Varg disagreed.

For Tavi, it was a sobering thought for perhaps five seconds. Then it became bloody frightening. The Cane was what he was. A killer. If it served his honor and his purposes to rip Tavi’s throat out, he wouldn’t hesitate for an instant-but he was content to show polite tolerance until the time came for the open war to resume.

“I’ve seen skilled players do worse in their first few years in the game,” Varg rumbled. “You may one day be competent.”

Assuming, of course Varg and the Canim did not rip him to pieces. Tavi felt a sudden, uncomfortable urge to deflect the conversation. “How long have you been playing?”

Varg rose and paced across the room in the restless strides of any caged predator. “Six hundred years, as your breed reckons it. One hundred years as we count them.”

Tavi’s mouth fell open before he could shut it. “I didn’t know… that.”

Varg let out another chuckling growl.

Tavi pushed his mouth closed with one hand and fumbled for something relevant to say. His eyes went back to the ludus board, and he touched the square where Varg’s gambit had slipped by him. “Urn. How did you manage to set that up?”

“Discipline,” Varg said. “You left your pieces in irregular groups. Spread them out. It degrades their ability to support one another, compared to adjacent positioning on the board.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Varg started positioning pieces again, as they were at the confrontation, and Tavi could see what the Cane meant. His forces stood in neat rows, side by side. It looked awkward and crowded to Tavi, but the overlapping combat capabilities more than made up for the difficulty of arranging it, while his own pieces stood scattered everywhere, each move the result of seeking some single, specific advantage in order to dominate the board.