The next few days were a blur, due in part to alcohol, and it was a quiet night in the Swaggers that she finally found herself face to face with Kiran. The very sight of him made her blood curdle, like milk that has curdled, and her temper brimmed to the surface like a bubbling cauldron of curdled milk.
She thought she could contain herself, and wait out the time until her plan could be acted out… but then something terrible happened.
Kiran told Baron Samsca that fish was only served on a Friday.
Quivering with untamed rage, she stood from her stool, and explained through gritted teeth (which sounded, up close, like a mortar and pestle tackling a particularly gritty batch of pepper), that fish used to be served everyday.
Kiran clearly had no idea who he spoke with, and his incredulous spoutings fuelled her anger, bringing her furious pot to boil.
Realization snapped first into place in Samsca’s mind, as she knew it was the right time.
It was with a grim satisfaction that Anna-Maria Boon noted Kiran’s horror was unconcealed. If one thing could be said for him, it was that he had too much pride to stoop to lies to save his hide.
Ignoring for the moment Rebecca’s cries, Anna drew the sword that had long lain dormant at her side – and tipped the point of Rum Reaper towards Kiran.
And in that moment, everything seemed to happen at once. Kiran pulled a crossbow from the shelf, Kathryn donned her cooking pot, and Reywal meandered in, reacting to Anna’s dramatic return with a resounding ‘Cool’.
Mourning only for a second the loss of her watermelon (which would later be named by Samsca the Watermelon of Salvation), Anna yelled to Kathryn to charge – Kiran’s moment of distraction had left him vulnerable.
Kiran’s blank, bewildered look would forever imprint itself on her mind as Anna leapt deftly atop the bar and swung Rum Reaper in a lethal arc towards his chest – at the very same moment as Kathryn’s broom made casual acquaintance with Kiran’s buttocks.
Anna-Maria staggered backwards. She watched in numb shock as her former friend lay gasping, twisted on the floor, blood draining from his body like milk from a jug (that had been sliced open with a sword).
Regret overwhelmed her.
And then he was gone.
Allowing herself only a moment to dwell in what she had done, Anna forced herself out of the choking bind of pity - the body would have to go, and quick.
She herself would do Kiran the last dignity of cradling his broken body into its undignified tomb.
But Kiran’s broken body had other ideas.
As the coarse hand about her throat cut the wind from her lungs, Anna experienced several things – terror, an odd relief, and a mild need to heed the call of nature. Then Olk shot him.
So both were alive, when both could have died. There was something poignant about it, but Anna was past caring for irony. She had done a lot of thinking, while Kiran’s hand throttled her windpipe, and her fury at him was gone. Could she really blame him, for wanting her dead? The Swaggers was the most famous tavern in the North, and each time Kiran became its master, Anna returned from nowhere to snatch it back – a greedy child in a playground of prosperity.
Now she wanted nothing more than not to have killed him… She did not relish the thought of rotting in prison in the hour of her triumphant return.
Her old husband, Elliot Heath, strode grimly through the doors minutes later, and Anna told him to do what he could. She knew he hated Kiran, and would, as she had moments before, have liked nothing more than to see every drop of his blood drain between the floorboards – but she also knew he would do it for her.
He worked rigorously to quell the red flow, while Olk, never one for wasting good money, asked a favour.
Would-be drunkards filtered into the Swaggers, which bore the bitter taste of worry in place of familiar ale fumes and wood smoke. Anna explained the accident to each of them, a look of genuine concern upon her face.
It became clear that Kiran had not, as his last breath had earlier suggested, breathed his last breath, and he was carried upstairs to an innroom.
Only then did Anna-Maria allow herself to wallow in her return, and the solution to her troubles.
