Page 18 of Zel
“You leave the tower then?”
“Often. If you are wondering why no one has reported seeing me, who is to say whether I look like this when I leave?”
A shapeshifter. Good to know. “You eat, clearly,” Zel indicated as Ulrich finished a bite.
“Why wouldn’t I? But it is not food nor water nor wine that sustains me. Do you know what does?”
Zel thought of the foot he had seen outside the tower wall. He thought of the stories he had heard and the many bodies reported to have been found around the tower for decades. Centuries. “Souls you drain from others, as you once attempted to drain my parents.”
Ulrich’s starlight eyes held Zel captive. “Understand that it would not kill me outright to stop consuming souls. But it keeps me… lively, even if it is not what keeps me alive.”
It was still possible that Ulrich’s true goal was to consume Zel’s soul as some magically enriched meal. It was also possible that the game Zel ate now had once been an unfortunate trespasser. But he could not waste time on wondering unless it furthered his goal.
“Do you resent your parents or me for how things have come to pass?” Ulrich asked.
“I used to,” Zel answered plainly. He had long since decided that he would be honest in everything he could, for it would add legitimacy when he had to lie. “As I got older, I understood why they risked what they did.”
“Did you?”
“They had nothing. Stealing from you gave them the promise of a possibly better future together. Anyone would have taken risks for that.”
“I suppose they would.”
“But I also do not resent you. They trespassed. They stole from you. You were in your rights to punish them. Yet you spared them. NowIhave a chance for a better life. One I hope I can share with them eventually.”
Ulrich smiled and took up his wine glass again to sip from it. “Let us get through the month first.”
“Of course.”
They ate for a while with idle chatter. If this had been a normal arranged marriage without subterfuge and all that was at stake, Zel might have been truly charmed by his betrothed, however intimidating he may have been. Ulrich was certainly attractive. Entrancing. Regal.
But it was Zel who ought to be doing the charming and learn all he could.
When their meal was waning, Ulrich asked, “Are you going to tell me about that book of mine you brought to dinner?”
“I know this book.” Zel lifted it. “I know all its stories. It pleased me to see it on my future bridegroom’s shelf.”
“Do you have a favorite story within?”
“Many.”
“Pick one and read it to me. I am interested to know how your thieving parents educated you.”
Was that a bait? “They are more than thieves, my lord,” Zel said plainly, if a bit stilted.
“Forgive me. Tell me then, what else are they?”
Assassinswas not the answer Zel planned to give, but he could still be truthful. “They own a music shop, Pied Pipers. Piper is our surname. They sell instruments there. Sheet music. Supplies for writing music. Even books like this one of beloved stories that have since been made better by being set to music. It is a cover for the Thieves Guild, yes, but they chose for the shop to be about music. Their love for stories and song is no lie, and they instilled the same in me.”
“Well then, tell me, Zel, instead of reading one of your favorite stories to me, could you sing one?”
“I can do better.” Zel rose from the table. “Might my magical lord provide a violin?”
Ulrich did so with no more flourish than lifting his hand from beneath the table, and there he held one, summoned, Zel assumed, from the treasure room.
Zel went to him and placed the book in front of Ulrich, turned to a specific page to follow along. It was when he took the violin that he saw Ulrich’s right hand for the first time, as it had held the bow. Ulrich had been using his left for everything, and it was clear why given the state of the right.
Zel’s parents had prepared him for it, but to see it was jarring. Not only was it blackened, with its veins glowing violet, but it was almost husk-like, just skin over bone.
