Chapter 56: [56] When the Princess Gives an Order
The deck of the Crimson Sparrow had transformed into a frozen tableau of confusion and violence. Smoke drifted across the harbor from whatever catastrophe had just torn through Orellia’s town square.
Pierre’s hands trembled slightly as he gripped his rusty pipe. The enhanced endurance that had kept him standing through Gideon’s brutal assault was dissolving, leaving behind the familiar ache of genuine exhaustion. His ribs throbbed where the giant’s backfist had connected, and his left shoulder felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through the joint.
The pirates in the longboat below were shouting over each other, their voices carrying across the water in a cacophony of confusion. Some pointed toward the burning town square, others gestured wildly at their motionless leader. The careful order of Moreau’s operation had shattered. It was the kind of chaos Pierre knew intimately from his past life: the precise moment a perfect plan smashes into brutal reality.
"Boss!" one of the pirates called up from the longboat. "Boss, what’s the play here?"
Gideon’s weathered face twisted into a grimace as he cradled his injured wrist against his chest. The man’s dark eyes swept between Pierre and the spreading destruction on shore, clearly torn between completing his original mission and responding to whatever emergency was consuming Orellia’s merchant district.
"I don’t know," Gideon rumbled. "Orders were to bring them to the captain. But if the captain’s dealing with—"
A small, fast boat detached itself from the chaos of the docks like a minnow fleeing a shark. The single occupant—a wiry man in the green bandana of Moreau’s crew—rowed with the kind of desperate energy that suggested his life depended on reaching them quickly.
Pierre watched the approaching messenger and felt his tactical mind spinning through possibilities. New orders. Has to be. Whatever just exploded in that square changed Moreau’s entire game.
Alyssa emerged from behind the rigging where she’d been taking cover, her blonde hair disheveled and a thin line of blood marking her left cheek where a splinter from Gideon’s axe had grazed her skin.
But her pale green eyes held something Pierre had never seen before—not the entitled arrogance of Captain Hardy’s daughter, not the desperate vulnerability of a girl fleeing her father’s tyranny. This was something harder, sharper. Something that reminded him uncomfortably of looking in a mirror.