Phillis did keep it short, which made Ty more suspicious than grateful.
The knights came first. The board pressed their shape into his hand: broken angles, sudden reach, a path no straight line could block. When fed, they left danger behind them and arrived with enough force to punish anything standing too close.
Ty looked at the two crouched pieces on his back row. Their mounts were not horses, not really. They had the lean shape of animals built from black bone and heat, but their hooves did not strike the board. They hovered a finger above it, waiting for permission to make the rules bend.
"They do not move like soldiers who trust roads."
"They move like problems that refuse straight answers," Phillis answered.
"That is the first useful thing you have said."
"You asked for short, not gentle or comforting."
The rooks came next. Ty did not need much explanation there. They felt like locked doors with fists. Straight lines. Heavy defense. A coin would make them anchor the pieces around them or slam pressure into a wide lane, but the cost felt slow and stubborn.
Useful later. Not first. The pawns finished the set, smaller than everything behind them, but the board did not treat them as weak. It showed Ty rows of shields, short blades, bodies meant to move together. A paid pawn could hit harder beside another pawn, burn itself out when trapped, and make a square expensive to occupy.
Ty looked at his front line differently after that.
Eight small pieces. Eight chances to make Aldric answer before the expensive pieces started bleeding.
"That is enough for the first move today."
"You have not reviewed every branch available yet."
"Nobody survives by reading every branch while a blade is moving."
Phillis paused for half a breath. "Acceptable. Commands must be clear enough for the board to obey. Unclear orders waste time."
"The board sounds like most officers I have met."
"Most officers are less precise and more expensive."
Across the board, Aldric finished his own briefing and straightened as if he had been waiting for Ty to notice. He had recovered most of his color. Not all of it. The spike had taken something out of him too, and pride was working hard to cover the gap.
"Have you finished communing with your charming little war table?"
"It has better manners than you under pressure."
"Then I envy the table’s expensive education more than yours."
A coin rose between their platforms, lifting from the seam at the center of the board, half black, half white, spinning slowly enough that both faces flashed in turn.
Phillis spoke in Ty’s ear. "Opening initiative requires a call from one king."
Aldric folded his arms. "He entered the room first, if the board cares about such things."
"The board cares about many useless things before killing people," Ty said.
"Call it before it decides you hesitated now."
Ty watched the coin spin until the room felt impatient.
"I choose heads, since the room wants drama."
The coin snapped upward. It struck nothing, turned once above the board, and dropped flat on the center seam with the head showing.
Phillis answered first. "Correct. You move first and have eighty seconds."
Aldric clicked his tongue. "Naturally. The demon gets first blood offered to him."
"You can complain to the coin after I move."
The timer changed from the first allocation count to a new one. Eighty seconds, red and clean.
Ty looked down at his pieces and forced himself not to grab the nearest coin.
That was the bait. Power first, thinking second. The board had offered him the shape of every paid piece and made each one feel like an answer. Aldric probably felt the same pull on his side.
A coin spent early could win tempo. A coin spent early could also tell Aldric exactly where Ty wanted to be brave.
Ty kept his hand away from the coins.
"Basic movement only for the first command today," he said.
Phillis answered in his head. "Name the piece and destination clearly enough for obedience."
Ty looked at the front line. The pawn before his king stood with its shield low and dagger held back. It did not know fear. That made it useful and stupid in equal measure.
"Pawn on E2, move forward to E4 now."
The board accepted the command, and the black pawn stepped out. It did not glide. It marched, one heavy foot after the other, while the square beneath it warmed and then cooled. The move opened a lane behind it, narrow but real. Ty felt the bishop behind the pawn adjust, as if seeing the board for the first time.
No coin spent, no blood drawn, and no pain came back through the table.
Aldric studied the move like Ty had placed a letter on the table.
"Simple opening from a complicated man today, from here."
"Complicated men still use doors when available sometimes."
"You opened one. That does not mean you know what is coming through."
