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best at very low prices.
"Further," Tadeusz continued, "I need only prepare a half dozen items a day to
satisfy my guests, saving the cooks much effort."
"But how do you know how much to cook?" Krystyana asked.
"My lady, we know about how much of what our guests will eat. True, sometimes
the pigs are fed better than they deserve, but not often. Also, our waitresses have
become adept at persuading our customers to purchase that which we have in
excess."
I laughed. "I think those girls could have a man eating dog meat without his
noticing!"
"Hmm ...an interesting suggestion, my lord. But I'm afraid that Sir Conrad would
not approve."
"No, Sir Conrad would not approve," Sir Conrad said. "And you're feeding surplus
food to the pigs? That's not good. Tomorrow, talk to Father Thomas and see what
can be done about giving it to the deserving poor. Don't give them anything you
wouldn't eat yourself, but, well, there are hungry people out there."
I drifted off in private words with Annastashia and so lost the thread of the
conversation. When I returned, Sir Conrad was reading from a list.
"...two dozen carpenter's hammers, two dozen mason's hammers, three dozen
wood chisels, assorted, one dozen wheelbarrows, two dozen..."
"Sir Conrad," I said, "what are you talking about? And what is a wheelbarrow?"
"A wheelbarrow is a sort of pushcart with only one wheel."
"One wheel? Then why doesn't it fall over?"
"It would, except that a man holds it up."
"That makes no sense at all."
"When you see one you'll understand. Come take a look at this list of tools I need
to buy. Tell me if I've forgotten anything."
"Tools? Why buy tools?" I asked. "If you hire workmen, they'll have their own
tools."
"Really? I didn't know that."
"Then there is perhaps another thing you don't know, Sir Conrad," my cousin
Gregor said. "And that's that a workman with tools costs half again more than
one without. If you project work of any size..."
"We have a town to build, with a wall and a mine to redig, and-"
"Then you will save by providing the tools yourself. Also, your tools would
doubtless be made hard by this cementation process of yours that we have been
hearing about. "
"Of course."
"Then they will be better tools than any a workman would have. Times have not
been good in Cieszyn. In the last year, not a workman in the city has spent a
penny on anything but food, and little enough on that."
"That rough, huh?"
"It saddens a man to look at them, the men ragged and hungry, the women
worse."
"And the children?" Conrad asked.
"The children? They're aren't many of them. Mostly they die very young. But what
can one do? My own peasants are well enough fed and we support our own poor
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Click here to buy
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but that is all. I have no great store of wealth with which to feed all the wretches
in the city."
"But surely something can be done."
"If you would be a benefactor, Sir Conrad, hire more men than you need. You'll
get them cheap enough. And build on a lavish scale."
"A good thought, Sir Gregor. I'll act on it."
Chapter Four
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
It soon became obvious that I couldn't simply hire a construction company and
go to Three Walls. I would have to hire individuals and form them into a unit
myself.
Furthermore, most workmen didn't have their own tools. They had sold them to
feed their families. What few tools were in the men's hands were in very poor
shape and were often poorly designed in the first place.
Nor could I go to a store and buy tools, not in the quantities I required. I had to
contract to have them made and if I was going to do that, I might as well see that
they were designed properly. I set up my drawing board and went to work.
I started drawing pliers and was astounded to discover that I knew the designs for
more than ninety sorts of pliers. I spent two days drawing them and then realized
that most of them would be useless in construction work.
I had to stop and think out exactly what we would need, because if we later
discovered some lack, we'd be hard-pressed to supply it.
I only had to put up some buildings fourteen miles away, yet my situation was
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