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.

"Captain’s orders!" the messenger shouted as his boat bumped against the Sparrow’s hull. His voice cracked with urgency, the words tumbling over each other in his haste to deliver them. "The situation has changed! Secure the ship and await her signal! Do not engage the red-head further!"

Gideon’s massive shoulders sagged in what looked like profound relief. "You heard him, boys. Stand down. We wait."

The giant turned his attention back to Pierre, and for a moment the two men simply studied each other. Gideon’s dark eyes held a grudging respect that hadn’t been there before their fight began.

"You fight better than I expected for someone carrying a rusty pipe," Gideon said, flexing his broken wrist and wincing at the movement. "Moreau’s going to want to meet you even more now."

Pierre leaned against the ship’s mast, using it to support his weight. The immediate threat to his life had been officially suspended, which should have felt like a victory. Instead, it left him with a different kind of problem.

We could run. Cut the anchor, raise the sails, and be gone before Moreau sorts out whatever mess is happening on shore. Raven’s smart enough to find her own way out of this.

But even as the thought formed, Pierre knew it was wrong. Not tactically wrong—though abandoning their navigator three days into their first real voyage together was strategically questionable at best. It was wrong on a deeper level, the kind of wrongness that came from his growing understanding of what it meant to be responsible for other people.

Whatever trap Moreau had set, Raven was caught in it because she’d honored her commitment to the crew of the Crimson Sparrow.

The crew of the Crimson Sparrow.

"That woman is our navigator."

Pierre turned to stare at her, and what he saw made him reassess everything he thought he knew about Hardy’s daughter. Alyssa stood with her spine straight as a sword blade, her chin raised and her pale green eyes fixed on Gideon with the kind of unwavering focus that Pierre had seen in his previous life’s cage fighters right before they decided to either win or die trying.

The blood on her cheek caught the amber light from shore. The torn silk of her blouse fluttered in the harbor breeze, but she seemed completely unaware of her disheveled appearance. Her attention was focused entirely on making her position clear.

"She is a member of this crew," Alyssa continued, her voice carrying across the deck and down to the pirates in the longboat below. "We are not leaving her behind."

Gideon raised an eyebrow at this declaration, his weathered face creasing into what might have been amusement. "Crew loyalty. Interesting. Moreau’s going to find that very interesting indeed."

"You’re right," Pierre said. "We don’t abandon crew."

The messenger in the small boat looked between them with obvious confusion. "Captain Moreau said to secure the ship. She didn’t say anything about—"

"Then we’re secured," Pierre interrupted, settling more comfortably against the mast. "We’ll wait right here for your captain’s signal. All of us."

Gideon nodded slowly, his dark eyes moving between Pierre and Alyssa as if reassessing the threat they represented. "Fair enough. We wait."

The giant moved to the ship’s railing and began issuing quiet orders to his men in the longboat below. Half of them would remain alongside the Sparrow while the he and the others returned to shore to help deal with whatever emergency was consuming Orellia’s merchant district.

"So what now?" Alyssa asked, settling beside him against the mast. Her voice had returned to its normal register, but something fundamental had changed. She no longer sounded like someone seeking permission or approval. She sounded like someone who expected her opinions to matter.

"Now we wait," Pierre said, touching the sea-blue stone at his throat. "And we plan."

"Plan for what?"

Pierre looked across the harbor toward the smoke-shrouded town where explosions still echoed through the amber-tinted air. Somewhere in that chaos, Raven was either fighting for her life or negotiating for it. Either way, she was doing it alone, surrounded by people who saw her as a commodity to be acquired rather than a person to be respected.

"Plan for getting our navigator back," he said, and was surprised by how much he meant it. "And plan for making Moreau regret thinking she could use our crew as leverage."

Alyssa’s pale green eyes glittered. "I like that plan."