The Chain Breaker: Books 1-3

by Holmberg, D. K.

  Alex watched him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gavin could only smile. At least he was consistent. “I hope not. If there’s any evidence of magic while we’re here, we’re going to have trouble.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Go to sleep, Alex. We’ll talk more when you wake up.”

  Gavin stood and headed toward the door, and he pulled Jessica with him. He waited outside the room for a moment, lingering with his hand on the door. He felt no sense of magic, and the El’aras dagger didn’t start to glow. If Alex attempted to draw upon power, he couldn’t feel it. It was possible he wouldn’t even be able to detect it.

  “I don’t know much about that boy, but he’s hiding something,” Gavin said, turning to Jessica.

  She watched him, frowning deeply.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re right,” Jessica said.

  “Right about what?”

  “They’re hiding something.”

  Gavin nodded. “That’s what I just said.”

  “But you’re not right about what they’re hiding.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s not a boy. That’s a girl.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The street was dark, and Gavin paced slowly with his hand on the hilt of the El’aras dagger. He was prepared, should anyone appear, though mostly he was concerned about Erica. She had deceived them, though Gavin should’ve expected it. It happened often enough that he was accustomed to it.

  Besides, why hire someone like me for a task like rescuing a child?

  Gavin wanted answers. Until he had them, he wasn’t going to release the boy—the girl, he had to remind himself—back to her.

  There were shadows along the street, but he didn’t see anything. He hated the darkness, and his eyesight had never been good at night. He didn’t want magic around him, but he was actually thankful when the El’aras dagger glowed because it gave him some light in situations where he wouldn’t otherwise have it.

  Gavin searched for signs of movement, but there wasn’t anything. He continued pacing back and forth along the street. At one end, a small group of people made their way up the street. He could smell the ale drifting off of them, and from the way they staggered and stumbled, he suspected that they had just come from one of the five taverns that lined the area. None of them were quite as nice as the Roasted Dragon, though Gavin might be a little bit biased.

  He stayed in the shadows, watching until they passed. It was as easy for him to wait in the alley as it was for him to pace along the street, but on the street at least he was moving. At least he was doing something.

  Attacking the Captain had been a dangerous plan from the beginning. Gavin should’ve known better than to have rushed in there without more intel. But the information that Desarra had provided and that Wrenlow had corroborated suggested it was reasonable.

  He leaned back, watching the street. She was to meet him soon.

  It was a dark night. No moon. No stars. Hints of clouds drifted across the sky. The only light came from the few street lanterns. In this section of the city, there wasn’t generally a need for more.

  The crowd of people was the only grouping that he had seen since coming out here. Every so often, there would be a single person making their way, usually stumbling. Never anything more. Even the constables didn’t patrol at this time of night.

  He lost track of how long he’d been waiting. His attention peaked when he finally saw a shadowed cloak moving along the street. Erica.

  She’d promised she would come alone, but then again, she had also claimed she was looking for a boy. And had said nothing about him—or her—being a sorcerer. As she moved along the street, Gavin stepped out of the alley and joined her.

  She jumped but calmed herself quickly. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come. I didn’t know if I had given you enough time.”

  Erica looked just as lovely as she had when he’d first seen her. Her green eyes were a little darker in the night, and the cloak hid the figure Jessica had teased him about.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “Did you find him?”

  Gavin studied her for a few moments. “I found him.”

  “He was there? Was he… was he hurt?”

  “No. But you should know that extricating him from the fortress was harder than we had anticipated.”

  “I told you I was willing to pay. You were the one who named the price.”

  Gavin grunted. “I did. And you were also aware that it wasn’t the kind of job I normally take.”

  Was that why she had hired me? Could it have been that she wanted the assassin, not that she wanted me to rescue the boy—girl?

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You knew what kind of work I normally do.” They paused at a street intersection, and he turned to face her. “I’m starting to wonder if you hired me for that specific purpose.”

  “I wanted my son back.”

  “Really? Describe him to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Describe your son to me. I want to make sure I brought the right person out of the fortress.”

  “He’s about ten. Wispy brown hair. He has delicate features, sharp cheekbones, a pointed nose. A little rosiness to his cheeks. You can’t miss him. There’s even a single mole right here.” She pointed to her left cheek.

  That could have described Alex. Of course, it could have described many people in Yoran. Many of them had the same wispy brown hair, along with the fine, almost delicate features that Alex had.

  “Any other distinguishing characteristics?”

  “What is this about? I thought you’d found him. That’s why I came to meet you.”

  “I just want to make sure that I did the job you hired me to do,” Gavin said. He placed his hand on the hilt of the El’aras dagger. “I think I told you when we first met that I’m typically hired for different purposes.” He watched her. “At the time, you said you didn’t know what those were, but I wonder if you know more than you’re letting on.”

  “Gavin?”

  “What were you really after?”

