Chapter 48: THE CINDER AND THE CROWN (V)

The snow had stopped falling, but the cold had tightened its grip on Prague, turning the Vltava to iron beneath its skin of ice. Konrad stood at the window of his chamber, watching the dawn bleed grey over the rooftops, and thought of Vienna. Of a small house near St. Stephen's. Of a boy with his father's eyes.

He had not slept. The letter from the unknown hand lay open on the table beside the ring and the wolf-sealed scroll, and he had read it so many times that the words had worn grooves into his memory. *The boy is not the only one. There is another. In Vienna. And he carries your father's eyes.*

A brother. Or a cousin. Or a lie crafted to pull him from Prague into a trap. The Habsburgs had built their fortune on such ambiguities, and Konrad knew better than to trust a message delivered by shadows. But the woman in the alcove had known things she should not have known, and the parchment had been sealed with a wolf's head pressed into cheap wax—the same seal his father had used, the same seal that now hung from Hedwig's scroll.

He turned from the window and began to dress. The feast would resume today, a final celebration before the Epiphany, and Ottokar would expect him at the high table with a smile and a steady hand. But first, there was something Konrad needed to do.

He found Brother Anselm in the chapel, kneeling before the altar with his beads slipping through his fingers like water. The Franciscan did not turn when Konrad entered, but his voice carried through the cold air, thin and precise.

"You have the look of a man who has not confessed in too long."

"I have the look of a man who has not slept," Konrad said, coming to stand beside him. "And who needs to ask a question."

Anselm finished his prayer and crossed himself before rising. His eyes were tired, the hollows beneath them deep as riverbeds. "Ask, then. I will answer what I can."

"The letter you gave me in Vienna—the one that spoke of my father's death. You said you copied it from a ledger in the chancellery."

"I did."

"Whose ledger?"

Anselm was silent for a long moment. The candles on the altar guttered, sending shadows skittering across the stone. "It bore no name," he said at last. "But the hand was old, and the entries spoke of payments made and received. Gifts to the Hospitallers. Gifts to the Teutonic Order. Gifts to certain bishops who had once been loyal to Přemysl Ottokar."

"Gifts," Konrad repeated. "Or bribes."

"Coin has no conscience, my son. It flows where it is directed."

"Directed by whom?"

Anselm turned to face him fully, and for the first time, Konrad saw something flicker in the friar's gaze—a wariness that had not been there before. "You ask questions that have sharp edges. In Prague, in this season, that is dangerous."

"I am a Habsburg in the court of the golden lion. Everything is dangerous."

"Then let me give you an answer that may cut." Anselm lowered his voice, though the chapel was empty save for the two of them. "The ledger belonged to a man who served the Přemyslid court for thirty years. A chancellor, a confessor, a keeper of secrets. He died two winters ago, and his papers were scattered among the monasteries of Bohemia and Moravia. I found the ledger in a chest in the abbey at Sedlec, where the monks had used its pages to wrap their relics."

"The abbey at Sedlec," Konrad said slowly. "That is Cistercian land. Under the patronage of the House of Kuenring."

Anselm's eyes flickered. "Is it?"

"You know it is. And you know that Eliska von Kuenring has been circling me since I arrived, leaving doors open and questions unanswered."

"I know that the Kuenrings have served many masters," Anselm said carefully. "And that they have prospered by knowing when to change their allegiance."

Konrad felt the cold seep through his boots. "You are telling me that my father's death was recorded in a ledger kept by a Přemyslid chancellor, and that the ledger found its way into the hands of a family that now courts my attention."

"I am telling you that the river has many branches, and that you cannot see the source from where you stand."

"Then help me see it."

Anselm was silent. The candles burned. Somewhere beyond the chapel walls, a bell began to toll the hour, its bronze voice heavy with the weight of the morning. When the friar spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

"There is a man in the city, a merchant of relics, who deals in older things than bones and saints. He has a shop near the Týn Church, in a cellar that was once a crypt. Ask him about the seal you carry. Ask him about the wolf, and the house that wore it before it was torn down."

"Torn down?"

"The von Eppenstein seat in Swabia," Anselm said. "It was burned in the year of your father's death. Nothing remains but ash and memory. But the merchant collects such memories, and he sells them to those who wish to remember differently."

Konrad reached into his tunic and touched the wolf-sealed scroll. "What is his name?"

"Tobias. He answers to no other." Anselm turned back to the altar, his beads slipping through his fingers once more. "Go now. You have already been here too long, and Ottokar's spies have sharp eyes."

Konrad left the chapel without another word, the cold air biting at his cheeks as he stepped into the courtyard. The snow had been cleared from the main paths, but the corners were still deep with it, and the sky above was the colour of old iron. He pulled his cloak tighter and walked toward the gate, nodding to the guards who watched him pass with flat, unreadable eyes.

The city was waking around him, merchants setting up their stalls, servants hauling water from the wells, a priest hurrying toward a house where someone had died in the night. Konrad moved through it all without seeing, his mind fixed on the name Anselm had given him.

Tobias.

The Týn Church rose before him, its twin towers dark against the pale sky, and he found the cellar entrance tucked between a butcher's shop and a seller of candles. The door was low and iron-bound, and it opened at his touch as if it had been waiting for him.

The stairs descended into darkness, and the air grew thick with the smell of dust and old incense. At the bottom, a single candle burned on a wooden table, and behind it sat a man whose face was a map of scars and years.

"You are expected," Tobias said, without looking up. "The wolf's blood always finds its way to me eventually."