The festival wound down in honest ways—children dragged by the hand, old men arguing as a ritual, aunties extinguishing lamps with pinched fingers and blessings. Sagar peeled his Guards into the dark where white cloaks wouldn't scare goats. Ketu leaned on a post, horn slung, pretending he didn't like bunting and failing.
Arya stood with Yeshe on the lane where prayer flags framed a square of stars. His palm had stopped itching; the vow-cuts were thin, tender script now. "For a moment," he said, "the storms felt…polite."
"Yes," she said. "Rooms teach weather manners."
A shadow detached from the alley. Not ash. Not seam. Men. Four of them, boots wrapped in cloth, faces plain enough to be forgettable. Their leader carried a map rolled and tied with red cord. He stopped three paces away and tipped his head as if knocking on a door that didn't exist.
"Evening," he said. His voice belonged to a man who apologized for winning at cards. "My name is Harish. I'm here on behalf of people who like roads to stay where we put them."
Ketu made a sound that was not a word and contained several. "Cartographers."
"Practical men," Harish agreed. He unrolled the map onto the lane. It was tanned hide—yak, maybe—edge stitched with gut. Villages inked as squares, wells as small rings, shrines pricked with vermilion dots rubbed in so often the paper had learned the color. But the roads—the roads moved. Twitched. Tightened. Loosened. Like snakes shifting in sleep.
Mira's staff lifted a finger. "I hate that."
Harish stroked one road with two fingers and it slid a finger-width toward the gorge track. "You see our complaint? Doors move roads. Priests move doors. Storms move priests. People like me are hired to glue things back down."
Sagar stepped from the darkness as if he'd been there the whole time. His voice was flat enough to level a shelf. "On whose writ?"
Harish didn't glance up. "The sort that arrives folded into your pay and never says please. Captain."
Ketu edged closer to the hide without letting his shadow touch it. "You're not supposed to use that in a village."
"Correct," Harish said. "Unless a hinge wakes within six miles. One did." He tapped the map near the pine well. Ink rippled, then settled.
Arya felt the storm lean as if answering a question someone else had asked. He set his breathing circles without thinking—small, quiet, the habit he was trying to grow. "What do you want?"
"Simple," Harish said, and meant it. "A condition. You keep your circles small, your feet off hinges. In return—" His fingers touched a knot near the amphitheater and the shifting roads smoothed, settling like a blanket properly shaken. "—I keep routes open for grain and babies and people who don't belong in reports."
"And if he doesn't?" Mira asked.
Harish looked up with regret rehearsed into grace. "The map eats a mile."
Lhakpa's voice went low. "For the record, you don't get to eat a mile that has people's names on it."
"That is why I am here before anyone is walking it," Harish said gently. "Storm-bearer—you've already done what you like to do. You made a door nod. You made a well behave. Good. Now stop so I can do what I like to do."
Yeshe tapped her cane once. "You are a broom with a hunger."
Harish's smile turned reshaped. "Maps are hungry. Roads must be fed or they wander into myths."
Arya crouched. The hide's ink-paths pulsed to the rhythm of something not living and not dead: intention. He did not touch it; he touched the lane instead, two fingers to dust, breath to circle. No fear. No pride. No harm to mine. No plea. No village as price. No ally mistaken for obstacle. No curiosity-theater.
The storm leaned and then stilled. "You move roads like nets," he said.
"We move them like memory," Harish said. "People remember with their feet. I push their feet where the world is still true."
"True for whom?" Mira asked.
"For the part that doesn't fall," he said simply.
Ketu whistled under his breath. "He makes sense and I hate it."
Sagar knelt opposite Arya, careful not to put a hand on the hide. His eyes measured. "You'll eat a mile if he refuses?"
"I'll lock it in my paper," Harish said evenly. "On the ground, the mile will repeat itself until your knees pray for a different god."
"Loop road," Lhakpa muttered. "I've bled on those."
"Then help me avoid it," Harish said, almost pleading. "Tell your storm to leave the hinge at millstone hill alone. Tell him to go back to wells and rooms and the inside of houses."
Arya thought of Aama Gita's note: Small circles become habits. Habits keep hands steady. Do not trade vows for convenience. He looked at the map, at the lanes that wanted to be pushed like thread, at the villages inked as tidy boxes that did not look like singing or bread or bedtime fights. "I can't promise your condition," he said. "I can promise mine."
