Read Online Nine Layers of Sky by Liz Williams - Free Book Online

supernatural powers of hearing, who hears things no one else can. You used to be a sorcerer’s dream, Muromyets. Now you are a scientist’s.”
    Ilya looked at him, his heart beginning to pound with a long, slow beat that he had not felt for decades.
    “You must have wondered,” Kovalin pressed. “You have so much more information available to you now, for perhaps the first time in history.”
    “Genetic engineering?” Ilya whispered, and hated the hope in his voice. For it was true what Kovalin had said. He still craved answers.
    “In the twelfth century?” Kovalin smiled. “The only thing your people might have engineered, was turnips. And yet the
bogatyri
were a breed apart. You never knew your father, did you?”
    It was as though Ilya had been waiting all his life to have this conversation. “No. I use a patronymic, but my mother told me he was dead, under the swords of the barbarians.”
    “If it is any comfort, she may not have lied. Not all the chosen women remembered what happened to them. Did you ever hear her speak of the
rusalki
?”
    “Yes. She told me she used to see them in the woods by the lake, up in the trees. She was afraid of them.”
    “She was right to be afraid. Did she tell you of a day when she fainted in the woods after a stumble, or, perhaps, sat dreaming at the water’s edge, as girls do, until she had lost so much time that she could not account for it?”
    “No, she didn’t.” But then came the long-ago echo of his grandmother’s voice, saying:
The woods are dangerous, Ilyushka, even in summer and the light. One day, I
remember—oh, long before you were born—your mother
went out to gather mushrooms and she was so long,
Ilyushka, that I thought she was never coming home. And
when at last she did, she was mazed, as if she’d spent too
long in the sun. . . .
    Wonderingly, Ilya repeated this to Kovalin.
    “But what happened to my mother? And what has it to do with me?”
    “I would hazard a guess that it was your conception.”
    “What? The
rusalki
are female. And whatever befell my mother that day took place long before I was born.”
    “The
rusalki
are not female, despite their appearance, and the gestation of their offspring is not human, either. The
rusalki
do not have a gender. If you were to be so unfortunate—or so lucky, for opinion varies—to sleep with one, you would find that they have nothing that approximates to human genitalia.”
    “You seem remarkably well-informed,” Ilya said dryly. “Have you been so blessed, then, or so cursed, to have a
rusalka
as your lover?”
    “No. But I have dissected them.”
    “I have killed
rusalki,
” Ilya said, staring at him. “And they shatter into ice at the touch of a blade.”
    “If they have time to marshal their illusions, yes. But they can be caught unawares and turned to colder flesh. They are not spirits, Ilya Muromyets.”
    Ilya rose, stiffly, and crossed to the window. Ice glittered on the Neva beneath the winter sun. Beyond marched the ranks of apartment blocks, made of the grey, crumbling concrete that had been a Soviet speciality. The modern, everyday world, where spirits and heroes did not belong. But he was sure that Kovalin was lying to him. He could almost smell it.
    “Then what are they?” he asked, still gazing out across the city.
    “Whatever they might be, they have been here for a very long time, hiding out in the silent places, the cold lands where few humans go. There is no sign that they use any kind of technology, yet there is evidence that they experiment on humans. And I suspect that if I was to take a sample of your blood, there would be matching DNA between you.”
    “What?” Ilya asked, blankly. He swung to face Kovalin. “Are you telling me that I am not human?”
    “Of course you’re not human,” Kovalin said impatiently. “Not as we understand it, anyway.”
    There was a short, charged silence.
    “And what are you?” Ilya asked finally. There was something about