Chapter 29: The Ice That Breaks

The toast died in a murmur of goblets and the scrape of benches. Konrad set his cup down untouched, the wine dark as old blood, and let the noise of the feast wash over him like river water over stone. Ottokar was watching him—not from the high table, where the king sat with his queen and his councillors, but from the corner of his eye, a lion’s lazy regard for a wolf that had wandered into his den.

Konrad smiled. It was the smile of a man who had learned to wear his face like a mask, and he felt the muscles ache with the effort.

The hall of Prague was vast and cold despite the braziers. Snow had fallen all day, drifting against the windows in soft mounds, and the air smelled of roasted boar and pine resin and the faint, metallic tang of winter. Konrad had been placed at a middle table, among the lesser knights and the clerks of the chancery—a deliberate insult, he knew, and a deliberate test. Ottokar wanted to see if he would bristle. Konrad did not.

Instead, he watched.

The dark-haired lady was there again, seated near the queen’s retinue, her gown the colour of deep forest green. She did not look at him directly, but he caught the tilt of her head, the way her fingers traced the rim of her cup as if tracing a line on a map. She was not a Přemyslid—he had asked, carefully, of a Bohemian knight who had drunk too much and talked too freely—but a von Kuenring, a house that had once held the march of Austria for the Babenbergs and now held grudges instead. Her name was Eliska, and she had been married at fourteen to a man twice her age who had died of a fever in Vienna three winters past.

Vienna. The word hung in the air like smoke.

Konrad turned back to his plate. The venison had gone cold, and he pushed it aside. A servant refilled his cup without being asked, and he let it stand.

The feast wore on. Ottokar spoke of the Danube and the ice that had closed the river to shipping, of the tolls that would be lost and the merchants who would complain. He spoke of the Emperor—a title Rudolf had not yet claimed, though every man in the room knew the old king’s hunger—and of the peace that must be kept with the princes of the Empire. His voice was warm and easy, the voice of a man who had never doubted his own right to rule. Konrad listened, and he heard the steel beneath the velvet.

It was near midnight when the queen rose and withdrew, and the hall grew looser, the laughter louder, the wine more freely poured. Konrad was considering his exit—a word to his host, a nod to the door, a walk through the snow to the house where he was billeted—when a hand touched his sleeve.

He turned.

The woman in grey stood beside him, close enough that he could smell the cold on her cloak and the faint, clean scent of lavender. Her face was half-hidden by her hood, but he knew the line of her jaw, the set of her mouth. Hedwig. His aunt. The sister Rudolf would not let him claim.

“You should not be here,” she said, her voice low.

“I was invited.”

“You were summoned. There is a difference.” She glanced toward the high table, where Ottokar was laughing at something a jester had said. “He has not decided what to do with you. That is why you are still alive.”

Konrad felt the cold of the hall seep through his tunic. “And you have?”

Hedwig’s mouth tightened. “I have decided to give you a chance to run.”

“Run where?”

“The river is frozen solid from Prague to the Moravian gate. But there is a fisherman’s path, east of the city, that follows the ice where it is thin. A horse can cross if it is led.” She pressed something into his hand—a scrap of parchment, folded small and warm from her palm. “The river remembers, Konrad. It remembers the winter of ’68, when your father was not the only man to die in that border skirmish. It remembers who ordered the killing, and it remembers who was meant to die in his place.”

Konrad unfolded the parchment. The script was small and cramped, the ink faded, but the words were clear enough. A list of names—his father’s among them—and a date, and a signature he knew too well. Rudolf’s seal, pressed into the wax.

“This is the letter,” he said. “The one you spoke of.”

“A copy,” Hedwig said. “The original is in the hands of a man who does not yet know what he holds. But the truth is not in the letter, Konrad. It is in what you do with it.”

He looked at her. In the candlelight, her face was older than he remembered, lined and worn, but her eyes were bright as winter stars. “Why did you not tell me this before? Why now?”

“Because before, you were a fang,” she said. “Now you are a question. And questions are more dangerous than knives.” She stepped back, drawing her hood closer. “Ottokar knows about the letter. He has known for months. That is why he invited you here—not to kill you, but to see which way you will fall. Will you be the serpent’s fang, or the serpent’s death?”

Konrad’s hand closed around the parchment. “And which does he want?”

Hedwig smiled, and it was not a warm smile. “He wants to choose.”

She was gone before he could answer, disappearing into the crowd of dancers and drinkers, and Konrad was left standing with the letter burning against his palm. He looked toward the high table. Ottokar was no longer laughing. The king was watching him, his golden cup raised in a toast that Konrad had not seen him make.

Across the hall, Eliska von Kuenring rose from her seat. She did not look at him. She walked toward the door that led to the winter garden, and she left it open behind her.

Konrad tucked the parchment into his tunic. He did not follow her. Not yet.

But he knew, with the certainty of a man who had learned to read the currents of power, that the feast was not over. The ice was breaking. And when it broke, it would take everything with it.