“But I didn’t finish the story before, about when I was at boarding school. You know what I did that day, when my father came for me? I fucking spat on him. I told him I would never go home again. I tore his expensive shirt. He slapped me and dragged me out to the car kicking and screaming.

“But I’m not eight anymore. I’m not a little girl. And the Foremost wasn’t half the man my father was.

“I whispered something to him. He had to lean down to hear me. I whispered: I don’t need your secrets, Foremost. But I’ll take your weapons. And I’ll take your desert too.

“Then I threw a handful of that fine black sand right in his eyes. And I got up off my knees. And I stopped whispering.

“And you can tell your god when you see him that I didn’t let you live. But I guess that’ll be kind of obvious.

“See, he’d made a big mistake. He thought when he sent me out there that he was going to crush me, but he was wrong. He made me stronger. The desert made me look at my own secrets, the ones I kept from myself, and I did. When I came back I didn’t have a weapon, I was a weapon.

“I can cast Woven Strength pretty quick when I have to. I was worn out from the ordeal, believe me, but nothing was going to stop me. Before he knew what was going on I punched the Foremost into the fucking wall. My hands were basically like stone. It felt good.

“For a minute everybody else just watched. I think they were thinking, OK, fair fight, let’s see if the Foremost can get out of this by himself. Don’t want to disrespect him by trying to help, sort of thing. By the time they changed their minds about that it was too late for him. And for them.

“Well, look, I was angry. I don’t think I commit a lot of gratuitous violence, but this was war, and he was a jerk, and I made a mess of him. I threw him through a couple of doors, and he cried like a fucking baby. You know what they used to write on cannons? The last argument of kings. I guess you could say magic is the last argument of queens.”