The Beetle-kinden city of Khanaphes, no less, just as some of our ancient-history fellows have been banging on about for ages. So now every scholar in that field is publishing his flights of utter fancy, saying that we came from there, that they came from here, all manner of lunacy. It makes you wish the Moths had been just a little more forthcoming with their menials, before the revolution. If there's one thing a man of the College hates it's feeling ignorant.'

'You are still a scholar at heart then?' Stenwold said. 'That amazes me. I happen to agree with you, but I'm surprised that a man of importance like yourself can still find time to concern himself with such abstruse academic matters.'

'There is more at stake here than scholarship,' Drillen said fiercely. 'You must be aware that people are looking at the world in a different way now, after the war. For me, I'd just as soon everyone went back to not really caring what lay east of Tark and north of Helleron, despite all the trouble that attitude has caused us, but it's too late now. Go into any taverna in the city and you'll hear scribes and guardsmen and manual labourers all talking about places like Maynes and the Commonweal and bloody Solarno, as though they were planning on going there tomorrow.' Drillen was becoming quite excited now. Stenwold sipped his wine and watched him with interest.

'And the romances!' the fat man continued. 'Have you any idea how many talentless clerks are writing "true" romances boasting of their supposed travels in distant lands? And still the printing houses can't get them to the booksellers fast enough to satisfy public demand. Everyone wants to read about foreigners, and I'll wager that not one of those people writing about them has so much as stepped outside Collegium's walls. It's all lies, but people are gobbling it whole. Foreign is fashionable. People are falling over themselves to be more misinformed than their neighbours about distant lands. And then there's Master Broiler.'