The food went to the side of the table, and the conversation found its real ground.
"Start with Guyuk," Orda said. "Everything else sits around him, and I want to know what you have from the road before I tell you what I have from the north."
Batu described the documents from Samarkand without dramatizing them, a courier carrying intelligence on his movements, intercepted before the passes.
The content was clear on the faction's members and on the directive language that made the first session's timing the actual weapon. A plan that gave Guyuk the right to call the vote before the full assembly seated itself.
"I have the same implication from different sources," Orda said, settling forward slightly. "He'll call it within a day of your tumen arriving, if he's smart. Before a full attendance gives the other factions a position to argue from."
He paused.
