Chapter 39: THE ASH AND THE ALTAR

The child’s laughter faded into the stone, and Konrad stood with his hand frozen on the latch, the cold iron burning against his palm. Brother Anselm had already turned away, his grey robes whispering against the flags like the skirts of a ghost. The corridor smelled of tallow and old incense, and somewhere above them the feast still roared, but here the silence was a living thing, pressing against Konrad’s ears.

He did not open the door.

He had learned, in the months since Rudolf’s crown had been hammered from stolen gold, that some doors opened only once. And some opened only into graves.

Konrad caught the priest by the shoulder in the narrow passage beyond the nursery, spinning him against the wall. Anselm’s face was bloodless, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The Franciscan’s hands were trembling—not from fear, Konrad realized, but from something worse. From knowing.

“You will tell me the name,” Konrad said quietly. His voice was soft, almost gentle, and that was the most dangerous thing about him. “Or I will drag you back through that door and ask the children themselves.”

“You would not.”

“I would do worse than that, Brother. I would ask Ottokar what you have been telling me. And then I would watch him decide which of us dies slower.”

Anselm’s eyes closed. For a long moment, the only sound was the drip of water somewhere in the walls and the distant, muffled thunder of the feast above. Then the priest spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

“The child is called Ludmila. She is four years old. And she is the daughter of Otto von Stade.”

The name hit Konrad like a blade between the ribs.

Otto von Stade. Margarethe’s brother. The brother who had died in Vienna last autumn—the brother whose death had made Margarethe the sole heiress to the von Stade lands. The brother whose death had been ruled a hunting accident, a fall from a horse, a broken neck on a frozen path. The brother whose death had made Margarethe’s marriage to Konrad so very, very valuable.

Konrad’s hand fell from the priest’s shoulder. He stood in the passage, the ring in his tunic pressing against his heart like a cold finger, and he understood at last what the river had been trying to tell him.

“The child is a hostage,” Konrad said. It was not a question.

“Ottokar took her when Otto died,” Anselm said. “He claimed her as a ward of the Bohemian crown. A gesture of protection, he said. The Přemyslid court is filled with the children of dead men, Konrad. They are fed, and clothed, and taught to pray for the soul of the king who shelters them. And if their uncles or their mothers or their fathers’ old allies grow troublesome, they are reminded that the children are so very fragile.”

“And Margarethe knows.”

“Margarethe knows the child is alive. She does not know where.”

Konrad laughed. It was a short, ugly sound, like a crow’s cry in a frozen field. “She knows. And she said nothing. She pledged herself to me, and she said nothing.”

“What would you have her say?” Anselm asked. “That her brother was murdered? That his child is a leash around her neck? That she must lie to you, and smile at you, and spread her legs for you, all while her niece’s life hangs on Ottokar’s whim? She is a woman in a world of wolves, Konrad. She has learned to howl with them.”

Konrad’s jaw tightened. The rage was a hot, bright thing in his chest, but beneath it was something colder. Something that felt like admiration. He had spent his life learning to read the lies of men. He had not yet learned to read the lies of women.

“The letter,” Konrad said. “The one Hedwig gave me. It names me as heir to the Habsburg name. If Rudolf learns of it, he will kill me. If Ottokar learns of it, he will use me. If Margarethe learns of it—” He stopped. The thought was a snake in his mind, coiling and uncoiling.

“If Margarethe learns of it,” Anselm said softly, “she will have a choice to make. And I do not know which way she will fall.”

They walked back through the warren of corridors in silence. The castle was a maze of stone and shadow, every passage lined with tapestries that had witnessed a hundred years of betrayals. Konrad’s boots echoed on the flags, and he kept his hand near the dagger at his belt, though he did not know which of the shadows he was arming himself against.

When they reached the great hall, the feast was still in full roar. Ottokar sat at the high table, his golden hair gleaming in the candlelight, his cup raised in toast to some Bohemian lord whose name Konrad had already forgotten. The King of Bohemia looked like a god from an old tale—beautiful, terrible, and utterly convinced of his own immortality.

And at the far end of the hall, near the fire, Margarethe von Stade sat with her hands folded in her lap, her grey eyes fixed on the flames. She did not look up as Konrad approached. She did not look up as he took the seat beside her, close enough to smell the lavender on her skin.

“I have been thinking about Vienna,” Konrad said quietly, pitching his voice below the roar of the feast. “About last autumn. About your brother.”

Margarethe’s hands tightened in her lap. Just for a moment. Then they were still again, folded like a prayer.

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “And a long way from here.”

“The river remembers,” Konrad said. “That is what I am told. It remembers everything. It remembers the bodies it carries, and the names it swallows, and the promises that were made on its banks. And it remembers the children who were taken.”

Margarethe turned to look at him. Her face was pale, but her eyes were bright—bright with tears, or with something harder. Konrad could not tell which.

“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“The truth,” Konrad said. “For once. Just the truth.”

Margarethe opened her mouth to answer, and then the scream tore through the hall.

It came from the courtyard—high and sharp and full of agony, the sound of a man dying in the snow. The feast fell silent in an instant, cups frozen halfway to lips, laughter choked in throats.

Ottokar was on his feet, his face gone hard as stone. “What was that?”

No one answered. And then the doors of the great hall burst open, and a Bohemian knight stumbled through, his face white and his hands slick with blood.

“My lord king,” he gasped. “The river. The river has risen.”

Konrad was already moving, Margarethe’s hand clutching at his sleeve, the ring burning against his chest, and the child’s laughter still echoing in his ears like a bell rung in a tomb.