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 him, 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
