Morning frost made lace along the fence rails. The wayhouse yard wore footprints where men had refused to pace. A crow complained from the Mani wall until Gita threw it a stale heel and it remembered how to be grateful.
Ketu stood outside with his horn un-slung, head tilted, listening like a man trying to identify a bird by how it disrespects silence. "We paid," he said without turning.
"For what?" Mira asked, rubbing her hands before the kettle's breath.
"For using a night without guards," Ketu said. "Road gods hate discounts. Something will try to collect a toll before noon."
"Let it take mine," Sagar said dryly. "I owe several."
Gita's niece smile sharpened. "They prefer yours last. You write receipts."
They ate quickly. Dal, bread, tea with the humor boiled out of it. Yeshe checked her cane's ferrule like a woman reviewing an old friend. Lhakpa tied his trident cord so it wouldn't clack on stone and give away a thought that should walk barefoot.
They took the road east, as agreements demanded: small circles near villages, six miles with no big doors, maps before courage when possible. Prayer flags at the gorge whispered in five voices at once—wind remembering sky, water, earth, fire, space—and the rope bridge didn't creak like a joke; it creaked like history.
Halfway across, Arya paused—habit, not fear—and looked down. The river argued with boulders politely the way old couples do. He breathed and felt his circles ride his ribs.
"Don't get poetic," Mira said. "Poetry is how people walk off bridges."
On the far bank the road widened, wheel ruts pleasant with use. A way-stone sat where two tracks met, smeared with vermilion and butter. Someone had pressed a coin into a crack; a child had left a clay bead. Arya touched his fingers to the marks and lifted them to his brow.
That was when the toll came.
Not soldiers. Not ash. Rope. A cord stretched across the road four paces ahead, at knee height, tied to two poles that had not been there an hour ago. It was thin and human and ordinary and perfect.
Ketu's face did not change. "Ah," he said softly. "Collectors."
Three figures stepped from a stand of millet stubble. No masks, no cloaks. A farmer's vest, a shawl, a hat with the brim chewed by goats. They carried no weapons visible. Their eyes were bright with a poverty that enjoyed being clever.
"Travelers," said the man in the vest. "Road tax."
Mira lifted her staff a finger. "On whose writ?"
"On the road's," the man said, unbothered. He pointed at the way-stone. "We asked it. It said the road was tired."
"Yes," Yeshe murmured. "Stones are easily flattered."
Lhakpa sighed with the resigned admiration of a professional facing amateurs who'd studied. "For the record," he said, "you picked a good spot. Eyes on the bridge, feet on the rut, nowhere to go but forward."
"Exactly," the woman in the shawl said, pleased. "You understand. Two coins per head. Three for a spear."
Ketu fished in his pouch, produced a dull copper, and flipped it to her with practiced extravagance. "For the road's tea," he said.
She caught it, sniffed, pocketed. "That's one."
Sagar stood very still. When he moved, it would be catastrophic; therefore he did not. "If you collect a tax from a Guard line," he said conversationally, "you will die."
"We aren't collecting from you," the man said cheerfully. "We're collecting from the road. You're just in the road's clothes."
Arya felt his palm itch. No villages as price—but what about roads? What about tolls taken by people with good reasons and bad methods? He stepped forward until he could touch the rope with his knuckles. It felt like every rope: stubborn, ordinary, indifferent.
"How long have you been collecting?" he asked.
"Since the door at the quarry started waking and the traders stopped coming," the man said, not defensive. "The road has a belly. We feed it. It feeds us."
Gita's niece voice had the exact weight of an auntie about to fix a pot and a nephew simultaneously. "And what does it buy?"
"Salt," the woman said, honest. "Oil. A blanket."
"Thread," Ketu muttered. "Always thread."
Arya drew a small circle on the rope with his finger, no storm at all—only the memory of the vow-ink in his skin. No storm on a plea. No fear. No pride. He whispered another: no gate where a knot will do. The circle did not brighten. The rope simply remembered its job was to hold things up, not hold them back. Slack traveled through it like a yawn.
The three collectors blinked as the rope sagged uselessly.
"That's impolite," the man said, annoyed. "We tied that."
"Yes," Arya said mildly. "Tie it up there." He pointed at a leaning prayer pole at the field's edge. "Hang a pot from it. Offer tea to the road for free until dusk. Ask for traders."
The woman folded her arms. "The road doesn't drink tea."
"The road drinks habits," Yeshe said. "Make a good one and see who comes."
Sagar's mouth twitched despite himself. "He's not wrong," he told the pole.
Ketu flipped another coin to the woman. "For the first pot," he said. "Two more for the blanket if a trader shows before sundown. We come back this way tonight. If there's tea left, we'll drink it and take your rope. If there isn't, we'll bring sugar."
The three conferred with the intensity of people splitting one good orange. The man nodded. "Fine," he said grudgingly. "But if no trader comes, we put the rope back and charge four."
"Of course you do," Ketu said, delighted by competence. "And I bring a better horn."
They took the rope down. Arya breathed. The itch in his palm eased. He had not opened a seam to solve a knot. He had not burned a field to mend a fence.
They walked on.
The road hunched into a cleft where rock pressed in and pines leaned overhead, their roots gripping stone like old men refusing to move benches at the tea stall. A small shrine sat in a niche—Bhairav's face painted in black and red, eyes wide as if he'd seen better parties. Someone had left a lump of jaggery in a chipped bowl. Ants approved.
"Six miles," Ketu said, glancing at the hill shadow. "No big doors, remember?"
"I remember," Arya said. "Do you?"
"Vividly," Ketu said.
They came to a bend where the world widened abruptly into a natural amphitheater—terraces scooping down in crescents, a stone platform at the base where festivals had clearly offended every winter for a hundred years. Today it was empty except for a line of prayer wheels and a drum sitting neatly in the center.
"Of course," Mira said. "They're tidy."
Lhakpa set his trident butt by his boot, hand loosely around the shaft. "For the record, we leave the drum alone."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "If you touch it, you are its."
Gita hung back, mouth thin. "Even I won't touch that. And I touch everything that holds flame."
The amphitheater held echoes like opinions. Sagar took three steps into it and stopped. "No soldiers," he said. "No vows bigger than a bowl. No horns."
Ketu laughed softly and put his horn behind his back like a boy promising not to blow it and definitely going to blow it later.
Arya felt a pull—familiar as hunger and twice as stupid. Not the seam's teacher. Not the eater. A call-and-answer waiting, the simple trap of rhythm. He set a small circle at his feet—breath-tethered—then another at the edge of the platform, then one on the nearest prayer wheel so it would turn only when a human hand pushed, not when a wind lied.
The drum did not move.
The echo did. It shaped itself into a laugh—not a person's, not the Ash-walkers'. The sound of kids daring each other to touch a shrine stone on nights when the moon hid its face. Teasing. Cruel.
Mira's jaw set. "I hate it."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "Practice ignoring."
They crossed the amphitheater without giving the drum a name.
On the far rim, the road resumed being a road. The wind dropped the smell of cooking rice into their path and the sound of a flute playing a song that had learned to be old by being played badly by children. A village.
"Remember your small circles," Ketu said lightly.
"Remember your quiet," Sagar said.
"Remember your hands," Yeshe said.
Arya touched his palm to the prayer wheel as they passed. It turned once—slow, honest—because human fingers were on it.
He walked into the village with his breath carrying his circles, not the other way around.