by Eoin Colfer
Riley spoke as he straightened. “Good evening, ladies and…”
The traditional theater greeting stuck in his gullet when he noticed Otto twirling a lace parasol.
“Ladies…and…”
Otto waited politely for a moment, then whispered through a funnel of fingers like a prompter from the wings. “Gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen.”
Riley forced a smile but was careful not to laugh. A display of mirth at this juncture could prove fatal. “Gentlemen, of course. Ladies and gentlemen. Apologies, Your High Rammity. I was not expecting an audience at this hour. Perhaps the advertisement chalked on the sidewalk outside was smudged by the passage of feet. The curtain does not rise on the evening’s entertainments for another three hours.”
Otto Malarkey idly opened and closed his parasol indoors, which was very bad luck. Riley felt a tingling of foreboding in his teeth. Theater folk are devout disciples of Lady Luck.
“I is King Ram, my young conjurer, and a single fig I does not give for what is expected. The world is, as the Bard might say, as I like it. I rolls up how and when I choose. I pay what I fancy if I fancy. I do not look to others; they looks to King Otto for tips and cues. Take this current rigout, for example.”
He paused then, almost challenging Riley to giggle, a challenge he wordlessly declined.
“We takes our high fashion cues from nature. The toughest peacock wears its feathers, the tiger revels in its stripes, and so we wear our finery, so that all may see us and know not to cross steel with the fancy boys of the Battering Rams.”
During this speech Riley felt his old training rise up from the dusky caverns of his mind and settle over his skull like a shroud. Not the magician’s training, though that was some of it; what dictated his actions now was the part of him that had absorbed Garrick’s skills in combat and assassination. It could well be that Malarkey simply fancied himself a trot to the theater with his bully chums and death would not be dealt here today, but if the High Rammity did have violence in mind, he would find Riley ready for him.
“Perhaps His Majesty and his esteemed company would enjoy a demonstration of my talents? A preview, if you will.”
Malarkey rapped the floorboards with the handle of his parasol. “You is a clever lad, a real dimber-damber. I always said it, Riley—or should I say, the Great Savano—but before we abandon ourselves to the wonders of the Orient, let us take a moment to chat viz your obligation to the Brotherhood.”
This was another long and winding statement, and while it meandered along, Riley examined what he now considered the enemy. There were six Rams arranged before him: Malarkey himself—or Golgoth, as he was known in the ring—a giant of a man barely contained by the ruffles of what looked like an opera shirt. He was flanked by Noble and Jeeves, two of his most experienced bludgers, who had manhandled Riley somewhat during their previous encounter, both barely recognizable under bonnets of powdered wig, the effect of which was ruined somewhat by facial scarification and heavy stubble. Beside Jeeves sat a man so colossal he had enough skin for two, and to the right of him sat a Ram so small he might have needed the extra skin. The monster was Otto’s little brother, Barnabus, saddled with the nickname “Inhumane” Malarkey in reference to the prosecuting attorney’s description of the assault that had earned Barnabus a half stretch in Newgate. The smaller man was Inhumane’s constant companion and general dogsbody, Pooley. Inhumane was squeezed into a blue silk frock coat with golden piping that had been tailored for a less robust frame, and Pooley was dressed in the uniform of a Russian Hussar. All were bearing obvious steel, and possibly hidden steel to complement it. All except Farley, the Rams’ tattooist, who sat two rows back, clad in his customary dark coat and worn breeches. A writing pad sat upon his knee, and he scribbled while Malarkey talked. It seemed the tattooist had now become the chronicler of King Otto’s life and times.
Riley studied the Rams and dispassionately reckoned that he could, with his training, dispatch three before the others took him. Though there was another way he might remove at least one with no resistance. He was skipping ahead to this point in his hastily assembled plan when he registered Otto saying the word obligation.
No ordinary word this. It wasn’t like saying pie and sausage.
Obligation was a big word among the Family. Obligation was taken as serious as cholera.
“Viz my obligation, Your High Rammity?” said Riley, careful not to show fear. “What obligation are you referring to? We ain’t in Ram country here in Holborn.”