  “Where is my son?” She raised her voice, and there was something almost panicked about it.

  He was tempted to believe her. Part of him wanted to believe her, but he didn’t know if he should. Perhaps that was his mistake in the first place. He had believed that she was a mother searching for a lost son, and he hadn’t even given as much thought as he should’ve to the possibility of who she might be and what she might be after.

  “You came to the Dragon looking for a specific person,” he said.

  If she’d come to the Dragon for Gaspar, it might have been different. Even a thief might’ve been better for the job than an assassin. At the time, Gavin had thought it was simply a case of a rumor of a name, but it had to be something different. Perhaps something more. He should have thought more about it before now.

  Gavin had been used by others over the years, and for the most part, it had worked out for him. He hadn’t killed anybody going to the fortress. Nothing had been done that couldn’t be undone. Only, he had attacked the Captain. If the Captain learned who he was and decided to come after him, he’d have to deal with a different set of consequences. With him connected to power within the city, he had the potential to be dangerous.

  “I came because I heard you were skilled. All I wanted was somebody capable of getting my son. I figured it needed to be somebody with enough talent for that.”

  The panicked sound in her voice picked up, and yet this time there was something else within it that troubled Gavin even more—almost as if she were acting.

  Now he was suspicious.

  He held onto the El’aras dagger, but he didn’t withdraw it.

  “There are probably stories about me within the city,” Gavin said. “And if you leave Yoran, there are definitely stories about me and about the pe
rson I’ve been in those places.” He leaned forward and held her gaze. “You hired an assassin to find your son.”

  He looked for some sign of shock. Concern. Worry. Nothing on her face changed.

  “You said you found him,” she said.

  “What were you expecting me to do?”

  “Did you find him?” There was a harder edge to her voice.

  Gavin smiled. “Who is he?”

  “You found him, though?”

  “If you don’t answer my question, I’m not going to answer yours,” Gavin said.

  “You will answer.”

  A strange streamer of green swirled around him, attempting to trap him. It matched the color of her eyes.

  Magic.

  Of course it would be. Why would he have expected anything else? She’d been willing to come into a place like the Dragon and had fearlessly approached him—a man she claimed to have heard of, one who had a reputation in Yoran and elsewhere of being a dangerous assassin. Yet she had been unfazed in asking for his help. People simply didn’t approach assassins if they didn’t have some sort of power of their own.

  “You’re going to regret that,” Gavin said.

  “Where is he?” she asked again, her tone harder than before.

  Gavin started to focus, paying attention to the core energy inside him. Out in the darkness of the street, it was easier to embrace that energy deep within him. He didn’t know if it was magic like Anna claimed, but if it was, then it was a part of him that he’d been trained to reach. As he attempted to access that power, to dive deep to grab hold of it, he could feel it surging up within him.

  It gave him the strength to find a way to reach for the bindings around him that came from her green swirl of power. He focused on them.

  The Chain Breaker.

  That was his nickname, earned through the games he’d played with Tristan.

  The leathers and the ropes had been the easiest. The chains had been more difficult. It wasn’t until he had learned to tap into that core energy that he’d been able to find a way to escape from the chains, when he was no more than thirteen or fourteen. They had given him his nickname.

  Over time, Tristan had used heavier and heavier chains as a test meant to see whether Gavin could escape. He had required more and more strength to progressively break free from them.

  Now he had to wonder if Tristan had been training him for something else.

  Gavin pushed out, exploding out of the bindings around him. He withdrew the El’aras dagger and was not surprised to find it glowing. He darted forward, jabbing the tip of the dagger toward the woman. In the past when he’d broken free of magical bindings, he hadn’t thought he was using magic at the time, but he probably had been.

  “Try that again, and you will find this blade buried in your neck,” he said.

  She watched him. There was no fear in her eyes, only determination mixed with something surprising. Hatred. “Did you find him?”

  “No,” Gavin said.

  “What?” She jerked free, using a hint of her green magic to blast at him and stagger away. He didn’t fight her at this point. He simply stood, watching. “I thought you said that you found him.”

  “You hired me to find a boy. I didn’t find a boy.”

  “A girl,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Of course. He was masking the presence. Clever.”

  “What was that?”

  Erica twisted her hand, and another swirl of green began to work its way around Gavin, thickening and becoming substantial. This time, it started to spiral up from the ground, working more and more rapidly as it weaved up and around him. It started to trace around his thighs, winding up like vines growing around him. He focused on his core energy and tried to break free, but the way that she was holding it made it difficult for him to blast out of.

  Instead of trying to fight his way out, Gavin used the El’aras dagger. He carved through the green vine. It peeled away, dropping to the ground before disappearing.

  He darted forward, and this time he jabbed the dagger into her shoulder. She cried out.

  Gavin withdrew and stood across from her. “I warned you.”

  “You really are everything I expected,” she said.

