The felt gave way without sound.
Suuqai pulled it aside with two fingers at the bottom edge and let it fold back against his forearm. The gap opened. The smell reached him, bodies and smoke and dried fish, the density of air breathed and breathed again in a closed space. Under it, cold coming up from the earth.
He waited.
The breathing inside hadn't changed. Deep, unguarded, the rhythm of men far enough down that small sounds passed over them.
He stepped through.
The two steppe riders came in behind him. One set the felt back against the outer wall, slow enough that the camp's firelight stayed out. The interior was dark. Thin orange lines came through gaps in the reed-bundle walls from the coals outside, enough to see shadows but not faces.
Six men by Suuqai's count. Five along the walls and across the ground, wrapped in coats and hides. And at the far end, slightly apart from the others, a sixth man on his back against the bundled reeds.
Faruk.
