“I walked back to the rock. I still had my sack of metal. I couldn’t let go of it—maybe they could use it for something else, I don’t know. I was not in good shape, I can tell you. I was so dehydrated I couldn’t even cry. It was pretty much of a mad scene, like Ophelia in Hamlet. Except, you know, a lot drier.

“And then I was back in the city, and they were taking care of me, helping me to a table where there was all this food and drink. They were having a party. The whole tribe was there. Everybody was smiling. The Smelter hadn’t come, but somehow it was all right. I’d failed, but that was just the way of things. The desert was eternal, and I had fought it and done my best and lost and that was all I could do. Everybody sat there smiling at me and after a while I was smiling too.

“The Foremost asked me to come up to where he was, at the head of the table, in front of everybody. He told me to kneel, and he took the sack of metal from me and held it up.

“You are an outsider, he said. But you came to us, and you bowed before the desert, and you combed through its sands with your fingers.

“Dramatic pause.

“You thought the desert would grant you its treasures. The treasures of our people. You thought it would give up our secrets. Our metal. Our strength. You thought you would take our desert from us, and rule over us.

“Here is what the desert has given you: a bag of worthless sand.

“And he poured my sack out onto the floor.

“You will never find our metal. The desert guards its secrets. It shares them only with its sons and daughters. You may take this sand back to your High King of Fillory and tell him that I let you live. Tell him that he may send us more whores if he chooses, this one was adequate.”

Janet rode in silence for a minute. Her back was to Eliot. He didn’t know if she was composing herself at the memory or just lost in thought. He saw her touch her face once, that was all.

“Janet,” he said.

“The Foremost got a good laugh out of that last one, believe me.” Her voice was unchanged. “He knew his audience. All that black sand was in front of me on the floor in a little pile. It had seemed a lot bigger out in the desert. I still couldn’t believe it wasn’t metal. I almost died for it.