Clump, shuffle, tick… clump, shuffle, tick on the firmly laid pavers of the sand-and-brick walk between the freshly pruned flowering bougainvillea, as Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas made a torturous way forward. His right foot in a regular high-topped boot almost demanded firm ground before the ham-strung left leg in an iron-braced-and-bound boot swished limply ahead, with the bright brass ferrule of the stout walking-stick swung out ahead for balance, to ring against the stones.

Guillaume Choundas's right sleeve was pinned up high under his heavily gilt epaulette, folded so it displayed gold buttons and wide oak-leaf embroidery, near where a sergeant would show chevrons. It was a full-dress coat more suited to a junior admiral, but very few in the Caribbean (or Europe, either) would dare to question his right to wear it. More gilt oak-leaf showed on the high red collar, and on the thighs of his dark blue breeches, too.

A large and elaborate bicorne hat slashed fore-and-aft atop his head, raked aggressively low over his eyes; eight centimeters of gold edge lace, loop and button and tassels gilt as well, with a tricolore cockade on one side, and blue-white-red egret plumes nodding above the crease. Below the hat, though…

Capitaine Choundas's face was half-covered with a stiffened silk mask that disguised a cruel, deep-scarred ruin, the result of a ghastly wound suffered long ago, a sword cut that had slashed upwards to slice one eye and his brow in half almost vertically, shattered the eye socket, chopped off one nostril and X-ed both lips to a horror worthy of an Hieronymous Bosch painting of a demon. The mask had been expanded lately to cover the nose completely, but there was no concealing the split lips that had healed in a rictus of rage.