Jack Nine-Wicks

The eldest jack in the fens, burned down to almost nothing and cheerful about it. He knows every causeway, including the ones that end in open water, and he has guided more travelers into this world and out of it than anyone alive. He is expected to metamorphose within a few seasons and has been taking bets on the timing.

In Person

Thin as a reed and lit from inside like a lamp with not much oil left. He is warm, talkative, and funny, and he will take a stranger's hand to help them onto a causeway with exactly the same courtesy whether he intends to bring them out the other side or not.

The fens' oldest and most disturbing convention is his: the two services are priced the same, described the same, and sold in the same sentence. He does not consider this deceptive. He considers it a matter of who is welcome.

History

Nine wicks means nine lives spent as a light, or nine crossings that cost him something, or nine names — the fens give three explanations and Nine-Wicks has confirmed all of them at different times to different people, cheerfully.

What is documented is the Ninewick ledger, which is not called a ledger: four decades of every guide in the fens, every route taken, and every client, kept at the junction of three causeways. Everyone who has crossed to the Waking World in living memory is in it, including several people the Kingdom insists never went.

Method

Registration and route. There is no law in the fens and no need for any: a guide who crosses the Wick-Houses does not get another client, and a traveler who crosses them does not get a guide, and the marsh handles the rest without anybody having to threaten anyone.

He rules by not ruling. He has never issued an order in forty years. He has declined to answer questions, and the answers people supply for themselves have been sufficient.

Household

The Wick-Houses. The guide families, holding every route in the fens between them, deferring to Ninewick out of custom rather than obligation.

The Far Bank. Jacks who work the human side, know the Waking World nearly as well as a hobgoblin, and are regarded with suspicion at home. Nine-Wicks has protected them for thirty years without ever saying why.

The Leshy. His loyal opposition: jacks who hold that leading the unwelcome in circles is no longer defensible now that the traffic includes refugees. He has not ruled on it. The ambiguity is doing a great deal of work and he knows it.

Relations

Takes the toll from everyone, including the Kingdom, discreetly, through intermediaries the Chancery would deny under oath. Cordial with the Great Hunt, which pays like anyone else.

He has known Old Mother Ash across the crossings for longer than either will specify, and the two of them are the only people in either realm who can say with authority who has gone through and who has come back.

Reputation

In the Wilds: the eldest, and the last word on the fens. Among travelers: the most trustworthy guide in the world, and everyone repeats that sentence without finishing it.

His approaching metamorphosis is treated as a civic event. Nine-Wicks is taking bets on the timing and paying out honestly, which the fens find both hilarious and unbearable, since it means the person keeping the causeways will shortly be someone with none of his memories.

Hooks

• Somebody is guiding people through the fens without a Wick-House licence — competently, cheaply, by routes the Wick-Houses do not know.
• The Leshy ask the party to bring Basekin refugees out of the Kingdom and through the fens, which requires a guide, and the Wick-Houses have been paid rather well not to supply one.
• The Deep Lights have moved nearer for the first time in recorded memory. Nine-Wicks' standing order — that any client asking to be taken to them is taken somewhere else and charged for it — has not changed, and his oldest guides have started sleeping on the causeway.
• He asks the party to be present when he goes, and to write down what he says, because there will shortly be a jack in the fens with all his habits and none of his reasons.

"He held my hand while I stepped up onto the stone. I found out later he had done the same for the party that went in the other direction that morning."