16
MIKANDRA HAD no idea how long she’d been sitting there when a group of about twenty people came walking up the street. They were loud, yelling and laughing, pushing and jostling each other. One of the shop attendants started pulling baskets of clothes underneath the awning of the shop.
Because they might steal or ruin their stock? Because they meant trouble?
Mikandra rose and slipped into the safely-lit area outside the shops, where tables and baskets displayed wares for sale by the light of hundreds of glow bulbs strung up in the trees. She went into a fabric stall and feigned interest in the wares to let the group pass.
“Can I assist the lady?” The shop’s owner had come up to her. He was quite rotund and dressed in a robe of similar colourful design as the fabrics in the stall. Da
