Chapter 53: THE WITNESS IN THE WALL (II)

The frost had crept into the chapel like a penitent, clinging to the stone pillars and the seams of the stained glass. Konrad knelt before the altar, but his eyes were not on the crucified Christ above him. They were fixed on the wall to the left of the confessional—a stretch of plaster that seemed newer than the rest, the color a shade lighter, the surface too smooth.

Brother Anselm had not been seen since the morning. The Franciscan had left his cell before matins, according to the porter, muttering about a debt he owed to God. Konrad had searched the kitchens, the library, the gallery where Anselm liked to stand and watch the comings and goings of Ottokar’s court. Nothing. The priest had vanished like smoke through a keyhole.

But the wall—the wall had caught Konrad’s attention during the noon mass, when the light had shifted through the south window and fallen across the plaster in a way that revealed a seam. A door, bricked over. An old one, perhaps, from before the chapel had been renovated. Or a recent one, sealed to hide what lay behind.

He rose from his knees, his boots whispering against the flagstones. The chapel was empty; even the altar boy had gone to his dinner. Konrad ran his fingers along the edge of the seam, feeling the give of the mortar. It was soft. Recent.

He took the dagger from his belt—not the one he wore for show, but the slim blade he kept hidden in his boot, the one that had no maker’s mark and had never been cleaned of its first blood. He worked it into the seam, scraping away the mortar in small, careful strokes. The plaster crumbled like old bread. Behind it, wood. A door, yes, but low and narrow, meant for a servant or a priest who did not wish to be seen.

Konrad paused. The river was pulling faster. He could feel it in his chest, that cold current that had carried him from one dangerous truth to another, each revelation swifter and darker than the last. He had learned that his father had been murdered on Rudolf’s orders. He had learned that he had a brother in Vienna. He had learned that Ottokar held Brother Anselm’s confessions—Konrad’s confessions—in a locked chest somewhere in the palace. And now the priest who had heard those confessions had vanished, and there was a hidden door in the wall of the chapel.

He pushed the door open.

The darkness beyond was absolute, but Konrad had been in darkness before. He stepped through, closing the door behind him, and stood still for a long moment, letting his eyes adjust. The air was cold and still, carrying the faint smell of tallow and old parchment. A stair, narrow and twisting, led down. He took it.

The stairs ended in a small chamber, no larger than a confessional box, its walls lined with shelves. On the shelves were ledgers—dozens of them, bound in leather that had cracked with age. Konrad pulled one down. The pages were covered in a tight, precise hand, the ink faded but legible. Names. Dates. Places. And in the margins, annotations in a different hand, sharper and darker, as if written in anger.

He turned the pages, his breath shallow. Here was a record of every death that had occurred in the palace for the past forty years. Births, too, and marriages, and the small betrayals that made up the life of a court. But it was the annotations that drew his eye—the sharp hand that had marked certain names with a cross, and written beside them: *by the king’s order* or *by the king’s knowledge*.

Konrad’s father was there. The name von Eppenstein, crossed out, with the date—1268—and the annotation: *by the king’s order, though the king did not hold the knife.*

He closed the ledger, his hands steady despite the storm inside him. The river was pulling faster now, but he had learned to swim in it. He looked around the chamber. There was another door, this one of iron, set into the far wall. It was not locked. He pushed it open and found himself in a narrow corridor that ran beneath the palace, its walls sweating with damp.

Footsteps. Soft, but unmistakable—the careful tread of someone who did not wish to be heard. Konrad pressed himself against the wall, his dagger in his hand. The footsteps came closer, paused, and then a voice spoke out of the darkness.

“I thought you would find it eventually.”

Brother Anselm stepped into the faint light that leaked from the chapel stair. His face was pale, his eyes hollow, but there was a peace in them that Konrad had never seen before.

“You have been here all along,” Konrad said. “In this place. This—this ledger of bones.”

“I wrote it,” Anselm said. “Every death, every birth, every secret that passed through the confessional. I wrote it because I was afraid I would forget. Because I thought that if I recorded the sins, I could somehow absolve them.”

“And the annotations? ‘By the king’s order’?”

Anselm’s smile was thin and bitter. “Those were added by another hand. A hand that knew the truth and wanted it preserved. Would you like to know whose?”

Konrad did not answer. He did not need to.

“Your father’s sister,” Anselm said. “Hedwig. She came to me years ago, before she disappeared into the grey cloaks of her own making. She told me that the river remembers, and that one day someone would come looking for the truth. She made me promise to keep the ledger safe.”

“She gave me a scroll,” Konrad said. “A wolf’s head seal. She said the river remembers.”

“Then you know more than most.” Anselm stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But there is one thing she did not tell you. One thing she could not tell you, because she did not know it herself.”

Konrad waited.

“The boy in the nursery,” Anselm said. “The one Ottokar watches. The one who carries your father’s eyes. He is not your brother.”

The words hung in the cold air like frost.

“He is your son.”

Konrad felt the floor shift beneath him, though he had not moved. “That is not possible.”

“You were young,” Anselm said. “You were in Prague, years ago, before the wars. You did not know. The woman—she did not tell you. She thought it would be safer if you did not know.”

“What woman?”

Anselm’s eyes met his, and there was pity in them. “The woman in grey.”