Irrakam was resplendent in the high summer months. The sun, unbearable even at its weakest burnt its presence into the tiles of Jya’s Keep and deep down into the bowls of the earth. Nobody, nothing, not at all escape its wrath.

“Do you think we could move the stall?”

Mordelain had been awake since before dawn. She had stood behind the three trestle tables laden with fine silks, golden jugs, etched, and be speckled with jewels and rare shells for five hours. Whilst the market was heaving, some stalls surrounded shoulder to shoulder, nobody was at hers.

Suresh had decided to take the prime spots surrounding the bazaar’s memorial fountain. The grand vizier and his guards, depicting a forgettable occurrence centuries ago that somebody deemed recordable stood watch. Their sandstone features worn and weary, the people at their feet did anything but remember.

“No.”

The merchant left no room for a follow up question. His tone put his daughter in her place, and she folded her arms across her chest in a huff.

“But-“

“No.”

Silence descended over them. One or two haggard women crept up to the stall, the weight of the sun bowing them until they could stand it no longer. They scuttled away again into the crowds, hoping to find shelter under an awning of a particularly large foreigner. Between olive skin mothers and reddened travellers plying their hard earned gold to the task of souvenirs, hulking orcs and Unbar (sand men), waded carefully through lesser beings.

“Why is it so busy today?”

Unbeknownst to Mordelain, it was this busy in the bazaars of Irrakam every day. Only sandstorms, rarely ever descending upon the city put a stop to trading. That, and the many hours in the day dedicated to prayer, napping, and eating. Soon, it would be eleven o’clock, the first of such long delays. Traders and shoppers alike would retire, leaving a ghost market in their wake until the high sun died proper, leading into the hazy, thick and humid afternoon lull.

“You have been working on this stall for three days, Mordelain. Is the summer sabbatical from university really so odious?” Suresh raised his unusually bushy eyebrow.
Though the il’Jhain very much loved her father, she had grown to hate his businesses. For two months of each year, Irrakam’s university took a long break from teaching. It became too hot, even in the cool interior of her classes, to put the eager students through their historical paces. There had been much talk in recent months, tenders by the plenty put to the Keep, about noria coolant systems and magical runes to allow education to prosper.

“I miss my students.”

She missed not having to stand in an inferno, but she would never risk an argument telling him so bluntly. Always Be Surreptitious was their family motto.

“Your bed, you mean,” Suresh chuckled.

He tended to the silks on the middle table, returning messed corners into neatly folded shapes that followed an archaic, but well thought out presentation plan. He turned jugs to face the right way and sprinkled scented dried flowers, spice balls (whose contents mystified the senses), and counted the changed in the leather pouch about his ample waistline.

“Fair point. I’ll get us some more water.” The youthful exuberance in her voice fell away.

She wore a simple black sari, tight leather sandals, and an array of sashes about her waist. Bangles, part-Tama, part Fallieni dangled around each of her wrists. Red hair, redder by grace of the suns’ withering powers trailed behind her, untied and unkempt. She longed to run away. She longed to slip into the void and dance amongst the Other Worlds. Instead, she picked up a silver jug resting on the side of the fountain.

“And pour it over your thick head,” she mumbled, leaning over the edge to begin filling two amphora for their stall. Legs dangled, a reach extended just an inch too far. The sound of the crowd overwhelmed as something started to happen in Irrakam. Something that would make summer seem like a blessing, not a curse.