They left the last roofs of Changu behind and slipped into pines that smelled of resin and rain. The path ran like a quiet vein along the ridge—stone in places, dirt in others, broken by the occasional chautara where travelers once rested beneath fig and pine. The storm inside Arya had stopped shoving. It leaned instead, steady as a river against its banks.
"Keep to the needles," Yeshe said. "Too many stones under your feet and the mountain hears you twice."
Mira angled her staff across her shoulders. "If the mountain didn't want to hear us, it shouldn't eavesdrop."
Lhakpa walked a half-pace behind, Guard cloak turned inside out so the white didn't flash through the trees. He was quiet the way trained people were quiet—eyes counting distances, ears filing away sounds that didn't belong. "Patrols use the trade road below," he said. "If we stay high, we'll be ghosts until the next village."
"Good," Mira said. "I'm tired of being interesting."
The pines opened to a low shoulder of rock. Below, terraces fell away in careful steps toward the valley, a stone spout—dhunge dhara—half-hidden by ferns where water glittered. Farther on, a rope bridge stitched one shoulder of the ridge to the next, flags bleached pale snapping along its spine.
Arya stopped at the rock's edge. His palm itched beneath the bandage. Not burning—itching—like a wound deciding how to heal. The vows he'd set at Changu sat there like knots he could feel with his thumb. No storm for fear. No storm for pride. No storm that harms those at my side. No storm on a plea.
"You're doing the stare," Mira said. "Storm or memory?"
"Both," he said honestly.
Yeshe's cane ticked once on stone. "We keep moving. The hours you bought at Changu are not the sort that grow."
They skirted the ridge until the path pinched to a strip of rock barely wider than their boots. On the far side, the rope bridge waited, its planks silvered by weather, its ropes furred with lichen. The gorge beneath it wasn't deep but it was unforgiving—boulders like piled dice, white water squeezing between them.
Mira tested the first plank with her weight. It held. "One at a time. If it creaks like a liar, jump forward, not back."
"Comforting," Arya muttered.
He went second. The bridge swayed with his steps, a gentle breathing. The flags whispered prayer-words in a language the wind still remembered. At the midpoint he paused—because he couldn't help it—and looked down. The water moved with the indifferent strength that made mountains honest. He placed his hand on the side rope. The itch beneath the bandage steadied.
Halfway across, a smell caught up to them. Not the clean sharp of pine. Metal. Oil. Cooked millet. Smoke from a small fire that hadn't burned long enough to lose its intention.
Lhakpa's voice came low. "Camp ahead. Left side of the far anchorage. Close."
Mira didn't turn her head. "How many?"
"Three or four," he said. "Maybe more if they're good at lying down."
Yeshe kept walking. "If they are waiting for us, they will show themselves on the last six planks."
They did.
A man stepped from behind the bridge anchorage posts, palms empty and broad, smile like a stall-seller's. "Travelers," he said pleasantly. "Rest? Warm broth? News?"
Two others eased into view—one with a bow held too casually, one with a sickle meant for grass but happy in other work. A fourth stayed in the shade of a pine, his outline wrong, as if he wore someone else's posture.
Mira's staff tilted down a hair. "We're full."
"Ah, but you are empty of news," the stall-seller man said, good-natured as rain. "And my friend loves news. He will pay you with a safe road."
Lhakpa's weight shifted to the balls of his feet, subtle as breath. The man in shade didn't move at all.
Arya could have lied. He could have smiled, said they were traders, said they were looking for a lost goat, said they were anything but themselves. But the itch in his palm reminded him what lying had bought him in the past: a little time, a worse trouble.
"We're in a hurry," he said.
The smile thinned. "So is the King. And the thing that smells like thunder." He gestured to the shaded man without looking. "Show the boy your bracelets."
The man in shadow lifted his hand. Copper bands, thin as reeds, ran up his wrist. At first they looked like prayer threads. Then Arya felt it—how the air near them pinched, how the itch in his palm tried to hide. Binding metal. The same quiet cruelty he had felt in the priest's charms, polished for travel.
Mira stepped forward, staff a simple line. "No."
"Girl," the stall-seller said, still pleasant, "you mistake hospitality for choice. We are the King's eyes when the road grows narrow. It will go easier if—"
Lhakpa moved first. He didn't shout. He didn't warn. He threw his trident like a man who had learned both the cost of asking and the price of missing. The bronze head hit the bowman's forearm. The bow went one way, the man the other, both useful to nobody.
Mira was already there, staff snapping down across the stall-seller's wrist. He yelped, the sickle-man lunged, and the bridge decided to join the argument—swaying as if it had opinions about authority.
