Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (10 page)

The men drank. As Jay lowered his glass, he said, “Rucksack, are you a man who fancies his chances with the ladies?”

One eyebrow went up. “That’s a random question.”

“Not really,” Jay replied. “Behind you, at a table along the wall, there’s a woman sitting alone.” Rucksack sat still. “Usually when someone says that,” Jay said, “the other person starts to wheel around and try to look. Of course, that gives the whole thing away to the person doing the secret staring.”

“Let’s just say I’m old enough to know better. What’s she doing?”

Jay shrugged. “She alternates between reading a piece of paper on her table and looking up and staring at you. I’m guessing she’s not reading a menu.”

Rucksack’s brow wrinkled. “What’s she look like?”

“About my age. And hot. Luscious, really.”

“You’ve been sleeping in dorms too long.”

Jay smirked. “You asked.”

“In case you’re forgetting, there’s more to a woman than her attractiveness. Is she older, younger? How is she dressed? Where does it seem like she’s from?”

“Maybe this would be a good time for you to turn around,” Jay said.

“What, and spoil it?”

“No, because she caught me looking. She’s leaving.”

Rucksack turned around. The woman didn’t need to push or shove to make her way through the crowd. She walked with a litheness that could move her between the raindrops of a monsoon without getting wet.

“I can’t see her face,” Rucksack said. “Where is she from?”

“How am I supposed to be able to tell?”

Rucksack stood, watching the woman until the pub door closed behind her. “Dammit, Jay.” He sat down. “People spend so much time talking about how seeing is believing, only to notice nothing when it counts. You might as well not have eyes.”

“You don’t have to be such a jackass about it,” Jay replied. “Just a pretty lady leaving.”

Rucksack looked away for a moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Jay nodded, then stood up and walked away. “Jay?” Rucksack said, but Jay ignored him.

No one had yet sat down at the table where the woman had been. Drops of lime-scented water remained in her empty glass. Over the stink of unwashed travelers and sharp booze, the scent of jasmine flowers lingered.

Jay looked at her chair. Nothing.

Then he looked underneath and smiled.

Sitting back down, he explained the glass and the scent to Rucksack. “That was the only trace of her. Believe it or not, some of us have senses other than our eyes.”

“That was everything?” Rucksack asked.

“Yes,” Jay said. “Except for this.” He slid an envelope across the table. “It was empty, but it must have contained the paper she had been reading. Since she was in such a hurry to leave, it must have fallen under her chair.”

Eyes wide and mouth closed in a tight line, Rucksack stared at the envelope. Handwritten in black ink that reminded Jay of Hindi and Tibetan scripts, one word stared back: “Kailash.”

Rucksack finally looked up. “Did you see her face?”

Jay nodded. “I couldn’t say where she’s from, though. Long black hair, deep brown skin, brown eyes with hints of amber and black. The closest I could say is she looked Asian, but that’s so general it’s meaningless. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know yet. I just have this.” Rucksack pulled an envelope from his vest and set it on the table next to the first envelope. The word “Rucksack” was written on it in the exact same script and hand.

“I take it there’s a letter in there.”

“Not just a letter,” Rucksack said, nodding. “It’s the reason I’ve been here for months, waiting, watching, wondering.” He stared hard at Jay. At last, Rucksack said, “Can I trust you?”

“You’re bewildering, but you’ve shown I can trust you,” Jay replied. “Besides, I owe you one. So yes, you can trust me too.”

“Open it, then.”

Jay pulled a thin sheet of blue paper out of the envelope. Something about the color seemed familiar. For a moment, his memory flashed back to his arrival in the city and to the strange things he kept seeing out of the corners of his eyes. He blinked and his vision cleared. Written in the same script as the envelopes, the letter said:

Rucksack of the World:
Before the eclipse, in the city of Agamuskara, by the river of the same name, what began it will end it, and you will find again Kailash.

Jay read the letter a few more times, then set it on the table. “So I take it that may have been her. And who exactly is Kailash?”

“Someone I couldn’t possibly meet again,” Rucksack replied. “Not in Agamuskara. Not anywhere in this world.” Anguish passed over his face, and sadness burned in his eyes.

“Like I told you before, my parents died many, many years ago,” Rucksack said. He looked to the door, then back to Jay. “Kailash was my mother’s name.”

T
HE MUSIC HAD DWINDLED
, and now only a few musicians remained. For the first time all evening, Jade stood still and had a moment to look out over her customers. The thinning crowd revealed empty chairs. The flow had reversed. As quickly as they had come in, the people had poured out of the pub and staggered back out into the world.

Jade hoped their hearts were lighter, their eyes brighter, and their spirits happier and resolved.
Better be, anyway,
she thought.
I went through three-quarters of the stock in the cabinet just calming people’s nerves.

From the first patrons through the door to Jay to the woman who’d left in a hurry to all the murmurs underlying the pub’s congenial air, it had been a strange evening.

Maybe I can chalk this up to the news about the mirror eclipse,
Jade thought,
and how there hasn’t been one since The Blast.

The Blast had happened long enough ago that in some places and cultures the memory had begun to fade. But not in India, where The Blast remained both tragedy and joy, horror and opportunity.

After the explosion had scoured Ireland and England, the scale of The Blast had terrified India as much as the rest of the world. Nation after nation had suspended wars, negotiated peaceful ends to conflicts, and reduced or even disbanded their militaries. India had joined other nations with shipments of supplies and volunteers sailing to Ireland and Britain to aid the survivors.

