The Hangman's Revolution by Eoin Colfer

through the trapdoor and spinning them downstage, platform in splinters around their ears.
    Otto took the brunt of the concussion, as he was closer to the blast, but his trunk was saved from shrapnel by the reinforced platform. However, the platform’s planking wrought considerable destruction on Malarkey’s flesh when it splintered, shredding his back more comprehensively than any bosun’s cat-o’-nine-tails.
    Riley was thrown onto his back, legs dangling over the lip, unable to tell whether he was coated with royal blood or his own. His skull hummed like a belfry at one minute past the hour, and his heart seemed to have decided to bust out of his chest.
    Otto ain’t stirring, he thought, his head being angled toward Malarkey. The king is dead.
    But dead the king was not, as evidenced by the flute of blood Otto coughed up on the boards.
    Farley’s head appeared stage left at the apron, peeping almost comically from the stalls.
    He looks like a bird, thought Riley, with his noggin a-wobbling in that manner.
    “Ah, both still alive,” said Farley. “Excellent. Excellent. This is the best afternoon’s fun I have had for a long time.” He mounted the steps. “This is what’s going to happen, Malarkey. Once I have put an end to your reign, then I return with my squad to the Hidey-Hole and make an offer of employment to the leaderless Rams. Those who take the shilling, as it were, will become part of a new world order. Those who don’t will be joining you in whatever hell is reserved for murdering criminals.” Farley dipped into his bag and came out with six shells in a circular clip, which he used to fill the revolver’s chambers. “Speed loader,” he explained. “I had our gunsmith fabricate the thing for me. Do you like it? Little inventions like this are going to help us take over the country.”
    Farley knelt at Malarkey’s side and placed his revolver barrel at the king’s temple. “I wish I had more time, Malarkey, because a hanging is what you really deserve. A bullet is too good for you. You ought to be strung up in Trafalgar Square for the whole city to see. Good old-fashioned British justice.” He sighed. “But the explosion will bring the constables, so a bullet to the brain will have to do.”
    It seemed to Riley that his eyes were the only part of him functioning, as per usual. He could see the instrument of his death, but he couldn’t do anything about it. One bullet for Malarkey and the second for him.
    Tom, he thought, I never found you. I failed.
    Farley cocked his weapon, amused by Malarkey’s total helplessness.
    “Look at you, Otto. The mighty Golgoth.”
    That was surely an end to the gloating. To delay any more would tempt fate.
    “Good-bye, Your Majesty,” said Farley.
    Then something fast erupted from the wings at stage left. A figure attached to a pair of legs that moved so quickly they seemed like blue fans. One of the legs swept upward and kicked Farley in the side of his head. Hard. The tattooist moved backward on his hunkers, like a drunken Cossack, until his momentum took him over the lip of the stage and into the orchestra pit below. Judging by the level of clatter, Riley reckoned that his landing was not a cushy one.
    P’raps he fractured half a dozen bones, thought Riley. We can only hope.
    The blue-clad legs bent at the knees and Riley’s savior knelt before him. The shock of recognition brought the boy’s voice box back to life.
    “Miss Chevron,” he said. “It is yourself in the flesh, come to save me once more.”
    Chevie’s face was pale with concern for her young friend, but she smiled to hide it.
    “That’s right, kid,” she said, running her hands up and down his torso and limbs, feeling for breaks. “Someone has to look out for you. I leave you on your own for a hundred years and look what happens.”
    Leaving posthaste, everyone agreed, was a good plan. Everyone agreed except Farley, that is, because no one consulted the tattooist; even if they had,