Chapter 73: THE ASH TREE'S ROOTS

The ash tree stood at the edge of the frozen pond like a sentinel that had forgotten what it guarded. Konrad had seen it before—in the tapestry, in Hedwig's warnings, in the fragments of dreams that came to him in the cold hours before dawn. But he had never stood beneath its branches, never pressed his palm against the rough bark and felt the age of it, the way it seemed to breathe even in winter's grip.

"You came alone."

Tobias emerged from behind the trunk, his scarred face half-hidden by a hood of undyed wool. The ledger of bones was tucked under his arm, its leather cover cracked and stained.

"You said to come at dawn," Konrad replied. "I came."

"The woman in grey—she followed you?"

Konrad shook his head. "She vanished after our last meeting. I have not seen her since."

Tobias grunted, unconvinced. He gestured toward the pond, where the ice had begun to thin at the edges, dark water showing through like the eyes of something waking. "The thaw comes early this year. The river will rise by week's end. If you want what's buried here, we have little time."

Konrad followed him onto the ice. It groaned beneath their boots, a sound like distant thunder, but held. In the center of the pond, where the winter wind had swept the snow clear, Tobias stopped and pointed downward.

"Beneath us," he said. "Six feet of water in summer, but in winter, when the ice is thick, it is only three. The box was placed here in the year of our Lord twelve hundred and sixty-eight. I was there. I helped lower it."

"Who else?"

"Two men. Both dead now. One by the sword, one by the flux." Tobias's mouth twisted. "I am the last."

He knelt and drew a small iron pry from his belt, striking the ice in a careful circle. The sound echoed across the frozen pond, sharp and lonely. Konrad watched the cracks spread, watched the dark water well up through them.

"What is in the box?"

"Letters. A seal. A lock of hair." Tobias paused, his breath misting. "And a ring—not the one you carry. Another. Your father's own, given to him by his mother, who was a Přemyslid before she was a Habsburg bride. It bears the wolf and the lion both, intertwined."

Konrad's hand moved to his chest, where Hedwig's ring hung beneath his tunic. "Why did Rudolf not destroy it?"

"Because he did not know it existed. Your father was clever, Sir Konrad. Cleverer than his brother. He hid what he valued most where Rudolf would never think to look—not in a castle, not in a church, but here, beneath the ice, where the river remembers."

The pry broke through, and water gushed up over the ice, black and cold. Tobias reached into the hole, his arm disappearing to the shoulder, and after a long moment, he pulled out a small iron chest, rusted but intact.

Konrad knelt beside him as Tobias worked the lock with a thin blade. The chest opened with a sigh of escaping air, and there, wrapped in oiled cloth, lay the truth of his father's death.

Letters, bound with cord. A seal of red wax, unbroken. And a ring—gold, heavy, set with a stone the color of old blood.

Konrad lifted it into the grey light. The wolf and the lion coiled together, their bodies forming a circle, their eyes meeting in the center. It was his father's ring. He knew it without being told, knew it the way he knew the shape of his own hands.

"There is more," Tobias said.

He unfolded a letter, the ink faded but legible. Konrad read it twice before the words found their meaning.

*To my son, Konrad, if he lives to read this—*

*Your uncle Rudolf believes me dead by accident, by fever, by the will of God. He is wrong. I write this in the hour before he sends his men, knowing what they will do. I do not run, because running would condemn you. I stay, because staying buys your life.*

*But I have made arrangements. The boy in Vienna—your brother, though you do not know him—is hidden with a family of merchants. His name is Heinrich. He carries my eyes and your mother's stubbornness. When the time comes, you will find him. You will protect him.*

*The ring I leave you is not a trinket. It is a claim. Your grandmother was Přemyslid, and through her, you carry blood that Ottokar cannot ignore. Use it wisely, or not at all. But know this: the Habsburgs are not your only family. The river remembers what the crown forgets.*

*Your father, who loved you,* *Albrecht*

Konrad read it a third time, the words burning into him like frost into stone. His father had known. Had known Rudolf would kill him, had known Konrad would survive, had known there was another son—another brother—hidden in Vienna.

Heinrich. The boy in the nursery. The one Ottokar had spoken of.

"He is real," Konrad whispered.

"He is real," Tobias confirmed. "And he is in danger. Ottokar knows of him. Rudolf knows of him. The only question is who will reach him first."

Konrad stood, the ring cold against his palm. The ice beneath his feet creaked, the river pressing upward, hungry for the thaw.

"Where is he now?"

"With the widow of a wool merchant, in the Jewish quarter. She has kept him hidden for six years. But the walls have ears, Sir Konrad. And the Bohemian king has many friends in Vienna."

Konrad looked north, toward the city that waited beyond the frozen fields. Vienna. The city of merchants and wolves. The city where his brother slept beneath a blanket of wool, carrying their father's eyes.

"I will go," he said.

"And the woman in grey?"

Konrad thought of Hedwig's warning, of Margarethe's opacity, of the note that had told him to ask what she did in Vienna last autumn. He thought of Kunigunde's finger to her lips, of Eliska's open door, of all the threads that had been woven around him while he thought himself the weaver.

"She will find me," he said. "She always does."

Tobias nodded, gathering the chest and its contents. "Then you will need this."

He pressed something into Konrad's hand—a small iron key, black with age.

"What is it?"

"The door to the merchant's house. The widow knows you will come. She has been waiting since the day your father died."

Konrad closed his fingers around the key. It was cold, colder than the air, colder than the ice beneath his feet. But it was also a beginning.

He turned and walked off the pond, leaving Tobias to rebury the chest beneath the ice. Behind him, the ash tree stood silent, its roots reaching down into the dark water, remembering what the crown had tried to forget.

And in Vienna, a boy with his father's eyes woke in a narrow bed, listening to the sound of horses in the street, and wondered if today was the day the wolf would come.

The river was pulling faster now. And beneath the ice, the serpent stirred, coiling toward the spring.