Chapter 35: THE CINDER AND THE CROWN (II)

The great hall had not dimmed with the hour. If anything, the flames in the hearths burned higher, fed by logs that servants dragged in like the carcasses of small animals. The air was thick with the smoke of tallow and the sour reek of spilled wine. The Bohemian nobles had loosened their belts and their tongues, and the feast had become a low, rumbling beast of its own—a creature of laughter and threats, of toasts that meant nothing and glances that meant everything.

Konrad moved through it like a man wading through a river he knew to be deeper than it looked. He had learned to smile with his teeth and say nothing that could be turned into a rope. The letter from Hedwig was pressed against his ribs, its wax seal a wolf’s snarl he could feel even through linen and wool. His father’s murder. Rudolf’s bargain. The truth of his own blood.

He found a place near the far wall, where the shadows pooled thick enough to hide a man’s face. From there, he watched Ottokar hold court at the high table, the golden lion roaring softly to his councillors. The Bohemian king was no fool, whatever Rudolf might have whispered to his allies. Ottokar knew how to smile, too. He had kept Konrad here all winter, not as a guest but as a piece on a board, waiting to see which way the piece would move.

A servant passed with a ewer of wine. Konrad waved him off, and the man’s eyes flickered—a moment too long, a shade too knowing. Konrad made a note of his face. In Prague, even the pourers of wine were spies.

“You drink less than any man I have ever watched,” said a voice at his elbow. “Which means either you are afraid of the wine, or you are afraid of what is in it.”

Konrad turned. Eliska von Kuenring stood close enough that the fur trim of her gown brushed his sleeve. She was younger than he had first thought—perhaps twenty, perhaps less—but her eyes were old in the way that court women’s eyes grew old, quick and careful and unblinking. She had left the door to the winter garden open for him once. He had not yet stepped through it.

“I prefer to keep my wits,” Konrad said.

“Then you are the only man in this hall who does.” She smiled, and it was not unkind. It was, in fact, almost pitying. “My father says the king will not let you leave until the snow melts. He says Ottokar means to use you as a message to Rudolf, a living letter that the Habsburgs cannot reach where they wish.”

“And what do you say, lady?”

Eliska’s smile thinned. “I say that messages have a way of being lost, and that the winter here is longer than any king remembers. If you wish to see the spring, Sir Konrad, you should not wait for it to be granted.”

She stepped past him, and the smell of her—woodsmoke and dried lavender—lingered like a question. Konrad watched her go, weaving through the tables with the ease of a woman who knew every stone and shadow of this hall.

He was still watching when he felt the presence behind him, heavier than Eliska’s, deliberate.

“You have made a friend,” Ottokar said. The king had left his high table and come down to the floor, moving among his guests like a lion among sheep, his golden hair catching the firelight. He did not look at Konrad as he spoke. He looked at the crowd, at the dancers forming in the center of the hall, at the doors where servants pressed in and out. “Lady Eliska is a sharp blade. Be careful she does not cut you.”

“I have been careful all winter, Your Majesty.”

“And yet you are still here.” Ottokar turned, and his eyes were the pale grey of a winter sky, all the more unsettling for their calm. “I asked you once what Rudolf truly wants in Prague. You gave me a speech about peace and prosperity. I have heard such speeches before. They are the music of men who plan to dance on other men’s graves.”

Konrad said nothing. The letter against his ribs seemed to grow warmer, as if it had a pulse of its own.

“I will ask you again,” Ottokar said, “and this time I will have a true answer. What does Rudolf want in Prague?”

Konrad met his gaze. The hall roared around them, but the space between the two men had gone quiet, a pocket of silence in the noise.

“He wants the crown,” Konrad said. “The one you think is yours by right. He wants the electors to look at him and see an emperor, not a count. And he wants you to know that he will not stop until he has it.”

Ottokar’s expression did not change. But something in his posture shifted—a tightening of the shoulders, a stillness in the hands that had been loose at his sides. He looked at Konrad for a long moment, and then he laughed, a short bark that drew the eyes of nearby nobles.

“An honest answer,” Ottokar said. “I had begun to think you were made of silk and evasion. Perhaps there is steel in you after all.”

He reached out and took Konrad’s hand before Konrad could pull it away. The king’s grip was strong, the grip of a man who had held a sword since he could walk. “Then hear my answer in turn. Rudolf may want the crown. But he will not have it while I draw breath. And you, Sir Konrad—you will stay here until I am certain that you are not the instrument of his ambition. And if I find that you are…” Ottokar’s smile was a thin, white line. “Then you will learn that the lion does not simply eat its prey. It savors it.”

He released Konrad’s hand and turned away, walking back toward the high table as if the conversation had been nothing more than a pleasantry between friends.

Konrad stood very still in the shadow of the wall. His hand was cold where Ottokar had gripped it, and the letter against his ribs had gone from warm to burning.

He had told the truth. And the truth, he knew, had just put a knife in Ottokar’s hand that the king would not hesitate to use. The river was rising, and the ice was breaking, and somewhere in the dark of the hall, a woman in grey was watching him, waiting for him to understand what she had meant by the river remembers.

Konrad turned and walked toward the winter garden, where the door still stood open, and the cold air carried the smell of snow and the promise of an ending he could not yet name.