Silver by Steven Savile Read Free Book Online

Ronan, but he can’t understand it. It’s impossible.”
    She saw Sir Charles was about to naysay her and cut him off before he could get the first word out. “And don’t go telling me he lived through Ireland. That was different on so many levels. Now, cut the macho bullshit and send a woman to do the job this woman is best qualified to do.”
    The old man looked at her, then at Ronan, and for a moment didn’t say anything. He seemed to be weighing up the cost of losing face over the value of stubbornness like it was some sort of economic factor-equation where one might somehow balance out the other.
    Noah wondered how the hell the old man could say no to her. He knew, roles reversed, he wouldn’t have been able to. Orla was all fire and heat, and like a moth, he wanted to get as close to her flame as he could, right up to where her incandescence had his flesh burning.
    Sir Charles rubbed at his nose and twisted his lips into an expression that was anything but a smile. “Sometimes arguing with you makes me feel like Sisyphus with his damned stone,” the old man said. And sometimes, Noah thought, listening to you two makes me wish I’d paid more attention at school. “What part of ‘the end of the discussion’ didn’t you understand, Orla? No, don’t bother answering that one, I know the answer. It was the bit where it meant I was saying no to you. You’re like a willful child sometimes. I have my reasons for wanting to keep you out of Israel, but if you are so damned determined to get yourself killed, go to Israel.
    “Ronan, that means you’re on foot patrol here.
    “Now, Maxwell is waiting to drive the rest of you to the airfield.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    5
     
     
    The Adoration of Silver
     
     
    The old man grappled with his wheelchair, banging the steel rim off the doorframe as he negotiated the turn into one of the many downstairs rooms. He cursed the damned thing, reversed and twisted hard on the right wheel to make sure he made it through on the second attempt. There was no need for it; the wheelchair was electric. He could just as easily have angled it gracefully between the gap using the little joystick set into the armrest, but right now Sir Charles needed to look frustrated. To finish playing the part, he needed to take that “frustration” out with sheer physical exertion. Anything else would have given his satisfaction away.
    He slammed the door behind him.
    And then he smiled the smile of a man content that he had achieved exactly what he had set out to.
    The room was yet another different world within the confines of Nonesuch. It was part study, part retreat. This was the old man’s haven. There was an antique pedestal desk with green leather inlay and matching green glass banker’s lamp and blotter. The pedestals were chipped and scuffed where he had caught them with the wheelchair. Above the desk was a mirror. Reflected in the mirror was a Rembrandt, brooding and dark with thick, heavy oils. The painting was priceless—or more accurately, beyond pricing—because the rest of the world believed it to be among the lost treasures of the art world, a variant on his 1629 masterpiece Judas Repentant . The painting had fascinated Sir Charles, as had the very notion that there could be no rehabilitation for the penitent sinner. What was it Peter had called Judas’ repentance? He remembered: The sorrow of a world which worketh death .
    It was getting progressively more difficult to recall the little things, the ephemera of life, which frightened Sir Charles. The idea of his mental acuity slipping into darkness was terrifying. He’d promised himself he would shuffle off this mortal coil if he ever forgot his own name. It wasn’t a promise he was sure he could keep. That was his sorrow. Age.
    He studied the painting for the thousandth time. Everything in it appeared to represent genuine shame—the hand-wringing, which mirrored so many portraits of Peter the sinner, the facial