The ger was larger than Sorghaghtani’s provision quarter space but furnished with the same pragmatic absence of ceremony. A working lamp, a low table, two cups already set.

Mongke was seated when Batu came through the entrance, which meant he had arrived before Batu and had been waiting without finding another meeting for himself in the interim. He was watching the lamp when Batu entered and looked up without particular urgency.

He was younger than Batu had expected given the weight of what Orda and Shiban’s reports had placed on him. Late twenties, perhaps thirty, with a lean frame that carried no excess and a face that confirmed what Orda had described. The coldness was in the eyes before any word arrived, an attention that made most people break from it first.

Batu sat.

Neither man spoke immediately. The camp’s sounds came through the felt walls, the feast still happening at the ground’s center, the distant percussion of it reduced to its lowest register at this distance and hour. The lamp was steady between them.

"The archery was informative," Mongke said.

He said it the way a man named a fact he had already gone past.

"Which part," Batu said.

"Buri’s response was more informative than the shot itself."

Mongke picked up his cup. "The way he acted when confronted in front of a crowd shows exactly how much his grandfather’s standing has actually left him." He drank and set it down. "He can’t read the bigger picture. He never could."

"He is familiar to you."

"Since before this assembly. Chagatai uses him as a voice when he wants someone that can shout loudly and with confidence. He doesn’t know that’s his only good trait."

Batu received this. The description was accurate and given in a casual form.

He noted the speed. Mongke had moved from the archery ground to Buri’s role in two sentences without appearing to have made a transition.

"The campaign," Batu said.

Mongke set the cup down. "My mother explained the terms. Senior front-line command, with real authority over the advance’s eastern flank." He looked at Batu directly. "What I want to know is how that works on practice when there are multiple Chinggisid princes in the field simultaneously and each of us has tumens answering to us personally."

"That will depend on who gives orders when the positions conflict."

"Then, do you have a real answer to that question or will it break the first time it is tested on the field."

Batu looked at him. Mongke had already identified the exact mechanism through which joint Chinggisid operations historically failed. Every campaign the empire had run with multiple princes in the field had that fault.

"In that case, the command runs through the senior field commander," Batu said. "Subutai. What the princes hold is territorial and administrative authority over their region. When the positions conflict, it comes to him."

"And when Subutai’s decision conflicts with what one of the princes wants."

"Then that prince brings the grievance to me after the engagement. Not during it."

Mongke looked at the table for a moment. He didn’t concede, but simply accepted the answer for thought, the same motion Orda made when a figure checked out against expectations.

"The marriage alliance," Batu said.

"I know about the meeting."

"I chose Saran."

Mongke looked at him for a moment. He had known Saran since they were children, and whatever that knowledge contained, it ran in a way that his face did not open for visitors.

A single beat of flat attention arrived.

"My mother was steering you elsewhere," he said.

"Yes."

"You noticed."

"It wasn’t difficult to."

Mongke looked at his cup. "Saran had been put on the list for mere formality. My mother didn’t really consider you would have chosen her." He paused. "I find it hard to believe you don’t have a good reason for it."

"If you are what I heard about, you should be able to tell," Batu said.

Mongke watched him with cold attention, reevaluating what he knew. It lasted for three seconds.

Then he said, "Saran is ambitious. That’s why you choose her."

"Yes."

"Someone who won’t correspond with my mother about decisions and wait for the response."

"No," Batu said.

He set his cup down with precision that said the subject was resolved and moved on without ceremony.

"Guyuk called the session before your faction had arrived," Mongke said.

"He called it before yours had arrived either."

"Yes." The word had nothing in it. "He’d been here weeks moving what he needed. Calling it early tells you something about how certain he was of his position." He looked at the lamp. "A man that certain usually has a reason to be."

"He had a reason," Batu said. "The picture he had of the Jochid western position was constructed. He trusted it because it had been fed to him through a network he believed was his."

Mongke looked at him.

"The network has been mine since last year," Batu said.

The ger went quiet. The lamp glow was steady.

Outside the feast ground’s sound continued at its late-hour volume, the human noise of tens of thousands of people making merry reduced to ambience across the distance.

Mongke had not moved. Nothing visible had changed in his face. But the pressure of his attention was different from what it had been thirty seconds before. The picture he just had a few minutes ago had changed in subtle but important ways.

"That’s not only about the campaign," Mongke said.

"No."

"It’s not field command either." He kept his eyes on Batu. "What you’ve been building in the west isn’t what a Chinggisid prince builds when he’s been assigned a position and told to secure it until he’s recalled. It’s what a man builds when he’s decided the position is eventually going to be his to define on his own terms."

Batu said nothing.

"I’m not objecting to it," Mongke said. "I’m naming what it is."

He reached for his cup and drank and set it back on the table with the exactness he brought to everything.

"Then you understand what it means if Guyuk follows Ogedei," Batu said.

"Everything you’ve built becomes a problem he has formal authority to absorb," Mongke said. "Yes. I’ve understood that since before this day."

"And you understand what it means for the Toluid line if he follows Ogedei."

"My brothers spend the rest of their lives at the margins of a succession that’s already been decided. Yes."

The lamp burned. The felt walls blocked the night outside them.

The two men sat on either side of a table with two cups on it and the entire weight of the world in the space without either of them having named it yet.

Batu looked at him.

"Who do you believe should succeed Ogedei," Batu said.