Goro: Ducking Out of the Way

*Ma,*

*It's real damn hot here. You'd probably like it.*

*They have temples to every god you can imagine, seems like. It's crazy. And very, very sacrilegious of course. Just think, if a cleric traveling here from Skyport was secretly serving some other deity like Mask or someone, he'd have no trouble finding room and board at a temple for Mask. Isn't that terrible? Imagine how much it would blow his twisted little mind to finally meet other clerics who openly serve the same god as him. Pity that poor man's soul. I'm so grateful I serve Helm.*

*Keeping busy so far exploring the city and performing temple duties. Like sweeping the goddamn floors, you know how much I missed that one.*

*Hope all is well. Love you.*

#

His favorite thing about the other clerics of Mask was that they were all just as paranoid as him. A bunch of skinny, shifty-looking fucks, crowding around him, glaring and poking, searching his pockets. It was great. He gladly submitted to their Zone of Truth interview, which they required completion of before giving him a place to sleep.

Being as paranoid as they were, of course they couldn't all bunk together like at a normal temple, oh no. Goro had his own room—an extremely tiny room, but a space all his own, with magical and mechanical locks already in place. It was beautiful.

There was one cleric among them, though, with a very different disposition. The elder, whom everyone called Father. He was as kind and serene as Amari. Goro supposed every temple needed one of those types.

It was strange, learning the ropes at this place. There was a lot he didn't know, hadn't even had a chance to know, as a solitary practitioner. There were hymns, chants, and prayers to memorize. Rituals he hadn't been doing quite right. He learned new spells, and ways to make the spells he already had stronger.

"A dedicated student and a hard worker," Father remarked one day, patting Goro on the shoulder. "A heart for serving others, that much is clear."

"Yeah right, Pops. This is all for me, and for Mask."

"Is that so? No one back home, waiting for you?"

"I have people I care about, if that's what you're asking. That doesn't count."

"No?" Father was amused, but he didn't argue beyond that. It was the same thing Amari did sometimes, where she was so confident in thinking she was right that she didn't feel the need to push it. It was stupid, but Goro liked the Father a lot so he just gave him a cheeky smile and let the matter drop.

#

Calimport was a beautiful city, particularly in early evening, when the worst of the day's heat had passed and the streets and buildings began to glow with lantern light. That was when Goro went out exploring, finding the restaurants and entertainment venues and public squares where people congregated. Sometimes he bought himself drinks and listened in on conversations. (The Calishami loved juices, teas, and yogurt drinks, and didn't feel the need to ferment everything until it turned alcoholic, fancy that.) Sometimes he struck up conversations of his own. Slowly, one tiny piece at a time, he was making a picture of the Tyrant King, and what life was like under his rule.

One night, while following a group of especially talkative young men, he wound up inside what he thought initially was a bathhouse. But then the men all separated, disappearing into various rooms, and two young women dressed in sheer silks descended on Goro and led him to a corner to sit on a pile of tasseled cushions. One of the women pushed a cup of wine into his hand and the other pulled off his shoes.

"Hang on a second," Goro said as the woman began rubbing his feet. "I think I came in here by accident." He sniffed at the wine and tried to pass it back to the other woman, but she'd already started to walk off.

The proprietor, a middle-aged half elf smoking a long and slender pipe, sauntered over for a closer look at him. "Layla," she said to the girl rubbing his feet. "What have I told you about studying the customer? He doesn't like it. Quit."

Layla let go of Goro's feet and scooted away, sitting with her head demurely bowed.

The proprietor blew a stream of smoke at Goro's face while she scrutinized him. "You must have come in here for something."

Eavesdropping, but he wasn't about to admit that now. Goro looked around the place, taking in the beaded doorways, the low lighting, the silk drapes hanging from the ceiling. A woman's moan drifted from some distant room. "This is a brothel, right?"

"Please. Brothels are much cruder establishments. This is a pleasure house, young sir. First time, I take it?"

Goro snorted. "Ooh, pleasurehouse. My mistake. Just what pleasures do you offer, besides sex?"

"Food. Wine. Conversation. Music. Massage." The woman raised an eyebrow, then pointed her pipe at him. "*That's* what you need. Layla, go back into the kitchen and finish the dishes. This is a job for a professional."

She came around behind Goro and began to rub his shoulders. "Good fucking gods," she grunted around the pipe in her teeth. "Are you a stone golem? I could tell you were tense by looking at you, but this is something else."

"Ow!" He jerked away when she dug her fingers in savagely. She grabbed him and settled him back into place.

"Hold still. This is going to take me a while. You're going to have to come back and see me again tomorrow before we make any progress."

Her name was Miriam. She worked at his neck and shoulders for almost an hour and declared that hardly any progress had been made. The next morning, after he'd healed the bruises and swelling she left behind, he found it was a little easier to move his head. Huh.

