pikit mata (adv.) "with eyes closed"; to accept something against your desires must be done; to go bravely into that which you cannot avoid.

The forest was deep and dark; often, beyond the next turning, footfalls of some predator wolf galloping across stone were heard, or further in the distance, with reassuring grunts, a wild boar trotted with steady stride. At no point was the path anything but engulfed and thickened with grass and nettles, blackthorn and sloe, so that it seemed you were in another, much more ancient time. Here and there, the chiaroscuro of thicket smelling of moistened down and fresh grass led into one of those glades where it seemed like, if the moon was in the right stage of its cycle, animals might speak to men. Irij had painstakingly wrestled this particular thicket into submission – the whole place was laced with obstacles and traps around and over which the cadets had to maneuver – but there was nonetheless the silent reminder as you moved through the trees that this was still a place mostly untamed.

Pekka caught his comrade on one of the highest platforms. He knew her by now; he knew her route. She had her own path through these woods, and she knew it well; in that regard, Pekka was now, and might always be, her inferior.

"Kinga." He rarely used her first name; that in itself had her turning towards him, her eyes darkened with concern. She was not a person often mistaken for emotional, but, as in the ring with Nerezza Astaroth earlier, she was not as difficult to read as others thought she was. Kinga was difficult to understand, maybe, but nine years of friendship had blunted any sense of division between them. Well, Pekka called it friendship. He wasn't sure what Kinga thought they were. "I need to ask you something."

"Yes," she said darkly, "you should absolutely marry her."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

Here, among the trees, they were for a brief moment alone; there was only the ghost of a breeze moving between the limbs, and the faraway whoops and cries of their friends. The wind was stronger in the higher boughs; it rattled the platform like the cough of a dying man. It was a mild day; the sky was blue and the sun was exceptionally pale, more silver than golden. Kinga crouched at the edge of the platform, looking utterly blasé about her precarious position as the platform shuddered beneath her. She said, "are you going to spit it out, Hämäläinen?"

Pekka took a deep breath. "If something happens to me..."

"We're not discussing that."

He sighed. "Szymańska."

She had never looked so much like her sister when she said, "if you leave me alone with them, comrade, I will kill you."

That roused a chuckle. "Not them?"

"Well," Kinga said, "I'll work up to it."

"I mean it." He lowered himself to her level, and caught her eye. Her eyes were a dark brown, just as Eero's had been. He wondered sometimes if she knew how much of his brother he saw in her. He had certainly never told her – Ina was the only person to whom he spoke about Eero – but Kinga could be perceptive sometimes. "If anything happens to me during initiation, I need you to promise me that you'll look after the others."

If anything happens to me…. seeing the Warriors earlier that day had just hammered it home. Pekka had always known what the curses were, but there had nonetheless come a moment that morning when he had thought to himself, these are the ones who have survived. So many had not. So many had never come home. So many had been buried after initiation. And worse than that – the curses that stripped everything away from you and left you as nothing more than an empty vessel for the Schreave sorcery.

He did not regret his choice. He was in this for a good reason. Yet even he could not deny that they were nineteen generations deep now; the Warriors Programme had left a very long line of corpses behind it. Pekka had to survive – he had to.

But his nature did not allow him to go into the unknown without some reassurance that he would be leaving his responsibilities unaddressed.

And they were his responsibility.

"You must be desperate," Kinga said, "to ask me."

"I trust you."

"Desperation makes a fool of us all."

He smiled. "You're not as big and bad as you think, Szymańska."

He looked out across the treetops. The forest was broken by a lake, about a mile to the north, where the obstacle course terminated; it shone in the wan afternoon light, its surface rippling gently with the promise of something unknown beneath. He and Ina had sneaked out in the dead of night on her birthday last year, to have a picnic on the banks and swim under the stars. She had enjoyed it, and that had been enough for him. Making her happy… it was an honour to accomplish what the rest of the world had not.

"No," Kinga said, thoughtfully. "Not yet."

She was ranked first in their class, and she had never risked that position, not once. Pekka had always thought a little less of her for that – for standing by while their classmates struggled, for shirking any activity with a potential demerit attached, for viewing another's difficulty as her opportunity. Even today, she had stepped into the fray only once Pekka had intervened without serious rebuke – and then, it had been more to deal with Nerezza than to protect Ragnar. Pekka couldn't say that he blamed her, but...

Maybe that was unfair of him. Maybe for someone who bore such familial expectations, this was the only path she could bear to take. Maybe if Eero had lived, he would have been exactly the same.

"You still haven't promised me."

"Hämäläinen. We're not having this conversation." Kinga gestured with her knuckles towards the woods. Though none of their fellow candidates were visible, the forest heaved with their exertion; there were calls back and forth as the trees shook, and shadows moved below. "It's been nine years, and they're our competition. If they can't look after themselves, then they shouldn't be a Warrior. And you shouldn't waste your life trying to make them something that they're not."

Pekka shook his head. "That's not fair."

"If you let them be burdens to you now," Kinga said softly, "they'll be burdens to you out there."

