Chapter 78: THE WOLF'S WIDOW'S DAUGHTER

The ash tree stood at the far edge of the widow's orchard, its branches bare as bones against the February sky. Konrad had ridden through the night from the stone cross, through snow that turned to sleet and then to a cold, needling rain, and now he stood beneath the tree with the letter from the Bishop of Olomouc burning against his chest and the words of the woman in the wall still echoing in his skull.

*He is your son.*

He had not slept. He had not eaten. He had only ridden, because movement was the only thing that kept the thought from swallowing him whole.

The house beyond the orchard was low and long, its thatched roof sagging under the weight of winter. Smoke curled from a single chimney, thin and gray, and a dog barked once from somewhere behind the stable. Konrad's hand found the hilt of his father's sword—the sword he had taken from the library, the sword that had been hidden for six years—and he forced himself to let go. He was not here to kill. Not yet.

He was here to understand.

The door opened before he could knock. A woman stood in the threshold, wrapped in a cloak the color of wet slate, her hair the same dark brown as the bark of the ash tree behind him. She was not old—forty, perhaps, with lines at the corners of her eyes that spoke of grief rather than years—but she carried herself like someone who had long ago stopped expecting mercy from the world.

"You are Konrad," she said. It was not a question.

"And you are the wolf's widow."

"I am Agnes von Kuenring," she said. "And I have been waiting for you since the day your father died."

She stepped aside, and Konrad entered the house of his father's mistress.

---

The room was small and warm, the fire in the hearth burning low and red. A loom stood in one corner, half-finished cloth stretched across it, and on the table lay a ledger, its pages yellowed with age. Agnes moved to the fire and added a log, her movements precise and unhurried, as though she had rehearsed this moment a hundred times in her mind.

"You know why I have come," Konrad said.

"I know what you have been told." She turned to face him, and her eyes—dark, steady, the eyes of a woman who had buried more than one secret—met his without flinching. "You have been told that the boy in Vienna carries your father's eyes. You have been told that he is your son."

"Is it true?"

Agnes was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled. The rain tapped against the shutters like fingers asking to be let in.

"No," she said at last. "It is not true."

Konrad felt something loosen in his chest—relief, or something like it—but it lasted only a breath. "Then why would she say it?"

"Because she wanted to hurt you." Agnes crossed to the table and picked up the ledger, her fingers tracing the spine as though it were a relic. "Because she wanted you to doubt everything you know. Because she is afraid of what you will become."

"Who is she?"

"Hedwig von Eppenstein. Your father's sister. Your aunt." Agnes set the ledger down again and looked at him with something that might have been pity. "She has been playing her own game for years, Konrad. She told you the truth about your father's murder—yes, Rudolf ordered it, and yes, the letter naming you as heir exists—but she did not tell you everything. She never does."

Konrad's hand went to the ring in his tunic, the ring Hedwig had given him in Prague. "What did she not tell me?"

"That the boy in Vienna is not your son." Agnes paused. "He is your brother."

The words landed like stones in still water. Konrad stared at her, the firelight flickering across her face, and for a moment he could not speak.

"My father had another son?"

"Your father had many sons." Agnes's voice was quiet, but there was steel beneath it. "You were not the only child he left behind. You were simply the one Rudolf knew about. The one Rudolf feared."

"The one Rudolf murdered him for."

"Yes."

Konrad turned away, his hands clenched at his sides. The rain had grown heavier, drumming against the roof, and somewhere in the distance a wolf howled—a long, lonely sound that seemed to come from the very bones of the earth. He thought of his father, the man he had barely known, the man whose sword he now carried. He thought of the boy in Vienna, sleeping beneath a blanket of merchants' wool, carrying eyes that were not Konrad's but his father's. A brother. A brother he had never known.

"Why did you not tell me sooner?" he asked, his voice rough.

"Because I did not know if you would survive long enough to need the truth." Agnes moved to stand beside him, close enough that he could smell the woodsmoke in her hair. "I have watched you from a distance, Konrad. I have heard the stories—the poison, the charters, the blood on your hands. You are your father's son. But you are also Rudolf's creature. And I did not know which would win."

"And now?"

"Now I see a man who rode through the night to find the truth." She reached out and touched his arm, her fingers light against the damp wool of his cloak. "Now I see a man who might be worth saving."

Konrad looked at her. "You said you had been waiting for me since the day my father died. Why?"

Agnes withdrew her hand and walked to the loom, where the half-finished cloth hung like a shroud. She touched the threads—red and gold, the colors of the Habsburgs—and when she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Because your father left something with me. Something Rudolf has been searching for since the night he died. Something that could change everything."

She turned, and in her eyes Konrad saw the same fire he had seen in Hedwig's—the fire of a woman who had been waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

"The letter naming you as heir is not the only document that survived that night," Agnes said. "There is another. A charter, signed by the electors themselves, that names your father as the true King of the Romans—and names you as his successor."

Konrad's blood turned to ice. "That is impossible. Rudolf was elected."

"Rudolf was elected after your father was murdered." Agnes's voice was flat. "The charter was signed in secret, three months before. The electors who signed it are dead now—all but one. And that one has been hiding in a monastery for six years, waiting for the right moment to speak."

"Who?"

Agnes smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Brother Anselm."

The name hit Konrad like a blow to the chest. Anselm. His confessor. The man who had recorded his sins, who had heard his confessions, who had been with him in Prague and Vienna and every dark corner of his life. Anselm, who had always seemed so meek, so harmless, so utterly beneath suspicion.

"Anselm is the last elector?"

"Anselm is the last elector," Agnes confirmed. "And he has been waiting for you to come to him. Waiting for you to be ready."

Konrad thought of the confessor's knot, the ledger of bones, the way Anselm had always seemed to know more than he should. He thought of the words Hedwig had spoken in Prague: *The river remembers.* And he understood, finally, what the river remembered.

It remembered the truth.

"Where is he?" Konrad asked.

"At the monastery of Melk, on the Danube." Agnes crossed to the table and picked up a sealed letter, pressing it into his hand. "This will get you inside. But you must go quickly. Ottokar knows about the charter—he has known for months. He will send men to silence Anselm before you can reach him."

Konrad tucked the letter into his tunic, beside the ring and the scroll and the weight of everything he carried. He looked at Agnes one last time, at the woman who had been his father's mistress and his brother's mother, and he saw in her face the same thing he saw in his own when he looked in a mirror.

The willingness to do what must be done.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't thank me yet." Agnes opened the door, and the cold air rushed in, bringing with it the smell of wet earth and the distant howl of the wolf. "The road to Melk is long, and the river is rising. And if you fail—if Ottokar reaches Anselm first—then everything your father died for will be lost."

Konrad stepped out into the rain. Behind him, the wolf howled again, closer now, and he thought of the boy in Vienna, his brother, sleeping beneath a blanket of wool. He thought of the charter, hidden in a monastery on the Danube, waiting to be found. He thought of Anselm, the last elector, the keeper of the truth.

And he mounted his horse and turned east, toward the river, toward the monastery, toward the truth that waited in the dark.

Behind him, the ash tree stood silent, its roots deep in the frozen earth. And beneath it, something stirred—something that had been buried for six long years, waiting for the snows to melt.

The wolf was no longer waiting. The wolf was hunting.