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.You totally think I’m secretly deep now.And you are right.It is true.I have deeps.” He slid even lower on the sofa, his eyes falling almost completely closed.“Maybe,” he added, his voice almost too casual, “this revelation will lead you to make the sensible decision, and go for me.”“And wouldn’t that be a magical thirty-six hours,” Kami said.“Before you died of exhaustion.”Rusty did something unspeakable with his eyebrows.“Why, Cambridge, I am scandalized!”“Shut up!” Kami told him.“You know what I meant.Shut up your entire face.”He was still laughing when she left on a mission to find out about Sorry-in-the-Vale in the 1480s.Matthew Cooper’s secrets might have lasted six hundred years, but they could not last a moment longer.The winter solstice was only weeks away.Chapter EighteenWhat I’ve Tasted of DesireKami had never liked Aurimere.There was something about the way she had been insulted and assaulted there a bunch of times that had really put her off.But she was growing a little fond of the records room.There was the table full of hidden sorcerous accounts, the wall of gold-clouded windows, and the fact that Ash always came in to keep her company.They had spent the better part of a fortnight in here now, searching for any sign of Matthew Cooper.The first day she came to the records room after she and Ash had cleared up what happened in the Water Rising had been ferociously awkward.But Kami had persevered, and Ash was lonely enough that he responded to any gesture.Kami thought that was why he had decided to like her in the first place.It was embarrassing and a bit sad to reflect upon how little actual allure Kami had when it came to guys.That Kami Glass, people must say as she went by.About as sexy as a teapot.Her first piece of luck came when she flipped open a book with the unpromising title Illustrious Personages of Gloucestershire and discovered that the Lynburns considered themselves so illustrious they had inscribed a family tree on the flyleaf.This one was the oldest of the family trees she had seen.It started with the names of James Lynburn, born 1440, and his wife, Annis, also born a Lynburn.They had had two daughters.One was Elinor Lynburn.“Hold on to everything,” Kami said.Ash looked up warily from his books.“I have Elinor Lynburn,” she said, tapping the brown writing sprawled on the yellow paper.“She had a sister called Anne.And hold on to everything even harder, because in 1484 Anne Lynburn married Matthew Cooper.And in 1485, Anne Lynburn and Matthew Cooper both died.”“So Matthew was a sorcerer?” Ash closed his own book and leaned forward.“He must have been, to marry a Lynburn.We only ever, ever marry sorcerers.And they both died in the battle when Henry VII’s soldiers came to Sorry-in-the-Vale.”“But that’s just it,” Kami said.“I’ve been researching, and there’s no evidence Henry VII’s soldiers ever did come to Sorry-in-the-Vale.Nothing confiscated, no lands burned, no record of other deaths.Just that Elinor Lynburn put the bells in the river, that Matthew Cooper died and had a statue erected to him for his courage, and now we know that Anne Lynburn died as well.Nothing but those two deaths, and the lingering story that the Lynburns did something to save the town.It’s a mystery, Ash.And I can’t help but think it’s a clue as well: a clue to how we can protect the town again.”Ash frowned.“They must have done something.”“Must have,” Kami said.“And it must have been something big.What did Elinor and Anne Lynburn do, and how was it different from anything any Lynburn has done before or since? How was Matthew involved?”Ash nodded slowly, conceding her point.“The Glass family was given our house because we were Matthew’s relatives,” Kami said.“There haven’t been any records to suggest any of my ancestors were sorcerers.Instead, there’s been a long history of the Glass family being some sort of special servants to the Lynburns.” She wrinkled her nose to express her feelings on that subject.“The house was a return for special loyalty,” Ash said.“It’s not like the Lynburns didn’t expect loyalty and service from everyone,” Kami said.“Why give us a house, why keep us especially under the eye of Aurimere? You can watch my house from the Aurimere bell tower, for God’s sake.They had a reason to do it.I don’t think Matthew Cooper was just any sorcerer.I don’t think he was a sorcerer at all.”Ash looked thunderstruck.“What could he have done for the town if he wasn’t?”Kami asked, “What am I? Think.Anne Lynburn was a lady of the manor, she wouldn’t have been fighting even if there had been fighting, but she and Matthew died at the same time.”Light dawned on Ash.He said quietly, “A sorcerer dies with their source.”“A sorcerer and a source can accomplish great things.Anne and Matthew did.They saved Sorry-in-the-Vale.But they died for it, and the Lynburns decided that sorcerers should stop using sources.They kept the Glass family close because they knew we had the potential to become sources, and they didn’t want us to.Maybe they kept us close because they thought that the time might come when the town would be in enough danger that a Lynburn would have to take a source again.”They both startled when Lillian’s voice rang out: “And are you saying that time has come?”Kami closed her book and smoothed a hand protectively down the cracked calfskin cover.“I’m trying to find out what the past has to teach us.”Lillian was wearing a tan jacket, and her hair was swept up.She was obviously on her way out on another trip to the woods with her new sorcerers.None of Kami’s group was invited on these trips, not even Jared and Ash.Lillian hesitated for a fraction of a second, but with her it was unusual enough to be notable.“Don’t fill my son’s head with any wild ideas.”“I can think for myself, thanks,” Ash said.Lillian shot him a disapproving look.“I have seen no evidence of that so far,” she observed, and swept out.Ash and Kami exchanged looks, Ash apologetic and Kami rolling her eyes.“Amber Green said to me that Matthew Cooper.” Kami hesitated, thinking of what Amber had actually said: Are you hoping to have them both? “She gave me the clue by talking about sources, and Matthew Cooper having them both.I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but—could she have meant two sorcerers to a source? Is that possible?”“No,” said Ash.“I’ve never heard of such a thing, and how would Amber know something I don’t? Look at the evidence.If Matthew had been Elinor’s source as well, she would have died too.No, I bet Amber was referring to some ancient unsavory piece of gossip about the sisters sharing.What a family,” Ash said, and Kami knew he was thinking of his father and Jared’s mother, living together in Monkshood.“I used to be proud of them,” he added.“I used to think I could never live up to them.”“Now you get to do whatever you want,” Kami commented.She opened her book again, but she did not miss Ash’s look, which was intrigued.The windows by the table only opened onto the Lynburn gardens, undergrowth and tree branches turned into silver snakes by winter, so Kami moved along to the arrow-slit window by the door.She saw bits and pieces, not quite cohering.Sorry-in-the-Vale’s ice-touched roofs, the dark spikes of the wood, the black spot on the landscape that was Hallow’s Field.The snow would not settle there, as if the ground was still burning.Lillian’s fair head, traveling down the road from Aurimere.Kami paused for a moment and hoped, so fiercely it was like a prayer, that no matter how annoying Lillian might be, she was right, and that she could handle this.Then, because Lillian might be wrong, Kami returned to her research [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]