Lillian sat on the most comfortable bed she had ever felt. Her room in the bunker fortress was a far stretch from the room she shared with her many sisters, back at the farm house.
She had been escorted here alone, a couple of taccy guards stood outside her door, she was both a guest and a prisoner. She did not know where her family was. She probably hoped they were okay, she couldn't tell.
It wasn't long before the door creaked open and in entered her lord Knight. She didn't know his name, she had never been further than ten miles from her village, so she didn't know much - outside of farm work and the medicine that her grandmother had shown her.
"What's your name girl?" He asked stiffly. He looked like a man used to giving orders and not asking questions.
"Lillian, sire."
"I'm Sir August, you may address me as such. You told me that you didn't know how you called all the drones to you, back on the wagon. My Warlord confirmed that you were telling the truth."
He pulled up a chair and sat in front of her. He crossed his arms, there was a knot of skin between his eyes and his beard was sharp, he looked tense.
"Word has already gotten out about happened. The Bastard Son is coming."
Even Lillian knew of the Bastard Son. An illegitimate child of the Emperor, a Boogeyman used to frighten children into eating their greens and going to bed on time. The Bastard Son was the one that took the serfs that showed signs of a curse.
Lillian looked at Sir August with her cold still eyes. She should probably pretend to be scared now, to show some sort of human emotion, but at this point why bother.
The look threw sir August off. He had expected tears, and wailing and fear, so he could come to the rescue with a plan to save her. He wasn't expecting her to show no reaction at all.
"You have heard of him, yes?" he asked, perplexed.
"Yes. He takes away serfs that show signs of the curse - "
"Gift." He interrupted.
"-...gift, and nobody ever sees them again. Nobody knows what happens to them, but with all the adopted noble babies showing signs of the gift. There are rumors."
"You don't seem afraid." He stated.
"I never am." She replied.
The knight was lost for words. It took him a moment to pull his thoughts back together. Lillian often has this effect on people.
"Well I have a proposal, My eldest son is unmarried. Should you be married to noble blood the Bastard Son won't be able to take you, and of course you would have to swear loyalty to me."
The cogs turned in Lillian's mind. "You have ambitions."
"Yes." He said.
"Ambitions enough to go against the emperor?" She asked.
Again the knight was thrown, this was a farm girl, a serf. She should be a blubbering mess of tears and snot. Begging at his rig straps for him to save her from a fate worse than death. She shouldn't be asking him pointed political questions.
He stood up in a flustered huff. "Look serf, my ambitions are mine and mine alone. You don't have a choice here, you will marry my eldest and you will serve under my command. Not only because I command it, but because the Bastard Son will take you if you don't."
"I accept, Sire" The words were to placate the man, she had found firmly agreeing with older people, especially men, to be the quickest way to calm them. She even tried her best to change her expression slightly, making a small crease in her brow, hopefully that would help.
The Knight takes in the state of Lillian. "I will call a maid. Get you cleaned up. Once you are done we will get you out of those peasants' rags. Dress you in something more suited to your new station." With that he swept out of her room.
Lillian didn't have long with her thoughts before two middle aged women burst into her room dragging a bath tub and started heating water over the hearth. Lillian, having grown up in a big family, knew where this was going and let it happen, with her normal cold indifference.
The maids, stripped her from blood-caked clothing and bundled her into the tin bath, taking special care of the wound on her leg - which had already been cleaned and wrapped with a poultice. She was then scrubbed within an inch of her life. For a Serf she washed more than most, it didn't help to be dirty when helping her grandmother with medicine, but that didn't stop the water running black with filth.
Once she was finally clean and wrapped in a robe, made from a material with sheen that she had never seen before, she was sat down on a small wooden stall and one of the maids viciously attacked her hair with a pair of scissors.
Once the maid seemed satisfied she was presented with a mirror. Outside of the reflection in puddles and streams Lillian had never really seen herself before, especially not truly clean with her hair properly cut and braided. She was tall and strikingly beautiful. Long black hair and icy blue eyes. Her skin was paler than the average serf, as she had mostly avoided field work, but she still had the lean body of someone used to manual labor and not always enough food. The maids seemed happy and they guided her out of the room and down a torchlit stone corridor.
She did notice the two guards stare at her as they walked past, a response that she hadn't gotten before the makeover. Great she thought, now I'm going to have to deal with this again.
The guards fell in behind her and the maids, as they guided her through a network of stone corridors that criss-crossed the bunker fortress. Eventually leading her to a cavernous building where Sir August's Warlord resides. She felt its sensors sweep over her as she entered, it seemed curious about her.
She was taken over to a large machine in the corner of the room and was told to wait.
Sir August eventually arrived, ignored her, and climbed into his Warlord. Shortly after he did, the machine in front of her fired into life. It scanned over her, a deep probing scan, much more thorough than the scan the Warlord had given her before. And then the machine fired into life.
That seemed to be the whole affair, Sir August quickly left, chatting with a number of taccies, and the maids guided her back to her room. Saying she should get some rest, as it normally took a number of hours for the machine, which they called a printer, to finish whatever it was doing.
Left alone in the dark yet comfortable bedroom, she lay down and closed her eyes. It never took long for sleep to find her.