She was not speaking about the city beyond the fence; she was not speaking about the kingdom beyond the city; she was speaking about the island, so very far away, and what lurked there in wait; she was speaking about the druj, and the Schreaves, and the final curse. Pekka could not find the words to tell her how wrong she was, and he did not bother searching for them. He just stood. "We've wasted enough time. You don't want to risk Zoran snatching your spot while we're up here, chatting."

Kinga rolled her eyes. "If he managed," she said. "I wouldn't even be mad. I'd be impressed."

Pekka shook his head. "You'd be a little mad."

She smiled, briefly, and jumped back to her feet. "Maybe."

They were evenly matched for the rest of their way back; Pekka was stronger, and taller, but Kinga had unparalleled balance and agility. Pekka did not, would never, understand how someone could have such fast reflexes, how even in what looked like free-fall, she managed to move her limbs in total concert to catch herself and fling herself forward again, moving between the trees like a creature that had never known anything else. The journey back down to the ground was as fast and as hard as it always was. There was a newly dug tiger-trap exactly where Pekka usually landed on the forest floor, and Kinga looked slightly disappointed that he noticed it in time.

Commandant was waiting by the lake, horses in hand. "Hämäläinen. Szymańska. What a surprise." It did not sound like he was surprised. "Congratulations on earning your lunch."

On this last day of training, there could surely not have been a more nostalgic sentence. Pekka's meal privileges had been revoked for five days when he was thirteen; Ina had smuggled him loaves of bread in the barracks after curfew; Ilja Schovajsa had met him before muster with last night's apples filling his pockets. Even Kinga had made a habit of accidentally leaving half of her lunch on the steps of the mess hall when she went to bed. It was this memory that prevented Pekka from worrying too much about her refusal to promise anything. She was not, he thought, as big and bad as she thought. Just… rough around the edges.

Commandant tossed them the reins. "Get back and get rested for class."

"Sir." Kinga frowned. "The assessments..."

Commandant interrupted her briskly. "Did I stutter, Szymańska?"

"No, sir."

"Did I issue an order, Szymańska?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why the fuck are you still in front of me, Szymańska?"

Pekka could tell she was trying to refrain from rolling her eyes. "Sir."

He quietly passed her the reins to her horse.

The journey back to the training grounds was pleasant enough; a long crescent-shaped path linked the lake and the cabins. It would take about an hour and a half to travel on foot, but on horse-back it took less than thirty minutes at a relaxed canter. The use of horses as relief for those who had adequately completed a task was, in itself, in furtherance of their training; it was common knowledge that the Warriors were frequently required to travel long distances in relative wilderness, particularly those without the capabilities of the Moon or the Chariot. Raising the candidates as comfortable equestrians was a matter of practicality. For cadets like Ilja Schovajsa, hailing from the farmland of Old Kur, these lessons were all but purposeless; for cadets like Pekka, who had been raised on the docks of Opona, the learning curve had been a sharp one. He had become enormously familiar with the ground during those first few weeks; improvement had been slow. But he had improved. Slowly.

Ina had always teased him about his hard head since they were children, but it had finally come in handy.

It would have been just under thirty minutes at a gentle canter, but as Kinga wheeled her mount around, she took off at a gallop. Pekka followed closely; they circled the lake. He watched the forest on the far shore, at the shadows among the trees that might have been cadets or might just have been shadows. Kinga had never managed to break her sister's record for the obstacle course, but she usually came close; the others would probably not be finished for another twenty minutes or so. Kinga seemed to be in a rush to get back and eat before she was subjected to the misery of socialising with her comrades; her steed threw up great chunks of turf and grass as they rode. If she had been anyone else, perhaps Pekka would have tried to comfort her – seeing Jaga in such a state must have weighed heavy on her heart – but she was not, so he did not. Kinga knew what she had signed up for.

They arrived into the training grounds in a great clatter of iron shoes on cobble. Even from here, the scent of lunch hung on the air, drifting slowly from the mess hall. Stew, Pekka thought, it was usually stew. The staff that worked at the mess hall for the Kur infantry usually came here after that lunch hour concluded, with whatever remained of their meals. Stew was a staple of living in the programme, and the staff by now knew the candidates well – they greeted each other by name. As Kinga moved towards one of the tables that took up a corner of the hall, Pekka took up his bowl and said, "I'll be back in a minute."

She shrugged, already tearing into her bread. She did not look up as he left the mess hall. Pekka very much doubted she would still be there when he returned.

The infirmary was on the other side of the cobbled square, a squat cabin of corrugated metal on wooden stilts to avoid flooding during the rainy seasons. The windows were always covered with old newspapers, so that the light within was always filtered in cool greyscale – it did not matter the hour or heat of the day. Ragnar Kaasik was occupying a low camp-bed close to the door, his face bandaged, his arm splinted and set in a sling against his chest. He seemed to have been dozing fitfully, for he awoke with a slight start when Pekka knocked gently on the wall to rouse him.

