The Hangman's Revolution by Eoin Colfer Read Free Book Online

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 fingers 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