  “Who told you to expect it?”

  “The Maker of Chains.”

  Gavin took a step back, staring at her. The choice of words couldn’t be coincidental.

  What did she know?

  “Who is the Maker of Chains?”

  Could it be Tristan?

  He’d trained Gavin to be the Chain Breaker, so it would make sense, but Tristan wouldn’t come after him like this.

  She smiled. “Where is she?” she asked.

  Gavin shook his head. “I need to know who sent you.”

  Somebody knew about him and what he was capable of doing.

  Was it one of the El’aras?

  He didn’t think that Anna or any of the people with her would have betrayed him. He stared at Erica, uncertainty filling him in a way it hadn’t in a while.

  It wasn’t that he was afraid of this sorceress—or enchantress, he had to acknowledge. The bindings of power around him were different than what he’d seen from sorcerers, although he suspected that they were all on the same spectrum of power. She could have some strange enchantment that allowed her to use her magic in this way. If he could find it, he could disarm it and keep her from using it on him.

  “You will bring me to her.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gavin said.

  “You will. She is far too dangerous for you. If you don’t, everyone you care about in that filthy tavern will suffer.”

  Magic started to swirl away from her hand again, and Gavin darted forward, anger surging up within him. He jabbed the dagger into her other shoulder and then spun, kicking behind her knees. She dropped to the ground.

  When she was down, he brought the dagger up and slipped it underneath her neck. “You aren’t the first person to make a threat to my friends, but I warn you it will be the last time that you make one.”

  She watched him, unconcerned. The lack of concern in her eyes was the most troubling thing about her. He’d expected some response, and Gavin didn’t even know how to react.

  He had to have answers. If she hadn’t mentioned the name, he might have been willing to kill her and leave it at that.

  The Maker of Chains.

  Had he not believed that Tristan lived, none of this would’ve been an issue. But he did believe it. Anna wouldn’t have said that to him were it not true. She wouldn’t have come to him and shared with him that there was something he needed to know were it not true.

  Gavin grabbed Erica. He pulled her along with him. She had injuries to both shoulders, but it was possible she could heal herself with magic.

  He needed someplace to hold her. Bringing her to the Dragon, close to where he now had the girl, wasn’t the right strategy. There was another place he might be able to bring her.

  As they moved through the streets, she didn’t fight. She said nothing to him. They passed a few other people, but Gavin didn’t look in their direction, and they didn’t look in his. He was mostly concerned about running into one of the constables. They might question why he was dragging a woman with him, and he’d have to either reveal she was an enchantress or knock them down.

  He didn’t have any trouble though. The forest rose in the background as he reached the street, and he was getting tired. He’d been forced to draw upon his core reserves as he pulled her along, worried about her using some of her power on him. There was a limit to how much he could hold, and he feared he drew close to that limit.

  When he reached Cyran’s home, the windows were dark like they had been in the days since Gavin had sent him off with the El’aras. He quickly unlocked the door, tossing her in front of him, where she sprawled out on the floor. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked. It was curiosity, not concern, that filled
her voice. There was still the edge of hatred there.

  “You and I are going to talk.”

  “Here?”

  “Did you have a better place in mind?” he said.

  A layer of dust hung over everything in the home, and Cyran had emptied almost everything he’d kept here. There were no furnishings other than a table and pair of chairs. The cabinets had been cleaned out. The air had a stale, harsh stink to it.

  “There’s something off about this place.”

  “I’m sure there is. It was once a sorcerer’s lair.”

  He didn’t know if that would intimidate her or not, but if it did, then good. Maybe she could detect something magical about it and could pick up on some element of the residual energy that remained following Cyran’s departure. Even if she couldn’t, he didn’t care. All he cared about now was holding her somewhere, although he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep her here either.

  He lifted her again and threw her into one of the chairs. “Tell me about the Maker of Chains.”

  “You’re concerned.”

  “No. Simply curious.”

  She glared at him. “I can tell when a man is concerned. When I came to you at the Roasted Dragon, you were not worried, which surprised me. Most men would have been concerned about the job I hired you for.”

  “I’m not most men.”

  “No, you are the great Gavin Lorren.” She said his name with a flourish and with a hint of an accent, a familiar sound that suggested that she knew something more about him than even he did, along with something of a sneer to it.

  The only other person who had said it in a similar way had been Anna—though without the sneer—and the sorcerer. Maybe the Maker of Chains was not Tristan at all. It could be the sorcerer who’d trained Cyran.

  Gavin would have no reason to believe the sorcerer would have left him alone—no reason other than the fact that he’d sent the sorcerer away. He’d completed the job, and that alone should’ve been enough reason for the sorcerer to move on, but Gavin had enough experience with sorcerers to know that they didn’t simply leave someone they found valuable. Given what he had done on behalf of the sorcerer, Gavin had proven he was valuable to him. That could have been a mistake.