Harish sighed. "Which is?"
Arya placed his palm beside the hide and set a ring in the dust that barely caught lamp glow. "No storm that turns a mile into a price," he said softly. The ring took, the dust remembering how to be stubborn. He felt the circle oppose the map—not to break it, but to refuse being eaten in the places where children had written their heights on doorframes.
Harish's fingers paused mid-stroke. The road he was nudging stuck.
He looked at Arya properly then—tired, irritated, curious. "You pin with breath," he said. "Strange craft."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "Useful against hunger."
Harish's jaw worked. He pressed again. The ink pushed, met the breath-ring's quiet, and slid around it instead of through. Not defeated—detoured. His mouth twisted. "Fine," he said. "You win a village."
"We weren't playing," Mira said.
He rolled the map up with movements neat enough to be prayer. "I have to deliver a mile to my employers," he said without menace. "If I cannot have this one, I'll take the stretch beyond the stone bridge at dawn. Tell your friends to choose another path if they prefer knees that don't learn to weep."
Ketu straightened as if a current had touched him. "You eat the bridge mile, caravans back up into the gorge. People starve because flour can't compete with clever."
Harish's eyes flicked to Ketu's horn. "Then be clever faster."
He slipped away with his three shadows, becoming night the way men trained to be mistakes do.
Sagar blew out a breath that admitted various headaches into his skull. "Bridge at dawn," he said. "We move."
Gita tightened her shawl. "I'll wake the aunties. They like to walk and complain at the same time; they can guard children with elbows."
"Practical," Ketu said, grim. "I'll run the ridge and set threads where a map would like to be a mouth."
Arya stared at the patch of dust where he'd set his no-price ring. The circle dimmed without vanishing. The lane felt true under it. "He is not wrong," Arya said quietly. "Hinges change roads."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "So do songs and taxes and goats that discover the joy of eating rope. Your job is not to stop roads from changing. It is to stop hunger from making the map."
They slept in snatches and woke to a pale seam of morning under cloud.
At the gorge, the stone bridge carried cold like a rumor. The prayer flags along it were dull, as if they had not been beaten by enough weather. A caravan had stacked itself in quiet misery—two pony carts, a man with barley in sacks, a woman with the terrifying patience of someone transporting a sleeping baby.
Harish stood at midspan, map unrolled to the width of a man's regret. His fingers danced the road toward his paper. The stretch of path after the bridge wavered—not visibly, but in the bones. A step there would become another there and another and another.
"Don't," Arya said.
"Deliverables," Harish said.
Ketu's horn blatted a single rude note. Threads snapped from parapet to parapet, down to wheel ruts, up to the prayer flags. Sagar set his trident on the bridge stone and did not move, as if steel could be a promise. Mira's staff tilted into the space where a loop wanted to form.
Arya didn't blast. He set three breath-rings—one at each end of the bridge and one at Harish's feet. "No storm that turns a mile into a price," he repeated, low, and added, almost without meaning to: no map that forgets feet are names.
The third ring caught. Harish's finger stopped, as if touching glass.
His eyes flicked to Arya. Not angry now. Respectful and, worse, relieved. "Fine," he said. "Your condition is uglier and more useful."
The road settled. The map did not eat. The mile stayed.
A stone clacked under the bridge—a single, polite sound. Everyone looked down. In the shadow below the arch, a red eye blinked, amused.
The watcher who had trailed Arya since the city tipped his chin in greeting and slid out of sight as if the bridge kept a pocket for him.
"Wonderful," Mira said. "Him again."
Harish rolled his map with hands that did not shake. "Your problem," he said to Arya, and left, this time with no threats. Only schedule.
Ketu put his horn to his mouth and let out a clear, simple note triumphant as tea poured into a cold cup. The caravan rolled. The baby did not wake. The prayer flags remembered their colors.
"Yes," Yeshe said softly. "For a morning."
"—which is all a morning owes," Sagar finished, surprising himself with honesty.
They crossed the bridge. The road beyond felt ordinary, which was a kind of miracle.
Behind them, at the gorge's lip, ash took a deep breath and decided to wait for night.