The journey to the Duke's estate, or rather palace, was five days on water and four more days on foot. It made sense why they would need a lot of maids.
Emilia was locked up and starved for sneaking on board till they reached land; she wasn't technically bought as a slave. This meant the great house of Duke was owing. A greater abomination. After hours of gruesome questioning on whether she was a secret spy or some crazy human. They concluded that she was just crazy.
"Has she confessed anything?" Emilia heard one of the guards say to another.
"She pretty much stares into the abyss all day." The other sighed, peering into the tiny storage closet she was kept in. Finally, after a week, the butler came to the closet again, crunching up his nose in disgust at the stench coming from her.
Emilia couldn't care less; it was far less of a scary reality than being married to Lord Goring against her will.
"I assume you have a name, or we would have to give you a Dacra one."
"Emilia." She whispered. "I am not a spy." She repeated, like she had been doing since the first day.
"Who sent you?" He asked again as he had since the first day, holding a cup of water in his hand. The message was clear: if she wanted to live any further, she would have to speak.
"I ran away from home." Emilia dropped her head in dejection as tears welled from her eyes. A half-truth.
"Why?"
"My father sold me to be married to an old man." another half-truth, hiding the fact that he was indebted to said old man.
Whether it be pity or boredom, the butler handed her the cup of water and waved to the guards.
"She is harmless." He said in Dacra.
"I will decide what to do with you when we reach land." He said to her and left. Hours rolled into days, and they finally reached land. Emilia feared her last days had come. But as the boat docked and they filed for another head count, Emilia heard the butler discussing with a man on the pier that one of the slaves bought was apparently a spy; she was caught and slit her own throat.
Now they were down one more maid. The butler, as if suddenly remembering, looked to Emilia and ordered her to be loosed. And they continued the rest of the journey to the Duke's palace on foot for another week.
Servants and slaves were not privileged to the carriages, so all the newly bought slaves walked while the duke's butler and guards rode on horses.
The Duke of Dacra was away on business, so Emilia never met him for the first month of working in the estate. Not much is known about him, except that he was widowed in the war six years ago and is a brother to the king.
She had heard whispers, though, of how he led the coup that destroyed the enemy to avenge his wife. How brutal he was in battle and how the sound of his voice made large men tremble.
Life in the estate was not as bad as people made it seem or thought; all she had to do was help with meals in the kitchen, clear the dining halls, and do the dishes. It was tedious, waking up as early as before the first crow and staying up till midnight, but years of taking care of her siblings and managing the farm made the work seem almost manageable. After meals, she was free to do whatever.
The estate had many rules that she had a hard time remembering, but remembering was one thing; keeping them was another.
Emilia seemed to attract a lot of trouble in the first two weeks, which earned her the bad side of the head palacemaid. Madam Phineas.
Not that she could help it, but the mansion was so big she got lost every time she left the kitchen. She made a few friends who were kind enough and helped with getting around after continuously getting yelled at.
After two weeks, she had gotten a hang of the palace, but keeping to rules was not something she intended on doing.
Emilia, since the day she found out the main house had an enormous library with books reaching the ceiling, decided to break the two most important rules, even if it meant losing her head.
'The main house is forbidden to slaves and kitchen girls.' 'The left wing of the castle is forbidden to everyone.'
Both places got cleaned once a week, the only time they were ever accessible. She covered a night cleaning shift for a friend, which happened to be at the library, and she never stopped going back. She would spend her afternoons with her nose buried in a book. It didn't take long before she developed a liking for writing herself.
After reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, she fell in love with writing about adventurous and forbidden love. She also had a lot of content around her. In a castle of over a hundred maids, cleaners, and cooks, romance stories were all they talked about.
The palace also had a rule against romance, but when love happens, who can stop it?. So if she was not reading about the seven seas and the stars, she would be found sitting by the private lake scribbling into her small journal.
Life could not be any better. She was privileged to a full meal a day, a bed to sleep in, water to bathe in, and books to read. Emilia wasn't particularly happy or joyful, but she was content knowing that her parents had one less mouth to feed. But she did miss her siblings greatly.
A month passed, and another and another. Her wild reputation increased; she got into more trouble with the head maid and other kitchen staff every other week and often received beatings for it. But who could take a farm girl?.
Emilia, although she lived a rough life, was still of noble descent. She could read, knit, and play the piano, a luxury most girls never had in their lives. They had been sold into slavery as babes. So naturally they hated her for it. The more they hated on her, the thicker her skin grew. She always fought back, like the wild farm girl that she was. Unbothered.