woman who considered the matter effectively decided. What Batu had just said was not what she had been steering toward.

She looked at him for a moment.

Then she looked at Saran.