The Scarecrow (Master of Malice Book 1) (51 page)

Dexter smiled tentatively, still troubled by the whole event and not wholly reassured by Robin’s lack of censure. Robin clapped him on the back before leaving him to organize the morning duties.

J
inella awoke afraid, shivering with cold, and tearful. She’d seen and heard no one all through the interminable hours of the day before, and her screaming and beating upon the door of her prison had done her no good. All she had accomplished was to further inflame her already painfully sore throat. As darkness came again, she wrapped herself as closely as she could in the comforter and cried herself to sleep.

Now, as she woke scratchy-eyed and aching after an uncomfortable night of frightening dreams and tearful prayers to be rescued, she realized it was daylight again. Her insistent bladder wouldn’t allow her to return to sleep, although she badly needed rest, and she straightened painfully from her cramped position on the hard, narrow shelf.

She used the bucket she’d found beneath the shelf, wrinkling her nose at its contents. Fortunately, it had a lid, though ill-fitting, and the worst of the smell was contained. She moved over to the tiny fire, which she had just managed to keep going during the night by waking frequently to tend it, and poured a small amount of her remaining water into one of the bowls she’d found. She used it to splash her face and rinse her fingers. Then she drank some, to clear the dust and the ache of crying from her throat.

She eyed the remaining water, wondering if it was a clue to when she might be released. About half the original amount was left; she’d had the wit to ration herself and not gulp it all down. She also still had a small amount of dried fruit and bread, now slightly stale, although it had been fresh the day before. Some cheese, too, nibbled during the night by mice she hadn’t seen or heard. Well, that was one mercy. Solitude she could bear; sharing her prison with brazen vermin was something else.

Tears pricked at her eyes. What on earth was she doing, worrying about mice? They were the least of her problems. She had a tiny amount of food and water, and not much wood left for the fire. If she was reduced to burning the dirty straw on the floor, or the wood of the shelf-bed, she would be in dire straits. She didn’t know whether to hope for her captors to return before that, or to hope they never came.

As she had the day before, she huddled miserably on the cold floor beside the fire, wrapped in the grubby silken comforter. Tears running down her face, she strove with all the strength of her heart and mind to reach out to Taran. She’d convinced herself she could make him hear her if she only had the strength. He must be looking for her. Surely he had heard of her disappearance by now? And surely someone had found poor, dead Alice? One of the servants must have tried to rouse her the day before to see why the kitchen was cold. And Seth would have noticed something wrong when he returned to the house. Or had the tale of Alice’s murder been a lie, told to cow her into submission?

She had no answers to her questions, only more uncertainty. The eerie phenomenon of hearing her dead uncle’s voice from another’s mouth now seemed like a distant nightmare. She had convinced herself it was a figment of her frightened imagination. She must have been kidnapped for ransom. Someone with a grudge against her had sent that filthy vagrant to spirit her away and lock her in this cold, lonely hut while they demanded money for her return. She could only hope the King or Taran would pay the ransom swiftly. She simply couldn’t bear another night in this place.

Cold, alone, and frightened, Jinella gulped back tears as she lay down and tried to will herself to sleep.

+ + + + +

D
espair pressed down on Taran, shutting his mind inside a prison of recrimination. Images swarmed around him like flies on a corpse. Jinny’s angry tears when he had told her why she hadn’t conceived. Ravening flames dancing around him, refusing his attempts to dampen them. The bleak, burned ruins of Jinny’s house and her wretched skeletal remains. A flash of silver as he found the box he had bought for her, back when she believed he loved her. Through these images her figure flitted; loving, gentle, smiling, passionate, proud. All the things he loved about her came to taunt him, showing him how his actions had thrown her love back in her face.

The heat of shame swelled in him, echoed by the nightmare flames surrounding him. He heard Jinny calling, crying out for him, begging him to save her. Her voice sounded so real, her terror visceral. In his torment he strove to reach her, stretching arms impossibly heavy, urging leaden legs to run. Her piteous image wavered as he struggled to move, heart floundering, blood pounding. A shattering cry ripped through his throat as she faded from sight and he lost her all over again.

