That’s all we are—animals who are better at telling the future, better at understanding causality in the past. We see how things got how they are, or guess at it, and use that information to make better choices for the future. Not good choices, just better ones than the other animals.

He thought of how he made traps of string and sticks and realized: Brains and fingers, that’s what we have.

But then he felt the mattress under him, and the light sheet over him, and thought: Brains and fingers have wrought marvels in these worlds.

They woke and dressed in their tunics and strapped on their walking sandals and made small packs out of the other things Ram Odin had bought—a pot, a ladle, a spoon, two blankets, needles and thread, rope and string, some cheese, some crusty bread, a bit of dried meat—of which rodent Rigg didn’t bother to ask. They hitched the packs onto their shoulders. They weren’t that heavy, but Rigg could tell right away that he would hate the way the pot bounced against his back when he walked. But he also knew that in time he’d get used to it. Or find a way to repack so that the pot didn’t shift so much with each step.

From the flyer it was a two-hour walk to get to a road. Ram Odin called it a road. He called it the King’s Highway, in fact, but it was barely a track.

“Ah, but you can see it clearly, and it goes from the Wall in the northwest to the Wall in the southeast. We’re a hundred kilometers from the northwest Wall, so it’s only a track here. Farther on, it’s wide enough for two coaches to pass. In two cities, it’s paved and four carriages wide.”

They walked along the track till, coming over a rise no different from the past few rises, they saw a cluster of houses and wide, well-cultivated fields. A few of the houses were rather substantial, with two stories; one had three. From the crest of the rise, they could see that there was another, larger village in the shimmering distance. They were in a wide valley now, and a river twisted its way through the level ground. Rigg saw no boats on it.

“No point in boats here,” said Ram Odin. “There are falls not far behind us, and falls again after the lake a few dozen ­kilometers on. They’re not much for fish.”

“Humans need fish.”

“They grow the substitute vegetables,” said Ram Odin. “And by the way, let’s start speaking this language.” He switched to the one they had heard on the streets of the town the day before.

“They speak that here?” asked Rigg, in that language.