But he knew. He knew in his gut what his obligation was.
Otto did not speak; instead he tugged one lace glove from his giant paw with utmost deliberation, finger by finger, then tapped his own right shoulder.
Riley knew what lay under the silken sleeve. A Ram tattoo similar to the one Farley had inked on his own shoulder six months previous, during a particularly testing escapade that would have puffed out Allan Quatermain himself. Riley’s choice at the time had been to either take the ink or be fed to the pigs. Taking the ink had seemed less immediately terminal.
“You is one of us, lad,” said Inhumane. “You is Family.”
Riley maintained his showman’s face, but behind the smile, panic was boiling his fluids.
How could I not have foreseen this? I am a Ram. Everything I do belongs to them.
“Everything of yours is ours,” said Malarkey sweetly, as though the king were privy to members’ thoughts. “This here building. The swanky velvet seats therein. Tell me, boy, you ain’t been spending Ram chink on refurbishings, have you?”
Riley spread his arms. “Just a few knickety-knacks. Here and there, odds and ends.” It was gibberish, but he was stalling for time.
“’Coz that would be a royal decision. Committee at the very least. You should’ve submitted a request form.”
“I didn’t know there was such a form, Your High Rammity. I never thought.”
This was apparently hilarious.
Pooley drummed his thighs with bone-thin fists. “’E never thought. Hark at him.”
“’E never finks,” said Inhumane, and he chuckled long and low, with a sound like far-off cannon fire. “That is the problem.”
“Brass tacks then, Mr. Malarkey, sir,” said Riley. “What’s on my account?”
“Brass tacks,” said Malarkey. “I like you, boy, which is why I ain’t taking this personal. I ain’t taking all of this sneaky earning the wrong way. I could see it like you been dipping into my pocket. Taking the bread out of my starving little brother’s pie hole.”
A thought struck Inhumane. “I am starving, as it ’appens.”
Otto laughed, waving the parasol like a baton. “See? He’s starving, is Barnabus. You wanna watch out—he’s likely to take a bite out of yer leg. He’s partial to tender meat, is Barnabus.”
Riley went slightly on the offensive. “So, we’re all square at the moment, King Otto?”
Had Riley been famed comic George Robey, the cacophony of laughter following this statement could hardly have been more enthusiastic. With eyes closed, one would have sworn that the Orient was packed to the gods based on volume alone. The mirth shook the men and the men shook the theater until their seats strained their floor bolts.
“All square?” wept King Otto, having taken a pull of brandy from the handle of his parasol. “Dear me, Riley. You is a tonic and no mistake. All square?” He thumped the Rams in range. “Did you ever hear of such a thing? There ain’t no all square in the Brotherhood, my boy. All square is not a condition we deals in.”
Riley felt despair drop over him neat as a butterfly net. “Perhaps you could set me straight, King Otto.”
Financial details were too vulgar for royalty to deal with, so Otto delegated. “Farley, spell it out for the Great Savano. Keep it simple. After all, he’s only a lad, despite his grand title.”
Farley smiled at Riley, the f
irst display of friendly teeth since the Rams had arrived. The conservatively clad tattooist seemed out of place in such rambunctious company. A scrivener among pugilists.
“Here’s the bad news, Riley. Once you take the ink, then your life is forfeit to the Rams. You may lease it back at the king’s pleasure for a half share of your worldly goods past and present.”
“Past worldly goods? How’s that to be collected without a time machine?”
Farley looked up from his notebook. “King Otto can hardly be blamed if you once had a fortune then lost it. Fifty percent is due nonetheless.”
The High Rammity swigged once more from his parasol flask, then spat into the aisle. “Magnanimous as I am, I waive the past. Present fortunes only.”
Riley bowed. “You are too kind.”
Otto sat bolt upright. “Sauce? You are giving me sauce? P’raps my terms is too lenient, then? You could be catching a bullet before the magic show. Sixty percent if you insist on lip, O Great Savano.”
