Chapter 52: THE WITNESS IN THE WALL

The corridor was empty save for the echo of Kunigunde’s footsteps, already swallowed by the stone. Konrad stood a moment longer, her words hanging in the air like frost. *I chose the wolf over the lion.* A dangerous declaration in a palace where the walls had ears—and tongues.

He moved quickly, not toward his chamber but away from it, deeper into the warren of galleries that connected the royal quarters to the older, abandoned wings of the Prague castle. The address Tobias had given him was a weight in his boot, but the night was not yet done. There was another thread to pull, one that had been fraying since the feast began.

Eliska von Kuenring had left a door open to the winter garden. He had not taken the invitation. Now, with Kunigunde’s words still cold on his skin, he needed to know which side of the river she stood on.

The garden door was exactly where she had promised. Unlocked. The hinges groaned as he pushed through, and the winter air hit him like a slap. The garden was a skeleton of black branches and frozen stone, the fountain at its center a jagged tooth of ice. She was waiting by the dead rose trellis, wrapped in a cloak the color of dried blood.

“You came,” Eliska said. Not a question.

“You left the door open,” Konrad replied. “I assumed you wanted company.”

She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “You assume much, Sir Konrad. It will be your death, or your salvation. I have not yet decided which.”

He stepped closer, boots crunching on the frost. “Then let me help you decide. You are Kuenring. Your family has served the Přemyslid for generations. And yet you meet a Habsburg in the dark, where Ottokar’s spies cannot see. Why?”

Eliska turned her face to the moon. She was younger than he had first thought, perhaps not yet thirty, but there were lines at the corners of her mouth that spoke of older sorrows. “My father died at Kressenbrunn,” she said quietly. “He bled into the Morava for Ottokar’s pride. My brother followed him into the ground two years later, killed in a skirmish that was never even recorded. And still the golden lion asks for more.”

She looked at him then, and her eyes were hard as river stones. “I do not serve Ottokar. I serve the memory of my father, and he would weep to see what Bohemia has become. The king grows fat on ambition while his knights grow thin on hunger. He speaks of empire while his own barons whisper of revolt.”

Konrad said nothing. He had learned that silence was a better question than any he could speak.

“I know what you are doing here,” Eliska continued. “I know you are not merely a guest. You are a blade, and Rudolf has sent you to test the lion’s hide for weakness. But you are not the only blade in Prague, Sir Konrad. There are others who watch you. Some serve the king. Some serve themselves. And one—” she paused, her breath pluming in the cold—“one serves something older than kings.”

“The woman in grey,” Konrad said.

Eliska’s smile returned, thinner this time. “You see more than you let on. Yes. The grey cloak is not what it appears. She moves through these halls like a ghost, and Ottokar does not stop her. Do you know why?”

“Tell me.”

“Because he cannot.” Eliska stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “She carries a seal that predates the Přemyslid. There are old families in these lands, Sir Konrad, families that were here before the lions, before the wolves, before the Christians built their churches on top of our temples. She belongs to one of them. And she has taken an interest in you.”

Konrad’s hand drifted unconsciously to the ring in his tunic, the one Hedwig had given him. The metal was warm against his fingers, as if it had absorbed his body heat. Or something else.

“What does she want with me?”

“That is the question, is it not?” Eliska drew a small bundle from beneath her cloak and pressed it into his hands. It was soft, wrapped in oiled leather. “I found this in my father’s old study, hidden behind a loose stone. He kept records of everything, my father. He was a meticulous man. This is a copy of a letter, dated the year of your father’s death. It is written in a hand I do not recognize, and it speaks of a promise made and a promise broken.”

Konrad’s fingers worked at the leather binding. Inside was a single sheet of vellum, creased and yellowed with age. The script was tight and angular, the ink faded to brown. He held it up to the moonlight.

*To the one who carries the wolf’s blood, know this: the river remembers what the kings forget. The child who was hidden shall be found, and the promise made at the crossing shall be kept. Seek the well beneath the ash tree when the snows melt. There you will find what was buried, and what was buried will rise.*

There was no signature. Only a symbol at the bottom—a circle with a line through it, like a coin split in half.

“What is this?” Konrad asked, his voice rougher than he intended.

“I do not know,” Eliska said. “But I know it concerns you. My father would not have kept it otherwise. He was not a man who hoarded secrets without purpose.”

Konrad folded the letter and tucked it into his tunic beside the ring. The weight of it seemed to settle into his bones. “Why give this to me now? Why risk Ottokar’s wrath?”

Eliska looked at him for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible. “Because there is a child in the nursery who should not exist, and another in Vienna who should not have been hidden. And because I have seen the way you look at the grey woman—like a man who has found a mirror in a house of strangers.” She stepped back, pulling her cloak tighter. “You are not the only one searching for the truth, Sir Konrad. Some of us have been searching for years.”

She turned and walked toward the far gate of the garden, her footsteps leaving dark prints in the frost. Konrad watched her go, the letter burning against his chest.

The river was pulling faster now. And somewhere beneath an ash tree, waiting for the snows to melt, something buried was stirring.