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drop my hammer as a phalanx of thirty Bugis explode into the clearing, bare-chested, oiled skin gleaming in the moonlight, weapons raised. A spear runs through my mechanical left leg, anchoring it to the ground, and then hands are on me, restraining my movement, forcefully removing me from my now non-functioning artificial legs. Iron manacles are clapped around my wrists, although I am unsure of their use, for without my legs how would I escape? I shriek at the night, at this continued injustice, at the unfairness of the world, and Dzurina is gone, is missing, what have they done with her, what have they done with my wife?
    Into view walks a middle-aged white man in full Royal Navy regalia, his uniform spotless, proudly displaying a number of medals, fat with the spoils of Empire, depilated, smiling a cruel smile, his eyes wrinkling at the sides. The man exudes authority, a casual aura of power that I abruptly yearn to snuff out. He leers above me, gazing down with satisfaction at my capture. Behind him stands an entire platoon of Her Majesty’s soldiers, rifles at the ready.
    “Henry Keppel,” I say through gritted teeth.
    “You presume correctly, young man. Lieutenant!” he barks to the officer behind him. “Please be so kind as to place Mister Davenport under arrest. Let him feel the result of crossing swords with the greatest Empire on this Earth!”
    ~
    The charges are read by an officer in a monotone, as if reciting the weather: miscegenation, trade in illegal goods, consorting with pirates, use of thaumaturgic enhancements, treason. The punishment: death by hanging.
    The Bugis, smart and ruthless and canny, operate now under a treaty with the British, who employ them as privateers to further “civilize” their claim on the East Indies. I rail and froth at this development, raving to anyone who will hear about the attacks on the fleet of Commodore Kennedy, but none will listen. I yell until my throat goes hoarse, but my only audience is the bevy of cockroaches that also occupy my prison cell. In the eyes of the Crown, it matters not what justification I had for my crimes. The law is the law, and any who oppose it are a menace, rabid dogs to be put down for the common good.
    Word arrives that our home has been ransacked, razed, and then burned to the ground. Everything we worked for is gone, obliterated. No news has come of Dzurina. I do hope my beloved did not suffer much before she was killed.
    ~
    It is almost over, I can feel it. My life slipping away, my identity evaporating into the mists, my thoughts and memories annihilated, my very soul returning to the wellspring from which it—
    ~
    In the hours before death, I sit quietly in my stone cell, attempting to take some pleasure from the cool breeze that enters my one barred window, resigned to my fate at the hangman’s noose. It is still difficult for me to fathom how my life has come to this, from meek ship’s scrivener to enemy of the Crown. But had I do it again, I would change not a thing. A life not spent alive is not a life at all.
    At least my death will happen on a pleasant day, the heat subdued somewhat by the recent monsoon season, the sky a sparkling cerulean, the vocal birds a symphony of avian musicality. I hear the hangman is especially skilled, so that upon the trapdoor dropping, one’s neck is snapped and death is instant, rather than the humiliation and indignity of slow strangulation.
    A key turns, and the door of my cell opens. I expect guards with their rifles, ready to accompany me to my fate, but instead a Buddhist monk enters, head shaven and bowed to the floor, robes the deep color of freshly turned mud. His face obscured, I cannot tell if he is an acquaintance from the island, but he must be if he is visiting me in my final hour. The door closes behind him, and he sits down beside me on the simple wooden bench.
    “Here to give me last rites?”
    “No, lah,” he says, no, a she , a woman’s voice, and she looks me square in the