Free Nine Layers of Sky by Liz Williams

own. It was not true. The Mechvor genuinely cared, unlike Anikova.
    She tapped Kitai on the shoulder. “You’re wasting your breath,” she said. The Mechvor turned, and just for a moment, Anikova felt a twinge inside her head; a neural toothache, sharp and stinging. She stumbled back.
    “I’m sorry,” she muttered, hating herself for her weakness in front of the suspect. His face was turned back to the wall, but she knew he was grinning. The Mechvor put a placatory hand on Anikova’s arm.
    “I know how hard this is for you, Colonel,” she murmured. “Please try not to worry. I’m sure we can sort everything out to everyone’s satisfaction.”
    “All right,” Anikova said sourly. “I’ll let you deal with it.”
    “Would you like to stay here while I ask this poor misguided soul a few questions?”
    “No,” Anikova said. “I’ll wait outside.”
    In disgust, she picked up a handful of samizdat papers from the table and strode to the door. The light streamed into the passage, dappling the white plaster walls. Anikova went over to the window and looked out.
    Pre’gorod—First City—stretched all the way to the Northwest Gulf, the Red Star banner snapping over the roofs and golden domes, revealing silvery glimpses of sea. A carrier was coming down to the airport, falling from the sky like a great drop of rain. If Anikova craned her neck, she could see the monorail—aptly named the Bullet—streaking across the city. Down in the street, her own long
siydna,
hovering between the trees, gleamed in the evening sun.
    Anikova opened the window and breathed in clean air from the gulf, laden with salt and the tang from the herring fisheries, masked by the headier scent of the limes. Her
siydna
was already dusted with pollen; it danced up in yellow swirls beneath the vehicle’s stationing-jets.
    From up here, First City was quiet and well-ordered, everything and everyone in its place. But Anikova’s ankle still stung where the
Domovoi
had bitten through her boot, and she could hear the murmuring voice of the Mechvor from inside the old man’s apartment. From the corner of her eye, she saw the city shift: the buildings shrinking, becoming greyer and smaller, the trees withering. Anikova grew cold. These glimpses of another, lesser reality seemed to be growing, but few people were prepared to talk about it. Except the dissidents. And she remembered with deep unease the heretical thoughts that her father had increasingly begun to voice before he fell into the breach all those years ago:
We are stealing from them, you know.
From the Motherland, from Russia itself. We are leaching
their dreams, to fuel our world. The better it gets here, the
worse it becomes on Earth.
And that was the key to her own long uncertainty.
But now I
know
it’s true. Central
Command has told me so. Yet what right do we have? Are
we not a nation of dream-stealers, thereby? And are we poisoning
our
world by our actions, diminishing ourselves?
    Restlessly, Anikova returned to the door and peered through. The old man was now sitting at the table, with Kitai bending over him. In the lamplight, the Mechvor could have been his granddaughter, neat in her dark uniform, but Anikova glimpsed the form of her avatar within her silhouette: a black, twisting embryo. Anikova did not wait to see any more. She closed the door behind her and leaned against the wall.
    She could not stop herself from listening, but there was nothing to hear, and that was the worst thing of all.

Part Two

One
    RUSSIAN FEDERAL REPUBLIC / KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY
    Ilya Muromyets’ great black sword, concealed in a fishing-rod case, rested at his shoulder. A packet of sunflower seeds weighed down his pocket and a shot of low-grade heroin—the very last, Ilya told himself— sang through his veins. The train rattled through the suburbs of St. Petersburg, gathering speed once it reached the flat whiteness of the steppes.
    It was a Tuesday in early March, hardly the best time for