Gavin tapped his own cheek, miming where Wrenlow needed to wipe his face. Wrenlow licked one finger and scrubbed at his cheek until the stain was gone.
“You should’ve looked in the mirror before you came over here,” Gavin said.
“I just knew that the job was over, and he was going to be busy, and I figured…”
“You figured that you would take the chance to visit her without him around to question you.”
Wrenlow shrugged.
“Does Desarra know?”
“She knows I’ve sent letters to her sister.”
Gavin started to smile before shaking his head. Of course it would be letters. With Wrenlow, that made sense. Gavin had never been one to court through writing, though he had never been one to do much writing in any regard. Typically, either he found someone who liked him and wanted to be with him, or he didn’t. That had been the case with Jessica when he’d come to the Roasted Dragon.
“What was your issue earlier?” Wrenlow asked. When Gavin didn’t answer right away, Wrenlow laughed softly. “I know you, Gavin. I know there’s something going on. Whether or not you want to admit it is another matter.”
“You can let it drop.”
“I will,” Wrenlow said, “but that doesn’t change that something was bothering you. Or still is bothering you.”
Gavin saw movement down the street. He caught a glimpse of Olivia—her long brown hair, her pale blue eyes, and her pale-yellow dress that swished as she moved. She hurried away from her home before moving past two gray cloaked constables patrolling at the end of the street.
Gavin nodded toward her. “It looks like there’s your chance.”
“I’m sorry, Gavin. Really, I am. Why don’t we talk about this later?”
“Why don’t we.”
“When I get back, I’ll keep digging for other jobs. I know we’re having a little trouble with them,” Wrenlow said.
“We don’t need any.”
“Isn’t that why you have me around? I find jobs for you. We take them. We complete them. And then—”
“I know what the situation is,” Gavin said.
“I’m sorry.” Wrenlow shifted, turning so that he could look toward Olivia before glancing back at Gavin. “I really should be…”
Gavin nodded. “I know. Go to her.”
Wrenlow grinned a goofy, lopsided grin, and Gavin noticed another ink stain on his other cheek. Wrenlow darted off, hurrying to catch up to Olivia.
Everything kept conspiring to keep him here.
First, Gaspar was including him in his jobs, where Gavin had always been the one to summon the old thief into his jobs. Now, Wrenlow was getting caught up with a romantic interest that would be difficult for him to leave. Even Gavin’s relationship with Jessica was complicating things. They claimed they were keeping it casual, but Gavin had not chased anyone else since coming to the city, and as far as he knew, neither had she.
This was unusual for him, and it might be the source of his discomfort. There was an odd nature to finding a balance but struggling with it as well. He was used to staying in a place for a little while, but then moving on. That was how he’d maintained his focus over the years. His edge.
He’d been in Yoran for some time now. Long enough to start to set down roots. Long enough that he was comfortable. But comfort brought complacency—a lesson that Tristan had taught him, but it was also a good one. If nothing else, Gavin understood he could not get complacent. He could not get too comfortable. But if he were to stay, what kind of work would he end up doing?
When he had first come to the city, the jobs had been plentiful. Most of them had been done on behalf of Cyran, but not all of them. Lately, he hadn’t had any jobs. The only task he really had was to protect the jade egg from the constables and to ensure the enchanters weren’t pursued.
Gavin glanced in the direction of the Captain’s fortress. Maybe it was time for him to pay the man a visit. If enchantments were moving throughout the city the way that Gaspar had uncovered, he needed to have words with him. Enchantments shouldn’t be so freely flowing like that. It was a danger, but maybe not for the same reason that Gaspar feared. It meant that the traditional power in the city had started to shift. Gavin had been around too many places where similar things had taken place and knew the dangers in a power vacuum.
He headed away from the manor houses and away from the Captain’s fortress, looking out at the darkened forest. There was a period in his life when he had spent considerable time wandering through forests. This had been another part of his training, but strangely, the memories from before his training were the ones that always stuck with him. He recalled the trees, a cozy home, and the warmth of a fire. All of that filled him with a feeling that he missed out on something, though Gavin could not tell what it was. Some aspect of his childhood, perhaps.
Gavin made his way back toward the Dragon. Every so often, he caught shadowed sight of constables patrolling. He smiled to himself when he saw them. Now that he knew their secret and understood that they had enchantments they liked to keep hidden from the city, Gavin felt as if he had a certain sort of power over them.
As he neared the Dragon, he realized that somebody was trailing him. It was a strange instinct, an awareness of somebody tracking him, but Gavin had honed those instincts over the years. It had kept him alive countless times, and he needed to be careful.
Other than the fight earlier in the day, Gavin hadn’t sparred all that much recently. Work with Wrenlow wasn’t terribly challenging for him. He had to be careful not to kill Wrenlow at times.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t continued his training. He always kept his skills sharp by working through all of the movements and forms, but what he really needed was a good sparring session—a fight with somebody as skilled as he was so that he could continue to progress and challenge himself.
