The fire was already built when Batu arrived.

Buqa had been at it before the morning began, which was his practice for any rite that required the fire to be at a specific temperature when the ceremony opened.

He was crouched at its near side adjusting the central stones when Batu came through the entrance, and he did not look up. The fire was his domain in this space and acknowledged no hierarchy above it.

The ger had a particular smell. Someone on Buqa’s staff had laid fresh grass across the floor before the fire went in, and the heat had drawn the scent out of it, and underneath that was the smell of the offerings at the fire’s right side.

Rendered fat in a ceramic vessel. A skin of airag. A small bundle of dried herbs that had traveled from somewhere south of the Silk Road and whose name Batu did not know, but which had been in Buqa’s ceremony kit since before he arrived in the west.

He stood inside the entrance and observed the space. The fire at the ger’s center, the smoke hole open above it, the interior organized around the central element with everything else in its secondary position.

Buqa’s attendant was at the far side, holding the instrument case. The offerings were ready.

Batu took his position at the near side, across the fire from where Saran would stand when the ceremony started.

The fire burned at the low steady rate.

Orda arrived first. He came through the entrance at an unhurried pace, checked the interior in a single sweep of his eyes, and found the witness position on the right side without looking for confirmation. He looked at Batu across the fire and a nod was the sum of his greeting.

Mongke came next. His footfall was different from Orda’s, lighter, the movement of who had learned to take up exactly as much space as he chose and no more. He took the witness position on the left and looked at Buqa’s work with cold attention.

Sorghaghtani entered behind him. She was carrying a small silk-wrapped object in both hands, which Batu recognized as the formal object of the union, something from the Toluid household that would be given to the Jochid household as part of the naming declaration.

She found her position at the side nearest the entrance and stood in it with the bearing of who had conducted a great many formal occasions and knew where she was supposed to be in each of them.

Nobody spoke.

Buqa continued to attend to the fire.

Then Saran came through the entrance.

She had walked from the Toluid camp alone. Her household attendants were outside, and she had crossed the neutral ground between the camps and arrived here without an escort.

She observed the ger’s interior in the same sweep her mother had used, found the position where the tradition required her to stand, and stood in it.

Her coat was her best one, in deep blue with gold stitching at the collar and cuffs, and she wore it with the ease of a woman for whom a formal coat was an ordinary thing to carry. She looked at Buqa’s work. She looked at the offered vessels. She looked at the fire and watched its depth without comment.

Then she looked at Batu.

He looked at her.

The fire crackled once and sent a curl of smoke upward through the hole above.

Buqa stood from his crouch at the fire’s near side and turned to face the interior of the ger with the full authority of his position, and the rite began.

"Möngke Tengri," he said, his voice finding the carrying depth he used in ceremonies. "Eternal Blue Sky, you are above this place as you are above every place. You were above those who came before these people. You are witness to what is gathered here."

He took the ceramic vessel from its position beside the fire and held it above the flame. The rendered fat poured in a slow stream, and the fire rose to receive it, brightening and reaching upward and casting the whole interior into a different light for the space of two or three breaths, the shadows jumping and the smell changing immediately, the sharp sweetness of fat in fire, something that had no equivalent in any other burning. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Buqa held the vessel until the last drops fell and then set it back.

"The ancestors of these lines watch from where they are," he said. "Genghis Khan, who was given the sky’s mandate, watches. Jochi Khan, his son, watches. Tolui Khan, his son, watches. The fire is their witness and ours."

He picked up the airag skin and crouched at the fire’s base, pouring a careful measure at the corner of the central stones where the ground received it. The liquid darkened the earth and the smell of it rose into the ger’s air and mixed with the fat and the dried herbs and the fresh grass.

He stood again and looked at the two of them standing across the fire from each other.

"The Jochid line and the Toluid line have come to this fire," he said. "What is done in the fire’s presence is witnessed by the fire and by the sky above it. Batu Khan, senior prince of the Jochid ulus, and Saran, daughter of Tolui Khan, son of Genghis Khan who held the sky’s mandate, the fire acknowledges you both."

