Chapter 17：A Busy Night

"Idiotic..."

Sicilia sighed as she returned the borrowed musket back to the guard before she proceeded to reload her own musket pistol. To say that she was irritated tonight would be an understatement. For the third time tonight, she was forced to intervene and clean up the mess that the city guard made.

She made sure to glare at the guards as they haphazardly left the cottage before trying to appear impressive before her. [Idiots... all of them... All of them are idiots.] How they could consistently fail to complete their given task, Sicilia did not know. She just knew that they were all idiots.

She knew the city guard of many cities was largely incompetent, but the fact that even the Dunnwal's largest city was not exempt from this still made her somewhat disappointed.

The grand city which was named after it's founder, "Maximinus" could be considered the capital city of the Dunnwal family. Situated near Redstone Ridge and Crystalwater River, the city was built atop it's exports of rare earth metals.

The Redstone Ridge which lay to the north of Maximinus was connected to the city and many other outlying settlements by the Crystalwater river. This meant that all materials mined from Redstone Ridge could easily be exported through the Crystalwater river.

As such, the river was the bread and butter of trade within the city.

However, the uses of the river wasn't limited to only trade.

It had many other uses as well.

Like deposing of dead bodies for example.

"Throw them into the river like the rest."

"As you wish."

Sicilia carelessly threw a pouch full of threans to the guard captain for him to split among the guards before she left for her carriage along with her personal knight. Wether the captain actually split them properly among himself and his men, she did not care.

She was just glad that at least for now she would no longer have to work with these incompetent idiots. As she crossed Robert's name off her mental list of 'undesirables,' she remembered the utter idiocy that the guard displayed.

She remembered how the guards insisted that she waited outside while they 'handled it'. [Absolute idiots... if they thought with what's inside their head instead of what's in-between their legs then I wouldn't have such a splitting headache!]

If anything, the only thing they were actually good for was carrying preloaded muskets. At least she didn't have to worry about missing her mark when there was always a guaranteed preloaded firearm lying around.

It could be said that instead of using muskets to execute her target, she could have instead simply slit their throat but Sicilia had a pretty good reason why she chose the former.

It was simply because out of the two options, using a musket was far less messy.

There was no need to clean up any blood on her blade because there was no blade. Although it could still be said that she was unnecessarily wasting bullets and making inconspicuous sounds at the middle of night but these were no real problems to her either.

For the former, she justified it with the fact that she's a noble. Why should she care about wasting bullets? As for the latter, loud gunshots often occurred during the middle of the night as another poor soul got mugged. More often than not, people would rather pretend that they never heard anything at night.

Soon enough, Sicilia found herself out of the small alleyways and back on one of the major streets. The floor that used to be a mix of dirt and grass was replaced with finely cut cobblestone.

Across the street, a jet-black carriage with dark purple outlines stood waiting for her. On the door of the carriage was the famous Dunnwal insignia. A silver snake that was eating itself.

Sicilia admired the insignia as her personal knight opened the door before she entered the carriage. As the carriage spun into motion, she suddenly found herself in deep thought about the Dunnwal insignia.

Unlike the bloated, self-aggrandising insignia's of the other major Drussian families, Sicilia found that the Dunnwal symbol was much more profound. It was just a silver snake that formed a circle as it swallowed its own tail into its mouth.

Unlike, the boastful show of power and force which is seen in the symbolism of other noble insignias the Dunnwal insignia was much more insightful. The silver snake eating itself represented one thing and one thing only.

It represented the way of life.

Or at least, one ideology about life.

It was the ideology that in order to gain strength and grow, one must also be willing to sacrifice a part of oneself. Wether it be love, money or even honour, there is always something to give up in the name of greater power.

The silver snake is the embodiment of that ideology. In a metaphorical way, the snake can be said to be immortal, forever eating itself as it continued to grow in length. Ever dying yet at the same time ever growing.

The silver snake takes the idea of sacrificing oneself for more gains and takes it to the utmost extreme.

It was this notion that filled Sicilia full of expectations.

Expectations of what Maxwell's plans will achieve... and what he would sacrifice to achieve it.