Arya froze for half a heartbeat. The storm surged, happy to be wanted. The vows yanked it back like reins on an old horse. Not for fear. Not for pride. Not if Mira gets burned for it. He needed something between silence and flood.
"Net," he whispered to his bones.
Lightning woke in his hand—not a spear, not a chain, but a thin line that leapt from plank to anchorage post and hummed. Another line, another hum, until a loose lattice spanned the mouth of the bridge.
The man in shadow flicked his wrist. The copper bands on his arm flared dull red and the nearest line shivered, thinned, snapped.
"He can cut it," Arya said.
"Yes," Yeshe said. Her cane struck the post once. "So make another where his eyes are not."
Arya shifted the lattice, not with strength but with intention—dropping a line low where the man's gaze hadn't fallen, letting the bridge's sway hide the spark. The copper flashed again, missed. The new line bit. The man jerked back, wrist smoking where the metal met vow-made light.
The stall-seller came at Mira with his good hand and a knife from nowhere. She let him inside the reach of her staff, which looked like a mistake until it wasn't—she slammed her shoulder into his chest and cracked the butt of the staff into his knee. He went down, opinionated about everything.
Lhakpa retrieved his trident, turned the shaft, and set the head against the sickle-man's throat with the gentleness people reserve for kittens and explosives. "For the record," he said calmly, breath even, "we declined your hospitality."
Arya felt the storm lean again. Something else leaned back. Attention. Not Sagar's. Not the priest's. The herald's, far away but listening down old pipes, patient. He tasted metal in his mouth.
"We need to move," he said.
The man with the copper bands hissed between his teeth, nursing his wrist. His eyes were the sort that promised work later. "You can run," he said. "But the bridges do not have that many directions."
"Yes," Yeshe said mildly. "They have one. We are using it."
They crossed, giving the copper-wrist as much distance as the planks allowed. On the far side, Arya flicked his fingers and the lattice brightened for a breath, then went thin and vanished—no show, no boast.
Mira glanced back once. "You think they're with Sagar?"
"No," Lhakpa said. "They're with whoever pays for copper."
"Which is the King," Mira said.
"Usually," Lhakpa said.
They took the high path again, under benches of rock where lichens made old maps. A small bhatti appeared—a roadside shed with a hearth black as a throat, two benches, and a kettle hung on a hook. An old woman nodded them toward a pot as if she'd been waiting all afternoon to feed whoever was bold or foolish enough to arrive. No questions. No copper. Arya burned his tongue and was glad of it.
By dusk, the pines thinned to a saddle where a Mani wall—stones carved with prayers—ran like the spine of a sleeping creature. Someone had tucked dry rhododendron leaves along its length. The air felt tighter here, as if the mountain had more to say per square breath.
"Camp?" Mira asked.
"No," Yeshe said. "Not where words are piled."
Lhakpa pointed down-slope. "There's a hollow near the old quarry. Windbreak. We can see the road."
They slid into it as the light bled from the ridges. Arya sat with his back to a boulder and tried to listen to the storm the way he had in the sanctum. It didn't shove or shout or wheedle. It waited like a dog that had finally learned the length of its leash and wanted to learn the trick that came after.
He thought of the copper bands, of the way the line had snapped where his intention was thin. He set his palm on the ground and drew a small loop of light no wider than his hand. It held. He breathed and widened it to the size of a bowl. The loop trembled, then steadied. He felt the vow-threads in it, the differences between no and not yet.
"Arya," Mira said softly.
He looked up.
At the quarry's lip, three new figures stood—not copper men, not soldiers. Masks covered their faces—wood painted with grins too wide and eyes too calm. Their bodies were wrapped in grey. No weapons in hand. Their hands were the weapons—long, pale fingers stained dark at the tips.
Lhakpa's breath caught. "Ash-walkers," he said, voice gone tight. "They burn the dead to feed their charms."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "And they like storms because storms make more dead."
One mask tilted. The voice behind it was gentle and wrong. "Little bearer," it said. "You made a door nod. We have been waiting to meet your manner."
Arya stood, loop of light trembling at his feet.
"Stay behind me," Mira said.
He didn't answer. The storm leaned, the vows held, the mountain listened.
The front mask smiled wider. "We brought something to trade for your leash."
On the ridge above, a second rope bridge creaked—and with it, a shape in the dark uncoiled, long and low, eyes like the last embers of a cooking fire.
The wind changed. The pine needles shivered. Arya's mark woke hot as a brand.
"Not tonight," he said.
The masks did not stop smiling.