A/N: This is a response to the Criminality September-October challenge on the Ten Commandments. It was written when I was deep in the middle of writing His Son's Father (for which review responses are now up on my blog), so you may see some similar themes. Thanks again to Gus for the beta.
Artemis opened his eyes. He shook his head, closed them, and tried to return his focus to Mozart's increasingly complex variations on "Ah! Vous-dirai-je, maman."
Seventeen seconds later, Artemis' eyes flew open again and he strode over to the control box of his expensive stereo system to halt the music. Mozart was not to be wasted on an inattentive mind – and his was running in the same fruitless track it had been for the past three hours.
Had there been another way?
Standing aimlessly by the stereo, his gaze was drawn to the window. On the terrace below, his parents were completing The Times cryptic crossword, conversing in companionable tones too soft for Artemis to decipher. His mother laughed at some joke of his father's, the bright evening sunlight lighting her hair in a halo of gold.
In an uncharacteristically violent motion, Artemis wrenched the curtains closed; it seemed somehow irreverent for his mother to laugh. She wouldn't have been laughing if she had known her son had killed a man.
Artemis deliberately released the fistful of drapery in his hand, stretching out fingers as pale and unstained as they had been that morning. It wasn't the literal spots of blood that had bothered Lady Macbeth, either.
He hadn't been the one to pull the trigger.
He hadn't even given an order – simply speaking his bodyguard's name had been enough – but Artemis was not comforted by such sophistry. He had learned to command Butler almost before he had learned to use his own arms and legs. Whether the finger on the trigger had been Butler's or his own was as irrelevant as whether it had been his left hand or his right: either way, the responsibility was his.
The shot had been fired.
Butler's marksmanship was perfect.
The man had been dead before his body hit the marble floor, blood so dark it had seemed black dribbling from the neat hole in his forehead and a fine spray of pinkish stains covering his clothes and skin.
Artemis had simply stared, feeling as though he had been snap-frozen, his mind blank and his senses relaying the world to him in disjointed pieces. Butler had hurried them both away, Artemis the First bristling with questions and Artemis the Second, for once, completely incapable of answering them any more than he could his own questions.
Was it justified? Could it ever be justified? Might there have been another way?
Artemis knew there hadn't been; his information that his father's new business contact was, in fact, Mikhael Vassikin on a mission of revenge had simply come in too late to be able to warn him. If he had been given more time, perhaps he could have arranged something more elaborate and not quite so permanent, but Artemis had to admit that not much would have stopped the man short of death – whether it was his own or that of his target. If he hadn't been killed, then Vassikin would likely have come after Artemis himself next and Butler would have been forced to step in anyway.
But all his elaborate rationalisations wound their way back to one simple truth: Artemis had killed a man. He had never imagined that the sixth commandment would cause him so much trouble.
He wasn't much of a Catholic. He certainly didn't believe in God, the Bible, or an afterlife where he would be judged for his misdeeds, and he had never had any problem breaking the other commandments – he had been stealing, lying, and coveting since before he could remember. He had never been able to cease taking advantage of his parents' trust, seen the benefit in restricting his scheming to six days in every seven, or truly shift gold and power from the top of his list of priorities and, although he had never committed adultery, blasphemed, or made himself an idol, it was more from the lack of a particular desire than any real conviction.
But he had never killed before today. There was something about causing the death of another human being; something about the knowledge that a life had been irreversibly snuffed out, because for all that Artemis himself had been the instrument of Vassikin's death, he could empathise with the man. After the kidnapping incident, Vassikin had lost everything, barely escaping from the Russian Mafiya boss with his life. He had been running ever since, apparently with a single mission of revenge in mind, but the Fowls had snatched victory from beneath his very nose once again. At least this time he would not have to return to an unforgiving master empty-handed.
Assuming, that was, that Artemis was right about an afterlife; he couldn't imagine Vassikin having much to recommend himself to the Almighty.
Artemis shuddered again at the memory of the scene he had interrupted earlier. His father was so absurdly vulnerable without a Butler; Vassikin had simply pulled out a gun, his finger already beginning to squeeze the trigger when Artemis the younger burst into the room.
He had only suffered two nightmares after pretending to kill his father – short affairs, mainly filled with nameless dread that had been easily shaken off once he had turned on the lights. He suspected he would not get off so lightly now that he actually had killed.
"Arty?" came his mother's voice from the doorway of his room, shaking Artemis from his thoughts. "Your father and I can't agree on this one: nine letters, 'Fewer after value is a gift beyond compare.'"
Artemis frowned. While his mother was certainly sincere, he in no way believed that his father had been stumped by this clue. If there was only one thing at which his father could almost give him a run for his money, it was the cryptic crossword – although Artemis had simply never seen the point of trivial word games. This clue was straightforward.
"Priceless," he said finally, deciding to play along with his father's game.
"Ha!" cried Angeline triumphantly. "Your father kept insisting it was 'misgiving', but I don't think that fits at all. Thank you, Arty."
"You're welcome, Mother. And… tell Father he's welcome, too."
Angeline nodded at the innocuous message and disappeared back down the hall without another word.
Artemis waited for a moment, considering, then cracked open his curtain to look down at the sun-drenched terrace where his father sat, awaiting Angeline's return. Obviously having been watching for some movement from the window, Artemis the First raised his hand in a grave salute.
The hand fell again as Artemis nodded an acknowledgement and they stared at each other wordlessly until his mother appeared, recapturing his father's attention. A short squabble over the pencil later, the two bent their heads close together to set about filling in their new answer, Angeline gloating over her rare victory.
As the sun touched the horizon, staining the clouds and sky with streaks of darkening orange and red, his mother's teasing laugh echoed through the still air, and this time it didn't seem so wrong. This, after all, was what he had acted to protect; could have, would have, might have, all boiled down to the same thing: hadn't.
Artemis restarted the music and then threw back the curtains to gaze full into the resplendent colours of the sunset. His fingers tapped soundlessly on the windowsill as Mozart's simple opening theme washed over him, white skin turned pink in the fading light.
No, Artemis suspected that he would by no means get off as lightly from killing a man as he had from pretending to kill one, but his father was right. He had no real misgivings about what he had done; he would certainly do it again in a heartbeat if the circumstances called for it.
His father was alive and his mother didn't even know how close she had come to losing her husband for the second time.
The spots may never come out – but there were some things for which he was prepared to pay any price.
fin
A/N: Did I mention "Support the Orions"?