Chapter 47: THE EMBER AND THE OATH

The fire in the great hall had burned low, and the air was thick with the dregs of wine and the sour breath of sleeping men. Konrad had not slept. He sat in the alcove near the eastern window, the parchment still warm against his chest, the words burning through the wool of his tunic. *There is another. In Vienna. And he carries your father’s eyes.*

He had thought he was alone in his father's shadow. He had thought the letter naming him heir was the only claim. But now, a brother—or a cousin—or a ghost—walked the streets of Vienna with the same blood in his veins, and Konrad did not know whether that was a weapon or a wound.

He heard the footsteps before he saw her. The soft drag of a hem over stone, the whisper of a veil. He turned, and Hedwig von Eppenstein stood in the archway, her grey cloak dark with melted snow, her face half-lit by the guttering candles.

“You should not be here,” Konrad said.

“I am always where I should not be,” she replied. “It is the only way to survive this court.”

She stepped closer, and he saw that she carried a small leather satchel, worn at the edges, the strap mended with twine. She set it on the table between them and did not sit.

“You have read the note,” she said.

“I have.”

“And you have questions.”

“I have more than questions.” Konrad’s voice was low, but it carried the edge of a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. “Who is the child in Vienna? And why am I only learning of him now, in the lion’s den, with snow at the walls and a king who wants my head?”

Hedwig’s jaw tightened. “Because the river does not reveal all its currents at once. Because some truths are too heavy to carry until you are strong enough to bear them.”

“I am carrying enough,” Konrad said. “My father’s death. Rudolf’s treachery. A letter that names me as heir. A bride who may or may not have sold herself in Vienna. And now a child—a child with my father’s eyes—who I have never met.”

He stopped, the words catching in his throat. “My father’s eyes.”

Hedwig looked at him for a long moment, and something in her face softened—not with pity, but with the weariness of a woman who had carried her own truths for too long.

“Your father,” she said slowly, “was not the man you think he was. And he was not the man Rudolf pretends he was. He was a man who made choices—some of them terrible, some of them noble—and he paid for all of them in the end.”

“Rudolf paid for him.”

“Rudolf collected the debt,” Hedwig said. “But the debt was not Rudolf’s alone to claim.”

Konrad’s hands were steady, but his heart was not. “What are you saying?”

Hedwig reached into the satchel and drew out a folded parchment, yellowed with age, the seal broken. She placed it on the table beside the note.

“This is a letter from your father,” she said. “Written in the winter of 1268, before he rode to his death. He gave it to me, not to Rudolf, because he did not trust his brother with the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That he had another son. A son born in Vienna, to a woman of the minor nobility. A son he acknowledged in secret, because to acknowledge him openly would have endangered the boy—and would have endangered you.”

Konrad stared at the letter. “Why would it endanger me?”

“Because Rudolf was already moving against your father. And if your father had claimed a second heir, you would have become a target—a pawn to be used against him. So he hid the boy, and he hid the truth, and he hoped that one day the river would bring them together.”

“The river remembers,” Konrad murmured.

“The river remembers,” Hedwig echoed. “And it is not finished with you yet.”

Konrad reached for the letter, but he did not open it. He could not. The weight of it was too great, the implications too vast. He had come to Prague to survive, to serve, to find out whose fang he truly was. And now he was learning that he was not one man—he was two, or three, or a dozen, each claim pulling him in different directions.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I want you to choose,” Hedwig said. “Not for me. Not for Rudolf. Not for Ottokar. For yourself.”

She reached into the satchel again, and this time she drew out a ring—not the one she had given him before, but a different one, heavier, forged of dark iron with a wolf's head carved into the face. She held it out to him.

“This was your father’s signet. He wore it when he rode into the ambush. It was recovered from his body and given to me by the man who found him, a soldier who owed him a debt.”

Konrad took the ring. It was cold in his palm, heavier than it looked. The wolf’s head was worn smooth in places, the muzzle and ears still sharp. He turned it over and saw the initials engraved on the inner band: *H. v. E.*

“Heinrich von Eppenstein,” Konrad said.

“Your father.”

Konrad slid the ring onto his finger, over the one Hedwig had given him before. It fit as if it had been made for him, and he felt the weight of it settle into his bones.

“What do I do with this?” he asked.

“You wear it,” Hedwig said. “And when the time comes, you show it to the child in Vienna. He will know what it means.”

“And what does it mean?”

Hedwig smiled, but it was a thin and bitter thing. “It means that the serpent has two heads. And that the lion has not yet seen the whole of the beast.”

She turned to leave, but Konrad caught her wrist.

“Wait,” he said. “What is the child’s name?”

Hedwig paused. She looked at him, and for a moment her mask slipped, and he saw the grief beneath—the grief of a woman who had buried too many brothers, who had carried too many secrets.

“His name is Otto,” she said. “Otto von Eppenstein. He is eight years old. And he lives in a small house near the Church of St. Stephen, with a woman who was your father’s friend.”

Konrad released her wrist. The name hung in the air between them like a bell that had yet to stop ringing.

“Otto,” he repeated.

“When you return to Vienna,” Hedwig said, “you will find him. And you will decide what kind of brother you want to be.”

She walked to the archway, then stopped and looked back.

“And Konrad?”

“Yes?”

“Do not trust Margarethe with this. Not yet. Whatever she did in Vienna last autumn, it was not for your benefit.”

She was gone before he could answer, the grey cloak swallowed by the shadows of the corridor.

Konrad stood alone in the alcove, the dark iron ring heavy on his finger, the letter from his father unopened on the table. He picked it up and slid it into his tunic, beside the note and the ring and the letter that named him heir.

He had come to Prague to survive. He had come to Prague to serve. He had come to Prague to find out whose fang he truly was.

But now he knew that the answer was not in Prague. It was in Vienna, where a boy with his father’s eyes was sleeping in a small house near the Church of St. Stephen, unaware that the serpent had two heads—and that one of them was coming for him.

Konrad walked out of the alcove and into the dark of the great hall, the fire low and the embers glowing like the eyes of wolves. The snow was still falling beyond the windows, and the ice was still breaking beneath the surface.

But the river was pulling him now, faster than before. And he knew that when it finally let him go, he would not be the same man who had entered it.