The Chain Breaker: Books 1-3

by Holmberg, D. K.

  “Do I have something that the two of you agree on?” Gavin moved forward, glancing in either direction around him. No signs of another attacker, but there could still be somebody else here. A single person would not be enough to protect an entire warehouse of value, regardless of what lay inside. He didn’t know what Gaspar wanted his help for, but he could only imagine that it was worth something significant.

  As Gavin started across the street, another flicker of movement came in either direction. Two attackers.

  He stopped in the middle of the cobbled street, the stones more cracked than they were in other parts of Yoran, smiling. “I’m going to be another moment.”

  “Gah,” Gaspar grunted, closing the door again.

  Gavin didn’t have to wait long before the first of the attackers came. When they did, they lunged toward him, sweeping in a blur. Both were enhanced with speed enchantments. Gavin dropped down, punching with his fist toward the first one to arrive, and he nearly shattered the bones in the man’s forearm.

  Not just enchanted with speed but with something else too.

  He popped up, flipping in the air, and landed facing the attackers. The blur darted toward him, and Gavin swept his leg around, kicking outward. He braced himself for a more jarring connection.

  His foot connected and crashed into the man, who went down. Gavin followed the movement, driving forward with his other foot. He stomped down on the man’s midsection, now visible and exposed, and knocked the wind out of him.

  The other person came toward him. Gavin was ready. This was the one who had some enchantment that turned the man to stone, or something else that made him harder to strike. Gavin couldn’t do it openhanded. He’d have to use his shoulder. Or a knee.

  Gavin braced himself and jumped, swinging both knees up right as the blurring movement streaked at him.

  He connected with something. There was a soft, feminine yelp, and Gavin ignored it as he jumped again, swinging his leg around and driving it into the woman’s belly. Then she was down. If someone was going to fight him, he was going to defend himself, regardless of gender.

  Another of Tristan’s lessons.

  Gavin hurriedly searched both the woman and the fallen man. He found and stripped them of their enchantments, then dragged them off to the side of the street.

  Fighting people with enchantments reminded him of breaking into the Captain’s home and what they dealt with when it came to the Mistress of Vines. Could he be responsible? Gavin hadn’t been paying that much attention when it came to the Captain, though perhaps he should have. He had allowed the Captain to remain in power, which may have been a mistake. Had he not, though, there would be a danger to the city—a power void that Gavin had been concerned about leaving too open. He suspected even the constables, and Davel Chan, approved.

  Whatever this was, Gavin didn’t think this was the Captain. He had kept enough tabs that he would’ve known were he the one responsible.

  “Now I’m coming,” he said. He pushed open the partially closed door, then stepped through the doorway. There was a faint light inside. “Is that your doing?” he asked Gaspar, nodding to the lantern glowing in the distance.

  “I wouldn’t have lit that.”

  “Then they know we’re coming.”

  “Given the mess you made out there, I would say that’s a pretty good possibility.”

  “I didn’t make a mess out there,” Gavin said, surveying the inside of the warehouse. It had as low of a ceiling on the inside as he’d expected from the outside. Lines of boxes were arranged throughout. A shelf ran along one wall. The lantern hung from a hook on the ceiling, but there was nothing else here.

  He swept his gaze around, looking for any sign of an attacker, but he saw nothing.

  They were safe… for now.

  “Are you going to tell me what you wanted me for?” Gavin asked.

  “Soon enough,” Gaspar whispered. He crept forward; his grizzled face wrinkled even more than usual as he stared at the lantern in the distance. He looked from side to side, moving silently.

  Gavin followed, now filled more with curiosity than anything else. “You know, this will go a lot easier if you tell me what it is you’re up to.”

  “This will go easier if you stop talking,” Gaspar said to him.

  Gavin followed Gaspar forward. He really needed to be careful. This was Gaspar’s job, not his, and he knew better than to antagonize the old thief. Gaspar had helped him many times on different jobs that he’d taken, and Gavin knew he should really be more appreciative.