It has been nearly a month since that meeting in the gardens and Sicilia has not yet dared to forget a moment of it.

Maxwell has already signed the death warrant of not only the rival family informants within Elgon but also the death warrant of the entire Drussian coalition force. By choosing to interfere with a part of their supply lines as well as allowing the army to face the Panish by themselves, the coalition could be facing complete and utter annihilation.

In fact, Maxwell admitted himself that he was counting on the destruction of the coalition army. When Sicilia asked him why, he simply replied with 'I'll save the truth as a surprise for later.'

From that point on, she knew that she made a big mistake in not paying attention to her little brother.

She just couldn't figure out what was going on inside his head. Sometimes, she feels that his mental age is actually similar to that of her own father! But that must be her own delusions... After all, how could someone who was only 18 years old have a mental age of at least 40?

However, the more she thought about it, the more unsure Sicila became.

When she turned to gaze out the window, she found that she was already out of the city and on the highway back to the Dunnwal manor. Although, the Dunnwals owned a castle within Maximinus, most of the Dunnwals preferred to stay at the Dunnwal manor.

The reason why?

It was because the Dunnwals prefer to have a certain amount of mystery about them. Apart from the knowledge that they had silver hair and violet eyes, not many of their own subjects knew about their exact appearances.

It was only really her Father and Cromwell who liked to stay in the city and socialise. It was mostly other nobles who received the privilege of personally seeing the silver hair and purple eyes of a Dunnwal.

The carriage hit a bump as the outline of the Dunnwal manor came into Sicilia's view.

"You seem more happy than usual ma'am."

Sicilia wordlessly answered her personal knight with a nod before she moved her hands to her mouth. She discovered that during the entire carriage trip, she had a wide grin on her face. [Damn... How many times has this happened recently?]

As Sicilia pondered about her incessant grinning the carriage slowed down to a stop.

Her personal knight once again opened the carriage door as he welcomed her out. Soon she was walking on the white marble pavement of the Dunnwal manor's courtyard.

Accompanied by her personal knight, Sicilia made her way to the parlour. Sicilia would have loved to retire to her chambers and sleep, especially since she had spent nearly a month at Maximinus rooting out rival informants.

But there was one last thing that she had to do.

Before she slept, she had to visit the manor's parlour at Maxwell's request. He stressed that she find him there if she arrived home during the dead of night.

When Sicilia finally arrived at the parlour, she saw a group of people spread out amongst the furniture. From their faces she could tell that they were nobles belonging to the vassal houses under the Dunnwal family. However, something was off about them.

All of them wore a strange set of clothing that she never saw before.

They wore dark purple noble coats with white outlines and epaulettes on their shoulders. On the left side of their chest was a metal emblem of the Dunnwal snake while on their right side was a set of overlapping silver triangles that differed in number for each person. Each person's collar also had a set of smaller silver triangles which shared the same number as the set of triangles on their chest.

Even the one female noble in the room who would have typically wore a dress instead wore the outfit. If Sicilia had to describe it, their clothes were elegant yet simple. Where practicality took precedence over style.

She then realised where their attention was directed at, a massive piece of paper, possibly two meters wide and one meter tall which had multiple diagrams which Sicilia couldn't understand inscribed into it.

They composed of multiple black circles which formed up into groups to make many different shapes. Some groups of circles made large square blocks while others made long rectangles.

Next to the massive paper was a standing man who had somewhat messy silver hair and wore a similar uniform to everyone else in the room. The only noticeable difference was that his triangles on both his chest and collar had a golden outline while the triangle at the front was gold entirely.

The man's purple eyes moved to meet Sicilia's before he spoke up.

"And look who just arrived on time."

When the people in the room heard what he said, they all simultaneously turned to gaze at Sicilia.

Before Sicilia even had time to be confused by what was going on, Maxwell gave the vassal nobles an order.

"To prove to me what you have learned, why don't you fine gentlemen..."

He paused for a short moment to glance at the only female before he continued. If Sicilia's eyes didn't betray her, she saw a slight blush appear on the female.

"And gentlewoman spare some time to 'educate' my lovely older sister about the new form of warfare."