Chapter 24: THE LION'S TABLE (II)

The snow fell over Prague like a shroud, silent and relentless, muffling the city into a white stillness that felt less like peace and more like held breath. Konrad stood at the window of his chamber, watching the flakes drift past the guttering torchlight of the castle courtyard below. The Christmas feast was but three days off, and the air itself seemed thick with anticipation, as though the very stones of the Hradčany knew what was coming.

He had not slept. Not since Hedwig had spoken the words that had cracked the foundation of his life. His father, murdered. Rudolf, the architect. And himself, the true heir to a name he had worn like a borrowed coat.

There was a knock at the door, soft but insistent. Konrad turned, his hand instinctively finding the dagger at his belt. But the figure who entered was no assassin. Brother Anselm slipped through the gap in the door, his Franciscan robes damp with melted snow, his face pinched with cold and something else—something that looked very much like fear.

“You should not be here,” Konrad said.

“I should not be anywhere in this city,” Anselm replied, closing the door behind him. “But I have heard confession that burns in my ears, and I have nowhere else to bring it.”

Konrad gestured to the single chair by the hearth. Anselm did not sit. He stood, wringing his hands, his eyes darting to the shadows in the corners of the room.

“The Bohemian king has his spies everywhere,” Anselm said. “But so do you, it seems. Or have you forgotten the woman in grey?”

“I have forgotten nothing,” Konrad said. “Least of all the things I have learned since I came to this city.”

Anselm’s mouth tightened. “Then you know that you are walking into a trap that has been set for you since before you were born.”

Konrad felt a coldness creep up his spine that had nothing to do with the winter air. “What do you know?”

“I know that Ottokar has been corresponding with your uncle,” Anselm said. “Not as king to king, but as one hunter to another. They speak of a prize, and that prize is you.”

The words hung in the air between them, heavy as the snow outside. Konrad’s mind raced, turning over the implications. Rudolf and Ottokar, enemies on the field of politics, united in their desire to see him neutralized. The fang, it seemed, had grown too sharp for the serpent’s comfort.

“You are lying,” Konrad said, but even as he spoke, he knew the truth in Anselm’s words.

“I am a poor liar, and a worse confessor,” Anselm said. “I have been in Prague for three months, sent by the Archbishop of Mainz to observe. I have seen the letters pass between the courts, sealed with wax that bore both the lion and the eagle. I have heard the whispers of the chamberlains who think a monk is deaf as well as mute. You are to be used, Sir Konrad. Your marriage to the Lady Margarethe is to be annulled, your claims to the Habsburg name to be declared forfeit. And you are to be delivered to Ottokar as a gesture of goodwill—a token of Rudolf’s sincerity in the negotiations to come.”

Konrad’s fist clenched at his side. The betrayal was so complete, so absolute, that he felt almost dizzy with it. He had served Rudolf faithfully, had been his fang, his shadow, his instrument. And now the king was willing to cast him aside like a spent quill.

“Why?” Konrad asked, the word barely a whisper.

“Because you are dangerous,” Anselm said. “Because you know too much, and because the letter naming you as heir is real. Rudolf cannot allow it to surface. He cannot allow you to exist as a rival.” The monk paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “There is more. The Lady Margarethe—she is not what she seems.”

Konrad’s blood ran cold. “What do you know of her?”

“I know that she was in Vienna last autumn, and that she met with a man who serves Ottokar’s chancellor. I know that she carried a sealed packet from that meeting to a woman in the convent of St. Agnes, and that the packet was subsequently delivered to the Bohemian court.” Anselm’s eyes met Konrad’s. “She has been playing a game of her own, and you are one of its pieces.”

Konrad turned away, his mind churning. Margarethe. The woman he was to marry. The woman who had warned him of Hedwig, who had promised herself to him with cool, measured words. Was she a spy? A double agent? Or something more complicated still?

“I do not believe she means me harm,” Konrad said slowly, but even to his own ears the words sounded hollow.

“Belief is a luxury for those who do not need to survive,” Anselm said. “And you, Sir Konrad, are not in a position to afford luxuries.”

The monk stepped closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “There is a way out. The dark-haired lady you have seen watching from the gallery—Lady Kunigunde of Brandenburg. She is not merely a guest at the Bohemian court. She is Ottokar’s niece, and she has her own reasons for wishing to see him humbled. She has asked me to tell you that she will meet you in the chapel of St. Vitus at midnight, on the eve of the feast. If you wish to survive the lion’s table, you will be there.”

Konrad stared at the monk, his mind racing. Kunigunde. The woman who had raised her finger to her lips, who had watched him with eyes that held neither warmth nor hostility, but something else—something that looked very much like calculation.

“Why should I trust her?” Konrad asked.

“Because you have no one else to trust,” Anselm said. “And because the river remembers, Sir Konrad. Even when the snow has buried all trace of its course.”

The words struck Konrad like a physical blow. The river remembers. Margarethe had said those same words, in a different context, and now they returned to him with a deeper, darker resonance. What river? And what did it remember?

Before he could speak, Anselm turned and slipped back through the door, disappearing into the corridor beyond without a sound. Konrad stood alone in the silence, the weight of the monk’s revelations pressing down on him like the snow on the rooftops of Prague.

He was a pawn, a piece to be moved and discarded. But pieces, he thought, could learn to move themselves. Pieces could learn to strike.

He crossed to the table where his writing materials lay, and dipped a quill in the inkpot. The letter he wrote was brief, addressed to a name he had not used in years—a name that belonged to a man who owed him a debt, and who knew the secrets of the Bohemian court better than any man living.

When the letter was sealed, Konrad blew out the candle and stood in the darkness, listening to the distant sounds of the castle settling into the night. Somewhere beyond those walls, a war was coming—a war between the lion and the serpent, between the old king and the new, between the man he served and the man he was becoming.

And in the chapel of St. Vitus, at midnight, a woman with dark hair and calculating eyes would be waiting to see which side he chose.

Konrad smiled, a thin, cold expression that had nothing to do with warmth.

Let them play their games, he thought. Let them think they know the shape of the board.

The hook was set. Now all he had to do was sink it deep enough to draw blood.