  “Which one of these trunks are we taking?” he asked.

  “None of them,” Gaspar said softly. He reached a short door at the back that barely went up to his shoulders, and he wasn’t that tall to begin with. He motioned for Gavin to get close.

  There was nothing other than the size of the door that was remarkable about it. It was little more than three feet wide by maybe four feet tall. “Go ahead, pick it,” Gavin said.

  “Do you see a damn lock to pick?” Gaspar asked.

  Gavin smiled to himself. “Fine. There’s no lock. So what do you want inside of it?”

  “Open it,” Gaspar said.

  Understanding dawned on Gavin. “That’s why you asked me to come.”

  “You’re damn right that’s why I asked you to come. I needed your special gifts.”

  “Now they’re gifts?”

  “I don’t know what else to call it. Now go ahead and be this so-called Chain Breaker that you like to keep going on and on about.”

  The Chain Breaker. A name he had taken after he’d demonstrated his strange and unique ability when he was younger. A name that he should’ve known meant something more. A name that had told him that he was something more.

  And yet, now that he operated out in the open, and now that others knew of it and of him, he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it.

  “Would you have asked for my help otherwise?” he asked.

  “You do have your uses from time to time,” Gaspar said, turning his head and looking behind him.

  Gavin glanced back too. Two figures came streaking toward them, and he shook his head. “You want to go ahead and get this, or do you need my help here too?”

  “I could use a bit of an assist.”

  “Just an assist, and that’s it?”

  Gavin stepped forward. The first attacker came at him and moved with a blazing speed. Gavin stayed in place, prepared for the onslaught of the attack. When it struck, Gavin twisted, driving his elbow down and swinging his leg around.

  He hit nothing.

  This attacker was better. More controlled.

  He should have known that there’d be a change in strategy—and a change in skill.

  He couldn’t jump very high here. The ceiling was too low, only a few inches above his head. This and the rows of boxes limited his ability to fight effectively. It would limit the speed this person could come at him with too.

  Gavin darted off to the side and watched as the blur came at him. He dropped, immediately flipping over and kicking up. He was greeted with a satisfying grunt. The kick sent the person slamming into the ceiling. When they connected, they went crashing down and landed on the ground. Gavin rolled and chopped the side of his hand at the person’s neck, knocking them out.

  There was still one more.

  He popped up and swept his gaze around.

  Where are they?

  They had to be somewhere inside still. As he looked around, he saw no signs of movement.

  “Get over here, boy,” Gaspar said.

  Gavin looked over toward the door. Gaspar swung a pair of blades in front of him, trying to fend off one of the enchanted attackers that was blurring toward him.

  “It looks like you’ve got this taken care of,” Gavin replied.

  Most of the time, enchanted individuals didn’t blur into nothingness the way that these had. They had to be heavily enchanted or had an unfamiliar enchantment that permitted them to do so.r />
  “Just give me a hand,” Gaspar said.

  Gavin started forward, but the person he had knocked out—or had seemingly knocked out—grabbed at his foot, tripping him. He stumbled, twisting at the last moment, and crashed into the person across from Gaspar.

  He heard a gasp.

  Blood dripped down Gaspar’s blades, which were plunged into the belly of the young man who stood across from him.

  “Dammit,” Gaspar said.

  Gavin looked down at the boy. He was probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. Young. Bleeding heavily.

  Gavin had killed dozens and dozens of times over the years. He viewed it as a part of life. Death was not something he normally feared. Still, in the time that he’d been in the city, he was killing less often than normal and even looked for reasons not to kill. Partly that was a desire to find some other aspect of work, but partly that was because he had come to realize that his skills could be put to use in other ways.

  This was the first person he’d killed since the Mistress of Vines.

  “It was you or him,” Gavin said.

