“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.
