The Chain Breaker: Books 1-3

by Holmberg, D. K.

  “There were. There were also dangerous and deadly things.”

  “Such as?”

  “People disappearing. Battles in the streets. Sorcerers fighting sorcerers. Did you know that before the Captain, the person with the most power in the city was a sorcerer?”

  Gavin smiled tightly. “That’s not surprising. That’s been the case in many of the cities I’ve seen. And the Captain isn’t without his magical connection. He might not be a sorcerer”—though Gavin wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or not—“but he certainly has enchantments. He has his own connection that enables him to maintain his standing in the city.” He had no idea how extensive that magical connection might be, nor did he know just what the Captain did to keep that position.

  Even though the Captain had enchantments, his guards didn’t. That surprised Gavin.

  If this was all about sorcery and all about using magic in ways that were hidden, then why wouldn’t the Captain have kept others with him with that kind of power? Why would he have been the only one to have enchantments?

  “I don’t think Gaspar likes getting back into this,” Jessica said, leaning across the table and shifting so that she could look at both Gavin and Gaspar.

  Gavin glanced over at the old thief. “Getting back into the magical world?”

  Jessica nodded slowly before turning her gaze back to him. She smoothed her hair back with one hand, and her brow furrowed.

  Was she thinking about how much she still had to do to clean up the tavern?

  “In his mind, he was done with it before,” she said.

  “Is that why he and Desarra can’t be together?” Having seen the two of them, it seemed strange to Gavin that they couldn’t. They obviously wanted to.

  “I don’t know. It’s more complicated than that, and don’t you go pushing me for more answers, Gavin Lorren. I don’t have them. I just know. And I know you don’t need to be pushing Gaspar when he doesn’t want to share.”

  “He wants to go back to her for the job.”

  “He does?” Jessica asked, watching Gaspar closely.

  “I think he believes she has something to offer us so we can figure out what’s taking place. He thinks Desarra might be able to help us find where these other enchanters are.”

  “What do you believe?”

  Gavin shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter what I believe. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to finish this job.” Maybe he could finish both jobs.

  “Then what?”

  He looked over at Jessica. “You want me to stay.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t, but you don’t have to. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Are you sure about that, Gavin Lorren? Are you so sure that you can see my thoughts? Do you know what I want?”

  “I know you’re the reason the rumors were spread throughout the city.”

  “And I’ve told you that I’m not. You can choose whether or not to believe me, Gavin, but I’m not responsible for that. If somebody wanted to spread rumors about you as a tracker and to force you into doing these things, you’d better start looking into why.”

  She stormed away, and Gavin sat there for a moment, frowning to himself.

  Maybe she was right. It was possible that he did need to look at things in a different way.

  If it wasn’t Jessica, who was responsible?

  There was no doubt in his mind that somebody had spread the rumors. That was what Davel Chan had said. Perhaps that was where he had to go.

  He looked around the tavern. Wrenlow brought him a tray, and Gavin picked at the food and drank his ale.

  His mind tried to work through everything. He didn’t come up with any answers, but that didn’t change how troubled he felt.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The cleared section of the main room of the Dragon made it easy for Gavin to practice. A fire smoldered in the hearth, giving a hint of light, and he moved through his patterns in the space he’d cleared out in the room. He needed to keep his skills sharp. There was a time when he wouldn’t have needed practice. There was a time when he never would’ve worried about losing any of his skills, but that had been before he had come here.

  That had been before he had stayed in Yoran for as long as he had, and now he felt as if his skills were starting to diminish, if only a little bit. He didn’t want to those skills to diminish. He’d worked incredibly hard to acquire them, suffering for much longer than he ever would have believed that he would’ve been willing to do, to gain those skills.

  Which was why he had to work at them, honing them for him to remember how to flow from movement to movement.

  “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

  Gavin spun out of a Noru fighting stance and turned to see Wrenlow coming down the stairs, pausing at the bottom of the stairs and looking out at him. He held a lantern in one hand and rubbed sleep from his eyes with his free hand. His notebook was tucked up under his arm, and a pen was stuffed behind one ear.

  “It’s not a matter of not being able to sleep,” Gavin said.

  “You’re down here, though.”

  “I’m down here,” Gavin agreed.

  Wrenlow took a seat at one of the tables, and he kicked back, resting his heels on a chair next to him. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  Gavin grunted. “You intend to watch?”

  “I don’t get to see you fight that often, so why shouldn’t I see you practice?”

  “You don’t want to see me fight,” Gavin said.

  “I don’t necessarily want to be a part of the fighting,” Wrenlow said, smiling slightly, “but at the same time, I don’t want to be left out of it, either.”

  Gavin paused and grabbed his shirt off the chair, and he dabbed at his forehead. “Do you feel left out of it?”

  “I know my role, Gavin.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” Gavin said.

  Wrenlow shrugged, and he set his book in front of him, and pulled the pen out from behind his ear. “I can’t deny that I would be interested in learning a little bit more.”