Aldric lifted one of his white coins, and Ty watched his fingers. The noble did not rush. He wanted the room to see that he understood cost and still chose it. The coin rolled across his knuckles once before he pressed it into the chest of the pawn at D7.
The white pawn changed. Armor folded out from its shoulders in plates of pale blue. A short spear formed in one hand. The shield on its other arm widened until it covered half its body. The piece’s head lifted, and for the first time Ty felt something on the far side look back.
Phillis supplied the name without making it a lecture.
Blueblood Guard, paid pawn, defensive burst, group threat, dangerous if allowed to stand beside friends.
Ty’s palm tightened around the table edge as the information settled.
Aldric smiled like he had felt that reaction arrive.
"Blueblood Guard on D7, advance two squares to D5 and hold the center."
The white pawn marched to D5. It came forward with discipline Ty disliked immediately. Two squares, no wasted motion. When it stopped, blue light snapped across its shield and then sank into the metal. The square around it cooled. The black pawn on E4 stood one diagonal away, close enough to kill and close enough to be killed.
Ty felt the board offer him the obvious answer.
Take it, break the paid pawn, make Aldric pay for spending first. That was why the move bothered him.
Aldric had not spent a coin because he forgot pawns could be captured. He had spent it because he wanted Ty thinking about the capture more than the board behind it.
"He wants you to take that piece too badly," Tui-Lan said from the side.
His voice was thin, but it carried across the side of the board.
Aldric did not look away from Ty. "Your hazard has become talkative for a ruined man."
"My hazard still has eyes and a working mouth."
Tui-Lan leaned his head back against the wall. "That pawn is bait. The question is whether the bait still has a hook if you know it is bait."
Ty looked at the board until the bait stopped feeling simple.
The Blueblood Guard threatened space by existing. If Ty ignored it, Aldric owned the center with a paid piece and would build around it. If Ty took it, he might pull pain back through Aldric, maybe strip the coin, maybe open himself to a knight or queen line he had not seen yet.
He had seventy seconds, then sixty, and the timer kept taking pieces of the choice.
Phillis spoke at his ear. "No direct hazard detected on the attacking pawn’s current square."
"That is a careful answer from a board voice."
"The board rewards careful questions from living kings."
"I asked no question out loud just then."
"You were about to ask the correct one."
Ty almost smiled and decided against giving Aldric the satisfaction of reading it wrong.
He looked at the white back row. Aldric’s knights had angles after the pawn moved. His queen had room later, not now. The bishops were still boxed. The paid pawn was not safe because the rest of Aldric’s plan was dangerous. Those were different things.
Sometimes the right move still had teeth, and sometimes that was the point.
Ty touched the black pawn’s square with two fingers.
The piece turned its head a fraction, waiting for the corrected order.
It felt wrong, giving an order to something built to die. Then Ty remembered what the board had shown him. Pawns made the board honest by standing where stronger pieces did not want to pay the price.
"Pawn on E4, advance to E5 and engage the Blueblood Guard."
Phillis corrected him at once. "Capture from E4 to D5 is the legal attack."
Ty held his breath through the correction, because the mistake would have made him look worse if the room had mocked him.
Aldric’s eyebrows lifted, and Ty hated giving him even that much.
Ty adjusted without looking away from the board.
"Pawn on E4, capture D5 and engage the Blueblood Guard."
The black pawn moved, crossing the diagonal with a suddenness that made the square behind it feel abandoned. Fire woke along its daggers, not bright, not decorative, just hot enough to make the air bend near its hands. The Blueblood Guard lifted its shield and set its spear.
Aldric’s smile did not break, which worried Ty more than fear would have.
"So you do understand appetite after all, when hungry."
"I understand paid bait still bleeds when cut."
The two pawns met at the edge of the D5 square. The board drew a thin line of heat around them, sealing the fight into a small field before either piece struck.
Ty felt the hook through his palm. No coin in his pawn. Less control. Less pain if it failed. Less certainty if it won.
The Infernal Footsoldier lowered its shield and lunged toward the Blueblood Guard.