One for Each

The counter was piled high with glassware orders and partial payments. After sorting through them, Zhou Yao summoned a messenger guard to deliver the lists to the Nine Kilns.

"Milady..." a soft voice called from behind her.

She turned to find Qing'er standing there, looking utterly lost.

Zhou Yao recognized her—the maid whose sister had fallen ill when she first took over Golden Curtain Terrace. The last time they'd really spoken was on the fifth day of the terrace's opening.

"What's the matter? Is your sister sick again?" Zhou Yao asked, her gaze serious.

Qing'er shook her head. "My sister's illness is almost cured, but..." She twisted her hands, head bowed, as if unsure whether to continue.

Zhou Yao was puzzled, but no matter how she pressed, Qing'er only stammered incoherently. Golden Curtain Terrace had been flooded with business lately; there was still much to handle, and any more delay might mean the day's work wouldn't get done.

After a moment's thought, Zhou Yao said soothingly, "If you need money, go to Cui Wei directly. Have her record it in the accounts and take it from there."

With that, she hurried out, leaving Qing'er standing alone.

She didn't notice the palm-sized powder compact clutched in Qing'er's hand.

The Nine Kilns wasn't far from Golden Curtain Terrace—about two or three sticks of incense away on foot.

"Wait—don't put those unfired blanks directly into the kiln!" Chen Yuwen's exasperated voice rang out before she even stepped inside. "Who sent me these people? Not a lick of experience between them. I'm going to worry myself to death."

"Master seems dissatisfied with the hands I sent over," Zhou Yao said with a cheerful smile as she walked in, her demeanor bright as a spring breeze—a far cry from the first time she'd ever set foot in the Nine Kilns.

If you asked Chen Yuwen, he'd say it plainly: Zhou Yao had gotten money and gone rotten.

He crossed his arms and glared at her, his eyes as baleful as a vengeful ghost crawling up from the underworld. "You dare say that!" His voice dripped with gloom.

Chen Yuwen personally led Zhou Yao to see the workers she'd assigned over the past few days. One after another, they were clumsy and rough-handed; some of the clay that had taken ages to settle had been stirred up and ruined.

With so many people and so many distractions, he alone couldn't stop them in time. The materials he'd prepped were already falling behind, and now the production timeline would have to be extended even further.

Golden Curtain Terrace's orders grew by the day. A mountain of unfinished glass cups had piled up. Zhou Yao hadn't even started to panic, but Chen Yuwen was already on the verge of combustion, unable to sleep night after night.

"You've worked hard today, Master. Go home and rest—I'll take it from here," Zhou Yao said, fetching a silk cord from the room to tie back her sleeves. "I've set aside a share of the glass profits for you. It should be delivered this afternoon. Remember to count it."

"Whatever. I don't need it," he waved dismissively, utterly indifferent to money. "I'll leave the rest to you then. I'm going home to rest."

She let him go without protest, watching his retreating figure. Within moments, she had gathered all the Nine Kilns' servants and reassigned their duties.

"First row, go to the back mountain and quarry new porcelain clay. Bring it back. Second row, you're in charge of drying and crushing. Third row, you handle soaking and mixing the mud."

The special ingredients, Zhou Yao would handle herself—no one else could help with that.

"If you feel you can't do your assigned job, you can swap. Once you've swapped, get to work immediately," Zhou Yao said, watching them scramble into disarray. "If you're not careful enough with your hands but you've got strength, go to the third row. If you're not strong, go to the second row. If you can't do anything at all, go to the first row."

She decided to leave the simple steps to the death-contract servants. The harder steps—ones the ordinary servants couldn't learn in a short time—she'd handle with Chen Yuwen herself, since there weren't enough of them to go around.

Besides, these days Zhou Yao was practically running between two places. Unless she hired more hands, this was the best she could do. Watching them head to their posts, she felt a flicker of inner turmoil.

Rather than hiring outsiders, she'd rather do the work herself. Glassware had to be shaped bit by bit—there was no rushing it. Hurry, and you'd lose the beauty, and with it the value.