With England decimated in the aftermath, its global British Empire had fallen into disorder. Indians still raised many a glass to the nameless hero who had arisen after The Blast, united the country as it had never been united before, and dismantled the British Empire in India, which some of the Brits had started calling, “The Raj.” The jewel in England’s crown. There had been little violence. Many of the English laid down their guns; they were too scared for loved ones back home to care about fighting, too confused about their place in the world to care about colonies while London burned. After India had achieved independence, the nameless hero had disappeared, never to be seen again. But today, when a mirror eclipse was said to be coming, India still shuddered.

Some flickering shadow, like one caused by firelight, had seemed to hang over the destinies and paths of everyone in the pub tonight. It had been hard to read the intertwining paths of destiny and decision, hard to see as far ahead as Jade normally saw. People expressed uncertainty about this marriage or that job, about a birth or a trip. Life always held uncertainty and indecision, but never had Jade seen it at such a magnitude as tonight.

The first patrons through the door had confused her the most.

Jade glanced at their table.
They’ll most likely be the last to leave,
she thought,
the way they’re nursing those pitchers of Deep’s Special Lager.

They seemed like two old men who should be arguing on a park bench. They could have been from anywhere, though something in their features reminded her of Rucksack.

Their helixes confused her. Most people’s paths wound out like rivers, with a mix of straight lines, bends, and meanders. These men’s helixes spiraled, spun, crisscrossed, and curlicued. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought the helixes were playing a joke. Luckily, all Jade needed to do was serve them what they ordered. Whoever they were, whatever their business was, they knew their course and needed no steering from her. Jade was relieved. All the zigzags made her dizzy.

Leaving a table of Brazilians who were traveling around India for three months, a woman came up to order a vodka and tonic. Jade came back to the now. One glance at the woman’s helix and Jade added a few dashes of independence to the drink.

The woman had traveled too long with the men and women in her group, and now she was bored, felt she had lost her way. A few days doing her own thing, on her own, and she’d not only enjoy the trip more, but she’d give the group some much-needed leadership.

The woman’s eyes lit up when she took a sip. “This is the best vodka tonic ever,” she said as she returned to her table.

Jade grinned. When she turned around, Jay was standing at the bar, a small black daypack slung over his shoulder.

Eight pints with Rucksack had hazed Jay’s eyes and given him a certain sway as he stood there, but he still grinned when he saw her. She started walking over, but she felt dizzy again, as if the two men’s helixes had whip-cracked her about the ankles. The floor didn’t seem to be where it should be. She stumbled. Her leg spun out to the side, and she fell forward. Light glinted off of the polished edge of the bar, right where she knew her forehead would hit.

A dull sound stopped the world. Jade stared at the edge of the bar, which was dangerously close but at least not embedded in her head.

She looked up. Jay’s hands were holding her shoulders, firmly but not too tightly. He helped her back up.

“Y’kay’?” Jay slurred.

“Yes, I’m okay,” Jade replied, trying to hide her irritation and stepping back from his hands.
An entire night of fast movement, never stopping for a moment, no mistakes, no problems, no tripping,
she thought.
But one look at this eejit and suddenly I’m nearly falling behind my own bar?

“Mm bit druk. C’n y’ nd’stnd me?”

“Anyone around Rucksack more than an hour winds up hammered, mate,” she said. “It’s okay. I speak drunkese.”
More fluent than you could believe,
she thought. Drunkese had been a required part of her training. The Management had explained that true drunk talk was not just intoxication but a form of primitive speech that humans regained when their minds were free of inhibitions like high cognitive functions and learned language.

Jay nodded. “Hoz’h’no’druk?”

Jade shrugged. “Wish I knew. I’ve never seen anyone put away as much stout as he does, but for all the effect it has, you’d think he was drinking decaf coffee.”
Sometimes I so wish he would order something else,
Jade thought.
Something I could influence. Maybe then I could figure out more about him…

More nods. Jay’s eyes slipped closed and his sway became like a buoy in an ocean getting stormy. “Um, Jay?” Jade touched his shoulder to steady him.

His eyes opened wide, and his voice rang clear. “Melt their legs off,” he said.

“What?”

He nodded and the stout returned to his voice. “R’ck’sk said y’ knew ’bout… ’bout… roaches.”

Jade laughed before she could stop herself. “They’re a way of life around here,” she replied. “Just a sec.” She came back and handed Jay a bottle full of amber liquid, covered with a black label and large red letters like flames. “Ram Rum. This is the worst we have. It’s the same one I use to get rid of the buggers,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t drink it. You’ve had enough. Especially for your first night hanging around Rucksack. To bed with you.”

“Mm’kay. Th’ks.”

He was still standing there, but Jade sensed a customer heading to the bar, and she started to walk away.

“Jade?”

She stopped and came back over to Jay, relieved to have stayed on her feet this time. “Yes?”

He smiled and nodded. “You… are… a really, really good bartender,” he said, slowly and deliberately, as if relearning speech.

“Thanks, Jay. I appreciate that.”

“And… and you’re really pretty too.”

The words fell as fast as a monsoon. Before either of them could say anything else, Jay waved to her and staggered out of the pub toward the stairs that would take him to his dorm. A rustling sound followed him out, and it looked like something in his daypack was moving.

She stood still.
He thinks I’m pretty,
she thought. Then she saw herself in the bar mirror.

“You’re grinning like you won a billion rupees,” Rucksack said, standing at the bar with an empty glass in his hand.

I’m grinning like a bigger eejit than you are,
she thought, trying to force the smile away. “He’s funny when he’s drunk,” she replied. The corners of her mouth still poked up. “Another stout, I take it?”

“One more. Man’s gotta have his nightcap.”

Jade started pouring another pint of GPS. “Are you marinating Jay from the inside out in this stuff?”

“He clearly needed nourishment.”

Jade laughed. “Next thing I know you’ll be taking him to The Mystery Chickpea.”