Nine Layers of Sky Read online

  Restlessly, he got to his feet and went to the door. His muscles ached and his nerves were wire-taut. He wondered how long it would be before withdrawal really began to take a hold. He had faced armies, but he was still afraid of this; scared that need would drive him to break the vow before he had even begun. He had to find a place that was safe, away from dealers and temptation, but he already knew that this was one of the worst cities in that respect. Afghanistan and the border could be no more than a few hundred kilometers away. Give it until nightfall and there would be a dealer on every corner. Maybe the priest knew a place to go—the dormitory of a clinic, perhaps. But then he would almost certainly have to pay… .

  The sound was sudden, startling him from his reverie: a woman, crying out in terror.

  I am here, something whispered.

  There was a flicker of movement in the pines, a shower of raindrops. Ilya ran down the steps and into the park.

  A rusalka was moving through the trees as swiftly as a squirrel. It was chasing prey. At the point where the path branched off toward the war memorial and the eternal flame, a tall blonde in a raincoat was running. The rusalka swarmed down the tree toward her and Ilya cried out in warning, but his voice was hoarse. The woman stumbled once, and Ilya’s heart skipped, but then she was out of the park and into the street and he lost sight of her. He could still see the rusalka, however. It was crouching at the side of the war memorial, beneath a rearing bronze horse, holding its clawed hands out to the eternal flame in a mockery of hearth-fire warmth. Ilya ran down the path, trying to ignore the heaviness in his limbs. He felt as though he were running underwater, and as he panted up to the war memorial, the rusalka uncurled itself unhurriedly, like a cat, and slunk over the top, apparently without seeing him.

  Cursing, Ilya looked around him. A young couple walked past him, laughing, but when the girl saw Ilya, her face changed and she clasped her boyfriend’s arm. He must look alarming, he thought: wild-eyed and disheveled, with the bloodstained bandage wrapped around his hand. No one would be looking to him to perform any heroics in the near future. Slowly, he walked over to the street.

  The blonde woman had disappeared. But just as Ilya was starting to think that all might be well, he saw the rusalka again, scuttling underneath a market stall. No one else seemed to have seen it, but there was a curious sheen to the air, like a heat haze, and he wondered whether the creature was broadcasting some kind of interference around itself. Or perhaps it had to do with denial: People saw these things more easily in the old days, when they had believed.

  Experience told him to look up, and there it was again, upside down on the ceiling. It was not looking at him, but staring into the market below. Ilya followed its gaze and saw the blonde woman once more. She was standing uncertainly among the vegetable stalls, her knuckles white around the strap of a shoulder bag. He was about to call out to her, but thought better of it. After the fright she must have had, the last thing she would want was some bloodstained maniac accosting her in the middle of the market. But why should the rusalka be so interested in this ordinary, attractive girl? Unless, of course, she had something it wanted… .

  Ilya followed the woman through the main hall of the market and into a corridor filled with clothes stalls, keeping a wary eye on the ceiling. As the woman reached the end of the hall, the rusalka slid down the wall and disappeared. The woman went through the door. This time, Ilya did not hesitate. He ran to the doors, scattering startled shoppers, and into a passage. He glimpsed the woman as she turned. The rusalka was waiting for her.

  Six

  ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

  Elena lay gasping on the tiled floor of the passage. A cold shower spattered her face and she looked up to see a woman’s head flying across the vault. Its eyes were empty and its hair streamed out behind it like molten metal. It struck the wall and exploded into shards and fragments that spiraled away through the air.

  A hand clasped Elena’s wrist and hauled her to her feet, so that she stood in a ringing silence. She looked numbly at the man who stood before her with a bloodied sword in his hand. A gleam of sunlight shot through the glass doors of the market. Elena backed against the wall.

  “Dear God, what was that? And who are you?”

  To her immense relief, the stranger lowered the sword.

  “It’s all right,” he said quickly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I think you just saved my life,” Elena said. Her voice was shaking. What kind of person went around with a sword in his hand? It looked like an antique. “And what was that thing ?”

