Chapter 87: The Salt of the Third Stone

The brother stood in the shallows on the far bank, the water curling around his boots like something reluctant to let him go. He wore a grey cloak, travel-stained, and his face—Konrad’s face—was thinner than it had been at the monastery, as if the winter had been feeding on him.

“You crossed quickly,” the brother said. “I thought you would wait for light.”

“I have waited long enough.” Konrad’s hand rested on his father’s sword. The ford was cold and the horses stood with their heads down, blowing steam. “You said we could begin. Begin, then.”

The brother smiled with Konrad’s mouth. It was an unsettling thing, like watching oneself in a darkened glass. “Not here. The priest of the third stone keeps a fire and a door that locks. He has been expecting one of us for a week.”

“One of us.”

“He does not know which.” The brother turned and began to walk upstream along the bank, and Konrad, after a moment, urged his horse out of the ford and followed. The Viennese boy, Peter, rode behind with the ledgers wrapped in oilcloth, saying nothing. He had learned silence in a merchant’s house; it sat on him like a coat too large.

They went perhaps a mile along the river, past willows with their feet in the water and a mill whose wheel was frozen in its race. The monastery at the water’s edge had been a place of bells and shadows; this was smaller, meaner—a chapel of fieldstone with a single tower, and beside it a priest’s house with smoke coming from the chimney. A stone stood at the path’s turning, the third from the ford, carved with a cross so worn it might have been a scratch.

The priest who opened the door was old and bent, his hands red with cold, and he looked at the two of them—at the two faces—without any surprise at all. That, more than anything, told Konrad what he needed to know. The old man had seen such things before, or had been told to expect them.

“Come in,” he said. “Both of you. The fire is small but the walls are thick.”

Inside there was a table, a bench, a crucifix, and a chest with iron bands. The priest bolted the door, then poured water into a pot and set it over the fire. He did not ask their names. He looked at Peter, and his eyes narrowed.

“The boy has his father’s look,” the priest said. “Sit, child. You are among friends, or among the only people left who remember.”

Konrad set his hand flat on the table. “You know who I am.”

“I know who your father was. That is the same thing, in this house.” The priest sat down heavily. “I was chaplain to the garrison at Stein when your father came through in the spring of sixty-eight. He had a wound in his side and a letter he would not let out of his hand. He stayed three days. On the fourth, men came.”

The brother, who had taken the bench across from Konrad, said nothing. His hands lay still on his knees. Konrad understood, with a coldness that had nothing to do with the river, that the brother had heard this before, or had not—that he could not tell which.

“What men?” Konrad asked.

“Riders with no badges. Their captain did the talking. He wore a ring with a wolf’s head.” The priest looked at Konrad’s hand, where Hedwig’s ring sat on his finger. “Like that one.”

“And my father?”

“He gave me the letter and told me to keep it until the river remembered. Those were his words. I thought he was raving from the wound.” The priest rose and went to the chest. He drew a key from a cord around his neck and unlocked it, and from beneath folded altar linens he took a packet wrapped in waxed cloth. “I have kept it twenty-six years. I have been afraid of it every day.”

Konrad’s hands were not steady as he took it. The wax was old and cracked. Inside was a single sheet, folded twice, the ink brown with age. He did not read it yet. He laid it on the table and looked at the brother.

“You knew of this.”

“I knew a priest kept something. I did not know it was here until the priest of the third stone sent word at Martinmas.” The brother’s voice was even. “I have been following the same river you have, Konrad. Only I have been walking it the other way.”

“Then tell me plainly. Who are you?”

The brother was silent for a long moment. The fire cracked. Peter sat very still, the ledgers on his knees.

“I am the son your father had before the marriage,” the brother said at last. “The one the family hid. I was given to the monastery at Melk, and then to the east, and then to the emperor’s service in Sicily, and then to no one at all. I have worn many names. The one I was born with is the one you bear.”

Konrad stared at him. The old priest had gone to the window and stood with his back to them, as if to give them privacy he could not truly give.

“You are my brother.”

“I am your brother.” The other man’s jaw worked. “And I have been Ottokar’s man these five years, because Ottokar is the only lord who ever paid to keep me alive. You should know that before you trust anything I say.”

“Then why warn me at the monastery?”

“Because you are my blood, and because I am tired.” The brother—Konrad’s brother—looked down at his hands. “The king of Bohemia holds a copy of the confessor’s book. He will use it when it suits him. But he does not hold this letter, and he does not hold the ledger of bones, and he does not hold the boy. Those are three teeth left in the wolf’s mouth. I would rather they be yours than his.”

Konrad unfolded the letter.

The hand was his father’s—he knew it from the charters, from the marginal notes in the family register. It was short. It named Konrad, born of the second wife, as the true heir of Eppenstein and of all that the Habsburg name had stolen; it named Rudolf as the author of the murder at Stein; it named a witness, a notary of Vienna, who had since died; and it ended with a sentence Konrad read three times before the words would hold still.

*What the crown forgets, the ash tree remembers. What the river takes, it keeps until the debt is paid.*

He looked up. The brother was watching him.

“There is a fourth tooth,” the brother said quietly. “You have not asked about the girl at Tulln.”

“Agnes.”

“Agnes. She is not at Tulln any longer. Two days ago riders came from Prague and took her east.” The brother’s face was grey in the firelight. “Ottokar has your daughter, Konrad. And he has sent word that the bargain you refused at his table is still open—but only until the thaw.”

The priest turned from the window. Snow had begun again outside, fine and steady, erasing the path to the ford.

Konrad folded the letter and put it inside his tunic, against his heart, where his father’s sword had lain. He stood.

“Then we ride east,” he said. “Both of us.”

The brother rose. For the first time his smile was not Konrad’s smile, but something older and sadder, a thing that had been broken and mended wrong.

“The river remembers,” he said. “Let us hope it remembers kindly.”