Desert Rising by Kelley Grant Page B

stake here, so keep your eyes open. Beware of a man named Severin. Need to meet soon. Can’t fit everything on this silly sack.
    Love and misses,
    You know who
    Sulis smiled to herself, wishing she had him here so she could throttle him for his childish trick on the road. She smiled even more when she realized that Ashraf had found her family, imagining the scene that must have played out with her uncles welcoming the rich businessman and Kadar and Ashraf suspiciously sniffing around each other, like roosters in an unfamiliar coop.
    She frowned suddenly, rereading the first sentence. Pink and red? Although she knew Ivanha’s acolytes were watching her, she hadn’t noticed any of Voras’s acolytes following her—­but Kadar would have had a better view than she did. What did Voras want of her? And who was Severin?
    â€œWhat is that?” a voice startled her, and she quickly hid the letter in the folds of her robe. Jonas stared at her accusingly, with Lasha looking on behind him.
    Sulis thought for a moment and decided to tell the truth. “A letter from my brother,” she admitted.
    He frowned. “We aren’t supposed to communicate with our families,” he told her.
    Lasha rolled her eyes and punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t be such a stuffed shirt, Jonas. We all do it.” She pushed past him and sat beside Sulis. She giggled. “My mom has my sisters bring me cinnamon cake sometimes though it’s half-­gone before my sisters find me.”
    â€œI’ll bet Alannah doesn’t communicate with her family,” Jonas protested, settling himself at their feet.
    â€œAlannah needs to lighten up,” Lasha said with a sigh. “And her parents are just as stuffy as she is, so they’d never break the rule.”
    â€œHave you known her long?” Sulis asked.
    â€œJust all our lives. Her family’s first-­circle, like mine.” At Sulis’s baffled look, she explained further. “It’s an Illian thing. The first circle has the big houses that are closest to the Temple. Usually, the richest or most important families live there. From there the roads circle out until the merchant district. The farther away you are from the Temple, the less important your family is. Circle children tend to play with those of their ranking, and Alannah was closest to me in age, so we grew up practically living at each other’s houses.”
    Sulis nodded, drinking this in. No doubt the hierarchy of Illian and how to navigate it was the same sort of thing Kadar was learning at the merchant hall from their uncle. No merchant could be successful without understanding who was in control and how the money flowed in a city.
    â€œWhat circle are you?” she asked Jonas, who looked startled, then laughed.
    â€œI’m not from Illian. My family lives by the coast, in Yamin. My father is a scribe and had a few too many sons, so he sent me to the great Temple to see if it could use a scribe. To his great surprise, I was paired.”
    â€œThat would make him about a second-­ or third-­circle here,” Lasha added, “although it is considered impolite to ask.”
    Sulis smiled. “Only because all of you already know each other. If I don’t ask, no one will ever tell me because the ranking of families here is something even your smallest child knows from birth.”
    Jonas looked thoughtful. “I suppose that’s true. What of desert clans? Do they have any ranking?”
    Sulis could sense that this was important to the other two and chose her words carefully. “I would say no, we are above that—­but it would not be true. Wealth is as powerful in the desert as anywhere in the world because larger communities like Shpeth have to buy much of our food. Some families are honored more than others for our ability to commerce with Northerners, to bring back what the community needs for survival.” She looked