Chapter 14: The Lion’s Feast

The letter lay between them like a drawn blade. Konrad folded it slowly, the parchment crackling in the cold air of his chamber, and when he looked up at Brother Anselm, the Franciscan’s face was the color of old bone.

“You read it,” Konrad said. It was not a question.

Anselm’s hands trembled around his rosary. “She gave it to me at the gate. The woman in grey. She said you would know what to do with it.” He paused. “She also said to tell you that the river remembers, and that you must not forget the name of your father.”

Konrad’s jaw tightened. His father. Otto von Eppenstein. A minor count who had died of a fever when Konrad was nine—or so the family chronicle claimed. But the letter in his hand told a different story. It told of a man who had once held a claim to the Duchy of Swabia, a claim that reached back through the Hohenstaufen line to the old dukes themselves. A claim that Rudolf, in his climb to the crown, had found inconvenient.

“She is mad,” Konrad said, but his voice lacked conviction. “A vagrant who plays at prophecy.”

“She knew your mother’s name,” Anselm said. “She knew the color of your father’s eyes. She knew the words you whispered to your horse when you thought no one was listening.”

Konrad went still. Those words had been spoken in a stable in Vienna, in the dark, to a beast that could not repeat them. No one had been near. No one.

“Find her,” he said. “Find her and bring her to me. Quietly.”

Anselm nodded and slipped from the chamber like a shadow, leaving Konrad alone with the letter and the weight of a truth that sat in his chest like a stone. He read the letter one more time, his eyes moving over the words that named his father as a murdered man, and then he fed it to the candle flame. The parchment curled, blackened, and turned to ash in the dish.

He was still staring at the embers when the knock came.

The servant who entered was dressed in Bohemian livery, gold and blue, and he bore a tray of silver cups and a flagon of spiced wine. He set them on the table with practiced deference, then bowed.

“From the King,” he said. “Lord Ottokar invites you to his table tonight. He wishes to speak of the coming feast, and of matters that concern your uncle.”

Konrad studied the servant’s face—young, smooth, with eyes that did not meet his. “Does he now.”

“The King also asks that you bring your betrothed. Lady Margarethe von Stade has already accepted.”

Of course she had. Margarethe moved through the Bohemian court like a fish through water, surfacing where she pleased, vanishing when pressed. The thought of her made Konrad’s jaw tighten. She had promised to marry him, but that promise was a blade with two edges, and he had not yet determined which side was meant to cut him.

“Tell the King I am honored,” Konrad said. “I will attend.”

The servant bowed again and withdrew. Konrad waited until the footsteps faded, then he poured the spiced wine into a goblet and sniffed it. The scent was rich—cinnamon, clove, honey—but beneath it, faint as a whisper, he caught something else. Bitter. Sharp. Familiar.

He set the goblet down without drinking.

Ottokar’s feast hall blazed with light. A hundred candles burned in iron sconces, casting gold across the long tables, and the air was thick with the smell of roasted boar and baked apples. The Bohemian nobility had come in force—lords of the Přemyslid court in velvet and fur, their ladies in silks that whispered against the stone floor. At the head of the room, Ottokar sat beneath a canopy of crimson and gold, his lion’s mane of hair catching the candlelight, and his smile was the smile of a man who knows he holds all the cards.

Konrad entered with Margarethe on his arm. She wore a gown of deep green, her hair braided with pearls, and she moved with the ease of one who had been born to such halls. But when she leaned close to him, her voice was scarcely a breath.

“The woman in grey is in the gallery above. Do not look up.”

Konrad kept his eyes forward. “And the wine your host sent me?”

“Tainted. Not enough to kill, but enough to loosen a tongue.” She smiled as they passed a cluster of Bohemian barons. “Ottokar wants you pliant tonight. He means to ask you about your uncle’s plans for the spring.”

“And what will I tell him?”

“The truth,” Margarethe said. “That Rudolf means to march on Vienna, and that Ottokar’s allies in Austria are already turning. But you will tell him as if it is a secret, and he will believe he has won something.”

Konrad’s hand tightened on her arm. “You play a dangerous game, lady.”

“I play the game I was dealt.” She looked at him then, and for a moment her mask slipped—beneath it, he saw something like fear. “Your uncle is not the only serpent in this hall, Konrad. There are those who would see the Habsburgs burn for what they did to your father. And there are those who would see you burn for what you have done in Rudolf’s name.”

She released his arm and moved ahead, taking her seat among the ladies of the court, leaving Konrad standing at the threshold of the feast. He felt the weight of eyes upon him—Ottokar’s, cold and measuring; the dark-haired Bohemian lady’s, thoughtful and deep; and from the gallery above, the grey-cloaked woman’s, patient as winter.

He took his seat at the King’s table, and the feast began.

The courses came in waves—soup of dried peas, heron in sauce, a swan roasted in its feathers, pastries shaped like castles. Konrad ate little and drank less, watching Ottokar hold court with the ease of a man who had never known defeat. But beneath the laughter and the music, he felt the current of the room shifting, and when Ottokar finally turned to him, conversation had fallen to a murmur.

“Sir Konrad,” the King said, his voice carrying. “I have heard that your uncle means to press his claim on the Austrian lands. That he sees himself as the true heir to the Babenberg legacy.”

Konrad met his gaze. “My uncle is a king, lord. Kings see what they must. But he has no quarrel with Bohemia, provided Bohemia does not quarrel with him.”

Ottokar’s smile widened. “A diplomat’s answer. You have learned well from your master.” He raised his goblet. “But tell me, Sir Konrad—do you truly believe a Habsburg can hold what the Přemyslids have won? Or do you simply believe what you must, to survive?”

The hall went silent. Konrad felt the weight of the moment, felt the grey-cloaked woman’s eyes on him from above, felt Margarethe’s gaze sharp as a blade.

He reached for his goblet—the one he had not drunk from—and raised it high.

“I believe,” he said, “that the river remembers what kings forget.”

Ottokar’s smile faltered. For a heartbeat, something flickered in his eyes—recognition, or suspicion, or fear—and then it was gone, smoothed over by the mask of a king who had survived too long to show his hand.

But Konrad had seen it. And he knew, in that moment, that he had just crossed a line he could not uncross.

The feast continued around him, but the music seemed distant now, and the laughter hollow. He did not look up at the gallery. He did not need to. He could feel her there, waiting, as she had waited for years—for him to remember who he was, and what he had been born to become.

The serpent’s fang, or its death.

He set down the goblet, untouched, and smiled at the King of Bohemia.

And somewhere above them, in the shadows of the gallery, the woman in grey began to laugh.