Stenwold pressed his lips together, locking away his automatic reaction to the very name. The fact that Broiler had always been his vocal political opponent was something Stenwold could live with: such free debate was after all the cornerstone of Collegium governance. However, he had his own suspicions about precisely who had bought the man's loyalties.

'What is Broiler doing now?'

'Courting public support, as usual, by pandering to the latest fashion.' Drillen reached into his robes and came out with a smudgily printed volume whose title proudly proclaimed Master Helmess Broiler, His Atlas of the Known World and His Account of His Travels Therein.

'The shameless fraud,' growled Stenwold, the historian in him genuinely shocked.

'Quite,' Drillen agreed. 'He's taken every damn map he could copy from the library, put them all together in no particular order, even the ones that are obviously made-up or wrong, and called it "The World". And he's written about his incredible adventures, this man who would get lost just walking from his house to the marketplace. I swear that Helleron appears in three different places in his so-called "Known World", and on at least one of the maps he's got the sea and the land the wrong way round. And you know what?'

'People are reading it?' Stenwold said.

'People are lapping it up,' lamented Drillen. 'They think Broiler's the best thing since the revolution. Stenwold, it's time for Lots soon enough, meaning all change at the Assembly. We have to do something before then.'

'We?'

'I have to do something,' Drillen corrected, 'and, unless you want to see Broiler as the new Speaker, so do you.'

'Where do I come into this, then?' Stenwold asked, thinking again about the Vekken and his final words. I am fighting for our future and my footing is being eroded like sand shifted by the sea.