Catching a bullet, thought Riley. How clever of King Otto to refer to the most anticipated trick in my repertoire: the bullet catch.
Fifty percent, sixty. It made no difference. Riley was to be a slave at Malarkey’s pleasure, and he knew it.
“So, to continue,” said Farley, “sixty percent of whatever the Orient brings in. If she brings in nothing, then we sell her lock, stock, and we plump the coffers with the proceeds. If the Great Savano makes a go of it, then we seed the crowd with dippers and do a side trade in the three w’s.”
The three w’s: wallets, watches, and nose wipers.
Disaster.
Even if the Orient did well, the pickpockets would drive Johnny Punter away. Riley knew well how this tale played. He would end up working for the rest of his life to pay off some dreamed-up debt while his half brother moved away from him in the world. Best to cut loose before the Rams sniffed out the diverse buried boxes in which Garrick’s blood-tainted sovereigns were stashed. He would change his professional moniker and go on the circuit, maybe tart up an old wagon and tour the county fairs.
“You is mine, lad,” Otto was saying. “You are my soldier. And I will have my due as sure as old Horatio is on his column in Trafalgar Square. And when this place has been squeezed, I will put you to work for me in the Hidey-Hole, pulling rats from hats.”
Oh no, thought Riley. Not me. I’ve been to the future and back. I’ve learned a dodge or two. The Great Savano does not enter into servitude for men in powdered wigs.
“As Your Majesty commands,” he said, bowing low once more. “But allow me the opportunity to negotiate.”
Inhumane stopped mouth breathing long enough to comment. “‘Negotiate,’ ’e says. Negotiate. We is Rams, lad. Negotiating ain’t a condition which…the other side…of the…Rams we be…”
It was hopeless; the sentence had gotten away from him, and so Inhumane fell silent, working it out on his fingers, chewing on the phrases.
“I agree with my brother in sentiment if not delivery,” said Otto. “No negotiations. It’s a question of rules. Rules is like hearts. Once you break them, they stay broke.” He waved his parasol in Farley’s direction. “Get that, did ye? It was a good one.”
The tattooist dipped his nib in an ink bottle, which was perched birdlike in his breast pocket.
“All preserved for future kings,” he said, moving his pen across the page in quick scratches.
“Good.” Malarkey returned his attention to the stage. “So, negotiating? There will be none.”
“Hear my proposal, King Otto,” said Riley. “It’s for the benefit of the enterprise. Our joint enterprise.”
In truth, Riley had less interest in negotiation than Malarkey did. He knew it was fruitless, but appearing to have an interest in a wrangle for terms made it seem as though he had accepted the proposition in general. It was classic misdirection.
Otto stretched his legs and hooked his pirate boots over the stage lip.
“I’m entertained,” he said. “I admit it. And so long as I am entertained then I am inclined to listen. So proceed, Riley boy, but take a care to be entertaining.”
Riley bowed once more. “As you wish, Your High Rammity,” he said, the calmness of his tone belying internal turmoil. Tonight’s performance was forfeit; he would use the illusions already set up to spirit himself away from the stage into the bowels of the Orient, where Garrick’s treasure was hidden.
Riley walked briskly to the wings and selected one chair from three—the plain wooden model with the secret hinges and elastic cord threaded through the hollow legs and back.
Riley, who was now every inch the Great Savano, tilted the chair onto a single hind leg, spinning it under his hand, reeling in the audience’s gaze.
“A theater is not really about walls or dressing rooms or even a stage,” he said, his voice slightly singsong, mesmerizing. “It’s about seats.” The chair spun faster and faster, its legs blurring together. “Seats love their work. They relish the fat, rich posteriors that will descend from on high.”
Inhumane frowned, an expression that settled with a certain familiarity onto his features. “This seat is relishing my posterior?”
Riley spun the chair over his head, then brought it crashing down so that it collapsed into segments and splinters. “But when the seats are empty, they simply fall to pieces.”
Smashing an old chair, even with such deft manipulation, was not such a great achievement, so no one applauded.