#

*Ma,*

*All's well, still.*

*I'm sending you some seeds for this certain kind of flower they have all over the place here. It's real pretty, bright red and yellow. The lady I bought the seeds from says plant them somewhere sunny with good drainage, and you don't need to worry about watering them unless they're looking wilty. Hope they survive the trip.*

*Love you.*

#

It was beginning to dawn on him that he'd spent years not telling Amari he loved her, and not calling her his mother, even though doing those things cost him nothing and made him inexplicably happy.

He wondered how many other things like that—things that were free, but led to happiness—he was missing out on.

He asked Father about it one day, when they were repainting the flaking trim on the temple windows. "Do you think people ever do this thing where they could be happy but they keep making choices that make them unhappy?"

Father had a good laugh. "Oh, well, yes, I would say that is the human condition. Or elven condition, as it were."

"Why, though?"

"There's no simple answer to that question. Could be any number of reasons. In your case—"

Father did that all the damn time, somehow knowing exactly what was on Goro's mind even when Goro didn't say it outright.

"—fear of loss, I assume. You perceive the pain of having happiness and then losing it to be worse than never having it in the first place. And thus when you sense happiness coming, you duck out of its way."

Goro worked in silence for a while. The repetitive motion of gliding the bristles over the plaster, leaving vivid red streaks behind, was soothing. Painting was his favorite chore.

"Maybe," he said, "I should stop doing that. But maybe not."

Father dipped his brush into the paint pot and followed after Goro, filling in the spots he'd missed. "Does it serve you still, child? Does it protect you? If yes, then continue. If no, then stop."

Goro didn't have the faintest fucking clue.

#

Every few days he went back to Miriam and let her work some more of her painful magic. Once his neck was fairly loosened up he let her work on his back, too. She would dig her elbow into the knots and it felt like a knife being dragged along his muscles. He pounded his fists and kicked his feet and screamed at her for being a hateful witch. She cackled every time. Once, ashes from her pipe spilled out and landed on his skin, burning him. She felt genuinely bad for that one and gave him some cooling salve and a free drink.

He was put on gardening duty at the temple, even though he protested that he had a knack for killing things. There were a few fig trees out back he was supposed to prune, but more often than not he just climbed up into their shady branches, picked some of the fruit, and ate it. Nobody complained. Wasn't like Mask disapproved of stealing fruit.

His skin tanned to a tawny brown. His hair got shaggy, and he had it cut. Shorter than he was used to, cropped close to his skull to match the other clerics'. Miriam showed him some stretches she wanted him to do to keep his neck and shoulders limber. He thought it was stupid at first, but soon found that he couldn't stop doing it. It became a new tic, practically; just as irresistible as pinching or clawing at himself, but with a more pleasant aftereffect. A feeling of lightness.

Sometimes whole mornings or afternoons would go by where he didn't think about Diva.

#

*Ma,*

*I'm not sure when I'm coming back.*

*I miss you, though. You ever thought about becoming Calishami? Hah. Just a joke. Nah, don't worry about it, I will come back. I'll probably see you in a few weeks. Maybe even before this letter gets to you, if Mikhail Haeth's teleportation do-dah works out.*

*I like it here, but I don't think I could be satisfied knowing Skyport just stayed the way it was. You know what I mean, right?*

*Love you.*

#

Amari had specifically asked him to write to her, so that was why he kept sending her letters. He cast a Sending spell for anyone else he needed to contact.

Which was pretty much just Joan. *All good?* he'd ask her, every week or so.

There were other people he missed, but he didn't know what to say to them, so he didn't try.

He had lots of things to say to Nixie, but he didn't think she wanted to hear any of them.

That was the worst fucking thing, right there. There were days when he thought, maybe, he could… get better. Get back to something approaching normal. He'd be the best damn employee Joan ever had. He'd go visit Amari at the Sanctuary every month, have dinner with her, take her for walks in the garden. He'd shoot the breeze with Larkin and Hansel and hell, maybe even get chummy with Roddy, if Roddy could handle him. (Goro was sure as shit gonna be asking him about some bizarre rumors he'd heard involving a murderous circus tortle.) He'd learn to hold Mishka at arm's length, have fun with him without it getting weird.

But Nixie. He would not have Nixie. And he just didn't want that to be true. There was nothing else to say, nothing to be done for it. It broke his fucking heart, and that was that.

Father had asked him if ducking out of the way of happiness still served him. Goro couldn't figure out, really, what that meant. But he did think that if he'd never met Nixie, everything would feel easier on him than it did right now.

Maybe that meant he had to keep ducking, for now.

Maybe that meant he was not going to get better.

Didn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing, though, he reasoned. You could heal a wound with all the magic you had and it might still leave a scar. You could set and mend bones and have the person still walking away with a limp.

At least they were walking, though. At least they had that.