Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall

Daichi found him in the western textile lanes.

He came at a walk, observing Batu’s position through the market crowd before he reached it, and his face was compressed in the way that meant he had found something that shouldn’t be reported in public space.

Batu moved to the wall between two stalls and waited.

"The seal," Daichi said. He kept his voice at a volume that covered two meters and no more. "There’s a correspondence broker three streets east of the Chinese section. He remembers a buyer from several weeks ago with the same mark. The man came twice, once to arrange the account and once to pick up completed correspondence."

"What kind of correspondence."

"The broker copied letters from a draft. He doesn’t know the content. He doesn’t read the eastern Mongolian script."

Daichi paused.

"The man paid above rate both times and left east both times."

"Is he still in the city."

"Suuqai doesn’t know yet. He’s working the eastern gate contacts."

Batu looked at the textile lane running south. The broker had been copying letters, which meant the courier had been composing correspondence in Samarkand and routing it through a local hand.

He either lacked the right format, or he wanted the document to carry local markings. The second reason was more interesting than the first.

"Tell Suuqai to stay on it," Batu said.

Daichi went.

The courier from the darughachi’s office found him less than twenty minutes later, a young Uighur man in a clean coat who approached the nearest Khar Kheshig rider first and waited for the nod before coming forward.

The invitation was delivered in Mongolian, formally but without the performed elevation that sycophancy required. The city’s senior administrator requested the honor of Batu’s company at the main caravanserai. A meal had been prepared. The timing was entirely at Batu’s convenience.

The timing had not been at Batu’s convenience since the courier had clearly been watching the market for some time before finding him.

The caravanserai was four streets north of the market’s eastern section, its outer gate opening onto a courtyard large enough for thirty loaded camels and presently occupied by half that many, their handlers working through the afternoon unloading with the economy of men on a schedule.

The smell of the courtyard was animal and straw and the sharpness of spices that had leaked from their packaging over the distance from wherever they’d started.

An inner gate at the courtyard’s far end led to a covered walkway and then to the private rooms, and a caravanserai servant opened the second gate before the Khar Kheshig had reached it.

The room had rugs in layered patterns across the floor and low tables inlaid with bone and dark wood, the designs of the Khorasan tradition.

Oil lamps in pierced brass shades threw light in small circles that barely touched each other, leaving the room’s corners in a soft brown shadow.

Food was already on the platters. Plov in a wide dish, the rice and lamb and yellow carrot steaming, a flatbread stack, a bowl of yogurt with dried herbs, a plate of dried apricots and pistachios. A ceramic jug and two cups.

The man already seated rose when Batu entered.

He was in his fifties, lean through the face and neck, carrying no excess, with the posture that long practice had made into something natural. His coat was Uighur-cut, well-made, not ostentatious.

He observed Batu from the moment the door opened, and whatever it produced he kept entirely off his face.

"Ayas," he said, when the introductions had run their form. "I’ve been in this post eleven years."

He gestured at the food with the correct hospitable inclination of a host who has prepared something and genuinely means for his guest to eat it.

They sat.

Batu ate it because the food was there and he hadn’t eaten since morning.

Gunnar was at the door’s edge with two of the steppe riders. Ayas had one attendant near the room’s far wall who was present to refill the cups and otherwise invisible.

Ayas poured from the jug. Cold sharbat, pomegranate from the color, the sweetness of it cutting through the lamp oil smell.

He poured his own cup and drank before Batu’s cup was full, which was either hospitality’s proof-of-safety gesture or a habit so old it ran without thinking. Probably both.

"The road from Urgench," Ayas said. "How did you find the delta country this time of year? We’ve had reports it’s been difficult. Raiders moving in the reed beds again."

He said it in a mild conversational tone. His eyes were on his own cup when he said it.

"We had a minor contact with a group south of Urgench," Batu said. "Before the city. We dealt with it and continued."

"Urgench’s darughachi mentioned something in his last report."

Ayas looked up.

"He said the larger of the two reed bed groups had gone silent. He wasn’t certain why."

He left the observation between them without adding to it, and did not require an answer.

"The provisioning there was handled well," Batu said. "Nayan runs a tight station."

Ayas received this and moved on, which meant he had what the delta question had been looking for and had found it sufficient.

He broke a piece of flatbread.

"The stay in Bukhara was longer than we’d expected," he said. "For a tumen moving on the kurultai road."

"I had business there," Batu said.

"So we understood."

A pause.

He was eating, at ease, no performance of interrogation in it.

"The seal on the paper contract was new to the darughachi’s registry."

"The Jochid administrative mark," Batu said. "We’re building the permanent infrastructure on the Volga and we need paper supply we can rely on. Bukhara’s workshop has the output and the workforce."

Ayas nodded once. He compared it against what he already knew, noting what it confirmed and what it added.

"And the engineer. The hydraulic man from Urgench."

"Ahmad ibn Farrukh. He’d spent two years restoring Urgench’s waterway system."

Batu took some of the plov. It was good, the fat-to-rice ratio right, the lamb pulled rather than chopped.

"The western campaign is going to move into river countries. I need men who understand how to make flooded flat terrain productive, not just crossable."

He looked at Ayas.

"This goes beyond the opening engagements. What happens behind the wall matters as much as reaching it."

Ayas looked at him steadily.

His attention had changed. He was finding the topic of something he had been thinking across the whole conversation.

"I’ve met quite a few Chinggisid princes through the years," he said after a moment, "most of them think about the campaign’s opening engagements."

He refilled his own cup.

"You’re thinking about the administration."

"The opening engagements win you the territory," Batu said. "The administration determines what you can do with it."

Ayas picked up a pistachio and looked at it briefly before eating it.

"The kurultai is convened for campaign planning. The western march has been discussed for some years now."

He looked at Batu.

"How do you see it developing? The command structure, the approach."

There it was. The question had its friendly exterior and its professional interior and both were real. This was a man who needed to report accurately and who also was genuinely curious about the answer.

Batu set his cup down.

"The western terrain is different from anything the eastern campaigns prepared for," he said.

He kept his voice even, explaining, choosing his words with care.

"The eastern campaign moved through cities that could be reduced relatively quickly. Zhongdu, Samarkand, Bukhara. What’s ahead is different. The fortifications are thicker and the populations know we’re coming because they’ve had years of reports moving west."

He paused.

"A force that wins the open ground quickly and then stalls outside the first show of resistance loses the momentum that makes Mongol operations effective."

Ayas looked at him.

Something had changed in his face. He’d asked a question expecting a political answer.

He’d received a military one.

He poured more sharbat into Batu’s cup without being asked.