  It was the expected response, and the kind of thing that Tristan would’ve said to him when he was training, but saying it now—and to Gaspar—felt hollow to him.

  He hadn’t needed to kill.

  Ever since dealing with Cyran, Gavin had tried to avoid it. There was nothing gained by hunting people down throughout the city. Not if he wanted to stay here, and surprisingly, he continually debated whether he wanted to stay in Yoran.

  “No, it wasn’t, and we both know it.” Gaspar turned to the door. “Just open the damn door.”

  He focused on the place of power buried deep within him and called to it—his core reserves. It was something that he had once believed was just tied to additional strength he could access, but he had come to learn was more than that. Magic, probably. He tried not to think about what that meant.

  As he called that power up, he filled himself with it and slammed into the door. It exploded with a thunderous crack.

  “At least you were useful for that,” Gaspar muttered, heading inside.

  Gavin followed him, ducking down to get inside the doorway. As soon as he did, he realized why it was so heavily protected.

  “Enchantments,” he whispered.

  “That’s right. Some damn fool thought to sell them here.”

  Gavin looked back. “Whose are they?” This wasn’t the kind of thing to be the work of Zella and her enchanters. Gaspar would have said something otherwise.

  “Don’t know,” Gaspar said, looking over at him. “I caught wind of someone attempting to move them.”

  That could mean literally moving them or selling them. Either wouldn’t be good. “Who?”

  “Another thieving crew in the city.”

  Gavin started to laugh. “So you decided to get there first?”

  “It was about making sure we didn’t have hundreds of enchantments flowing through the city,” Gaspar said.

  “There’s more to this.”

  Gaspar looked over to him. “Of course, there is more to this. We’ve been through what we have over the last few months, and you even need to ask?” He looked over to the enchantments. “Especially after what we dealt with coming from the Captain.”

  “What are you going to do with them? I’m sure Zella would take them.” She’d probably know how to figure out what each of these enchantments did.

  “I’m sure she would. I’m thinking of a different approach. I’m going to destroy them,” Gaspar said. “I’m not leaving this for the constables, and I’m not leaving this for some other fool. The others don’t need this stash.”

  Gaspar set something down on the center of the floor. It started glowing; a pale orange light radiating off it. It pulsed slowly and gradually increased in the frequency.

  “Just a little something that will take care of all of this.”

  Gavin just shook his head. “You do realize that Desarra—”

  “Don’t you get her involved in this.”

  Gavin backed out of the doorway, ducking low.

  Even though there were all these enchantments in the room, there was no point in protecting them without having some way to test them, determine what they were, and catalog them.

  What do I care if Gaspar destroys all of them?

  Maybe it’d be better to have less magic available within the city. The last thing he wanted was for more magic to fill the city. He had already seen just how dangerous Yoran could be with magic, and in his mind, it was better for it to be gone.

  Gaspar backed out and motioned for Gavin to move. “Are you going to help me drag these two out of here?”

  “I already did what you wanted me to do,” Gavin said.

  “You don’t get to pout on a job.”

  “I’m not pouting. Usually when I involve you in a job, I fill you in on all the details. And yet, when it comes to your jobs, you don’t even give me the same courtesy.”

  “My jobs don’t deal with killing people.”

  “And my jobs haven’t either.”

  He and Gaspar held each other’s gaze, and neither looked away.

  “We better get moving, unless you want to see what that enchantment will do,” Gaspar said finally.

  Gavin flicked his gaze toward the open door. The pulsing from the item that Gaspar had set down continued to intensify. “I can imagine what will happen.”

  “Then we’d better get moving.”

  Gavin shook his head. “Fine. But this isn’t over.”

  He grabbed the first man that he’d taken down and flung him onto his shoulder, while Gaspar dragged the other one, leaving behind a trail of blood.

  A massive explosion tore through the warehouse, and then it was sucked back in. It left nothing more than rubble behind.

  They had barely gotten outside in time.

