Sneaking this in as my February 2019 fic posting. I might actually finish this before the movie comes out!

Sincerest thanks to M. for doing multiple (!) rounds of last-minute beta reads.

Author's notes to follow.


Vinyáya and her team reentered the time-stop an hour after they left, with their cargo from the other side in tow. There were four hours remaining for the time-stop, and Major Feldspar was waiting for them by the portal. Root, Foaly, and Cirrus were nowhere in sight, but Vinyáya thought she heard Root's voice echoing from one of the parked shuttles.

Feldspar, Eight's first agent on-scene, caught Vinyáya's eye and led her aside. "I'm glad you're back," he said. "A lot has happened inside."

"After you left, we used Diggums to carry Captain Short's equipment to her. She is now fully suited and armed, and is still around the house avoiding Fowl and the other humans. Fowl, unfortunately, has noticed this, but as Short has her helmet on, he can no longer give her any commands. She remains bound under eyeball orders not to leave, and not to injure Fowl."

"After Diggums delivered Short's equipment," Feldspar continued, "Euclase directed him to further investigate the house. He found a translated copy of the Book in a safe. Colonel Lomers has also checked in from underground. She confirmed our earlier theory that Fowl encountered the exiled sprite Aeolia Rishel and obtained a copy of the Book from her. He may have other sources of information as well, but if he does, we have not yet encountered them. Colonel Lomers sent up transcripts from initial questioning along with her report, if you'd like to take a look at them. And Section Eight was able to get a preliminary location for Fowl Sr. in the Arctic. Mafia custody, I believe."

"Excellent," said Vinyáya. She did so enjoy having competent subordinates. "Anything else to report?"

Feldspar paused, looking uncharacteristically hesitant. "… Lieutenant Cudgeon is arguing that we should send a troll into the house," he said, all in a rush.

Vinyáya raised her eyebrows. Well. That would certainly explain why Root was yelling. There was no way he would ever let a troll be sent anywhere near one of his officers.

She could see some of the logic behind Cudgeon's argument — trolls, which were nonmagical, would have no issue with the geas on dwellings. Encountering one of those ought to change up Fowl's act immediately. Since was Captain Short on the loose, armed, and magicked-up again, she had a decent chance of staying out of the troll's way.

But using a troll to deal with three Mud Men was utterly ridiculous — it was beyond overkill. The troll would only lead to severely traumatized Mud Men and correspondingly more difficult mind-wipes, not to mention the property damage to the house itself that would need to be repaired. Unless… was Cudgeon was going for bust and trying to use the troll to kill all the humans, without resorting to the bio-bomb?

It wouldn't look good in the post-op tribunal, that was for sure. Vinyáya didn't particularly care if the humans made it out of the time-stop or not, but this kind of clumsiness and heavy-handedness had no place in command. Cudgeon was an ambitious officer; he was no doubt hoping to get a promotion out of this, but he still had a ways to go if this was the caliber of his political maneuverings.

Feldspar cleared his throat. "Commander Root, obviously, does not agree. He and Lt. Cudgeon are currently 'discussing' this."

"I should let them know I'm back," Vinyáya said.

"That might be best," said Feldspar.

They left Cirrus and his warlocks fussing over the unconscious Angeline Fowl, whom they'd fetched from the other side of the time-stop, and followed Feldspar to the shuttle Root and Cudgeon were in. Honestly, she could have found it by herself just by listening to their voices.

Neither speaker noticed her entrance. Root and Cudgeon were in each other's faces — Cudgeon was still going on about the troll, for Frond's sake, and Root was yelling that he remained the ranking officer on-scene. From the way Foaly was lurking in a corner, he had tried to calm down the situation and been shouted down from both sides. The centaur met her gaze questioningly, and not without some relief.

Vinyáya summoned her best parade-ground voice and shouted, "Enough!"

Root and Cudgeon turned. Root also looked relieved to see her; Cudgeon, on the other hand, looked utterly astounded. There was a vein popping in his head.

"Enough of this," Vinyáya repeated. "Commander Root, by my authority as Councilor I am assuming command of this crisis situation."

"Take it, with my compliments," Root muttered. He cleared his throat. "Councilor, I stand relieved. You are in command."

"Now, Lieutenant Cudgeon."

Cudgeon, by this point, had turned an unhealthy-looking red shade. He was staring at her, and his jaw was working silently — in fact, he looked rather like a caricature of Root.

"Lieutenant Cudgeon," Vinyáya said pointedly. Cudgeon finally seemed to realize she was speaking to him.

He abruptly shrieked, "Get me that outside line to the Council!" and leapt at Foaly, his hands outstretched into claws.