“But when those seats are full…”
Riley lowered himself slowly into a seating position until it seemed certain that he would fall.
“When those seats are full…”
Riley dipped even lower, but then…but then the broken chair began to jitter and fuss, dancing to some unheard music, knitting itself together until, in a rush, it surged upward into wholeness just as Riley descended to meet it.
The chair, magically restored, took Riley’s weight with a puff of sawdust.
“When those seats are full, they are money machines,” Riley told his audience. Then, on cue, he opened his mouth and rolled out his tongue, revealing the sovereign that lay thereon.
Riley made to snatch it, but then his tongue slid sharpish back inside his mouth, and his teeth clacked shut.
“Gold!” he said, as though nothing lay on his tongue. “You saw it! Bright and shiny gold. He has it. We wants it. So how do we get it?”
Pooley stood on his chair. “Bash ’is bleedin’ teeth in, and cut ’is bleedin’ tongue out.”
These blunt verbals broke the Great Savano’s spell somewhat, but Riley recovered well.
“Yes, my stunted friend. We could cut his bleedin’ tongue out, but then this is the only gold coin Johnny Punter will ever donate to the Rams’ coffers.”
Malarkey was listening now. Riley was twice as sharp as the average street cove, which made him four times brighter than the glocky duds sitting beside him today.
“Tell me then, my clever boy. How does we get that sov, and others like it?”
“That is the question. A sovereign for a sovereign. We get the sov by making Johnny Punter want to give it to us.”
Riley snapped his fingers together, and a flurry of butterflies fluttered from their tips, spiraling in a tight cone up into the penny seats. The audience’s mouths dropped open, as did Riley’s own, and out rolled the gold-bearing tongue. He whiplashed his own tongue like a jump rope, and the sov leaped into his hand.
“Presto,” said Riley, neatly palming the coin from one hand to another, then flicking it through the air. The sovereign spun end over end to land with the soft fat plop of pure gold on flesh in Malarkey’s waiting hand.
“Your cut, King Otto,” says the magician, all smarmy and professional, finishing the bit with a bow so low, he was eyeballing his own anklebones.
Malarkey closed his finger
s around the coin in case the Great Savano would magic it away somehow.
“You puts on a good show, little Ramlet,” he said. “But—”
Riley cut him off smoothly, taking back control.
The person in control of the room is in control of the illusion, Garrick had told him. He decides whether or not magic comes into the world. You must be that person.
“But my show is not finished,” Riley said, projecting to the gods. “And I am improvising to tailor my illusions to Your Majesty. The Great Savano has another point to make, and in a most entertaining fashion.”
Malarkey winced. His hair told him something was wrong. Beneath the wig, Otto’s famed raven tresses yearned to be free and itched at the roots like they always did when things was a little off-color. Malarkey’s hair-sight had saved his life on more than one occasion—but Oh Lord, couldn’t that junior Ram chappie do the magic act like a topper?—so one more trick, then down to business.
I never gets to go to real theater anymore. It’s all knife acts and then screaming.
So he said, “Sharpish, Ramlet. And I better not sniff a whiff of underhand or it’s coming out of yer hide.”
Riley bowed again, but it seemed to King Otto that all this bowing and scraping was perhaps not as respect-laden as it might be. Another point to dwell on later.
After the trick.
“So we have our customer for the present,” said Riley, bowing slightly. “But what will happen to Johnny Punter if we follow friend Farley’s counsel and fill the theater with Family?”
Family. A cozy name for the criminal so-called fraternity.
Riley pulled a handkerchief from inside a wide pocket in his cape and shook it out until it unfurled to the size of a tablecloth.
“That was folded, is all,” muttered Inhumane, eager to prove himself a smarty-pants. Then as often happened, his words ran away too fast for his stumbling mouth to keep pace. “Folded is all, and then with the shaking wot…under his…cloak. Wot’s a magician’s cloak called now? So, anyways, it gets big, and now youse is all like, oh ’eck, and…”
Malarkey poked his brother with his drinks parasol. “I know, brother. Now think yer words inside yer head and let the pup perform.”