As Miria fiddled with her wares and waited for the jinni to respond, she took a discrete glance around the market square. There was no one near the jinni, and no one nearby gave the impression that they were watching his movements. How strange it was for a jinni to be shopping for tapestries unsupervised! Wouldn't the owner need to be present to select just the right look? Couldn't the jinni make any of this himself or rely on the network of other jinn to make something for him? It didn't make sense.

That was when he mentioned mourning. Miria looked up at him then, feeling as though the air around her had suddenly dropped ten degrees. A memory flashed across her mind, of her family slaughtered. She remembered blood splattered everywhere -- on the walls, the furniture, the unfinished tapestries, the faces of her mother and father frozen in silent horror. [i]He[/i] had been there, crouched next to her father, stroking his hair, taken by sobbing. Burglars had come, he had said, and he tried to stop them, but too late...

Miria had cried with her jinni that day, the jinni she suddenly inherited, and believed his story for years. She had been young, inexperienced in the world, so her jinni had also become her crutch....

Miria's gaze hardened when this older jinni declined her gestures and looked steadily at her. Why was he here if not to buy one of her tapestries? This was all the more suspicious to her. "Is it your master you mourn for?" she snapped, and without giving him a chance to answer, she pressed on. "Have you a new master? Where is your master now? Perhaps you have--"

She caught herself just in time, literally biting her tongue until she could feel the metallic sweetness of blood in her mouth to keep herself from finishing her inquiry. She had almost accused this jinni of murder, and for what? For all she knew, he could be mourning the death of a relative or friend. This, however, didn't explain why he needed to buy one of her tapestries. Or perhaps his master was in mourning, which meant he must be by default. She was allowing her own circumstances to get the best of her again. 

Miria gave the jinni an apologetic smile and parted her lips to apologize, but movement over the jinni's shoulder caught her eye and stayed her speech. On the other side of the square, two guards were drifting about, stopping at each stall, observing the wares with disinterest, craning their necks as though looking for something specific... or someone. With them was a middle-aged woman, one of Fiira's neighbors. She was the nosy sort that liked to occupy her time with the affairs of others. She had been on holiday for several days, but she had come back early. Of course, Miria didn't know the woman at all to know these details, but she did note that the woman looked distraught, flinging comments to the guards, wringing the corners of her shawl with both hands, glancing about nervously. They weren't close enough to hear or to make out details of their faces, but Miria had been a part of this lifestyle long enough to know that something was amiss. It could be a number of things.