Chapter 13: The River Remembers

Konrad stood at the gate long after the woman’s footsteps faded into the frozen mud of Prague’s streets. The wind carried the scent of woodsmoke and coming snow, and somewhere beyond the rooftops a dog bayed at the thin moon. His hand remained on his dagger, though there was nothing to strike. The words she had spoken hung in the air like frost.

*The letter that names you—not Rudolf—as the true heir.*

He turned the phrase over, tasting it for poison. His father, Sir Ulrich von Eppenstein, had died in a hunting accident when Konrad was nine. A fall from a horse, they said. A broken neck among the roots of an oak. Konrad had never questioned the account, for what boy questions the shape of his own grief? But now the woman’s words pressed against that old scar like a thumb testing a blade’s edge.

He walked back through the winding streets toward the bishop’s residence where the Habsburg retinue had been quartered. The snow crunched beneath his boots, and his breath clouded before him. He passed a group of Bohemian guards warming their hands at a brazier, their eyes sliding over him with the practiced disinterest of men who had learned not to see too much. Konrad nodded to them as he passed, the mask of the courteous envoy settling back over his face.

Inside, the corridors were quiet. The bishop’s household had retired, and only a few candles guttered in their iron sconces. Konrad found Brother Anselm in the small scriptorium that had been allotted to them, hunched over a sheaf of parchment, his quill scratching in the lamplight.

“Still writing your chronicle?” Konrad asked, closing the door behind him.

Anselm looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and weary. “Someone must record what happens here, Sir Konrad. The king’s clerks will write what Rudolf wishes them to write. I write what God sees.”

“And what does God see tonight?”

The Franciscan set down his quill and studied Konrad with that uncomfortable directness he had never quite learned to soften. “I see a man who has been walking the streets of Prague in the dark, alone, when he should be sleeping. I see a man carrying something heavy in his chest.”

Konrad poured himself wine from a jug on the table. It was Bohemian, sweet and dark, and it warmed his throat as he drank. “I spoke with a woman. Grey cloak. She knew my name, and she knew my father.”

Anselm’s face did not change, but his fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “What did she say?”

“She said my father left a letter. A letter that names me as the true heir to the Habsburg name. She said I should ask Rudolf what he buried before the snow fell.” Konrad set down the cup and met the friar’s gaze. “You know something.”

“I know many things,” Anselm said carefully. “Most of them are sins I have heard in confession, and I cannot speak of them.”

“This is not confession, Brother. This is politics.”

Anselm was silent for a long moment. Then he reached into the folds of his habit and drew out a small leather pouch, worn soft with age. He placed it on the table between them.

“Your father came to me in the spring before he died,” Anselm said. “He was not a religious man, but he was a frightened one. He gave me this and told me to keep it until you came of age. He said that if you ever asked about the river, I was to give it to you.”

Konrad stared at the pouch. “The river remembers,” he murmured.

“That is what he said.” Anselm pushed the pouch toward him. “I have carried it for twenty years. I had begun to think I would die with it still in my keeping.”

Konrad picked up the pouch. It was heavy for its size, and something inside shifted with a metallic whisper. He loosened the drawstring and tipped the contents into his palm.

A signet ring. The seal was unfamiliar to him—not the Habsburg lion, but a serpent coiled around a sword, its tail forming the letter E. And beneath it, a folded square of parchment, yellowed and cracked at the creases.

“I will leave you to read it alone,” Anselm said, rising. “But I will tell you one thing, Sir Konrad. Your father was not the man you remember. He was not the man anyone remembers. He was a man who saw too much, and who paid for his seeing with his life.”

The friar left, closing the door softly behind him. Konrad sat down at the table and unfolded the letter with hands that were not quite steady.

The ink had faded to a pale brown, but the hand was strong and clear. His father’s hand, he realized. The same hand that had taught him to hold a sword, to read a charter, to smile when he wanted to kill.

*To my son, Konrad, when he is old enough to understand.*

*If you are reading this, then I am dead, and you have been told it was an accident. It was not. I was killed because I learned the truth about our family—the truth that your uncle Rudolf has spent his life burying. The Habsburg name is not what it seems. We are not Swabian counts who rose by fortune. We are the heirs of a line older and darker, and Rudolf knows it. He has used that knowledge to climb, and he will use it to destroy anyone who threatens his ascent.*

*The letter that names you as true heir is not a title, Konrad. It is a burden. It is a claim that Rudolf cannot allow to exist. He did not kill me himself—he is too careful for that—but he ordered it done, and he will order it done to you if you become a threat.*

*You have a choice, my son. You can serve the serpent, and become its fang. Or you can remember who you are, and become its death.*

*The river remembers. So must you.*

Konrad read the letter twice. Then a third time. The wine sat untouched before him, and the candle burned down to a stub, and still he sat there in the darkness of Prague, holding the truth his uncle had buried before the snow fell.