  Her rescuer started to cough, leaning back against the wall, with a hand pressed to his chest. “Sorry,” he gasped.

  Warily, Elena considered him. His black leather overcoat was scuffed at the hem, and she absently noticed that a button was missing from the sleeve. A pale, angular face—typically Slavic—beneath unkempt, greying hair. The eyes were a chilly, haunted blue, but you saw a lot of eyes like that these days. Looking more closely, she saw that there was a tilt to them, suggesting ancestry other than Russian, a touch of the East. One hand was bandaged. It was also obvious that he was ill. Elena edged away a little. Tuberculosis was rife in the prisons, and this man had the air of a convict.

  “My name is Ilya Muromyets,” he said, recovering his breath. Odd, Elena thought, that he introduced himself in the Western manner. Didn’t he have a patronymic? “And that creature was a rusalka.”

  “A rusalka?”

  “Yes.”

  Elena stared at him incredulously. “What, you’re telling me that was a water spirit? Rusalki are a myth.”

  “So am I,” Ilya Muromyets said, smiling for the first time.

  “What do you mean?” Elena asked with the anger of recent fright, but he did not answer. The name seemed familiar, somehow, but he was talking like a crazy person. She started to edge away toward the door.

  “Why did it attack you?” Ilya Muromyets asked. “Do you know?”

  “I’ve no idea.” But even as she spoke, her hand curled protectively around her handbag and Ilya Muromyets’ cold blue gaze fell upon it. Elena felt her face flushing; she was lousy at keeping secrets.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” Ilya Muromyets asked, very low.

  “It’s nothing. It’s something I found ages ago.”

  “Show me.”

  “Why?” Elena demanded. Even in these odd circumstances, she didn’t see why she should comply with the instructions of a stranger.

  “Because I’ve saved your life once already this morning, and I might have to do so again,” Ilya Muromyets said, sounding reasonable enough. Reluctantly, Elena reached into her handbag and took out the black ball. Ilya Muromyets stared at it.

  “Do you know what it is?” Elena asked.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the snow,” Elena said, determined to tell him as little as possible.

  “Here in Almaty? When?”

  The cold eyes held her, and compelled. She said reluctantly, “On the road to Tashkent, about two weeks ago. There was a bad freeze, people died. The ambulance men were stealing things from the dead. I think this fell out of an ambulance driver’s pocket, but I’m sure he stole it from someone else.”

  “Do you know who the original owner might have been?”

  “There was a dead man in a car at the front of the line; he had a strange look about him. Maybe the thing belonged to him. But I don’t really know.”

  “Strange? How?”

  “I thought at the time that there was something funny about his eyes. But it must only have been that he had frozen.” She shivered at the memory, wrapping her arms around herself. “I tried to find out what this thing might be. I went to the library and the museum; I phoned everyone I could think of—I used to be a scientist, you see. Anomalies arouse my curiosity.”

  Ilya Muromyets’ eyes narrowed. “Tell me more.”

  “Stop interrogating me,” Elena said. “Who are you, anyway?”
Surely he could not be from internal security, not with that down-at-the-heel appearance, not to mention the sword. Unless the armed forces had become too poor to afford guns. But his interest in the object was intriguing.

  “I told you my name,” he said.

  “Which means nothing.”

  Ilya Muromyets smiled. “True. There’s no reason why you should have heard of me, not these days.”

  “Were you famous or something, then?”

  “Or something. And you haven’t told me your name, even.”

  “Elena,” Elena said, after a pause.

  “Just Elena?”

  She did not answer.

  “Well, if you don’t want to tell me … Or perhaps it’s Elena the Fair, like the story of the firebird?”

  He smiled with sudden charm, and to her surprise, she found herself smiling in return.

  “Do you live here?” Ilya Muromyets went on.

  “I don’t know anymore,” Elena replied before she could stop herself.