"Stand down, Briar!" Root yelled, but he was ignored as Cudgeon pinned Foaly to the wall of the shuttle.

Vinyáya almost missed the barely audible pneumatic hiss and the faint flicker of motion in the corner of her eye, but there was no missing the way Cudgeon collapsed, his eyes closed. The lieutenant winked out of sight before he hit the ground.

"… Oops?" said Root very unconvincingly. He was staring very hard at the place where Cudgeon wasn't — where he had been, and was now lying unconscious outside the time-stop. Even without the broken geas screaming at her, Vinyáya could practically feel his train of thought grinding to its logical, inevitable, and extremely unfortunate conclusion: Cudgeon had left the time-stop.

Someone would have to be sent to fetch him. At least Retrieval was already on-scene.

Foaly said indistinctly, "But I don't understand what happened — the dart was only supposed to deliver a sedative…?"

The centaur had not been party to Vinyáya's earlier conversation with Root about the time-stop, so hopefully he wouldn't put the pieces together quite yet. Get Euclase to distract him, she mouthed to Feldspar. With any luck, the opportunity to play with Eight's toys would occupy him enough that the delicate conversation about time-stops could be delayed until debriefing.

Feldspar led Foaly out, leaving Root and Vinyáya in the shuttle alone.

"You've been busy," said Root. "I heard something about Fowl's mother? It seems the Mud Brat was correct about some things."

"You can see why we've kept it quiet."

A questioning look. Vinyáya rubbed her temples.

"Eight put a magical geas on the secret so no fairy could find out how to escape a time-stop. We overlooked humans."

"Understandable."

"The key is a change of consciousness, which isn't possible without some external intervention. In Fowl's mother's case, Fowl dosed her with sleeping pills. She was sedated and alone on the other side of the time-stop, and Cirrus detected her when we came in to drop off Diggums. In Lieutenant Cudgeon's case—"

"Foaly armed me with a sedative dart on my finger when I went to negotiate with Fowl. I forgot to take it off."

"Yes, all entirely accidental, I'm sure."

She and Root exchanged looks. More seriously, Vinyáya added, "I'm sorry it came to this. I know the two of you were close."

"Six hundred years of friendship, and this is how it ends," said Root bitterly. "I guess the troll was better than sending in a blue rinse, since Holly would have had a chance to survive, but — that he would gamble my officer's safety for his own ambition — well, it's your show now." He sighed. "So you're going for, what, a reverse hostage ploy with Fowl's mother?"

That was one way of putting it. "He has someone we want. We have someone he'll want."

"You think Fowl will go for it?"

"Our understanding is that Fowl is only doing this for his father's sake. How, then, could he leave his mother in our hands?" She might have approved of such filial duty if it hadn't brought them to this situation, but a knife cut both ways. This would break Fowl.

"So she left the time-stop, fine — but how in Frond's name did you manage to get her? Fowl forbid us entry."

"You'll have to allow me a few secrets, Julius," said Vinyáya. "The future holds many mysteries."

That was actually a hint about how she did it, but judging by the undisguised irritation on his face, Root hadn't picked up on it. Vinyáya relented.

"Consider basic time-stop mechanics. All the events that happen inside the time-stop, no matter their subjective ordering, take place in that moment when time was frozen at the beginning of the time-stop. When I left the time-stop, I reentered the flow of time. The 'present' outside the time-stop is the future, relative to the inside.

"Fowl brought this upon himself. None of your race has permission to enter here while I'm alive, you remember, but we called his bluff when we entered the house on the other side of the time-stop. Either he retroactively rescinds his ban — and because he's inside the time-stop, chronologically that takes effect before we entered — or he dies, and the condition is fulfilled that way. If he's as clever as he thinks he is, he'll catch the out. Either way, we have our leverage."

"And since Fowl's mother was already unconscious when we brought her back into the time-stop, he can't pull the same trick he did earlier," said Root slowly. "It's certainly tidier than a troll. What would you have done if Fowl hadn't sent his mother out of the time-stop?"

"There are greater powers than yours, as Councilor Crane told me before we left Haven. I think Cirrus is still disappointed he didn't get to pull out anything really interesting from his bag of tricks."

"Do I want to know?" said Root.

"Probably not."

Root looked like he wanted to ask anyway, but they were interrupted by a knock on the shuttle door. Foaly stepped in a moment later, carrying an earpiece.

"Commanders, Fowl is trying to raise us on the radio."

"What is he saying?" said Root, as Vinyáya said, "Have you responded?"

"Not much. He's noticed Holly escaped," Foaly said, "and no, we haven't said anything yet."

"Well then, you're up again. Break the news to him gently, will you?" said Vinyáya to Root.

