The wayhouse smelled of lentils, damp wool, and the kind of smoke that seasons beams instead of choking them. A brass lamp hung from a hook; its wick burned steady. Two low tables held bowls, bread rounds flattened by palms, and a dish of chili chutney that would stain a man's intentions a brighter red.
The keeper's messenger waved them to a bench. "Eat," she ordered cheerfully. "Talk later. The mountain likes negotiations better when everyone's sugar isn't sulking."
Mira didn't argue with efficiency. She tore bread and dipped it like a priest making a point. Lhakpa accepted a bowl with both hands, grateful as a monk. Yeshe sat with the careful bone-economy of someone who had done this in too many rooms to be impressed by any of them.
Sagar lifted his cup to the messenger with the courtesy of a man who knows how to keep peace in a room he cannot control. "You have the keeper's look," he said.
"She has mine," the woman said. "I'm her niece. Everyone calls me Gita anyway because the mountain doesn't like learning new names."
Arya let the heat of the dal push some of the cold out of his chest. He didn't speak first. Sagar didn't either. Ketu had taught him something without intending to: whoever names the road tends to own it. Let someone else draw the map.
Gita set another bowl down and slid a folded square of oil-paper onto the table beside it. "Message," she said to Arya, matter-of-fact. "From the bell side of Changu."
He unfolded it. Inside, three lines in Aama Gita's neat hand:
Small circles become habits.
Habits keep hands steady.
Do not trade vows for convenience.
The last line had a dot of lamp soot pressed into the paper, like a fingerprint from a different conversation.
Mira leaned to read. "That's a keeper way to say 'don't be stupid.' "
"She doesn't like to repeat herself," Gita said, pleased. "Drink."
Sagar set his cup down. "We need terms," he said, addressing the table instead of any one person. "The crown will not accept a storm that walks and opens things without permission. The mountain will not accept copper in its wells. The road wants to be a road. The boy wants to live." His gaze finally met Arya's. "So do ours."
"Agreed," Arya said, surprising himself. "Name your first term."
"Two," Sagar said. "First: you keep your circles small within a day's walk of villages. Second: you tell me before you go near any hinge bigger than a door, so I can move men away instead of being forced to push them onto it."
Mira bristled. "And when he tells you, you come with cuffs."
"No," Sagar said. "I come with maps."
Gita's mouth twitched. "He's not lying. He hates bad maps."
Yeshe's cane tapped lightly. "Our terms," she said. "One: no sealing in sanctums, wells, or fields under harvest. Two: if you bring a priest, bring one who can be bored. The eager ones break things."
Sagar considered, then nodded. "Done."
Mira blinked. "Just like that?"
"I am not here to make it worse," Sagar said, a thread of weariness finally audible. "When kings want storms in scabbards, they hire men like me to be scabbards. It is a boring job until it is not, and then it becomes a short job." He glanced at Arya's hand. "I prefer maps."
Ketu appeared in the doorway as if the mountain had delivered him with the draft. He tossed the horn onto a peg and stole bread with the expertise of a lifelong thief of small things. "Good," he said through a mouthful. "Terms. Now add mine: six miles, no big doors. I am boring on this point and eager on the next if you break it."
"Done," Arya said, before pride could touch the word. "Six miles."
"Behold," Ketu said to the rafters, "a storm that can do math."
Gita clapped once. "Excellent. Now eat fast." The cheer in her voice flattened. "Because something that hates terms is on the ridge."
Everybody stood at once, even the benches seemed to flinch. The lamp flame did not so much as nod. That was worse than if it had.
Sagar moved to the door, trident in his hand by habit, not hope. Ketu rolled his shoulders like a dancer about to disgrace himself for a crowd. Lhakpa slid along the wall to the window slit; he peered out and then leaned back, mouth a thin line. "Ash-walkers," he said. "Three masks. And a porter behind them carrying a drum."
Gita swore with the artistry of an auntie who had once dropped a pot and scalded a nephew and never forgiven fate. "Drum means a calling."
"Yes," Yeshe said, rising like a tree remembers standing. "For the eater. Or worse."
Mira planted herself in the doorway and spun the staff once, because ritual matters to hands as much as it does to bells. "We hold them outside," she said. "The wayhouse is a mouth; mouths are hard to clean."
Ketu slung the horn, eyes bright with the terrible joy of a man who likes purpose more than safety. "Pemba, Dolma—threads. Suresh, left roofline. Captain—if they throw ash, don't let it touch your men's faces. It stains deeper than pride."
Sagar didn't argue with a boy he hadn't hired. "Guard," he snapped, and the men he had hired moved like a hinge: two to the wayhouse corners, one to the rear lane, one to the roof with Suresh, one to the water jar where ash dies like any other fire.
Arya stepped onto the threshold and felt the storm lean hard. The vow-cuts on his palm itched like new teeth. No fear. No pride. No harm to mine. No storm on a plea. No villages as price. No ally mistaken for obstacle.
The masks stopped ten paces out—polite, as ever. The drum porter set his burden down with reverence and pulled the cloth back. The drumhead was stretched skin. Arya did not ask whose.