Blackness and depression ate at his soul. He ached with loss and self-blame. What use was he when he couldn’t make her happy, couldn’t keep her safe, couldn’t even reach her to let her know he hadn’t abandoned her? She was better off without him … yet his love for her remained.

He grasped at the emotion, desperate to stave off the specter of despair. She would have told him he was better than this, this wallowing in failure and self-recrimination. His powers had grown, and his confidence too. What use was that if he couldn’t rule his own emotions? Why should he let the darkness take him, and thereby validate his father’s low opinion of him? Hadn’t he already shown he was worth more than that?

As these thoughts nudged their way through alternating veils of flame and darkness, Jinny’s face appeared once more, smiling as if to encourage him. His heart surged at the sight, tenderness flooding his soul. He might have made mistakes, might not have been completely honest with her, but that didn’t mean he loved her any less. It didn’t mean he had to give up. If he did, he would be letting Jinny down all over again.

He thought he heard her voice once more, calling for him, crying his name. It tore at his heart, but instead of beating him down with his failures, the sound brought a measure of calm to his soul. He was an Adept-elite, not some weak and feeble fool. He had resources and he could fight this, be the man she had once loved. He owed her that, at least.

Resolve flooded his spirit and his heart gave a lurch. The image of her face gazed at him, as if through the veil of death. A solid sense of purpose tugged at him and he beat at the flames of his nightmares, quelling them as he had been unable to do at the mansion. He reached out toward her image, stretching, pleading, and felt her take his hand in hers. It was warm, vibrant, and firm. It anchored him, showing him a way back from despair.

I love you
, he told her, his voice echoing in the void of his mind. He heard her sob and felt her arms come around him. Their warmth bolstered him, comforted him, giving him strength. This is how it would feel if she had forgiven him. Might she have forgiven him? Would she, even though she was gone? Had her spirit heard him, as he thought he had heard hers?

A sob caught in his throat and he gasped, choking. He snatched a breath and opened his eyes, seeing a familiar face inches from his, feeling comforting arms around his shoulders.

+ + + + +

A
s Taran finally stirred and woke, Sullyan released him and sat up, blinking back tears for his pain and the loss of Jinella. His cries had cut to her heart. She watched as he came fully back to himself, realizing who she was. He pushed himself upright, wincing at the pain of his crushed leg.

“Brynne. Oh, I’m sorry … I’ve been … I shouldn’t have let myself go like that. Have you been here long?”

She smiled. “Only a few minutes. I thought I might have to help rouse you, but you did it all on your own.”

He gathered himself with an effort, breathing hard. She sensed his awful memories of that terrible night as they surged to the fore.

“Jinny … I thought I heard ….”

He wasn’t fully over his trauma, she could see that. To help ground him in the present, she asked, “Do you know how the fire started?”

He looked up sharply. “Denny thought it must have been an accident, an overturned lamp. But Seth said … he said … he said she’d been desperately unhappy since our row, that she’d sent the servants off early and that she’d been crying. He offered to get one of her friends, but she refused and sent him away. He said he checked all the lamps that night and they were all safely trimmed. He said”—Taran’s increasingly agitated voice fell to an anguished moan—“she must have done it deliberately.”

Sullyan frowned. “What, he thinks she burned the house down to take her own life?”

Taran nodded miserably, and Sullyan shook her head. “That does not sound like Jinella to me. And you believe him?”

Taran shrugged, hugging his chest. “Why would he say it if he didn’t think it was true? She must have hated me for what I did to her, and now I can never put it right. I’d just found that silver box, and then … and then, her body ….”

He couldn’t go on. She regarded him while she thought over what she’d heard. The silver box he’d mentioned was on the bed between them and she idly picked it up, running her fingers over its delicate tracery.

She knew how upset Jinny had been by her belief she was barren, and could understand the girl’s anger when Taran told her the truth. Betrayal hurt, especially so when the perpetrator was a loved and trusted partner. But suicide? Sullyan was damned if she would believe their row caused Jinny to contemplate taking her own life. The Baroness would have spoken with Taran once her temper cooled. She wouldn’t have thrown away everything they had together because of one mistake. Jinny was too openhearted for that.

