Lucien had always said that he’d go into the Heart until what was ahead of him was worse than what was behind him. But you know what? He just died. He got killed. He bit the big one. So there it was.
He had learned much, down here. But if he had learned anything, it was that his story was best told when it was told through his relationship with someone else.
Dwell on the legendary gambler he had shared a prison cell with, in his early thirties. The gambler’s own casino was a put that didn’t pay off, couldn’t be paid off. But the insurance on it?
He’d spoken to Lucien of his friends.
Sarah “Bulletin” Bullock, crime correspondent with a trigger finger as fast as her mouth. Broke the stories that’d break anyone else. He would talk about every headline she ever made.
Chiara Scuro, warlock hunter, paladin pedagogue. Silvered plate meticulously etched with Truth. Folk hero who found that schooling the peasantry got faster results than any lone wolf protector. He could teach Lucien everything that paladin had ever taught, and Lucien kicked himself nightly that he could only remember about a tenth of it.
Rowan Oake, the broad, kind, handsome adventurer who could shape lightning with his hands, and his best friend Nickel, playful prankster inventor, who would find the most clever things to do with it. They were madly in love, but too shy to admit it. They were never out of arm’s reach of each other, though, and still wished to be closer.
And, of course, his wife. His pregnant wife. The tequila songbird with the blood of swamp royalty, a touch of the true sight. A high note that could shatter any crystal glass but the ball she used for her séance. She picked it special. It was the gambler’s voice that broke, describing her.
Lucien had never met any of them, but he’d heard of them. The gambler would tell stories about them for hours, and hours, and hours. The most wonderful stories. As if they’d happened only yesterday. As if they were sitting just behind his shoulder, waiting to add what he missed.
He’d killed them. Cut them down in their prime.
Not on purpose. An accident had to occur, a meticulously planned one, that would engulf his mansion in flames. One last gamble. He would use the insurance to pay off his creditors and move to a cottage in the country, a modest one, where his family would be all he needed for his happiness. But for it to work he’d need witnesses, unimpeachable ones.
They were all meant to be on the lawn when the bombs went off. They were meant to watch the fireworks together. None of them had known- That had been the whole point. They couldn’t have known.
The gambler had been the only one who survived. The last of his bad luck. Tears leaked from eyes that had grown old enough for milky clouds of cataracts.
And the gambler had said: As long as I remember them, they’re still with me. As long as I remember them. But it’s been so long, and the memories…
Every time I forget them a little more, the gambler said, it is like I am killing them again. So I can never forget them. I have to remember that last day, again and again and again. Or else I let them go. Do you understand?
And Lucien had thought; That’s the trouble with friends like that. You’ll only lose them in the end.
And Lucien had thought; The best way to avoid this would be to only make plans that relied on yourself, and to be able to make reliable plans.
And Lucien had thought; What sense was there in the gambler moving on, if all his happiness was in his past? We live one good story, and we hope we do not outlive it.
He had been an idiot.
Lucien knew differently now. Was different, now.
He’d made friends like that. Coleman. The Engineer, Last Witness of Wormwood, The Unionist. And Jackdaw, The Jackdaw.
And… Ailee Sundish. The pawn who made it to queen. She always suspected he’d die without her. He always thought the same back. In the end they got each other killed. They’d danced together at Wormwood, just before it fell, and he asked her a question. She wouldn’t give him her answer then, so he had suggested his own at the Carnival, and it seems she wasn’t too proud to take it.
He thought of something else.
The gambler had told him that if he picked up a deck of cards, if he played again, he would forget everything. There was only him and the game again. All he needed to do was start playing and never stop, and he could forget everything. It had made him forget everything that had been important in his life before. It could do that for him again.
He was good at it. He would win. And as long as he could win he could live in an eternal present, without past and without future.
Even as stupid as he was then, Lucien had felt his heart break at that. He wasn’t ready to understand why. But, he thought, he understood exactly what the gambler felt. The Fool of the Sky Court came from that toxic place. Feeding on that manic addiction. Cutting so close to death that nothing else matters but surviving the next moment, and the thrill of pulling it off.
The gambler would burn his future and his past in the furnace of that long present. They both knew it. The question was why that wasn’t a happier ending, if both only brought him pain?
He was with that gambler for two weeks. Not once did Lucien take out the deck of cards that were in his jacket pocket. The weight of those fifty two pieces of cardboard became unbearable, even though each one had something important on them in invisible ink, something that could have got him out sooner.
He was ready to understand, now, it was not the burden of keeping them hidden. It was the secrets that had made them so heavy. Printed on playing cards, seeing them for what they were...
...
Lucien couldn’t return to the surface. Too many people were out for him, and he would escape them, because he was better than them. It would be fun. He would be a cat amongst the mice again, the shark amongst the shoals. There was a Game and he would play it again.
He would be the best again.
He wanted to be so much better than that, now.
He could only stay better if he stopped playing, and it was time to tell a better story.
And Lucien had learned his story was always told best through his relationships with others.
There are those who seek the Heart. Their reasons are as varied as their character. It is a dangerous journey, often lethal, and many will not find what they are looking for. From the Houses of Parliament to the Forest of Stone, the Blade Graveyard and the Fortress in Misted Chains. The Screaming Archives and the Flood and the Crystal Desert and the Mycological Labyrinth. Yet there are people who will journey through.
At the surface there is a spiralling tower of books, where a Professor raises goats and mules. He is who you must go to, if you want to inquire after the Tour Guide.
The wait may take months, the Professor will tell you, if he ever returns at all. It is a very dangerous job, after all, and a very long journey. But you’ll know him when you see him, he is sure.
Many will set off without waiting. Their journey is too urgent to wait.
Others are patient. He is, after all, the best.
And when he returns - and somehow, he always does - he picks a handful of his favourite likelies. His favourites are those that could never make it on their own, and know it. They’re going to try anyway.
A funny thing usually happens on the way down, with the Guide. By the end of their journey, they have become who they needed to be to have made it. And usually - but not always - they find what they needed was the journey and not their intended destination.
For the rest, the Guide never goes all the way to the end. There’s nothing at the end for him, and there never really was. Those last steps are always taken alone, because that is the only way they can be taken.
And every trip the Guide takes makes the next trip easier. Because with each trip, someone else finds their place in the Down There. They stick around, they make a home of it. And they’re always happy to help a friend.
And every new trip, the groups will linger. And they will ask him if he was really there to see the Jackdaw first take her name. And they will ask if he rode the last train out of Wormwood with Coleman of the Roundhouse. And they will not ask him about Ailee Sundish, because they know that is the one question you cannot ask.
And every trip the Guide takes makes the next trip more interesting. Because with each trip, there is someone new to check in on, and there are more friends to visit along the way. And he does love to catch up on old friends, doesn’t he?
And with every trip, the Guide adds a book to the Professor’s library, for the people who wait. It is filled with the stories of the ones that went before them. They serve as warnings as much as encouragement. The Heart is a dangerous and changing place. Sometimes even for the better.
It has been many trips, now. And Lucien has a collection of other people’s stories. Far more than that gambler, who could not imagine a future past the ending of his first story.
And it was more than the ending he would have given himself, if he had not been touched by the story of The Jackdaw.
Nobody lives just their one story. They play a role in the story of everyone they meet. And those stories will always be more special than the ones we could ever tell on our own.
It was an honour to tell this one with you, and for all of you to allow me to add to yours.
