white teeth, an imitation of an Aleran smile. Granted, no Aleran would ever look quite so... unabashedly carnivorous.
Tavi shook his head, still running down possibilities on the game board. "I've been playing ludus with you for almost two years, sir. I thought I had your tactics down fairly well."
"Some," Varg agreed. "You learn quickly."
"I'm not so sure," Tavi said in a dry tone. "What is it I'm supposed to be learning?"
"My mind," Varg said.
"Why?"
"Know your enemy. Know yourself. Only then may you seize victory."
Tavi tilted his head at Varg and arched an eyebrow without speaking.
The Cane showed more teeth. "Is it not obvious? We are at war, Aleran," he said, without any particular rancor beyond his own unsettling inflections. He rolled a paw-hand at the ludus board. "For now the war is polite. But it is not simply a game. We match ourselves against one another. Study one another."
Tavi glanced up and frowned at the Cane. "So that we'll know how to kill one another come the day," he said.
Varg let his silence speak of his agreement.
Tavi liked Varg, in his own way. The former Ambassador had been consistently honest, at least when dealing with Tavi, and the Cane held to an obscure but rigid sense of honor. Since their first meeting, Varg had treated Tavi with an amused respect. In his matches with Varg, Tavi had assumed that getting to know one another would eventually lead to some kind of friendship.
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.
Varg restored the table to its game positioning, flicking his tail in emphasis with his words. "It is the same principle as when your Legions face our raiding parties. Their discipline mitigates their physical weakness. No amount of rage can match discipline. Unwisely employed aggression is more dangerous to oneself than any enemy, cub."
Tavi frowned at the board and grunted.
"Concede?" Varg asked.
"Game isn't over yet," Tavi said. He couldn't see how to defeat Varg's positioning, but if he pressed on, he might find an opportunity, or Varg might make some kind of mistake Tavi could capitalize upon. He pushed a Knight to Varg's Steadholder, taking the piece and beginning the vicious exchange.
After a dozen moves, Tavi did not find a way to beat the Cane. His defeat looked inevitable, and he grimaced and lifted a hand to knock his First Lord onto its side in capitulation.
Someone pounded on the door to the cell-really, Tavi thought, it was more like a Spartan apartment than a prison, a large suite that included a bed large enough to suit even the Cane as well as a sitting area and a reading area-and a guard opened the wooden door outside the prison suite. "Excuse me young man. A courier from the Citadel