But if the fire wasn’t a suicide attempt, why should the manservant say it was? Even if it was, it was a cruel thing to taunt Taran with. The Adept had obviously been in great distress, and finding Jinella’s charred remains would have been traumatic enough. Why lead him to believe the fire was a result of his actions? Why drive him further into despair? Unless …

She stilled, recalling her suspicions concerning the brigand ambush and Neremiah’s death. Turning eyes now clear of introspection upon the grieving Adept, she asked, “Did you and Seth ever disagree? Can you think of any reason why he would wish you harm?”

Taran raised a pale face, eyes dark with pain. His brow furrowed, his glance falling to the gleaming box she turned in her hands. “No, not really. I never had much to do with him. I got the impression he didn’t like me much, but we never spoke more than a few words to each other.”

Sullyan eyed the box, her thoughts speculative. She casually raised the lid, looking at the skillfully-worked design along the rim, admiring the silversmith’s art. “And Jinny never expressed any dissatisfaction with—oh, what is this?”

A thick, folded parchment pressed up against the loosened lid. Sullyan glanced across at Taran, who shrugged listlessly when she offered him the box.

“I don’t know. Probably a letter from her mother. She was always asking Jinny for more gold.”

Sullyan took out the parchment and scanned it as Taran continued. “I was going to see her, you know. The evening before the … fire … I was going to see her. I wanted to make sure she’d heard about the death of His Immanence, and I hadn’t yet taken her uncle’s possessions to her. But instead I let Denny persuade me to play cards. It was too late, really, to go calling on her unannounced. It was an excuse, I suppose. I really should have gone. And then, in the early hours, I heard her call to me.”

“What?”

Sullyan’s head snapped up. She had been reading the parchment, eyes growing wider by the minute, and hadn’t been paying attention to Taran. But on the heels of her realization of what the parchment revealed, Taran’s last statement suddenly registered. She stared at him, the parchment temporarily forgotten. “What did you say?”

Taran stared back, frowning. “I heard her call me.”

“You mean through the substrate.”

He nodded. “I was asleep, dreaming. At first I thought it was part of my dream, a nightmare. It certainly felt like one. When I realized it wasn’t, I thought … I thought it was you. But when I checked, you were sleeping peacefully. It wasn’t until later, when I realized the seat of the fire was at the estate, that it hit me.”

Taran paused, his face draining at his failure to recognize Jinny’s call. He hugged his chest tighter, breath rasping though his teeth. “I didn’t expect it. She had no talent, we all knew that. I’d hoped … you do sometimes hear of a bond being forged between close partners, and she’d always been so eager to hear about how we work and communicate. I’d always hoped one day … one day we might break through her mind’s barriers and the impossible would happen. But when it did, when the anguish in her soul grew so great she could finally overcome those barriers, when she needed me so badly she found the means to reach me … I failed her.”

Tears prickled Sullyan’s eyes and she leaned forward, placing a hand on Taran’s forearm. She spoke earnestly, driving her words at him to make him hear.

“Taran, I cannot deny you failed to recognize Jinny’s call, although I will refute your right to claim you failed her. You can hardly be blamed for not realizing the call originated with her. You may believe me or not, as you wish. But this you will believe, my friend. Jinella did
not
take her own life. She did not succumb to dark despair over your argument, and she did
not
die hating you.”

Taran stared at her out of deep wells of pain. “How can you say that?”

Sullyan extended the parchment with trembling fingers. Taran stared blankly before he took it. Sullyan rose from the bed and moved to the window, her back to the stricken Adept as he read the words his beloved lady had written. She heard nothing but the quickening of his breath. He made no outcry, gave no gasp. When she finally turned around, he had laid the parchment on the bed and was sitting with his head in his hands, just as she had done on hearing the dreadful news the previous evening.

She crossed to him and sat beside him, her arm across his trembling shoulders. But he wasn’t weeping, as she’d thought. He was past weeping, now.