The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [114]
Quire approached Merry Andrew when he emerged, fresh-faced and neat. The man seemed hungry for what Quire disingenuously offered: the chance to settle accounts with those rivals who had caused him such trouble last winter, and broken up one of his cronies; to rid himself of competitors in advance of the next body-snatching season.
“I know where they are,” Quire had murmured, “and I’m not meaning to arrest them, not now. There’s only one or two of them, and none at all after I’m done. That’s my plan. Anything you can find on them or about them is yours. I’m not caring about the law these days.”
And Merry Andrew had smiled, in his brutish, gawky way.
So the four of them rode the cart up the track towards Cold Burn Farm. Spune, it turned out, was even more enthusiastic about the enterprise than Merry Andrew, for it was his cousin had been beaten half to death when they met Blegg in the grounds of Greyfriars Kirk. The boy was still half-crippled, Spune told Quire bitterly, and would never walk right again.
They were not the kind of allies Quire would once have chosen for himself, but he lived by different rules now, and for the work at hand he could think of few better. He had made the mistake once of coming to Cold Burn Farm alone; it was only fools who failed to learn the lesson of their follies.
Quire was equipped for savagery if—when—it came to that. Not just the pistols, but the sabre sheathed at his waist. Though he had never been much of a swordsman, he knew the rudiments of its use. Gently curved, with a broad, single-edged blade and a simple but solid bar for a hand guard, it was very much a thing of purpose, not decoration.
Merry Andrew had a pocket pistol, Quire knew; a tiny little snub-nosed thing, but it would be damaging if he was close to his target. He had seen Spune and Mowdiewarp loading their pockets and belts with knives and—in Spune’s case—a short iron truncheon that looked brutally heavy. It was a fearsome enough armament, though whether it would meet the needs of the day, Quire was not certain. It would probably depend, as such things usually did, not on the weapons themselves, but on the conviction of the men who wielded them. All three of his companions seemed to Quire to be pleasingly set upon doing violence.
Though fire was a thing Quire loathed, and feared, he had come ready for that, too, as Durand had recommended it. There were lit lanterns in the bed of the cart, beside Merrilees and Mowdiewarp, and bottles of lamp oil. He had done what he could to prepare himself, and now wanted only to get done what needed doing.
The gate partway up the track stood open. It was impossible to say whether it was invitation or negligence. Quire let the horse take its own pace through the gate and on towards the copse of trees, which he remembered all too well from his encounter with Davey Muir. It was agonising, to now grind slowly along with the dense thickets on either side, expecting at any moment to be suddenly assailed. But they came safely through, and trundled up towards the farm steading.
“Get yourselves ready, lads,” Quire said under his breath. “Not until I tell you, though, right?”
A discontented grunt from Merry Andrew was the only response.
Quire could see at once that things had changed at the farm. The barns and house looked just as dilapidated and neglected as before, but the low cowshed at the far end of the yard, where Quire had inadvertently disturbed Davey, was now in considerably worse condition. It had, from the look of it, been gutted by fire. Part of its roof was fallen in, and there were ugly black streaks over some of its stonework, where smoke had leaked out through cracks and crevices. The doors were hanging from their hinges, one of them blackened and much reduced by flames.