The enchanted attackers had given him some of that. Not enough, though. Maybe having somebody trail him gave him a different kind of opportunity. At least he could try to discover why they were trailing him.
He started making a wider circle. As he did, he realized that it wasn’t his imagination. There was a dark cloak. A hood pulled up over the cloak. A strange limp. Was there somebody else with them? He didn’t see anybody, but that wasn’t to say they weren’t there.
Gavin switched back around, following the flow of the crowd. He moved carefully, trying not to draw any unnecessary attention to the fact that he had picked up on them but wanting to get a better glimpse of them.
His pursuer had disappeared.
Balls.
Either they had caught him paying attention to them, or he had simply lost sight of them. Regardless, Gavin was growing complacent. Just the thing he’d started to fear. He needed a job—something that was his job and not Gaspar’s, and not one given to him only to use him as the Chain Breaker.
Gavin continued sweeping his gaze along the street, looking for evidence of the person who’d been following him, but he found nothing. Either they had disappeared, which he thought unlikely…
Or they were hiding from him.
Gavin ducked forward, keeping his head down and blending into the crowd. He looked for any hint of the dark cloak, the slight limp, anything to clue him in. He didn’t see any sign of them, though they had to be there.
He looped around, making his way back toward the Dragon. The route was otherwise quiet. There were people out on the street, as there often were, but nobody caught his attention the way the last person had.
Gavin glanced to the rooftops. He wouldn’t put it past somebody to scale one of the nearby roofs, hide there, and observe him, but he saw no sign of anybody atop them.
He passed two constables patrolling, and though he glanced in their direction, they didn’t pay him much attention either. Neither of the constables had a limp, so he didn’t think his pursuer was one of them.
Who was it, then?
He continued making his way along the streets, passing a serie
s of storefronts and warehouses. Gavin looked over them, wondering if perhaps Gaspar might have other places that he had targeted for search. Frustration built within him as he meandered, passing a series of cottages near the edge of the city. Maybe it was just his lack of focus, not knowing what he was after, but increasingly it felt as if it were a lack of purpose.
At the end of the street near the Dragon, he caught sight of the dark cloak in the distance. He watched closely for a moment.
Is it the same person?
No limp this time. The height didn’t seem quite right.
Gavin darted forward. He reached the Dragon at the end of the street, but they were gone. Gavin spun, looking behind him at the way he came, and still saw no sign of his pursuer.
Something caught his eye near the main entrance to the Dragon—a couple walking toward the tavern. They were younger, the man with long rust-colored hair and a scruff of a beard, and the woman with pale skin and auburn hair. Gavin moved forward and raised his hand, waving his finger at them. They both shot him a look of annoyance, which he ignored.
He grabbed a folded slip of paper attached to the tavern's door beneath the carving of the dragon’s head. It had his name on it.
Odd that somebody would leave a note like this.
He looked around for his pursuer but saw no sign of them, so he unfolded the note and skimmed it.
All of that for a job? Why not just approach me directly and hire me?
He certainly had a reputation in the city, so it wouldn’t be altogether surprising that somebody would be afraid to approach him in the open. It might be easier—and generally safer—to come at him indirectly like this.
The details of the job were strange, though. It looked more like a thieving kind of job, the kind of thing that he would’ve expected Gaspar to take, though Gavin would never say that.
Given the dearth of jobs they had recently, he figured that perhaps it made sense for him to take it. Besides, at the bottom of the page was a symbol for gold, along with the number five.
It was just enough that he couldn’t turn it down. Of course not. That would be enough to make sure that he had a good start if he had to leave the city. Not that he didn’t have enough funds. He had forced Davel to pay handsomely for the last job, and Gavin didn’t even feel any guilt in doing so. It offered him a measure of freedom. Besides, he had completed the job, even if it wasn’t the way Davel intended.
If nothing else, having a job that paid well would at least let him feel useful in a way that he hadn’t lately. He didn’t need to take Gaspar’s jobs, and he didn’t need to depend on Wrenlow or Jessica to find jobs for him. He could get them on his own, however mysterious this one might be.
He folded up the slip of paper and stuffed it into his pocket. Though he’d been offered the job on his own, that didn’t mean he’d do it on his own. When Wrenlow returned, he could look into it to make sure it was safe for Gavin to complete. As safe as necessary, that was. When it came down to it, no job was necessarily safe.
He pushed open the door, took a deep breath of the familiar scent of the Dragon, and immediately tensed.
It shouldn’t have felt familiar. It shouldn’t have felt comfortable. It shouldn’t have felt safe.
Comfort breeds complacency.
It was long past time for Gavin to move past complacency.
Chapter Three
Gavin fingered the slip of paper that had been attached to the door of the Dragon, his mind working through the job that had been left for him. He still had no idea if he would even wanted to take the job, but he tried to think back to the last time that he had come up with an assignment on his own, and the only thing that came to him was what Davel had asked of him when he had come to Gavin to find the jade egg.
Could it really have been that long?
