Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 89

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 89
Before Siaka stood a single chair without a back.
How long had it been sitting there?
Siaka pressed her eyes shut.
For a life sentence prisoner to sit across from someone of the Grand Duchess’s exalted station—it demanded every scrap of courage she possessed, drawn from lifetimes past and present alike.
But had she truly done wrong?
She had only made her father answer for her mother’s death.
Even if she had erred, weren’t seven years of hard labor enough to pay for it?
I was always a difficult woman—stubborn, willful, selfish.
If one cannot share the sky with the enemy of their father, how can one live alongside the enemy of their mother?
Siaka clenched her teeth and forced her trembling legs forward. They quaked beneath her as she walked to the chair and sat.
The heavy shackles clinked against her knees.
Perhaps it was the greatest reserve of courage she would ever summon in her life.
“… Workshop Master Siaka offers her respects to the Workshop Master.”
Her voice shook. But it did not break.
The Grand Duchess before her smiled.
Siaka wondered if she had truly died and ascended to heaven itself.
Truly, the Grand Duchess was a mesmerizing presence.
“I’ll hire you.”
* * *
A few days later, recruitment notices appeared throughout the Slum District where Gonet’s poorest inhabitants dwelled.
The Slum District was the poorest quarter even within the vast Grand Duke’s Territory.
The roofs were all rotted straw, children ran barefoot through the alleys, and those who could read were scarce enough to count on one hand.
So Erichi found someone literate and stationed him beside the notice, reading aloud to whoever gathered with curiosity.

Four silver coins per day, paid the same day.
Meals provided daily.
Those skilled at sewing and needlework.
Those with the strength to move earth and stones daily.
*Women only.
Additional requirements: Clothing and hair must be clean; cleanliness is paramount. The filthy will not be accepted.
After the notice went up, the Riverbank near the Slum District was always alive with women’s voices.
“Four silver coins a day, they say?”
“And they give it to you that same day? Really?”
“And they feed you too. Every day.”
The women wavered between bewilderment and the determination not to let such an unexpected opportunity slip away.
Some nobles had launched ambitious ventures recently, drawing many men to work for them.
But for the women—especially those born and raised in the Slum District—no positions had come.
To them, four silver coins a day was a sum they had never dared dream of.
For the first time in ages, women clung to the flowing stream and washed themselves thoroughly clean.
Then, half-convinced and half-skeptical, they made their way toward the Old City District, where walls had been erected.
* * *
“Is that so? All those women are going to the Old City District?”
“Yes, Earl Oswald.”
The Earl heard the report from his aide and made no effort to conceal his displeasure.
“Low-born creatures. The moment someone offers them a few coins, they rush off to some enterprise that could go bankrupt tomorrow.”
The aide said nothing and lowered his head.
Inwardly, he thought that women so poor would stampede toward such work even if offered copper coins instead of silver ones.
The Earl, lost in thought, finally spoke.
“Something about this feels wrong. I think I need to plant someone.”
“How should we proceed?”
“They won’t hire all of them. Go and observe, then select two or three of the women who pass and plant them as spies—offer them money. I need to know what that Deposed Crown Princess is plotting.”
“I shall obey at once.”
He took a sip of wine.
He had invested so much time and effort in swallowing the bankrupt Grand Duke’s House—there was no way he would leave any uncertain variables behind.
* * *
The workshop was bustling from the very first day.
Thirty women had been hired in total, all with nimble hands and no trace of cunning in their eyes.
They entered the largest building together, every one of them tense.
“You’ve all arrived.”
But when the women actually laid eyes on the Workshop Master, they all sucked their teeth without meaning to.
They’d heard the Workshop Master was a potter, but none of them had expected a woman—let alone one so young.
Yet Siaka was built tall and broad-framed by nature.
Her rolled-up forearms bore the marks of years spent wrestling clay and turning the wheel, etched into her skin like a calendar.
But it was her eyes—sharpened by years in prison—that cut deepest.
Siaka spoke only what needed saying.
“Today we make work clothes for everyone here. Two sets each.”
Her voice scraped like metal on metal, and her words fell like stones.
The women murmured among themselves.
“Anyone who doesn’t finish within a week loses that amount from her wages.”
The murmuring stopped dead.
The women startled, their hands flying to needles.
Two sets was the order, but the design was simple—just sturdy knots holding it together. Not beyond the reach of quick-fingered women, really.
One woman who’d taken up a spool of thread opened her eyes wide.
“Look at this thread. I’ve never seen thread this fine.”
“We don’t even see this quality at the fabric shops back home.”
The cloth itself was cheap—durability was all that mattered.
But the thread was costly. Cheap thread would fray at the seams, and that wouldn’t do.
The women would be handling coal every day; the work clothes had to be built solid from the stitching up, and it was clear that Rorelthiana, who’d burned through nearly all her ready cash, couldn’t stomach even a day’s delay if a garment tore.
Needles and thread flew in their fingers with remarkable speed and brilliance.
Thirty threads darting through cloth, filling the building with a soft, steady whisper.
By midday.
Basins overflowing with food were set down before the hungry women in rapid succession.
The women nearly leapt to their feet without thinking!
When was the last time they’d smelled warm food like this?
A single bowl of stew and a whole pot of it carry a weight of scent beyond measure.
As the lid lifted, steam rose in plumes.
Potatoes lay whole and swollen in the rich broth, soft-boiled into submission.
Carrots floated in scarlet crescents, and tender meat shredded like thread with each pass of the ladle. The onions had dissolved entirely, their sweetness melting into the broth itself.
The Slum District women couldn’t remember the last time they’d smelled anything like this.
Two smooth, steaming eggs sat atop each portion, and a hunk of black bread besides—with milk rising in white steam above a rough wooden cup.
“We can’t even eat like this on New Year’s at home…….”
“Are you saying we get food like this every day?”
The women were joyful, yet bewildered.
By Slum District standards, it was a feast.
The women scraped their stew bowls clean. They even cracked the eggshells with care, wasteful of nothing.
But then.
One woman in the corner ate only half her black bread and slipped the rest into her skirt fold.
The woman next to her did the same.
And the woman next to her.
Nearly all of them did it—eating only half and hiding the rest in their lap, or else not touching it at all and smuggling away the whole loaf.
All while scraping their stew bowls to the bottom.
The servants handing out food were too rushed to notice, and the Gonet knights seemed equally absorbed in their meals.
But the truth was otherwise.
These women, seasoned in the Grand Duke’s household, had sharper eyes than most!
They’d already mapped out who was taking what, and how much.
* * *
“Your Grace. Over the week, eight women have smuggled cloth home. As for bread—twenty-eight out of thirty.”
At Erichi’s report, I tilted my head slightly.
Twenty-eight.
I’d had him observe them daily for a week.
The numbers barely shifted.
Women who’d eaten at a lavish table yet wouldn’t touch the largest bread, tucking it away in their lap instead.
Women with hungry mouths at home to feed.
That’s what poor neighborhoods breed.
“Post a knight on the two who didn’t take anything. I want them investigated.”
“Just those two, Your Grace?”
“The Council of Elders would’ve planted someone to watch what I’m doing. They’d have paid extra for it.”
A woman flush with coin wouldn’t need to pinch a piece of black bread.
She’d eat it all.
‘Of course, it might not be. She could just be a woman with no family dependents to her name.’
So investigation came first, punishment later.
“And among the eight who smuggled the cloth out of the house, the woman who stole the most…….”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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