  Gavin stared at the remains of the building. “I could use one of those.”

  “I’m afraid there are no more,” Gaspar said. “That took me a long time to coax out of them.”

  Them.

  The enchanters.

  Gaspar was working with them. Not that it surprised Gavin.

  “Here,” Gavin said, dropping the man on the ground. “Now that I’ve done what you needed, it’s your turn. You get to deal with them.”

  Gaspar shot him a hard-eyed stare, but Gavin ignored it, striding away and leaving Gaspar in the street.

  “What was that about? Are either of you hurt?” Wrenlow asked.

  “That was him using me.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Wrenlow asked.

  “You do realize that he can listen to us.”

  “I do. I just think that your reaction was—”

  “Just stay out of it.”

  Chapter Two

  Gavin leaned on the wall of the bakery across from the Roasted Dragon, looking at the entrance. A dragon carved into the door always caught his attention, the streetlight reflecting off the surface making him think of stories of dragons from his childhood. Only stories. There were terrible creatures in the world, but no dragons.

  He could go in. Hell, he should go in. At this point, he didn’t know if he wanted to, though. Maybe his frustration stemmed from how Gaspar had used him, or maybe it stemmed from what Gaspar had said to him. He wasn’t sure.

  The door to the Dragon opened, and Wrenlow stepped out.

  Gavin blinked in surprise. He had muted the enchantment, not wanting to listen to Wrenlow in his ear any more than necessary, but he hadn’t been expecting Wrenlow to disappear on him. He figured his friend would’ve waited for him in the Dragon.

  Where was he going?

  Wrenlow hurried through the streets, sweeping his head from side to side the way Gavin had taught him. That was about all that Gavin had managed to teach him to do so far. Wrenlow had learned to watch for any pursuers, though he was doing it in a half-assed way. There weren’t many people out at this hour, though enough that Wrenlow had to maneuv
er around a pair of drunks staggering through the center of the street, a pair of lovers leaning on each other, and a group of five men, probably up to no good.

  Wrenlow was heading toward the center of the city.

  Gavin snorted. The longer he watched, the more certain he was that he didn’t know what Wrenlow was doing.

  What would Gaspar think of it?

  Thankfully, Gaspar was a bit preoccupied right now and would remain so until he dealt with the other thieves they had dispatched. Well, the other thieves that Gavin had dispatched. Gaspar had been silent until Gavin had muted the enchantment as well.

  Gavin hurried forward to see just where Wrenlow was going and caught sight of him turning a corner. Wrenlow was heading toward the Captain’s fortress and a row of manor homes.

  Gavin whistled three times in quick succession.

  Wrenlow spun, darting his gaze to either side of him. He shifted his stance and looked like he was ready to fight.

  A lot of good that would do him. At least in that stance.

  Gavin really needed to keep working with Wrenlow. The boy wasn’t going to be able to defend himself if it came down to it. There had been some training, but not as much as what Gavin knew he needed to make him competent.

  “Gavin?” Wrenlow said, hurrying toward him.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Wrenlow ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I just came to check on something.”

  “And what would that be?” Gavin asked.

  “I came to check on…”

  Gavin glanced toward Desarra’s home. As soon as he’d started following Wrenlow, he’d known where his friend had been heading. “You can say it. If you’re going to pursue her, then you can say it.”

  He held Gavin’s gaze, then pulled his enchantment out of his ear. “You knew?”

  Gavin grunted. “Not sure how I couldn’t. Why are you sneaking away like this?”

  “I’m not…” He shook his head and sighed. “Fine. I’m sneaking. Obviously not well. I don’t want Gaspar to know,” Wrenlow said.

  “Because you don’t know if he would approve? It’s not like Olivia is his daughter.”

  “Mostly because of Desarra. I don’t want to anger him too much if I…” Wrenlow shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.” He grinned, and the ink stain on his cheek twitched just a little bit.