1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [161]
As was Minnie herself, for that matter. Before Denise had finished the first sentence, Minnie already had her pistol in hand. So did Denise, of course.
At that point, the day began improving. One of the lads raced off but his partner proved surprisingly stout and adaptable.
“Look, it was worth a try,” he said, smiling and raising his hands in a pacific gesture. “No offense meant. If you’d rather pay us with money, so be it. What’s your offer?”
By sundown, they had everything in place. All negotiations had been successfully concluded and all arrangements made. The only hitch was that Minnie had to unruffle Herr Kienzle’s feathers first, which were still ruffled as only Denise could ruffle feathers. She made Denise wait outside the shop until she took care of that problem.
“Okay, I finally got him settled down,” she said when she came out. “He’ll have the roller ready as soon as we tell him the hostlers are on the way.”
Denise scowled. “You did tell him the hostlers were as young as we are, right? We don’t need that fat sorry swell-headed son-of-a-bitch to go all Yesyourmajesty on them when they show up.”
“Yeah, I told him. At this point, I don’t think he cares. Not once he started figuring out what that roller was going to cost him given that you’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t getting the back half of the money on account of the agreement was ‘satisfactorily built’ and we didn’t think it was even though a judge would probably rule in his favor but the only operating judge right now is Gretchen and most of these guildsmen are leery of dealing with her.”
“Gee, wonder why?”
“Gretchen would probably rule in his favor too, you know? We were maybe a little vague about exactly what we needed.”
“Well, maybe. He’s still a fat sorry swell-headed son-of-a-bitch.”
Denise’s skills in the forgive-and-forget department, on the other hand, were minimal. One might even say, microscopic.
Noelle had just finished her report when she heard Denise and Minnie clumping up the steps to the front entrance. She’d been using a quill pen and down-time ink, since she’d seen no reason to hurry her writing and the few up-time pens she still had left were things she was now saving for special purposes. So she had to wait a bit for the ink on the last sheet to finish drying before she stacked it with the rest of the pages.
There were twenty-three pages all told, hand-written. Francisco had asked for a full report; a full report he’d be getting. It would have to be sent by courier, for sure. The cost of sending that long a message by radio didn’t bear thinking about, not even for someone with Nasi’s wealth. The cost was a moot point, in any event. There was no way the CoC people running the radio operation would have allowed that much time to be monopolized for a private transmission.
While she waited for the page to dry, she rose from the writing desk, stretched her arms and began walking about. She’d been sitting nonstop for the last three hours and was feeling stiff.
She heard a screech from outside. Denise’s voice, clearly enough, although no words could be made out. It had just sounded like a screech of fury.
Now alarmed, Noelle raced to the stairwell, stopping only long enough to draw her own pistol out of the drawer of the side table where she kept it.
The screech came again. Noelle hurried down the stairs and threw open the door, pistol in hand and ready to fire.
Not quite. She still had the safety on but this time she’d remembered it was on and was ready to flick it off. There’d be no repeat of…well, any number of embarrassing moments on the firing range. Noelle’s capabilities in the Annie Oakley department were risible. One might even say, the laughing stock of