Chapter 49: THE LEDGER OF BONES

The cellar smelled of tallow and old parchment, but beneath it lay a deeper scent—iron, and something like the earth after rain. Konrad descended the last step and stood before the scarred man, whose eyes reflected the single flame like chips of flint.

“You are expected,” Tobias repeated. “The wolf’s blood always finds its way to me eventually.”

Konrad did not sit. He kept his hand near his dagger, though he suspected the gesture was theatre. A man who opened doors before they were knocked did not fear daggers.

“I am told you know things,” Konrad said. “Things about my father.”

Tobias smiled, and the scars on his face moved like the cracks in a dry riverbed. “I knew your father. I carried him out of a ditch near the Marchfeld in ’53, when Ottokar’s men had left him for dead. He paid me in silver and a secret. The silver is long spent. The secret, I have kept.”

“And now?”

“Now the secret has grown teeth.” Tobias pushed a leather-bound ledger across the table. It was thick, the cover stained with what might have been wine or something darker. “Your father was not the only one who kept records. I was a clerk before I was a gravedigger. I learned that the dead speak through what they leave behind.”

Konrad opened the ledger. The script was cramped, precise, the hand of a man who counted every word as coin. Entries dated back decades—names, places, sums. Payments made. Favours owed. Debts settled in blood.

He turned pages until a name stopped him cold.

*Rudolf von Habsburg. December 1268. Payment to three men of the Swabian road. Service: silence. Price: forty marks, paid in advance.*

“This is my father’s hand,” Konrad said, though the words came out rough.

“It is. He kept his own counsel, your father. He suspected his brother would move against him long before the blow fell. He hired those men to watch the passes, to warn him if Rudolf’s riders came.”

“Then why did he die?”

Tobias leaned back, and the candle flame guttered. “Because one of the three men he hired was already in Rudolf’s pay. Your father bought a net, but it was woven from the ropes meant to hang him.”

The cellar seemed colder. Konrad’s fingers traced the entry, the careful script of a man who had tried to buy his own survival. “And the secret he paid you for?”

“He told me where he kept his true testament. Not the one the monks of Wettingen sealed. The one that names you.”

Konrad’s breath caught. He had heard of such a document from Hedwig, but had never found proof. “Where?”

Tobias did not answer. Instead, he reached beneath the table and produced a small iron box, no larger than a missal. He slid it across the wood. “I have kept it for fifteen years, waiting for the day when the wolf’s cub came to claim it.”

Konrad lifted the lid. Inside lay a roll of parchment, tied with a black ribbon and sealed with the wolf’s head—the same seal that marked the scroll Hedwig had given him. He did not open it. The weight of it was enough.

“You could have sold this to Rudolf,” Konrad said. “You would have been rich.”

“Rudolf pays in promises.” Tobias’s voice was dry as old bone. “Your father paid in silver, and he kept his word. I am a man of small faith, but I keep the bargains I make.” He paused. “There is one thing more.”

Konrad waited.

“The boy in Vienna—the one you learned of. He is real. I have seen him.” Tobias’s fingers drummed the table. “He is five years old. He lives in a house near the Schottenstift with a wet nurse and a priest who teaches him his letters. He has your father’s eyes.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I am the one who took him there.” Tobias met Konrad’s gaze, unblinking. “Your father brought him to me in the spring of ’68, a babe in arms. He said that if anything happened to him, I was to see the child safe. He did not trust the Church. He did not trust the Habsburgs. He trusted a gravedigger who owed him a life.”

Konrad’s hand tightened on the box. Another brother. Another weight. The river was pulling him faster now, the current black and cold.

“What is his name?”

“He is called Wilhelm,” Tobias said. “Wilhelm von Eppenstein, though he does not know it. The priest tells him he is an orphan of the plague.”

Konrad closed the box and tucked it into his tunic beside the letter and the ring and the note that asked what Margarethe had done in Vienna. He carried more secrets now than flesh.

“Why tell me this?” he asked. “You could have buried it all.”

“Because Ottokar has sent men to find the boy.” Tobias’s voice dropped. “His agents have been asking questions in Vienna, tracing the line of your father’s blood. They know there is another heir. They do not yet know where he is hidden.”

The words struck like a blow. “Ottokar would use him.”

“Ottokar would kill him,” Tobias corrected. “Or worse—raise him as a puppet against Rudolf, a claimant to the very name you carry. The boy would be a weapon, and weapons are spent.”

Konrad stood in silence, the candle flame between them. He thought of the child in the nursery above, the heir of Bohemia sleeping in his cradle, unaware of the forces closing around him. Now there was another child, hidden in Vienna, unaware that he carried a name that could topple kings.

“You want me to go to him,” Konrad said.

“I want you to decide what kind of wolf you are.” Tobias rose, his joints creaking. “The boy is safe for now. But the winter is long, and Ottokar’s reach is longer. If you do nothing, he will be found. And when he is found, he will be used.”

Konrad thought of Rudolf, of the calculation in the old king’s eyes. He thought of his father, murdered in the snow for the crime of being a threat. He thought of Hedwig, bound to a convent for the sin of loyalty.

The ledger of bones grew heavier with every name.

“I cannot leave Prague,” Konrad said. “Ottokar watches me. If I vanish, he will know.”

“Then you must find someone who can go in your place.” Tobias reached into his sleeve and drew out a folded scrap of parchment. “This is the address of the house. And the name of the priest who guards him.”

Konrad took it. The paper was worn, creased from years of being carried close to a gravedigger’s heart.

“You have done what you swore to do,” Konrad said. “Why risk more?”

Tobias smiled, and for a moment the scars seemed to soften. “Because I made a bargain with your father. And unlike kings and princes, I keep my bargains.”

He turned and walked toward the far wall, where a door Konrad had not seen stood half-hidden in shadow. At the threshold, he paused.

“The boy has your father’s eyes. But you—you have his mouth. The quick tongue that cuts both ways.” He shook his head. “Use it wisely, Sir Konrad. The winter is not done with you yet.”

The door closed behind him, and the cellar fell silent.

Konrad stood alone with the ledger and the box and the weight of a brother he had never known. The candle burned low, and somewhere above, the feast continued, Ottokar’s laughter still echoing through the stones of the great hall.

He tucked the address into his pouch, beside the secrets that were piling up like snow against a door.

The river was pulling him faster now. And the current was full of bones.