Chapter 72: THE WOLF'S CUB (II)

The road south from Prague ran through a country of frozen rivers and silent villages, and Konrad rode it with a mercenary at his back and a son in his thoughts.

He had left the boy with Elsbeth and the wooden horse and the wax tablet. He had left him with the ring, and the words, and the weight of a name. He had not looked back. He could not afford to look back. The river was pulling faster now, and the ice was breaking behind him.

They rode through the night and into the grey dawn, past the silver mines of Kutná Hora where the shafts breathed steam like sleeping dragons, past the monasteries where the monks sang their offices to empty chapels. The mercenary—a Swabian named Dietmar with a face like a weathered cliff—spoke little, and Konrad was grateful for the silence. It gave him room to think.

A son.

The word sat in his chest like a stone. He had been young, yes—barely eighteen, a landless cadet with a poet's tongue and a hunger for something he could not name. The girl had been a baker's daughter in Augsburg, with hair the color of wheat and a laugh that made him forget, for a few hours, that he was nothing and no one. He had not known her name. Or he had known it and forgotten it. The details had blurred with time, as details do. He had left before the child was born. He had not known.

Or had he?

The question gnawed at him as they rode. Hedwig had said the boy carried his father's eyes. But the boy in Vienna—the one Elsbeth had shown him, the one who traced the letter 'K' into the wax—was not his brother. He was his son. Which meant the other child, the one Ottokar had mentioned, the one who slept beneath a blanket of merchants' wool, was something else entirely. A half-brother? A cousin? A lie?

The river remembers, Hedwig had said. But what did it remember? And what did it want?

They reached the Danube by nightfall, crossing at a ford where the ice had been broken by the passage of boats. The water was black and cold, and Konrad felt it through his boots as they waded across. On the far bank, a fire burned in a shepherd's hut, and a man sat beside it, wrapped in a cloak the color of ash.

Konrad reined in his horse. "Who is that?"

Dietmar squinted through the darkness. "I do not know, my lord. But he is waiting."

The man rose as they approached. He was tall and thin, with a face that had been handsome once, before the pox had taken it. His eyes were the color of slate, and they fixed on Konrad with an intensity that made the hair rise on his arms.

"Sir Konrad von Eppenstein," he said. It was not a question.

"Who are you?"

"A friend of a friend." The man smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes. "I have a message for you. From Vienna."

Konrad's hand went to his sword. "From whom?"

"From the one who carries your father's eyes." The man's gaze flickered to Dietmar, then back to Konrad. "The boy is safe. The woman is safe. But there is a price."

"What price?"

"The letter." The man held out his hand. "The one naming you as heir. You will give it to me, or the boy will not see the spring."

Konrad felt the cold settle into his bones. "You are Ottokar's man."

"I am no one's man." The stranger's smile widened. "I am a merchant of sorts. I deal in secrets. And I have been paid very well to bring you this message."

"By whom?"

"By the one who wants you dead." The man tilted his head. "But not yet. Not until you have served your purpose."

Konrad drew his sword. The blade caught the firelight, and the stranger did not flinch.

"You will not kill me," he said. "If you do, the boy dies. The woman dies. And you will never know the truth."

"What truth?"

"The truth about your father. The truth about the letter. The truth about the child in Vienna." The man's eyes glittered. "You think you know the game, Sir Konrad. But you are still a piece on the board. And the hand that moves you is not Rudolf's."

Konrad's grip tightened on the hilt. "Whose hand, then?"

The stranger reached into his cloak and drew out a small pouch. He tossed it to Konrad, who caught it with his free hand. Inside was a ring—a ring he recognized. It bore the wolf's head, but the metal was different. Older. Darker. And on the inside of the band, a name was engraved.

"Your mother's name," the stranger said. "She was not who you thought she was. Neither was your father. And the boy in Vienna is not the only child who carries the wolf's blood."

He stepped back into the shadows, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

Konrad stood frozen, the pouch clutched in his hand. The fire crackled. The river rushed. And somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled—a sound that seemed to come from inside his own chest.

"My lord," Dietmar said quietly. "We should go."

Konrad did not answer. He was staring at the ring, at the name engraved inside the band. A name he had heard only once before, in a cellar beneath a butcher's shop, from a scarred man who kept a ledger of bones.

The name was Hedwig.

He turned to Dietmar, and his voice was very cold. "We are not going south. We are going back to Vienna."

"But the boy—"

"The boy is not my son." Konrad's hand closed around the ring. "He is my brother. And the woman who told me otherwise is the one who has been playing us all."

He mounted his horse and turned its head north, toward the city of merchants and wolves. Toward the river that remembered. Toward the truth that had been buried beneath an ash tree, waiting for the snows to melt.

Behind him, the fire died, and the darkness closed in.

And in the cold water of the Danube, something stirred—a serpent, or a shadow, or a memory—coiling beneath the ice, waiting for the spring.