Triangular ears stood erect and forward, focused on the ludus board. His broad tail flicked back and forth in restless thought, and he narrowed scarlet-and-golden eyes. The Cane smelled like nothing else Tavi had ever encountered, musky, musty, dark, and something like metal and rust, though the Cane’s armor and weaponry had been locked away for two years.

Varg hunched down on his haunches across the board from Tavi, disdaining a chair. Even so, the Cane’s eyes were a foot above the young man’s. They sat together in a plainly appointed chamber in the Grey Tower, the impregnable, inescapable prison of Alera Imperia.

Tavi permitted himself a small smile. Almost impregnable. Not quite inescapable.

As always, the thoughts of the events of Wintersend two years past filled Tavi with a familiar surge of pride, humiliation, and sadness. Even after all that time, his dreams were sometimes visited with howling monsters and streams of blood.

He forced his thoughts away from painful regrets. “What’s so funny?” he asked the Cane.

“You,” Varg said, without looking up from the Indus board. His voice was a slow, low thing, the words chewed and mangled oddly by the Cane’s mouth and fangs. “Aggressive.”

“That’s how to win,” Tavi said.

Varg reached out a heavy paw-hand and pushed a white High Lord figure forward with a long, sharp claw. The move countered Tavi’s most recent move to the skyboard. “There is more to victory than ferocity.”

Tavi pushed a legionare figure forward, and judged that he could shortly open his assault. “How so?”

“It must be tempered with discipline. Ferocity is useless unless employed in the proper place…” Varg reached up and swept a Steadholder figure from the skyboard, taking the legionare. Then he settled back from the board and folded his paw-hands. “… and the proper time.”