  “You want to learn how to fight?”

  Wrenlow looked over, and rested his elbows on the table, staring at Gavin for a moment. “With all the things that we do, I’m bound to end up getting in trouble sometime. It wouldn’t hurt to know a little bit more about how to defend myself if it came down to it.”

  Gavin took a deep breath, and he nodded.

  He should have thought about that before. Wrenlow wasn’t wrong. Gavin did ask quite a bit of him, especially finding information, and learning how to find dangerous people in a city like this put him into a very different type of danger. Without any enchantments, other than the one that allowed them to communicate, Wrenlow wouldn’t be able to do much.

  “Would you prefer we find enchantments that would allow you to fight more effectively?”

  “What good are enchantments if I don’t have the skills to use them anyway?”

  “Even an enchantment for speed is useful,” Gavin said. He moved to the table where Wrenlow sat, and he rested one hand on the chair, leaning toward Wrenlow. “If you have an enchantment, you can run.”

  “You don’t run.”

  “I don’t run,” Gavin said. “But then again, I’m trained not to run.”

  “You don’t even use any enchantments.”

  “Again, I’m trained not to use them.” He dabbed his forehead. He’d been working for the better part of an hour and had managed to get through quite a few different fighting styles, flowing from one to the next, often times mixing different styles together. That was how he would best ensure that he stayed sharp. “I try not to use enchantments. I was taught that if you come to rely upon enchantments, you might find yourself using them at the wrong time.”

  “What’s the wrong time?”

  “Basically, you find yourself relying upon them, and if you do that, and the enchantment fades, you could suffer.”

  Wrenlow pulled his book toward hi
m, and he shook his head. “So, you want me to learn to use enchantments, and if I were to need them, I might find them not available?”

  “How often do you really think that you’re going to need enchantments?”

  “How often are you going to send me after information about people like the Captain?”

  “You didn’t have any trouble finding that information, did you?”

  “Not that time, but…”

  Gavin pulled the chair out and took a seat. “What’s really on your mind?”

  “We’ve been dealing with an awful lot of magic,” Wrenlow said.

  “That’s what you’re concerned about.”

  Wrenlow shrugged. “Shouldn’t I be? Considering everything that we have gone through, and all the dangers that we’ve faced, don’t you think that I should be a little bit concerned about how much magic that we have suddenly been facing? First it’s your sorcerer friend—”

  “He is not my friend.”

  “He was.”

  “I thought so,” Gavin said softly.

  “And then there is his mentor, or whoever that was, whoever was trying to call you into gathering him. Now we have another sorcerer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gavin said.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s just the reason that I’m asking for a little bit of help. Maybe some training.” Wrenlow grinned slightly. “We’ve dealt with quite a few different sorcerers over the time that we’ve been together.”

  “I’ve tried to stay away from sorcerers,” Gavin said.

  “Ever since you dealt with that crazy bastard in Noral.”

  “He was the worst,” Gavin said, shaking his head. “He tried to hire me to take out his rival.”

  “I don’t think he believed you could actually do it,” Wrenlow said, chuckling and shaking his head. “I mean, who would believe that somebody without any magic could take out somebody with magic?”

  “Maybe he knew I had more than I knew,” Gavin said.

  Wrenlow arched a brow. “Maybe,” he said. “And how is that going?”

  “You mean how is it going with me trying to figure out whether I have any connection to power?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ve been struggling,” Gavin admitted. “I don’t know if I can control it.”

  “You’ve moved past the idea that it’s not magic?”

  “I don’t know that I have much choice in believing that is not magic,” Gavin said. He glanced over to the book, and he reached for it, but Wrenlow smacked his hand away, arching a brow at him. “I have been able to do too many things with that power that are probably magical. And now I don’t even know.”

  “It’s useful, though.”

  “Maybe,” Gavin said.

  “Think about some of the things that you dealt with before. Can you imagine what we would have been able to do had we known that you had that kind of power? We had that one sorcerer in Kevlin who was more than even you could handle.”

  Gavin shook his head. “The Tanran.”

  “That’s right. I forgot about his name.”

  “Or hers,” Gavin said.

  “If you say so,” Wrenlow said. “Either way, we couldn’t even find him or her. You got hired to take him out, and then he goes and disappears on you.”

  “Again, I’m not so sure that it’s a matter of him disappearing so much as it was me just not learning where to find him.”

  “You gave up on that job awfully quickly,” Wrenlow said.

  Gavin leaned back, closing his eyes. That had been a difficult time. The sorcerer had been skilled. He hadn’t even gotten close to finding the Tanran. He’d been asked to take care of a dangerous and deadly sorcerer, and as he had gotten close, the sorcerer had simply disappeared; moving on. Over the years, Gavin had caught word of the Tanran a few other times, but he had never attempted to pursue.

  “None of that matters,” Gavin said. “I don’t even know if that job would’ve gone any easier had I known I had a connection to magic.”

  “It couldn’t have gone any worse.”

  “No one died.”