The front mask lifted its stained fingers in greeting. "Little bearer," it said pleasantly. "We bring a lesson and a gift."
"Keep them," Mira said.
"Gifts prefer to be given," the mask said, unoffended. "And lessons are loyal. They will find you whether you want them or not."
Ketu blew his horn once—short, sharp. Threads snapped into place from eaves to poles, to fence posts, to Suresh's poised trident, a lattice no thicker than patience. Pemba's fingers blurred; Dolma whispered names Arya did not recognize but which the road seemed to nod at like old friends.
Sagar lifted his trident and set its tip on one of Arya's older habits: a low net. The bronze runes along the haft brightened, not eager, just awake. He met Arya's eyes and didn't have to say anything at all.
The drum sounded.
It wasn't loud. That was the insult. It pulsed like a second heart, out of rhythm with the one a man should keep. The air thickened the way a field does an instant before locusts show their manners.
The eater did not come.
Something else did—a pale fog that rolled low along the ground, careful to keep to the net's lowest lines, careful to test edges the way water tastes banks for weakness. Where it touched stone, the stone remembered funerals. Where it touched wood, the grain went gray as if a hundred winters had taken a bite.
Gita hissed between her teeth. "Ash-breath," she said. "They're making the ground old."
"Threads up," Ketu called, voice clipped. The lattice climbed a handspan. The fog leapt politely to reach it and failed by a finger, as if insulted by a height requirement.
The front mask tilted, pleased by the experiment. "See?" it said. "Lessons."
Arya raised his hand and found the urge to blast like thirst after salt. He swallowed it. No village as price. Instead of a spear, he drew a ring three paces out from the wayhouse threshold—thin, bright, anchored on either side to Gita's lamp hook and the corner stone that carried a thousand tired backs. He set the vows into it and then, because habit is a better shield than a speech, he breathed them once, like saying grace before eating.
The fog touched the ring and forgot what it was doing. Not in a catastrophic way. In a boring way. It thickened in annoyance, then drifted harmlessly to the side like a tired moth.
Mira laughed once, delighted. "You bored it."
"Yes," Yeshe said, oddly satisfied. "Good. Boredom is the most powerful magic I know."
The drum beat harder, impatient now. The fog pulled itself together into three low heaps, then climbed as if trying to become men and discovering the arithmetic didn't work. The heaps collapsed back into themselves, sulking.
The front mask's voice lost a fraction of politeness. "Child," it said to Arya, "you refuse too many lessons."
"Two a day," Arya said. "Doctor's orders."
"Then take this one at least," the mask said, and lifted the drumstick high.
Sagar snapped, "Down!" and Guards and roadfolk obeyed reflex without proof. The stick fell—
—and the roofline behind them split, not under weight, but under absence. A seam had opened above the wayhouse, where no net had been, where no one sensible would lay one. It yawned like a mouth that had forgotten whose. Cold poured out, and with it, voices—not words, but the sound of names being mispronounced on purpose.
Ketu swore so softly only Arya heard him. "They went over," he said. "Of course they did."
Arya didn't think; he chose. He flung a net up, not out—anchor to beam, to hook, to spar, to the very nailheads that had held lanterns longer than Sagar had held oaths. The lines sang and caught. The seam snapped against the weave and tried to saw through with nothing but contempt. Contempt is sharp. Not sharp enough.
Gita leapt and slammed the lamp onto a post where a knot of thread crossed a knot of light. The flame did not flare. It steadied. The lattice held.
The drumstick paused. The mask's head cocked.
"That," it said, "was elegant."
"Go away," Arya said, and meant please, and meant now, and meant I am tired of lessons.
Oddly, the mask's stained fingers fluttered—amused? Annoyed? It tapped the drumhead once, gently. "Soon," it said. "We will send you a teacher you cannot bore."
They withdrew like properly raised guests—and left the fog to disperse in the manner of all bores: slowly, resentfully, taking too much air with it.
Silence pooled in the doorway. Then the room exhaled in a dozen different keys.
Ketu sagged against a post and pressed the horn to his own forehead. "Six miles," he said to Arya without heat. "Remember."
"I will," Arya said, equally without heat. "Keep your roads open."
Sagar's eyes went to the ceiling, to the lines he hadn't ordered and couldn't deny. "And I," he said to the lamp, because it felt like the proper witness, "will write a report that tells the truth and survives its own reading."
Gita poured tea as if nothing in the world had happened that tea couldn't address. "Drink," she instructed. "Then sleep in shifts."
Arya's hand ached. The cuts itched. The vows hummed like a lullaby that had learned to fight. He looked at Mira, at Lhakpa, at Yeshe's tired smile, at Sagar pretending not to watch him, at Ketu doing the same with less practice.
Outside, prayer flags strained, then settled. The wayhouse remembered its job.
He put his palm on the table and felt the wood answer with the patience of things made to be touched by wet hands and bad days.
"Small circles," he murmured, and let himself sit.
Above the rafters, where darkness collects out of habit, something listened and did not yet step through.