Chapter 25: The Gallery of Shadows

The chapel of St. Vitus was cold as a tomb, its stone walls sweating with the breath of a Prague winter. Konrad entered alone, his boots whispering against the flagstones, the smell of incense and old wax hanging thick in the air. Candles guttered at the side altar, their flames bending toward an unseen draft, and for a moment he thought the place was empty.

Then she moved.

She stood in the shadow of a pillar, her dark hair barely visible beneath a hood of grey wool. Not the grey of Hedwig's cloak—this was finer, edged with silver thread that caught the candlelight like a spider's web in morning dew. She did not turn as he approached, but he saw her hands clasped before her, fingers laced tight.

"You came," she said. Her voice was low, measured, the accent of a woman who had learned to speak three courts' tongues and trusted none of them.

"You knew I would."

She turned then, and Konrad saw her face fully for the first time. She was younger than he had expected—perhaps thirty, with the high cheekbones of the Bohemian nobility and eyes the color of winter river ice. The dark-haired lady from the gallery. Up close, she was less beautiful and more dangerous.

"I am Eliška of the House of Krumlov," she said. "You have been asking questions about Sister Hedwig. I am here to tell you to stop."

Konrad felt the chill of the chapel settle into his bones. "And if I refuse?"

"Then you will not survive the feast." She said it without malice, as a physician might announce a diagnosis. "Ottokar has already marked you. The only question is whether he intends to use you as a pawn or a corpse. Your uncle's envoy is safe—envoys are useful. A Habsburg bastard who claims the true blood? That is a different matter entirely."

Konrad's jaw tightened. "I have claimed nothing."

"You do not need to claim it. The letter speaks for itself." Eliška stepped closer, and he caught the scent of lavender and something sharper beneath—vermouth, perhaps, or the residue of a poisoner's trade. "We know about the letter, Sir Konrad. Hedwig did not burn it, and her loyalty to you has put her in mortal danger. The woman you call Sister Hedwig is not a nun. She is a keeper of secrets, and Ottokar's spymaster has already begun to unravel hers."

Konrad's mind raced. Hedwig had warned him to be careful, but she had not told him of this. "You know where she is."

"I know where she was." Eliška's eyes flickered toward the altar. "Three nights ago, she was taken from her lodgings near the Jewish quarter. Not by Ottokar's men—they would have made a public spectacle of it. These were quieter hands. Private hands. The kind that serve a lady with river-fog loyalties."

Margarethe. The name rose unbidden in Konrad's throat, bitter as gall. He had pledged himself to her, and she had promised to marry him, but the note he had received in Vienna warned him to ask what she had done there. Now the dark-haired lady of Krumlov was telling him that his betrothed had taken his only true ally.

"You are telling me this because you want something," Konrad said. "What is it?"

Eliška smiled, and it was not a warm expression. "I want you to live long enough to serve my purpose. Ottokar is a lion, but lions die. The Přemyslid line is rotting from within—the king's pride will be his ruin, and all of Bohemia will bleed for it. I have no love for the Habsburgs, but I have a daughter, and I would see her wed to a family that will survive the winter."

"A marriage alliance."

"Not a marriage. A debt." She reached into her sleeve and withdrew a small scroll, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. "This is a list of names—Ottokar's agents in Vienna, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. Men who have sworn to the lion but will serve the serpent if the price is right. Take it to your uncle. Tell him the House of Krumlov is his for a single promise: that my daughter is betrothed to the Habsburg heir of her choice."

Konrad took the scroll, feeling its weight. It was light, but it carried the heft of treason. "And if I refuse?"

Eliška's smile widened. "Then I will tell Ottokar that you are not merely a Habsburg envoy, but a claimant with a letter that names you true heir to the dynasty. He will not kill you—that would be waste. He will marry you to a Přemyslid bastard and keep you in Prague as a gilded hostage, a thorn in Rudolf's side for the rest of your life."

The threat was precise, surgical. Konrad had faced blades and poison, but this was a different kind of weapon—a cage, not a grave.

"You have a daughter," he said slowly. "What does she think of this bargain?"

Eliška's eyes flickered, and for the first time, a crack appeared in her composure. "My daughter is six years old. She thinks of honey cakes and the snow. She does not know that her mother has already sold her soul to three kings and would sell it to a fourth if it meant she would live to see her wedding day."

The words hung between them, raw and honest in a way that surprised Konrad. He had expected treachery, not truth. But he had learned that the two were often the same.

"I will take the list to Rudolf," he said. "But I make no promise beyond that."

Eliška nodded, as if she had expected nothing more. "Then we understand each other. One more thing, Sir Konrad." She stepped past him, her skirt brushing the flagstones, and paused at the chapel door. "The river remembers. Hedwig told you that, and she meant it. But the river also washes things away—names, oaths, the faces of the dead. If you do not find her before the feast, you will find her in the Vltava's thaw, and all the letters in Christendom will not bring her back."

She was gone before he could respond, leaving him alone in the candlelit dark with a scroll of traitors and the weight of his sister's life pressing against his chest.

Konrad stood for a long moment, listening to the wind howl outside the chapel walls. Somewhere in Prague, Hedwig was waiting for him—if she was still alive. Somewhere in Vienna, Rudolf was sharpening his fangs. And somewhere in the gallery above, the lion Ottokar was watching the chessboard, unaware that a pawn had just been moved against him.

The hook was still set. But the line was fraying, and the water beneath was deep and cold.

He pocketed the scroll and walked into the night.