“Exactly,” said Artemis Senior, somewhat self-consciously removing his hands from his neck and straightening the collar of his beige stretch cotton leisure jacket, which was emblazoned with a golden AF symbol, as it came from his wife’s fashion line. “I simply need a moment to get my ducks in a row.”
Beckett stopped jittering. “Do you mean to tell me we have ducks you can order to swim in formation?”
Artemis Senior sighed once more. Sometimes it seemed to the Fowl patriarch that sighing was his main mode of exhalation when dealing with his sons, either singly or as a team.
“Of course not. That’s preposterous, Beckett.”
Beckett was in full agreement. “I know. Ducks never do what you ask. They’re worse than badgers, which are frankly”—Beckett screwed up his face to deliver the next clause—“scritch-scritch-arrrrr.”
Artemis Senior knew he shouldn’t ask but couldn’t help himself. “And what language might scritch-scritch-arrrrr be in?”
Myles jumped in. “I am no expert, Father, but I would wager Beck is speaking in the language of badgers to avoid swearing in English.”
“Myles is right,” said Beckett. “He is no expert. We should have recorded him saying that, as he’ll probably never say it again. But I was speaking Brockish, which is what badgers speak, by the way. And it was a bit sweary.”
Artemis Senior dropped his head to the desk once more and rolled his forehead along the cool aluminum surface. When he spoke, it was toward his own feet, but the tower had excellent acoustics, so the twins heard his words nevertheless. “Some years ago, I was held captive by the Russian Mafiya.”
Myles raised a finger. “They refer to themselves as the Bratva these days, Father.”
“Thank you, Myles. Well, I would refer to the ones who held me, Vassikin and Kamar, as scritch-scritch-arrrrr, if you take my meaning?”
Myles nodded, appreciating the segue, while Beckett smiled, appreciating the rude joke and his father’s excellent Brockish pronunciation.
“And I can honestly say,” continued Artemis Senior, “that the two of you scare me more than they ever did.”
This statement shocked Myles so much that he stopped mentally puzzling on the second of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (magic, he believed, was the missing factor) and focused on his father.
The statement shocked Beckett so much that he could no longer be confined to a chair and jumped to his feet. “We scare you, Dad? That’s terrible. We would never hurt you.”
“Not physically, perhaps,” said Artemis Senior. “But the emotional toll of parenting such extraordinary children has been so very high.”
Myles scrambled to justify the twins’ shenanigans. “Yes, but Father, in our defense, the Fowl DNA is positively littered with epigenetic markers passed down by generations of masterminds, so in many ways we have no option but to act as we do. I would go so far as to say that we are the victims in this—”
Artemis Senior cut his son off with a slice of his hand. “Spare me your verbal gymnastics, Myles. We both know you would win any argument you care to engage in, but let me tell you something: Winning an argument doesn’t make you right.”
This might seem like a typical platitude, but Myles immediately realized that his father had delivered a masterstroke, for any further squabbling on the twins’ part would only strengthen Artemis Senior’s position, ironically winning the argument that his father claimed he could not win.
“Well played, Father,” he said.
“No!” said Artemis Senior, standing but keeping the weight off his bio-hybrid leg, which pained him in low-pressure areas or when he was anxious, as he was now. “I am not playing. No more playing. Things must change absolutely. A change that will permeate every stratum of your existence.”
“We’re getting perms?” said Beckett. “But my hair is already curly.”
Artemis Senior gave Beckett the full laser blast of his glacier-blue eyes, and Myles felt a shiver trip along his spine. He could not help but wonder if this was the glare Artemis Senior treated his lieutenants to back in the criminal-empire days.
“Oh no, Beckett Fowl,” said the boys’ father, wagging a finger at the blond twin. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what, Dad?” said Beckett, but he knew what. It was in his father’s eyes.
“Use a silly comment as a coping mechanism to deal with stress. Your distracting remarks are calculated to put me on the back foot. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have a back foot.”
Beckett was stunned. No one had ever called him on this trick before, and he’d been using it for years.
“‘Are we getting perms?’” continued Artemis Senior. “Or ‘Can I order ducks to swim in formation?’ And a thousand other asinine questions you pull out of the bag whenever you don’t feel like being responsible for your actions.”
Myles was almost giving the situation his full attention now. Father was playing hardball. Perhaps this time they had actually pushed him over the emotional edge. Myles thought he might try one more avenue.
“Father, if I might gently protest. You are in no position to lecture us about taking responsibility. After all, you evaded taking responsibility for your actions over the decades.”
This indeed was a bold challenge, but Myles reasoned that shock tactics might be the only way to halt Artemis Senior’s verbal barrage.
He was completely incorrect. Artemis Senior’s response to his son’s gentle protest was as follows:
“You are making a mistake here, Myles. And your mistake is to believe that we are engaged in a civilized discussion like intelligent equals, whereas in fact you have behaved appallingly and are about to be soundly disciplined.”
“How have we behaved appallingly, exactly? I feel our crimes should be listed, in the interests of fairness.”
Artemis Senior shrugged in an exaggerated and, Myles thought, semi-unhinged manner. “How would I know, exactly? It goes without saying that you haven’t told me everything, Myles.”
Myles was taken aback. “Of course I haven’t told you everything. That is at the very core of what it means to be a mastermind. I never tell anybody everything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Fowl patriarch. “What matters is that your mother and I are upset.”
Myles clasped his hands behind his back. “It is not now, nor has it ever been our intention to cause distress to either Mother or yourself. In fact, we deny all charges. It was not our actions that led to this alleged upset, but rather the actions of those who would do us harm.”
“Save it for the judge, son,” said Artemis Senior. “Because I don’t care about your denials. What I do care about is this family and its well-being. Physically and emotionally. So, rule number one: No more fairy-related antics.”
“We’re related to fairies?” cried Beckett, forgetting the embargo on his silly questions tactic.
His father shot Beckett a warning glare but otherwise gave him a pass on that offense.
“That’s right,” continued Artemis Senior. “I know all about the fairies. Our family has been friends to the People for centuries, and it has cost us dearly. Your own brother Artemis died. He died.”