Batu found Kirsa at the eastern horse lines before the camp had properly awakened. The morning cold sat heavy against the skin. Above them, the sky stretched flat and gray, and beyond the fence the steppe ran outward in every direction, empty enough to hide movement until it was too late.
He stopped beside Kirsa and studied the fodder line.
"Your six horses. The horse master shifted them to the northern pasture two days ago. I know. I saw him do it." Kirsa kept his eyes on the line. "Two are already showing early signs. He caught it before it took hold."
A groom passed carrying a fodder bundle, moving methodically down the line without looking up. Another followed behind him at a measured distance.
"You gave me part of an answer on the ridge," Kirsa said. "I've been thinking about the part I didn't say."
Batu waited. Pressing too early would narrow the answer.
"You already know the first part. Thirty years west of the Ural. The name. The grievance. The story people kept repeating. I used that to pull the Ulus in."
The second groom reached the far end and disappeared around the corral fence.
"But there was something else. Before I made the decision, a rider arrived."
"He came at night. Spoke directly to my senior commander. Gone before morning. No name. No clan marking. Western steppe stock under him." Kirsa's voice stayed stripped down to observed fact. "The message said the Jochid camp was divided over Sarat. That there was opposition inside your command over the way you'd handled the Tergesh and the Ulus. If the Khotor moved within the month, that division would fracture your response."
"Your senior commander believed him."
"My senior commander wanted to believe him." Kirsa turned and met Batu's eyes. "I thought there was enough truth mixed into it to make the window believable."
"You were wrong."
"I was wrong about the fragmentation. I wasn't wrong about the rider having inside knowledge. He knew the Ulus terms. He knew the road passage clause you added to the Tergesh penalty. That information wasn't moving through the western camps when he reached us."
The line had gone quiet. The grooms were distant now, beyond easy hearing.
Batu ran through the problem at once. Who had known the full Tergesh terms before the announcement? The road passage clause had gone into Torghul's brief the morning of the operation. They had discussed it in the command tent the night before departure.
Very few men.
"What direction did he come from?"
"East. From inside your perimeter. The horse was local bred, not courier stock." Kirsa held his gaze. "I'm telling you because you need the information."
Batu weighed it against what he already knew.
"It changes some things."
He left Kirsa at the horse lines and walked back through camp.
The training ground sat on the eastern flat beyond the corrals. When Batu arrived, the middle phase of the day's exercise had stalled. Forty riders held position while two men argued in front of them.
He stopped at the edge and took stock before either officer noticed him.
The dispute was between Ulan, a unit commander who had held authority over two hundred riders since before Sarat, and a younger officer named Penk, assigned three days ago to the new coordination staff role.
Ulan argued that a coordination call did not override a field commander's judgment on his own ground. Penk, speaking with the careful precision of a man who knew he was technically correct and losing anyway, explained that the coordination call was not an override. It was a timing signal.
Torghul stood fifteen meters away, watching without intervening.
Batu walked over.
"How long?"
"Twelve minutes."
"Have you stepped in?"
"I was about to."
"Don't. Let it run."
Torghul glanced at him. Batu kept his attention on the argument.
"Ulan's objection matters." He watched Penk shift tactics in real time, abandon explanation, and begin asking questions instead. Good. "Stop this now and the disagreement just goes underground. Let it finish."
Penk was asking Ulan what support from the coordination role would have made the timing signal workable with his ground assessment. Ulan, caught answering a practical problem instead of defending a position, gave a concrete answer.
Penk said he could build that into the protocol.
The argument ended without victory, but not in collapse either.
Torghul made a short sound that fell somewhere short of approval.
"Put them in the same element next exercise. If the protocol works, practice will prove it."
He turned toward the command tent.
Khulgen intercepted him halfway across the central ground.
"The Ulus guests. They came through the eastern gate twenty minutes ago. I placed them in the outer officer quarters."
Batu looked toward the gate. Three horses were being led toward the eastern corrals by a Jochid handler. The riders had already gone inside.
"Any problems?"
"None."
"Keep them comfortable. They came under agreed terms."
Khulgen departed. Batu continued on.
He worked through the afternoon supply reports without rushing. The information from Kirsa stayed where he had put it, waiting until the last document was dealt with.
Then he turned to it properly.
The road passage clause. Added to Torghul's brief on the morning of the Tergesh operation. Discussed in the command tent the previous night.
The men present had been Torghul, Khulgen, Odun, and two senior council officers responsible for operational security.
Five men.
Not Borte-Qol. The clause had never entered the general security summary.
That mattered. It was not broad information. A last-minute tactical addition discussed in one room on one specific night.
Batu pulled the operational log from the Tergesh preparation and checked the attendance record. Senior field commanders rotated through the council security role by monthly cycle.
The council officer handling the summary that night had been Mersek.
Batu set the log down.
Mersek.
Flat eyes. No explanation. A forty-minute delay long enough to signal intent. A boundary dispute handled with the relaxed certainty of a man who believed his footing secure.
A man who had left a summons without waiting for dismissal, whom Batu had marked as confident and set aside for later judgment.
A man who tested absent authority through small acts.
A man who had been in that room.
A man whose eastern boundary lay closer to Ulus and Khotor territory than any other council officer.
The information might have spread without deliberate betrayal. A careless remark to the wrong contact. A detail spoken in a place that felt contained.
That possibility existed.
Batu marked the log with a single line, replaced it, and shifted to a narrower question.
What had Mersek actually been doing since the column returned?
The boundary dispute.
The delayed summons.
The watch reform left untouched for ten days while Batu had been in the field.
Each incident small enough to deny. Each one survivable on its own.
He had been reading them as confidence.
He looked again at the line he had marked in the log.
No.
That reading no longer fit the pattern.
He had been reading them wrong.