In anyone else, Root's smile would have been considered mischievous. "You know, I have an idea. Why should I be the only one with the pleasure of dealing with the Mud Brat?"

"You think I should talk to Fowl?" This was hardly standard hostage negotiation procedure. "But you've already developed such a rapport with him."

"The Mud Boy and I got off on the wrong foot, what with assaulting my officers and trying to blow me up," said Root, in a spectacular understatement. "But he's read the Book, you say. So let's give him a show out of the Book. A bit of fear will do him good, and as I've been reminded" — he gestured at Vinyáya — "there are greater powers than the LEP here."

"You're joking," Foaly said.

"I never joke," said Root, and he said it with a straight face.


Root's logic made sense once he elaborated. Up till now, Fowl had been writing the script, and the LEP had followed it, obediently jumping through all of Fowl's hoops. Now that they were reversing the situation, they wanted to keep Fowl on his toes, off-balance and passively reacting, instead of plotting. Vinyáya was confident in her understanding of time-stop mechanics, and equally confident that Fowl would insist on plotting, if left to his own devices.

The good cop/bad cop negotiating routine was a classic — unsubtle, perhaps, but a classic for a reason. Root was currently doing a bad job of suppressing his amusement at the idea of being the good cop for once, since his temper usually cast him as the bad one. But Vinyáya was well-suited to being the bad cop this time, the stick to Root's carrot, since she held a civilian title as a sitting Council member in addition to her military ranks.

More relevantly, as Councilor Crane had reminded her, fairy society was and remained a theocracy. Frond who dictated the Book had been a priest-king, and the same was true of the Council that had succeeded him. As a sitting member of that Council, Vinyáya was technically a priest of the second rank and therefore had some right to the crow-feather robe she wore, though no one had worn such a garment since the last time the fairy peoples had gone to war at Taillte ten thousand years ago. There were certain stories from the Book that still lingered in the human subconscious, and the LEP was tapping into them now.

Greater powers, indeed. Vinyáya doubted that Crane had intended to suggest they stage divine intervention as psychological warfare, but at least it was going to be entertaining.

So that was how she came to be stalking down the front avenue of the Fowl estate under an invisibility spell, wearing a crow-feather robe and carrying a sword and a spear. An unconscious Angeline Fowl, also invisible, was laid out on two hoverstretchers that trailed along behind her.

The sword and spear that Vinyáya carried were made in the image of two of the four great treasures that the ancient Dé Danann had brought with them out of their old cities in the time before time. The Lia Fáil, the Stone of Kings, now stood at Tara, and the cauldron of plenty would hardly be useful now, but the sword and the spear would serve as a potent reminder (to the LEP as well) of the People as they had been when they ruled the surface by magic, a time before the Book.

If they had the original Claíomh Solais and Lúin Celtchair to hand, instead of the replicas used in religious services, their virtues — the sword that could not be defeated, the spear that could not miss its target — might have been useful against Fowl's mountain of a bodyguard. Still, some things were universal: even if Fowl didn't recognize their significance, the antique weaponry was very sharp and very striking.

… and heavy, too. Vinyáya was glad to stop once she had reached the approximate spot where Retrieval One had been so ignominiously defeated earlier.

"Move a little forward," said Cirrus, via her earpiece. He was serving as stage manager for this whole production. "Just another foot or so — perfect. Ready, ma'am?"

"Of course," she murmured.

"All right, Commander Root, on your mark." Her earpiece clicked over to Fowl's radio channel.

Root finally broke radio silence. "The situation has … changed," he said deliberately.

"What?" said Fowl.

That was Cirrus' cue to drop the spell of invisibility. To Fowl, who according to Euclase's BIRDs was currently watching his security cameras, she and the floating bier appeared directly in front of his front door with a sudden crack of thunder. Before Fowl had a chance to react, she thumped the butt of her spear onto the ground. The earth shook as if in response, a special effect courtesy of Cirrus' warlocks.

"Artemis Fowl!" Vinyáya shouted, her voice laced with magic. She was using a touch of the mesmer, just enough to make her voice more compelling; Cirrus also had made her voice harsher, almost crow-like, and magically amplified it. Between the spellbound resonance and the microphone she wore, she had no doubt they could hear her throughout the house. The traditional summoning spell required calling a name three times, but judging from his squawking over the radio channel, Fowl had already noticed her presence, no further repetitions necessary. He sounded agitated. Good.

Vinyáya continued inexorably: "You have made mischief among my people. Why have you done so? It is not fitting that a child, as you are, should concern himself with affairs such as these. Your father is held prisoner in the Arctic" — she paused to let the echoes fade — "but child, where now is thy mother?"