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.”