In Pursuit of Justice

Listen to the story of a retired gladiator on the run:

I entered The Lizard’s Tail, a dive most likely named for the mean-faced reptile that struck my bare ankle with its spiny-spiked tail. The darkness had only begun to press on the windowpanes, so it wasn’t yet busy. Still the voices were boisterous, and the talk was virile. The row of wall-mounted oil lamps threw my shadows past shelves crammed with amphorae, crockery, and glassware and into the tang of boiled cabbage and smoked fish. With the eyes of the few roustabouts boring into me, I felt edgy, like I had to keep looking over my shoulder.

There in the gloom, mounted on the rear wall, I found some faded nautical maps, their brittle edges curling, and next to them, a crude sketch of each vessel with its latest sailing schedule. Grabbing a candle from a back table and crouching under the cobwebbed eaves, I saw the first departure for Rome would be on the Soteria. What could be better than a ship named for the goddess of safety and deliverance?

But as I elbowed through the throng, I felt something. Was it the sigh of a breeze that happened to find the dampness at the nape of my neck or the chilly breath of some goon committed to arresting me?

From “The Dagger” in The Deadliest Deceptions, a collection of Miriam bat Isaac’s perilous adventures in pursuit of justice. To find out more, click here.