He gestured once, a movement that both of them read as the beginning of the circling, and Batu came around the fire’s left side as Saran came around the right, moving in the sun’s direction, the fire between them and then passing to their left as they came around, the heat reaching across and finding their faces on the first rotation.

The ger watched everything still while they moved. Orda at his position, watching without expression. Mongke in the same note. Sorghaghtani with the silk-wrapped object in both hands, her eyes on the fire.

The first rotation completed.

The second. The fire’s heat came again on the left face, then the interior’s cooler air on the far side, then the heat again. Saran’s pace was perfect. She was looking at the fire on each pass, which was tradition.

The third. Batu watched her on the far side of the fire as they completed the rotation, her face in profile against the smoke hole’s light, and considered what he was looking at.

She had done whatever preparation was available to a Toluid daughter who had grown up in a household where ceremony was the daily experience, and she had it exactly right.

Buqa stepped forward when the third rotation completed and reached for the airag vessel. He dipped his thumb and placed a mark on Batu’s forehead, a single line drawn from left to right, cool against the skin. Then Saran, the same gesture, his thumb moving with economy of who had done this ten thousand times in forty years of practice. He stepped back.

"The fire has received what was brought to it," he said. "The sky has witnessed what was done before it."

Sorghaghtani stepped forward.

She held the silk-wrapped object in both hands and looked at her daughter across the fire with flat attention, and then she spoke.

"Saran, daughter of Tolui Khan, who was son of Genghis Khan to whom the Eternal Blue Sky gave the mandate of all the peoples under it."

Her voice was even and without effort. "You leave the Toluid hearth that raised you. You enter the Jochid hearth. The fire of your new household accepts you. Take what I give as the Toluid line’s blessing to the Jochid house."

She placed the silk-wrapped object in Saran’s hands.

Saran received it with both hands and held it without opening it.

Orda said, "The Jochid hearth receives her."

Mongke said, "The Toluid line witnesses the union as complete."

The fire burned at the center.

Buqa’s attendant moved to begin banking it, and the ger started its return from ceremony to ordinary space as the gathered people found their movement again, Sorghaghtani turning toward the entrance, Mongke and Orda stepping toward each other for the brief exchange that witnesses had after such things were done. Buqa went back to his own concerns.

The space between Batu and Saran opened as the others moved, a brief interval in the ger’s transition from ceremony to the preparation for the feast.

She spoke first.

"The riders from the assembly have been talking about a city," she said. Her voice different, still direct, still forthright, but also free to say whatever she wants. "On the Volga. It’s yours, yes?"

"Indeed," he said.

"How much of it exists. Did you start in the previous winter? What about the foundation? And do you have a specialized workforce?"

"The foundation is laid. The craftsmen are there and the administrative work is running from the main camp until the buildings are ready." He kept his voice even. "Before you reach it there will be more."

"How much more," she said.

"A records building, a market district started, and the supply relay that runs through it is already doing the work of a city even without the city’s structure."

She looked at the silk-wrapped object in her hands for a moment. Despite her efforts to hide it, Batu was able to see the fidgety in her fingers, the eagerness to start. She looked like a child with a toy she was finally allowed to play, only that the toy was a khanate, and the child was an ambitious woman.

"What does it need that it doesn’t have." she asked.

Batu could tell it. She had been thinking about this, probably for weeks. About what the work was, about what she could do, about what she could improve.

"People who understand how to run an urban city," he said.

"That’s what I thought," she said.

She turned toward the entrance where the feast preparations were beginning to draw people, and he followed her through into the summer air.

Outside, the brothers were already gathered near the feast space. Orda stood with his cup. Tangqut had his arm around Toqa-Timur’s shoulder, saying something that made the shorter man’s face compress in the way that meant he was deciding whether to laugh or object.

Berke stood at the outer edge with his usual slight distance from the main group, and Siban was beside him, which was its own kind of signal about how much things had changed since the past year.

From the Toluid household, two of Mongke’s brothers had come over, Kuklan among them, young enough that the assembly had been his first at this scale, the look of someone still filing what the past weeks had meant still visible somewhere in how he carried himself.

"Finally," Tangqut said when he saw them come through. "I’m starving."

"You are always starving," Toqa-Timur said.

"Only before feasts."

The food was already at the tables.