  It was a foolish thing to say, but he answered, “I know the feeling. Listen, Elena. What you are carrying is a danger to you; you’ve seen that already. Let me take it off your hands and you’ll never set eyes on me or it again, I promise.”

  Elena felt suddenly as though she was standing back at the cosmodrome, gazing up at the stars, and she knew then that she was looking at the future. “If I give you this, it’ll come at a cost.” To her own ears, she sounded hard, like the new money-grabbing Russians she so despised. It made her add, “I’ve lost my job, my self-respect, and my family’s starting to fall apart. Even my country’s been abolished. All I have is a home I don’t belong to anymore.”

  “I know what it is like,” Ilya Muromyets said with a curious diffidence, “to lose everything, and not to know any longer who you might be. But I also know what it is like to need to be the hero of one’s own life. If you wish, you can come with me, take your object to people who know what it is and what is to be done with it.”

  She must have looked suspicious, for he added, “If I meant you harm, I’d have let the creature kill you, or done it myself before now.”

  Elena looked into Ilya Muromyets’ face, but could not read anything from it. She did not believe him. She believed in rockets, not rusalki. She did not know what she had seen, but she was certain that it could not have been anything supernatural. Surely she had been attacked by some drug addict, and Ilya Muromyets had scared the girl away. She could not have seen that head, flying toward the wall and leaving no trace of blood and bone behind. And Muromyets wanted the black ball, or knew someone who did. Maybe it was valuable after all; an antique, perhaps.

  “Then how much will you give me for it?” Elena asked.

  Ilya Muromyets grimaced.

  “I don’t have much money on me. Otherwise I’d buy it from you. But the people I know will be able to pay you for it, I’m sure of that.”

  “And you don’t know what it is.”

  She saw him hesitate.

  “I’m not sure what it is, no,” he said. She could not tell if he was lying, or simply uncertain.

  “So how much do you think they’ll pay me for this unknown thing?” Elena said. Her gaze locked with Ilya Muromyets’.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t even know if they really will pay, do you?”

  “What do you think, Elena? Do you think it’s worth a chance?”

  There was always the possibility, Elena thought, that it might be some kind of elaborate scam. God knows there had been enough of those over the years; she’d read about such things in the newspaper. What about that organ scandal in Tashkent? People had been told that they were being smuggled abroad to a new life, but they turned up in pieces in some village midden.

  “Where are they, these people?”

  “They’re out of town,” Ilya Muromyets said.

  That settled it. “Tell them to get themselves into town, then,” Elena said. “I’m not going anywhere with someone I don’t know.”

  “I could just take it,” Ilya Muromyets told her.

  “But you won’t,” Elena said. “Will you?”

  Ilya Muromyets shook his head, saying wearily, “No. I won’t take it from you.”

  “Go to your friends, then. Tell them I’ll meet them tomorrow in”—she hesitated, trying to think of somewhere suitably public that had security guards—“the lobby of the Hotel Kazakhstan. Say eleven o’clock. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Where can I find you?” Ilya Muromyets asked. “Just in case I can’t reach them?”

  “There’s a cafe on Mamedova Street, by the old metro vent. You can leave a message there,” Elena said. She did not even want to give him her phone number, just in case. You never knew what contacts people might have, the extent to which they might be able to track you down. Ilya Muromyets nodded wearily.

  “Very well. I’ll tell them.”

  “Is there any way I can contact you? Where are you staying?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve only just arrived in town.”

  “If anything happens, and I can’t make it, I’ll leave a message at the cafe on Mamedova. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Elena said.

  “All right. I’ll see you then.” He did not sound happy, but Elena was not disposed to further argument. She turned quickly and went out through the door of the market.