She'd given the customers an estimated time, true, but Zhou Yao had long since learned not to speak too absolutely. So she'd only promised delivery by mid-October. Crafting each piece one by one, they'd still make the deadline.

With everyone working in an orderly fashion, Zhou Yao picked one sharp-looking person from each group to serve as a team leader, responsible for managing the work and rest schedules.

She herself wasn't idle either. She cleaned up the mess they'd left behind. The half-fired glass still needed someone to watch the heat, so she hauled a folding cot over and sat at a moderate distance from the kiln.

Cui Wei had the day off today, leaving Zhou Yao without help. That made her think of Qing'er back at Golden Curtain Terrace—what had she been so hesitant to say that morning?

This batch of glassware wasn't actually difficult. The molded and carved pieces had been planned for later, once Golden Curtain Terrace was more established.

As time went on, Zhou Yao's glassmaking skills improved along with it. The backup materials produced by the three teams at the Nine Kilns piled up higher and higher, and just looking at them made her feel grounded.

She fetched wooden tags from the house, ground her ink, picked up her brush, and wrote the settling dates on each tag. Every jar that needed to settle got a tag tied to its mouth marking the date, and she arranged the jars by section in the shady areas.

The long, sweltering days passed one by one, and before long, this new batch of glass was fired to completion.

Zhou Yao had been eating and sleeping at the Nine Kilns, rarely visiting Golden Curtain Terrace. Only occasionally did she hear from Cui Wei that the beagle at Golden Curtain Terrace refused to sleep at night, whimpering wer~wer~wer~ without end. It kept so many of the servants up, and by morning they all shuffled around listless and exhausted.

"Milady, you absolutely must do something about this!" Cui Wei said, fixing Zhou Yao with a pitiful, pleading stare—a look of expectation Zhou Yao simply couldn't bear.

Guiltily, Zhou Yao averted her eyes...

She'd spent days without the beagle by her side, living the good life, and she'd nearly forgotten that dark, dark chapter of her past...

Ah, well. Ever since the beagle had come home, the quiet days had indeed grown scarcer.

So... she'd just have to ask everyone to bear with it a little longer~

But Zhou Yao had no intention of telling Cui Wei that directly.

She awkwardly kicked a pebble by her foot, watching it roll a short distance away. Under Cui Wei's gaze, she fidgeted with her hair bun, and when the staring became unbearable, she played dumb and scurried to the kiln to toss in a few pieces of firewood, pretending to be very busy—a flimsy attempt to brush off the one who'd been tormented by the beagle.

Cui Wei silently slapped a label on Zhou Yao: unreliable, but what could you do. She fought back tears and headed back to Golden Curtain Terrace to mind the shop.

And so, Zhou Yao opened the kiln.

This batch produced few usable pieces. Many of the glass cups were ruined by insufficient firing.

The glass she'd gotten before seemed to be pure luck. Why had everything worked out then, but suddenly gone wrong this time?

Zhou Yao brooded for days, until Chen Yuwen returned from his day off and finally solved the problem.

The kiln had originally been fired with plant ash repeatedly burned, filtered, and boiled down; plus ground oyster shells that had been calcined multiple times, mixed with water into a paste, dried, and turned into quicklime. Those two, combined with porcelain clay, produced a glass cup that imitated fine jade.

The problem Chen Yuwen identified wasn't the ratio or the kiln temperature—it was something far more critical and fatal.

It was sheer laziness. None of the processing steps were done properly. The steps Zhou Yao needed to fire ten or twenty times, the servants would do once or twice to save effort. There might be plant ash, but it nowhere near had its intended effect.

These were death-contract servants from Qi Manor. Usually, they were loyal and tight-lipped because the master provided their meals. But when it came to actual work ethic, Zhou Yao had to think—yes, this was where the problem lay.

She ordered everyone to thoroughly inspect all the prepared materials. Anyone who found a single substandard item in those batches would get twenty coins as a reward. In the blink of an eye, servants were scrambling to inspect.

