BE THERE FOR MIRIAM

Having withstood the ravages of storms and earthquakes for more than three hundred years, the lighthouse comforted me as I trailed behind the bearers, ducking under porticoes and behind colonnades, scuttling from monument to monument, and otherwise wedging myself behind statuary and topiary. Inasmuch as it would be hours before the

city gates would re-open for the peddlers from the countryside to trek in with their goods, the streets were still. The only sounds were the chirr of insects, the occasional voice of a distant ship, and the beat of the bearers’ boots against the pavement. Constellations must have salted the sky, but all I remember once we left the torch-lined Canopic Way was a flawless darkness relieved by only a veiled moon, the shaft of light from each bearer’s hand lamp, and the glow from the lighthouse.

But what happens to Miriam when her target branches off the main grid into a knot of narrow, tenement-fringed lanes punctuated by shuttered shops and boarded-up street stalls? Just a click or two on THE DEADLIEST LIE and you can be there to guide her through the fungoid stench and the swarm of skeletal cats on the prowl for a water rat.