"Were you close?" asked Shadow.
     "Close?" discout ugg boots asked Czernobog. "No. How could we be? We cared about such different things."
     There was a clatter from the end of the hall, and Zorya Vechemyaya came in. "Supper in one hour," she said. Then she went out.
     Czernobog sighed. "She thinks she is a good cook," he said. "She was brought up, there were servants to cook. Now, there are no servants. There is nothing."
     "Not nothing," said Wednesday. "Never nothing."
     "You," said Czernobog. "I ugg boots for women shall not listen to you." He turned to Shadow. "Do you play checkers?" he asked.
     "Yes," said Shadow.
     "Good. You shall play checkers with me," he said, taking a wooden box of pieces from the mantelpiece and shaking them out onto the table. "I shall play black."
     Wednesday touched Shadow's arm. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said.
     "Not a problem. I want to," said Shadow. Wednesday shrugged, ugg boots discount outlet and picked up an old copy of Reader's Digest from a small pile of yellowing magazines on the windowsill.
     Czernobog's brown fingers finished arranging the pieces on the squares, and the game began.
     In the days that were to come, Shadow often found himself remembering that game. Some nights he dreamed of it. His flat, round pieces were the color of old, dirty wood, nominally white. Czernobog's were a ugg discount dull, faded black. Shadow was the first to move. In his dreams, there was no conversation as they played, just the loud click as the pieces were put down, or the hiss of wood against wood as they were slid from square to adjoining square.
     For the first half dozen moves each of the men slipped pieces out onto the board, into the center, leaving the back rows discount uggs for women untouched. There were pauses between the moves, long, chesslike pauses, while each man watched, and thought.
     Shadow had played checkers in prison: it passed the time. He had played chess, too, but he was not temperamentally suited to planning ahead. He preferred picking the perfect move for the moment. You could win in checkers like that, sometimes.