The brazier had burned low by the time Batu was writing, the cold having moved into the room while the center still had its warmth. The pale gray of winter dawn was coming through the felt on the east and giving him enough light to work by. He had the stylus in his hand and a piece of felt spread on the writing surface, and he had been at it for a while already.

The list was taking longer than a field order because the phrasing had to carry its own weight without him there to explain it. He wrote.

The midwife’s hands and the attendants’ hands must be washed in water that has been boiled and then cooled before any birth work begins. Not washed in cold water. Boiled water, cooled to the point of use.

Every cloth used in the birth must be boiled beforehand and handled only by the midwife after.

The blade for the cord is to be held in fire until it glows, then cooled in clean water before it cuts. The binding for the cord is to be boiled cloth only.

No one who has a fever, open wounds that are festering, or sick children in their household is to be present at the birth or to come near the mother or the child in the seven days following.

The afterbirth must come out complete. If the midwife has any uncertainty about whether it is complete, the physician is to be called immediately. She does not wait.

The child is to be put to the breast within the first hour of birth. Nothing else is given to the child before this, no honey, no water, no other substance.

The mother’s surroundings are to be kept clean throughout recovery. Soiled cloths are removed from the room immediately.

He set the stylus down and looked at what he’d written.

He heard the sleeping mats shift, then the sound of someone crossing a cold floor without hurrying. Saran came around the partition still wrapped in the heavy felt lining from the sleeping mat. She didn’t bother wearing anything else. She crossed to where he was sitting and leaned over his shoulder to read.

He kept his hands flat on the table and waited. She read from the first line through to the last without speaking.

"All of it has to be boiled," she said, her voice low with sleep.

"Yes."

She looked at the second line again, her brow tightening slightly. "That’s not how it’s done."

"I know."

She stayed where she was, her eyes moving through the directives. When she reached the blade rule, she tapped the felt lightly.

"The blade in fire until it glows?"

"Yes."

She read through the fourth rule, the restriction on who could be present. He let her get to the end of it.

"Why boiling and not just clean water," she said.

He considered the wording before answering. "There are things too small to see that get into wounds and into the birth and kill from the inside. Clean water doesn’t reach them. It has to be heated all the way through."

She said nothing for a moment, her gaze still on the list. "I hadn’t heard that."

"Most people haven’t."

She read the afterbirth rule. "The midwife knows this one."

"She knows to watch for it. The rule says she acts if any part remains, not waits."

"And the breast within the first hour." She glanced back at him. "The attendants said to wait."

"Don’t."

She straightened up and looked at the list from above it rather than over his shoulder. Her expression was the one she used when she’d finished working something through and arrived at the action it required.

"I’ll have Khulgen make copies before the meeting. One for the physician, one for the midwife, one for the senior attendant." She rested her fingers briefly on the felt. "I’ll keep this one."

That was the full extent of her response to it. She didn’t ask where it had come from. She considered it, determined what it required, and was done.

She leaned down and put her lips briefly to the back of his neck, just below his hairline. Brief, and hers. Then she moved away toward the sleeping area to dress for the day.

He looked at the felt in front of him. The brazier was putting its heat into the room from the right and the winter dawn was coming through the felt on the left, and this was what a morning looked like now.

Khulgen had the copies done before the late morning.

As for the next business, Tükel had been waiting in the administrative room at the record building when Batu arrived with Saran. The waiting had not made him impatient. He carried himself like a man who had expected it to take time and prepared for it.

He was broad through the shoulders, middle-aged, with the posture of someone who had spent years loading and unloading goods across a long career. His coat was Uyghur in cut and maintained better than most travel allowed, which said something about how he had thought of this meeting before he arrived at it.

He had organized what he’d brought on the low table in the room’s center, and when Batu and Saran came in, he didn’t move to speak. He let the table make the introduction.

On the eastern side, there was a bolt of Song dynasty silk, folded so the weave was visible at the long edge, the thread count fine enough to distinguish itself at a glance from any Persian or Kipchak textile. Beside it a sealed clay jar marked with southern Chinese trading house characters, the seal not fully containing the smell of black pepper beneath it. A roll of Chinese administrative paper, the quality higher than what the Bukhara contract had produced. A small lacquered box, closed.

On the northern side, there was a pelt of Arctic fox, the long guard hairs still on it, pale against the table’s dark surface. Beside it a piece of Baltic amber the size of a thumb joint, pale yellow, with an insect frozen inside it that the winter light from the east window found and held when the light struck it.

East and north, both directions, and Sarai sitting at the crossing between them. The table said all of it before anyone spoke.

"Tükel," Batu said.

The trader inclined his head. "My lord."

"Tell me what you’re proposing."

Tükel glanced at the table once before he spoke, confirming what he’d arranged was doing what he’d intended.

"There’s no market on this stretch of the Volga," he said. "From the river to the Caspian, there’s nothing a merchant can reach and know will be there the following season and the one after. Urgench is the nearest reliable point, and it’s far enough south that it changes the margin on smaller loads coming from the north. The smaller traders don’t make the journey. Only the large ones, and only in the biggest seasons."

He looked at Batu.

"The north has what you’ve seen on that table. Fur, amber, walrus ivory, beeswax, northern timber. The men who collect it come down the river systems, but they need a consistent buyer, and right now the nearest one who’s going to be in place year after year is too far for the numbers to work on anything but large loads. So the trade moves through the Ayas network and routes south, not here. What it should be doing is stopping here."

"And what do you want for bringing it here," Saran said.

The trader’s attention moved to her, and something in it changed. He had been pitching at Batu. She shifted his focus without pause.

"A permanent location in your market district," he said. "Every season, year to year, with the right to hold goods there and conduct trade under Sarai’s terms. I also want protection of my goods on Jochid roads between here and Samarkand. And a tax rate on what passes through." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

He named the rate. It was a real number, not a starting position built high to be forced down. It was what he was actually asking for.

"The protection on the roads," Saran said. She stepped closer to the table, her gaze on the goods rather than him. "If a load arrives short, if goods are missing between Samarkand and here, how does the claim work. Who accounts for the records."

The trader looked at her directly now, and the look said she had asked the question he hadn’t expected from this room.

"In the Ayas system, the caravanserai registers the load at departure. Weight, content, count. The receiving station registers the arrival. If there’s a shortfall, both records show it. The claim goes to the road authority."

"The road authority here would be Khulgen’s office," Saran said.

The trader glanced toward Khulgen. "We have a format for that already."

Khulgen said after a moment. He set a hand on the table, ready to negotiate.