  The rain had blown out over the city, leaving a washed pale sky in its wake. A group of old men had already clustered around a chessboard at the far end of the market, and Elena could hear the faint, discordant drift of karaoke from a cafe stall. She felt safer with people around. She walked swiftly across the wet concrete until she reached the edge of the trees, then looked back. The entrance to the market was empty; Ilya Muromyets was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had gone inside. Elena fingered the ball in her handbag, relieved to find it still safely tucked away. The whole episode had made little sense: this talk of spirits and strangeness, Ilya Muromyets’ gaunt face and fractured manner. She wondered whether he was simply mad, but then she remembered the image of the girl, hanging above her with that needle smile. Involuntarily, her eyes lifted to the surrounding buildings, as though the girl might even now be crouching among the pigeons, but there was nothing.

  Elena took a last look around, then hastened toward home.

  Seven

  ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

  Ilya waited behind the door of the market, his eyes closed, until he heard the woman’s footsteps resound on concrete. She was walking west, her heels tapping with a swift, decisive rhythm. Ilya paused for a moment, then slipped outside. Sounds rushed upon him: a blackbird high in the trees might have been singing inside his own head. Ilya ignored these noises, concentrating instead upon Elena’s heels on the pavement.

  She thought he was mad, of course, and he couldn’t blame her. He wondered if she would even remember the rusalka’s attack the next day. The rusalki had their own methods of remaining undetected: confusion, illusion, a pressure in the head. And they were aided by the precepts of this modern age, which, even in Russia, sought to reject the supernatural, and to embrace sweet reason. He had seen the war going on in Elena’s mind. He had almost been able to hear her sorting and organizing, convincing herself that what she had seen had been explicable after all. Rusalka to runaway; from sword to fishing rod.

  But the world was not so easy as these rationalists would have it. Perhaps the volkh was right, and maybe the rusalki were creatures from another world, but Ilya Muromyets intended to treat them the same way that he always had: as enemies, and deadly in their treachery and stealth. His job now would be to keep Elena safe until the morning. Thus he looked up as he passed beneath the trees along the street, to see if a white face might be peering down through the branches, and he listened to the sounds around Elena’s receding footsteps, to make as certain as he could that she would not be set upon before he could reach her.

  He could see her now: her tall, neat figure nearing the
end of the market stalls. Ilya moved beneath the scanty protection afforded by the trees; if she looked back, he did not want to be seen. He followed her past the mural of a smiling woman bearing a basket of fruit. That was what this town was named after, he remembered now: Alma-ata, in the Kazakhs’ barbarous tongue. Father of apples. Elena was vanishing behind a passing tram. Ilya hung back, in case she should chance to glance around, and then he saw it.

  The thing was sitting underneath one of the stalls, gnawing on a bone. Ilya’s first wary thought was that it was one of the rusalki themselves, without the glamorous disguise, but then he saw that this creature was different. It was sinuous and small, its muscles gleaming beneath a translucent layer of skin. It had an unfinished, embryonic appearance. It reminded Ilya of the horse’s head in the market, flayed and glistening. But the tissue beneath the skin was mottled, purple and grey like a bruise.

  He reached for the fishing-rod case. The thing turned its head and looked at Ilya out of great black eyes. It sucked the bone straight into its mouth. Ilya saw the bone go down its throat with a great painful gulp. Then it was gone, swarming up the wall and into a crack in the concrete. Ilya glanced at the stallholder and his customers. Clearly, they had noticed nothing.

  He caught sight of Elena again, walking toward the bus station. Ilya was immediately worried. What if he’d spooked her so much that she was heading out of town? She disappeared behind a plume of exhaust fumes. Ilya pursued, hastening past the line of Tajik refugees in their floral shalwars, reading the cards for passersby or selling the last of their pitiful possessions. One of the women looked up sharply as Ilya passed, gave a knowing, gold-toothed grin. Did she see him for what he was, Ilya wondered, or did he merely look like a potential customer? The latter seemed even more unlikely than the former.

  Elena was almost at the end of the street, turning left. Ilya followed her down an unremarkable avenue of apartment blocks until she vanished into a dark doorway. He closed his eyes and listened, counting the number of steps that she took. The slam of the steel door was deafeningly final. He could not follow her into her home, but he could still listen. Keeping one ear open, Ilya went back out onto the street to find a public telephone.