Read Online Desert Rising by Kelley Grant - Free Book Online

you are his mistress, so anyone who does believe it is not worth your time,” Ashraf assured her.
    â€œWhat do you mean, organizing the Forsaken?” Kadar asked. “I thought we were here to discuss a trade agreement.”
    Ashraf waved that away. “Yes, yes—­of course. We have excess silk, and you have excellent halls to sell them in. The benefits for all are so obvious that we need not discuss them. And our elders certainly will change everything we would agree on, so we don’t need to spend much time on details. Indeed, your aunt and uncles are probably drafting an agreement while we speak. The most important thing is the alliance between our two houses. I’m assuming that your uncles agree we need to stand together?”
    Kadar nodded. “They’ve told me so,” he said. The conversation was not going as he’d imagined earlier in the day. He’d thought they’d still be dancing around the question of whether the Nasirof house wanted to export with Hasifel, then they’d carefully feel each other out for larger things. Instead, Ashraf was alluding to alliances and movements.
    â€œGood,” Ashraf said, and exchanged a glance with Farrah. She nodded, and he continued. “Now, what I am going to say, your uncles might not approve of. And I would rather you not involve them at this point. If they are as smart as I think, they know a conflict is coming, but I don’t know how they will feel about what I am about to tell you.”
    â€œGo on,” Kadar said neutrally, curious.
    â€œI have been convinced for some time that we are in great danger from the Temple,” Ashraf said. “They have a large, well-­organized, well-­trained force of soldiers, and the Northern Territory’s population is greater than ours.”
    â€œRecently, the Temple’s been stealing halls and land from good, law-­abiding ­people and declaring them Forsaken,” Farrah said bitterly. “It purposefully sets a high tax we can’t meet and calls us heretics and criminals, so it can steal our lands and profits. Then it recruits our young men into its armies with promises of better treatment and regaining their honor.”
    â€œMy family believes the Temple needs money for a war; that’s why it is dispossessing so many landed merchants,” Ashraf said. “There’s only one place it could attack that would make it worth the expense and risk of the ­people’s rising up against what it is doing.”
    Kadar thought about it. “The Southern Territory,” he said.
    Ashraf nodded. “The desert is the one place over which the deities have no control, and the only way to get to the rain forests on the coast is through the desert. Those routes are controlled by merchants like your family. Just gaining control over our ­people and the riches of the South could give more power to the deities.”
    â€œWhy don’t ­people protest?” Kadar asked.
    â€œVoras and Ivanha are smart,” Farrah said. “We can’t meet without suspicion, we can’t own weapons, and we can’t travel and organize because they keep tabs on us. We want to be free again.” She slapped her hand on the table for emphasis. “We owned farms and halls and homes, and they’ve taken those away and thrown us in the gutter like trash. We want what they’ve stolen from us.”
    â€œI’ve convinced some of my clan that the Forsaken are the key to keeping the Temple out,” Ashraf said. “If we help them organize, and we use our wealth and resources to store weapons, they will fight for us.”
    Kadar picked his words carefully. “So you are getting the Forsaken together, arming them, finding homes for them. What then? And what do you need me for?”
    â€œWe will leave Illian, head to the desert,” Farrah said.
    Kadar gaped at her. “But there are thousands of Forsaken,” he