The road from Volga Bulgaria was the one he had ridden twice before, east in the autumn when the steppe was dry and pale, west in spring when the snowmelt was still in the soil.

Now the grass was fully green and the air had the heat of a summer that had been working at the steppe for weeks. Daichin moved at the easy walking pace since the morning’s departure from the last supply point, consistent and unhurried, the pace of an animal that understood the day was distance rather than urgency.

The Khar Kheshig kept their formation as they always did it.

He had been in Volga Bulgaria for the entire spring. Orda’s White Horde held the territory now, the white banner stable over positions that had been charred earthworks weeks before.

Subutai was at the main camp with his staff, working campaign planning from physical maps and terrain surveys. The tributary system was extending through the former Bulgar state by appointment, record, and formal submission. The craftsmen from the Bulgar workshops were already moving toward Sarai.

The Toluid and Ogedeid armies would assemble at the Sura river. The correspondence from Subutai placed Mongke’s tumens arrival at the camp before winter. The same applied to the Ogedeid force.

The Rus campaign would open in the next spring.

Orda had the authority to manage what happened between now and then in the former Bulgar territory. That was not a concern.

The personal reason for Batu’s return was ahead of him.

The correspondence had reached him during spring. Two riders within a day of each other, Khulgen’s formal dispatch and Saran’s letter in her tight hand.

A son.

Born at the end of the season. Both were well. What he had wrote and instructed for the birth was faithfully obeyed.

Sarai was up ahead, the workshop district smoke rising into the summer air.

More fires than when he had left. The workshop district had expanded along the road, new buildings visible past the original foundation, their smoke spreading thin at the top where the summer heat diffused it.

The market district was also bigger, stalls and fixed depots on ground that had been empty earth when the campaign departed. The granary had a new wing whose timber was pale against the older wood.

At the dock position on the Volga river, the stone coursing Ahmad had begun the previous autumn was finished, the bank rebuilt at a different inclination.

He rode through the market district.

The stalls kept their business. The transactions continued.

At the near corner of the market’s main row, a Uyghur trader in a familiar coat was negotiating over a bolt of northern cloth with a Kipchak woman, and neither of them looked up when the Khar Kheshig passed between them.

The administrative quarter was the same. The wolf’s track banner above the records building flickered against the wind.

Everything around the banner had grown toward it in his absence.

He observed the city’s population density from the street as he moved through it. It was higher than when he had last watched it.

Ultimately, he turned toward the residency.

The senior attendant met him at the entrance. She inclined her head when he dismounted and said, "Khatun’s in her room. The boy’s been up since before dawn."

Batu handed Daichin’s reins to the nearest guard rider and went inside.

The residency interior was the room he had left, organized in the way Saran preferred, with nothing present that did not belong there.

A stack of documents on the outer table was in Khulgen’s hand. Beside it, a second stack in Saran’s own hand, her administrative work still up to date to Khulgen’s through the months, the record of what the civil apparatus had created while he was in Volga Bulgaria.

He noted both stacks and kept moving.

The corridor toward her room.

He passed one of the attendants coming the other way, a young woman carrying a bundle of recently washed cloth, who pressed herself to the wall without being directed to and moved past without looking at him.

The cloth had the scent of the herbs Saran had added to the wash water since the winter.

The door at the end of the corridor was mostly closed.

Before he reached it he heard a voice, small and irregular and unlike speech, the kind a nursing infant made that was like no other voice in a closed room. It was a type of voice he had never paid attention before.

Batu stopped outside the door for one moment.

He put his hand on the wood.

Then he pushed it open.

Saran was in the chair near the window.

Her hair was unkempt, loose at the back, who had been woken through the night for weeks and had stopped caring about it.

She was thinner through the face than she had been in the winter, and there was a tiredness around her eyes that she would not mention and that he would not name for her.

The rest of her was Saran entirely, which meant her attention found him from the moment the door opened.

The child was breastfeeding and she did not cover herself. There was no reason to with this man.

Batu crossed the room.

He went to the chair and crouched beside it. For a moment neither of them said anything.

The child was making small sounds, entirely absorbed in the most important task available to him. He was larger than a newborn. Batu had way to categorize a infant, so he watched it for what it was, small, clearly in the world for some months already, and fully occupied with it.

Saran’s free hand found the back of his neck.

He leaned into her and his forehead came to rest against the side of her head. They stayed there, his hand on the arm of the chair, her arm around him and the child between them in the particular way that a very small baby could be between two adults without any of them being uncomfortable.

The campaign had been months of cold mornings, burned cities and everything battles sounded like when they came down. This room had none of that in it.

He stayed like that for a while, and then he sat back and looked at the child.

The boy had Saran’s remembrance through the jaw and his father’s through the brow, and his eyes, which were dark and clear, gave nothing away. They were neither Saran’s exactly nor any reflection Batu recognized from himself.

Saran watched him for a moment before she said, "He looks at everything that way. Like he already made a decision about a problem that needs to be solved."

Batu looked at the child.

"It’s your eyes."

Saran chuckled. "In case you hadn’t noticed. I’ve been looking at that expression of yours for over a year. At least it’s more adorable for a baby."

One corner of Batu’s mouth shifted slightly.

"He’ll learn to hide it."

Saran adjusted the child against her arm before answering.

"Or he won’t need to. He’ll just be right enough that no one bothers to say anything about it."

She looked at the child with the specific warm attention of a mother.

"I’m sure he will take it after you."

Saran shifted the child in her arms, calmed him down and then held him out toward Batu.

Batu took him.

The heft of it was the first thing he felt, how the weight sat in his arms, at the chest with the head still needing to be held.

He adjusted his hands once and the child tolerated the rearrangement without fuzz.

The infant’s warmth reached through the cloth into his forearm and chest before he had finished working out how to hold him.

The dark clear eyes moved in his general direction without quite finding him, bringing their full attention to the problem of the figure in front of them.

Saran watched him hold the child.

"You waited for me to name him," Batu said.

"I did," she laughed. "As a fair and virtuous wife, you can name the boys and I name the girls."

He looked at the boy. The eyes were still working at him, thorough and unhurried.

"His name is Toqoqan," Batu said.

Saran said nothing for a moment.

Then she repeated it softly. "Toqoqan."

She sat with the word, testing it. Then she looked at the child in Batu’s arms and back at Batu.

"Good. He already looks like he knew it was coming."

The summer light came through the window and lay across the chair and the floor between them, and the boy, Toqoqan, looked toward the light with his full attention, the way he had looked at everything since he arrived in the world, and did not look away.