The floor remained open and the minor princes began to speak.
Chaga son of Toquchar rose first from the Ogedeid section's inner ring. He was perhaps thirty, well-dressed in the way of who understood that presentation in formal was its own argument, and he addressed the session floor with the ease of who had been preparing this for longer than the three days of the games period.
"The empire has conducted every campaign of consequence under command that answers to the ancestral land," he said. "From the first campaigns of the Great Ancestor to the reduction of the Jin territories, the army answers to the Great Khan and to the commanders the Great Khan designates."
He let that be clear, and then continued, "The western campaign is not a local operation. It crosses a distance that makes it the largest undertaking this assembly has ever authorized. A campaign of that scale requires the clearest possible line of authority. The Ogedeid line stands for that principle."
He sat.
