Chapter 31: THE WOLF'S WINTER

The cold had followed Konrad inside, clinging to his cloak like a ghost. The great hall of Prague burned with torchlight and laughter, but he felt the chill of the garden still wrapped around his bones as he threaded through the press of bodies toward the hearth where Brother Anselm sat hunched over his wax tablets, a cup of mulled wine untouched at his elbow.

The Franciscan looked up as Konrad settled onto the bench beside him, his eyes taking in the frost on Konrad's shoulders, the set of his jaw. "You have been walking in the snow again," Anselm said. It was not a question.

"I needed air." Konrad reached for the wine and drank deep, letting the heat of it scour the taste of the night from his throat. The ring was a cold weight against his chest, Hedwig's wolf seal pressing into his skin like a reminder of his own teeth.

"The Lord Abbot of Sedlec has been asking after you," Anselm said, his voice low. "He claims you promised him a charter for the new monastery lands."

"Then he will have it," Konrad said. "Once I have seen the original grant from Přemysl Otakar I. I would not want to forge a false copy of a document I have never read."

Anselm's quill scratched a brief note. "You have a strange notion of honesty, Sir Konrad."

"I have a precise notion. Honesty is for men who can afford it."

A shadow fell across the table. Konrad looked up to find Eliska von Kuenring standing before him, her dark hair bound with silver wire, her smile careful and sharp as a new blade. She wore a gown of deep green, the color of the winter garden he had just left, and she carried a small leather pouch in her hands.

"Sir Konrad," she said, her voice carrying just enough for the nearby tables to hear. "I have been sent to fetch you. The Queen of Bohemia wishes to speak with you about the betrothal arrangements for her niece."

Konrad rose, his hand brushing Anselm's shoulder in a gesture that might have looked casual to anyone watching. The Franciscan's eyes followed him as he followed Eliska through the hall, past the roaring fire, past the tables where Ottokar's knights drank and boasted, past the dais where the golden lion himself sat in state, his eyes tracking Konrad's progress with the lazy attention of a cat watching a mouse.

The corridor beyond the hall was quieter, the stones colder, the torchlight thinner. Eliska led him past the chapel, past the guard room, until they reached a small antechamber lined with tapestries depicting the hunt of Saint Hubert. The door closed behind them with a click that sounded louder than it should have.

"The Queen's niece," Konrad said. "That would be the Lady Agnes of Bohemia, I believe. She is six years old."

Eliska turned to face him, the leather pouch held against her chest. "The Queen's niece is in the nursery, sleeping. I needed to speak with you alone."

"Your door in the winter garden. I never took you up on it."

"No. You walked in the snow instead, and spoke with a woman in grey." Eliska's smile did not waver, but her eyes were hard as river stones. "The guards saw you. They reported it to the Chancellor. I am told the woman has been identified as a nun from the convent at Eppenstein, and that she has been placed under house arrest in the guest quarters."

Konrad kept his face still, though something cold and sharp twisted in his gut. "I spoke with a holy sister about the soul of my dead father. Is that a crime in Bohemia now?"

"It is a crime to meet secretly with someone who carries the seal of a wolf." Eliska stepped closer, and he could smell her perfume—something dark and sweet, like night-blooming flowers. "I am not your enemy, Sir Konrad. But I am not your friend either. I am a woman who must survive whatever comes, and I have learned that the surest way to survive is to know which men carry secrets worth selling."

"Then you have come to the wrong man. I carry nothing but debts and a broken sword."

Eliska laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "You carry a letter that names you heir to the Habsburg name. You carry a ring that belonged to a man who died for knowing too much. And you carry the promise of a Saxon heiress who may or may not have poisoned her first husband in Vienna last autumn."

The words hit him like a blow. Konrad heard Margarethe's note rustling in his tunic, the paper whispering its accusation. "You know a great deal about my affairs, Lady Eliska."

"I know what is whispered in the chambers of powerful men. I know that Ottokar has sent riders to Vienna to ask questions about Lady Margarethe's time there. I know that he plans to have you declared a spy and a traitor before the spring thaw, and that your uncle's envoys are already being turned back at the border." She paused, letting the weight of it settle. "And I know that the woman in grey is your aunt, and that she has told you things that could burn this kingdom to ash."

Konrad reached for his dagger, but Eliska held up the leather pouch.

"Before you do something foolish," she said, "you should know what I am offering you. The Queen of Bohemia has a sister in Brandenburg who fears for her children. She has asked me to find a man who can carry messages safely across the border, a man who knows how to forge a seal and when to use a blade. A man who has no reason to love Ottokar."

Konrad's hand fell away from the dagger. He looked at the pouch, at Eliska's steady gaze, at the tapestries of Saint Hubert with his vision of the cross between the antlers of the stag.

"I am to be your courier, then. Your little bird."

"I am to be your way out of Prague before the ice breaks." Eliska held out the pouch. "There is a letter inside. It is addressed to the Margrave of Brandenburg, and it carries the seal of the Queen herself. If you deliver it, you will have friends in the north. Friends who do not love the Habsburgs, but who hate Ottokar more."

Konrad took the pouch. It was heavier than it looked, and he could feel the crackle of parchment within, the weight of a new chain beginning to form around his neck.

"Why me?" he asked.

"Because you are already a dead man walking." Eliska smiled, and for a moment she looked almost kind. "And dead men make the best messengers."

She turned and opened the door, the torchlight spilling into the corridor. "The Queen's niece will expect you in the nursery within the hour. I would not keep her waiting. She has a temper, that one. She gets it from her mother's side."

Konrad stood alone in the antechamber, the pouch in his hand, the ring cold against his chest. Somewhere in the hall beyond, he could hear Ottokar's laughter, loud and confident and full of the certainty of a man who believed he had all the time in the world.

But the ice was breaking, and the current was pulling him downstream.

He tucked the pouch into his tunic, beside the ring and the letter and the note that asked what Margarethe had done in Vienna. Then he walked toward the nursery, toward the child who carried the blood of kings, toward the door that might lead him out of the lion's den.

Or into its gullet.