The camp was still ahead when Kirsa asked the first question.
The other riders had spread to their natural intervals on the return, Bayan at the outer edge, eyes on the open steppe beyond the gate, the remaining in loose formation ahead.
The frost still stood on the grass in the places the sun hadn't reached. The cold sat in the open air with no wind to move it. Two horses side by side on the flat winter steppe, moving at an easy pace, the eastern channel behind them and everything else ahead.
They had not spoken since Batu named him mingan commander. The silence had the texture of completed work. The kind that did not need filling.
Then Kirsa asked.
"Why did you trust me as much as you did."
He asked it flatly, with no angle behind it. Batu had learned this about him early. Kirsa never asked for something he did not actually want.