The results were as expected: none of the previous batches had been made to specification.

This incident reminded Zhou Yao that death-contract servants had their merits, but nobody does work they don't benefit from. She sat on the folding cot and thought it through, then summoned Cui Wei from Golden Curtain Terrace to the Nine Kilns.

All the Nine Kilns' servants were gathered. Those who had cut corners were separated out, leaving only a handful still standing off to the side.

The Nine Kilns was in a period of need; mass replacement of staff wasn't an option. Zhou Yao had Cui Wei distribute the promised rewards first and, in front of everyone, gave the diligent workers an extra string of coins and seven days of leave, to make clear her policy of rewards and punishments.

"The work at the Nine Kilns is indeed exhausting," Zhou Yao said unhurriedly, walking over to the waist-high wooden chest used for storing coins. She reached in casually and pulled out a handful of strung copper coins, letting them dangle from her palm as she played with them. "If you don't want to work hard, you can head back to Qi Manor right now and find yourself something easy."

She tossed the coin strings back into the chest. In the blazing sun, the gleam of the copper flashed in everyone's eyes.

Zhou Yao feigned regret. "Too bad—those easy jobs back at the manor don't come with bonus pay."

"I don't need smooth-talkers, thieves, or scheming scum. Those willing to stay at the Nine Kilns and work steadily according to my requirements can earn at least—" Zhou Yao held up one finger.

Some servant whispered below, "A hundred coins? For this much work? This young master's not doing it. I'm heading back to Qi Manor soon—don't try to steal my spot."

Zhou Yao heard their chatter and gave a cold laugh.

Cui Wei smoothly picked up where Zhou Yao had trailed off. "You think Milady's generosity would stop that low?"

"Self-cultivating farmers across the realm earn about three strings of cash a year—three thousand copper coins. As for me, I'll pay everyone who stays at the Nine Kilns one string of cash per month, paid on the fifteenth. If your work is good, I'll give extra bonuses on top. Added up, it'll be no less than that single string."

"Of course, the more you produce, the more I pay. Think it over carefully, then go register with Cui Wei."

"One string of cash!" the same servant who'd been whispering marveled. "Who is this woman? She's throwing money around like it's nothing! When my folks were so poor they couldn't eat and sold me off, they only got two hundred in exchange. I've never seen this much money in my whole life, heh heh."

Zhou Yao followed the voice and saw a young man who looked reasonably put-together standing at the end of the line, his coarse cotton clothes caked with mud.

She pointed at him. "You—come here."

The young man stood there dumbstruck, not reacting, so Zhou Yao repeated, "Yes, you. Come over and register first."

Zhou Yao thought: he looks like a fool, but he's got nerve, whispering in line like that.

Cui Wei found the personnel list Duyun had sent over earlier, unrolled the scroll, prepared brush and inkstone, and ground the ink. And so, on an afternoon when the breeze carried the scent of flowers, the registration began.

The man made the same choice he'd whispered in line: he stayed at the Nine Kilns. In fact, they all chose to stay.

"Since you've all chosen to stay, I'll speak plainly," Zhou Yao said, her gaze sharp as she looked down at them. "All the sloppy work before—fine. I'm sympathetic. I won't hold the losses against you. But if you don't work hard from now on, it'll come straight out of your wages."

"From this day forward, the quality of our glass determines the bonus at mid-month. We rise together, we fall together. If the glass sells well, you earn well. If the glass sells poorly, then all of you can go back where you came from. I have no use for useless people here."

"Yes!!" they answered in unison—and then that one odd voice piped up again: "Hey, I didn't catch half of what she said..."

It was that same boy as before. Zhou Yao understood; it was no surprise. Many common folk came from families too poor to put food on the table, let alone send their children to school. Illiterate people like him were everywhere among the common folk.

The materials for the glassmaking were prepared in an orderly fashion once the servants had taken a short rest. The difference this time was that the materials were made with genuine intent from the heart—truly something they wanted to do.