It seemed impossible that had been that long ago, but at the same time, Gavin hadn’t been actively pursuing new assignments. That had been a mistake.
Partly that was Gavin’s fault. He hadn’t been as motivated to pursue other assignments. Not in Yoran, at least. He had been used here. Now it felt as if he were biding his time while looking for information about Tristan, though Wrenlow had failed to uncover any details about Gavin’s old mentor. That didn’t surprise Gavin all that much. How could it? Tristan had trained him, which meant that he would likely be able to hide from Gavin for as long as he wanted to. He had certainly managed to hide the truth about his death from Gavin.
Gavin had waited at the Dragon for Wrenlow to return, but he’d been gone when he’d gotten up in the morning. He didn’t want to wait any longer to find out more details about the job, and his curiosity had been piqued.
He fingered the note again, tempted to bring it out and read it. It shouldn’t be so easy to find him or to direct others to him. It had not been like that in any other place that Gavin had visited, spending any amount of time. Only, in Yoran, he had become easy to find. And what was worse, no one feared finding him the way that they once would have.
He debated tapping on the enchantment, whispering something to Wrenlow and letting him know where he was going, before deciding against it. Wrenlow was preoccupied. He had gone off with Olivia, and he certainly didn’t need Gavin interfering with that.
He was alone.
It was the way that he preferred it, so why did he feel unsettled?
It was this place. It was Yoran. It was everything that he had gone through since coming here. All of that had worked to keep him in the city and had plotted to force him to take action that he had not intended. All of that had turned him into this hesitant person.
He didn’t know the address the note had directed him to, but he had spent enough time in the city that he didn’t feel like he needed somebody to guide him. It was on the city's northern edge, near a row of small cottages, the homes small, cozy, and some of them with smoke drifting from chimneys. They were different than the large brick homes found toward the center of the city, or the towering brightly painted wooden manor homes along the western edge. He found Jesser Street as the note directed, and then the intersection with Ihnar Street.
It would be near here.
He fingered the hilt of his dagger, tracing his hand along the El’aras markings on it.
This could be a trap.
There had certainly been enough of them, after all, but the letter had been detailed enough that he didn’t think so.
He paused on the far side of the street, his gaze sweeping along the cottages, and tried to look as nonchalant as possible with the occasional person who meandered along the street. A dirt brown dog prowled along the far side of the street, and Gavin noticed it chasing a gray cat. When the dog got close, the cat spun and hissed, swiping at the dog before it yowled and darted away.
Gavin snorted.
It wasn’t busy here. There were no shops, nothing to draw people here unless they lived in this part of the city. Anyone here had a reason to eye him with suspicion. His cloak would only draw even more attention, as with the sword sheathed at his side.
It was daylight, which didn’t fit Gavin’s mood any better, either. He didn’t care for operating like this in the daylight. Actions like this were better taken in the dark. Meeting with employers was better done in the darkness.
At least, that had always been his preference in the past.
He counted down the row of cottages until he came to the one where he was supposed to meet his potential employer. A small basket of yellow daisies was set in a windowsill, the only coloration on that building or others surrounding it.
That was the place.
Gavin strode across the street, focusing on his core reserves and reflexively reviewing various fighting styles that he might need to use.
He raised his hand to knock when the door opened.
The face that greeted him was older, graying hair, and with dull blue eyes. She was a good head shorter than him, and he had no sense of a threat from her.
That didn’t mean that she wou
ldn’t pose one.
Gavin had too much experience with others who were nonthreatening to believe that she would be completely innocent.
“Are you him?” She spoke in a creaky sort of voice, and she touched her neck, squeezing the gray dress she wore.
“This was you?” Gavin pulled the letter out of his pocket, and he held it out. This was not what he had expected, and certainly not the kind of employer Gavin was accustomed to.
The woman’s gaze flickered to the letter and then to Gavin. She seemed to regard him, and something in her dull blue eyes suggested reluctance. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come. She told me that I could ask you, but I didn’t know if it was dangerous to ask an outsider for something like this.”
Gavin glanced along the street, but no others were moving. It was as if the street had emptied the moment that he had come to this home.
“You want to talk here, or would you prefer meeting somewhere else?”
“I gave you my address. I’m not afraid of you finding me.”
Gavin started to smile before catching himself. “Did she tell you what I do?” Gavin held out the note, and his gaze drifted along the surface for just a moment until he came to the letter Z. There was only one person that could have sent this woman to him with that initial.
The only problem was Gavin hadn’t expected Zella to send anyone his way.
“She told me that you can find things.” She gripped her neck again, and she looked up, meeting Gavin’s eyes. There was a fearlessness there, which surprised him.
“Occasionally. That’s not all that I do, though.”
“But you can find things?”
Gavin tried to look past her but didn’t see anything in the small cottage that worried him. Not that he really expected to have found anything.
“I can find things, but it would be helpful to know why you need me for this.”
“Well, she said that her ability to track this kind of item is limited.”
The Chain Breaker: Books 1-3 Page 58