  “Not at your hand,” Wrenlow said. “Others in the city did, though.”

  Gavin leaned back, looking around the inside of the Dragon. It was dark, and other than the lantern that Wrenlow had brought down, there was little light. He been sparring using the light coming off the hearth, but that was barely enough for him to see much of anything. He hadn’t needed to see much of anything, though. For the kind of work that he needed, it was mostly by feel. At this point in his fighting, that was how he had to practice. Instinct, more than anything else.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” Gavin asked, looking back to Wrenlow.

  “Probably the same as you.”

  “I doubt it,” Gavin said.

  “Fine. I guess I don’t have the mysterious magic that you do, nothing that keeps me awake the way that your strange magic has suddenly started to keep you awake, but I do understand there’s something going on. And I’ve been trying to figure out the connection between all of this. I feel like the answer is right there the edge of my ability to understand, I just have to find it.”

  Gavin chuckled. “If anybody’s going to find it, it’s going to be you,” he said.

  “Thanks, I guess,” Wrenlow said.

  “I know you feel like you need to fight in order for you to have some value to what we do, but that isn’t where you bring me the most value.”

  “I just want to help,” Wrenlow said. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to take pity on me.”

  “I don’t.”

  Wrenlow arched a brow at him.

  “I’m not saying that I didn’t,” Gavin said, and he laughed. “When I first found you, you were pretty pitiful.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “You got better.”

  “I’ve gotten exposed to things that I never would have imagined that I would be a part of,” he said. “And there are times when I still don’t even know what to think of some of this.”

  “I hadn’t brought anybody else with me before you,” Gavin said.

  “Why not?”

  Gavin closed his eyes. “One of the aspects of my training was that I needed to manage on my own.”

  “No one can be on their own forever,” Wrenlow said.

  “I was taught to be on my own,” Gavin said.

  “Did you like it?”

  “What was there to like?”

  “Your training. Everything that you went through. You haven’t talked much about this mentor of yours recently. Not since Anna told you that he might be alive.”

  “I don’t know what there is to say about him,” Gavin said.

  “You never really talked about him before, either.”

  “Because he was gone,” Gavin said.

  “You don’t talk about the dead?”

  “The dead don’t need us,” Gavin said.

  “The dead don’t need you,” Wrenlow said, laughing softly. “You can’t kill someone who’s already dead, can you?”

  “No,” Gavin answered.

  “What will you do if you find him?” Wrenlow asked, looking to Gavin and watching him. “That’s what you intend to do, eventually, isn’t it?”

  Gavin breathed out slowly, and he looked around the inside of the Dragon. “I think I’m getting too comfortable here,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with comfortable?”

  “It means that I’m getting complacent,” Gavin said.

  “You’re still the greatest fighter in the city.”

  “I was once much more than that,” Gavin said. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and shook his head. “But maybe I have to be content with being the greatest fighter in the city. At least for now.”

  “You want to be the greatest fighter in the world?” Wrenlow started to laugh. “You do know the world is kind of a big place. And I can’t imagine that you could find a way to be the greatest in the entire world. T
here are others who have innate magic. Think about the El’aras. They wouldn’t have any trouble with somebody like you.”

  Gavin arched a brow at him. “I handled the El’aras.”

  “I suppose you did,” he said. “Sometimes I forget about that.”

  “We shouldn’t forget about that,” Gavin said.

  “Have you tried calling her?”

  “What makes you think that I will?”

  “I saw the way that you are looking at her when she was here,” Wrenlow said. “I didn’t say anything to Jessica, if that’s your concern.”

  “That’s not my concern.”

  “Not while you are here. But eventually, won’t it be? She gave you the marker to get a hold of her.”

  “She gave me the marker, but I haven’t used it.”

  “You could,” he said.

  “For what purpose?” Gavin rested his elbows on the table, looking at Wrenlow, holding his gaze. “What purpose would there be in me calling to the El’aras, and drawing them back here? They were here for some other reason, hiding the Shard, or to stay away from the rest of their people. I don’t even know. And I don’t even care. Just so long as they don’t give me a reason to go after them, I shouldn’t get caught up in it.”

  “You shouldn’t?”

  Gavin shook his head.

  He tried to ignore the fact that Anna had claimed he was part El’aras. He didn’t know anything about his own past before he had trained with Tristan. That was the only thing that he could really remember. That and the fires that had claimed his parents.

  He took a deep breath and got to his feet. “Come on,” he said to Wrenlow.

  “Come on?”

  “You wanted to fight.”

  “Now? With you?”

  “You have to fight with me to learn,” Gavin said.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  Gavin frowned. “Are you going to give me any reason to?”

  “I just want to learn to protect myself.”

  “There are a few different fighting styles that might be effective for that,” he started. “I can help you with them. But I have to warn you, I can be a painful instructor.”

  “I believe it.” Wrenlow got up, and he set his pen down next to his book, and he glanced to the lantern before stepping into the cleared space in the Dragon. “How did you learn so many different fighting styles?”