"Hey." He extended the bowl in his hand, and the smaller boy took it gratefully. Pekka pretended not to notice the slightly shame-faced expression that flitted across Ragnar's features. "I wasn't sure when they were going to get around to feeding you."

Ragnar shook his head ruefully. "You know what they're like."

He did. Pekka watched as the younger boy began to eat. He was thankfully left-handed; even his arm did not heal as well as it ought, he could still feed himself. Pekka did a lot to help his fellow cadets, but even he drew a line somewhere.

"I'm surprised you're still here," he said eventually. "I was expecting them to move you to a civilian hospital."

"Why would they do that?"

Pekka paused, leaning against the door-frame to consider his comrade at length. "Why wouldn't they?"

"I'm not dropping out." Ragnar paused. His voice was quietly determined. "I haven't spent nine years of my life on this to give up now, Pekka. If they want me gone, they'll have to eliminate me. And so far, they haven't."

Pekka looked at him. He was brutalised – a black eye, a burst lip, a broken arm and his cheek and throat bandaged. Could he really hope to compete in the final assessment? More importantly – could he do so, and survive? If Nerezza got another shot at him… What had happened to Ragnar was not the first time the Astaroth girl had proven herself to be more of a danger to her comrades than to their enemies. Pekka still had not forgiven her for much that she had done; if she wasn't dragging them all down, she was threatening them, hurting them, herself. Unbidden, the thought of Ina being paired with Nerezza for their final assessment crossed his mind; his heart constricted. How could the Champions countenance such behaviour?

"How's your ranking?"

"Commandant hasn't said. There's no new list yet."

"But?"

"But," Ragnar said. "They haven't eliminated me."

They were not friends - Pekka could not remember ever having a long conversation with the other youth, though to be fair, Pekka was not inclined towards long conversations with many people. Ragnar Kaasik was of the mountains, just as Pekka Hämäläinen was of the port; narrow and broad, one had always lingered around the lower ranks of the class while the other had maintained a firm position at the top.

But in this moment, they understood each other just fine.

Pekka nodded, and straightened. "Right. I'm sure you don't need luck, Kaasik. Focus on getting your strength back."

"I appreciate the lunch, Pekka. I owe you one."

"Don't mention it."

Pekka retreated in favour of the mess hall once more. Most of the training corps' horses had been returned to their pastures; they grazed peacefully in the shade of a broad, leafy maple tree. Some previous candidates had carved symbols into the tree: tiny hearts, little sets of overlapping Gs, an elaborate M and a spiky J linked together. From this distance, Pekka could not quite discern them, but he knew that they were there. He knew this whole campus like he knew his own heart.

Slipping into the mess hall, he found that in his short absence the whole space had lit up with sound and movement. About half of the group had returned, though Ina was not among them. Kinga was still eating, quite resolutely, on her own; Pekka moved over to sit opposite her, quite undeterred by the way her dark eyes flicked up to watch him approach. She didn't look happy, but nor did she protest; in fact, she pushed her plate to the centre of the table, and indicated that he should help himself to her bread.

"I don't know how you stay so huge," she said, in an almost accusative tone, "when you keep giving your food away."

Pekka broke off a chunk of bread and shrugged. "Genetics?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Sure."

Ilja Schovajsa moved over towards them, gesturing towards the seat beside Kinga. "Occupied?"

Kinga shook her head; it rather struck Pekka that she was rejecting the idea of Ilja joining them, rather than answering his question, but it wasn't entirely clear. Pekka said, "not at all," and Ilja dropped his bowl on the table, looking grateful to sit down; Uriasz Chrzanowski collapsed onto the bench opposite him, looking exhausted. "There's a lot of people late back."

Ilja grimaced. "Commandant only brought enough horses for the first ten to finish the course. The others are on foot."

Kinga blinked. "Ouch."

"I don't know what's wrong with him today." Ilja shook his head. "You'd think he'd be glad to see us go."

Kinga just tore apart her bread and said nothing.

Pekka glanced around the room. So many weren't back yet – Ina, Zoran Czarnecki, Khalore Angelo, to name only a few. Nerezza Astaroth and her shiny new black eyes, courtesy of Kinga, were also absent. However, that wasn't the case for the youngest member of the training corps. Azula was small; that meant when the powers that be weren't weighing her down with loaded packs, she was exceptionally fast and agile. Even with her leg injured, she might have been one of the first to finish; she waved shyly to Pekka from across the room, where she was sitting with Hyacinth Estlebourgh and Belle Seo. He returned the gesture.

"It must have been hard," Uriasz Chrzanowski said, softly. "Seeing his old students like that..."

Kinga abruptly jabbed her knife in his direction. Uriasz did not look as concerned as Pekka would have been in his position, but then, it was only a butterknife. On the other hand, it was Kinga's older sister that he was insulting – Pekka thought there was a good chance that the dark-haired cadet would scrap bare-handed for her family's honour. "What are you implying?"

"Oh, come off it, Szymańska." Uriasz shook his head. "They looked like death warmed over."

"Are you questioning the gift of the xrafstars? I could report you to Konrad for talk like that. Treasonous words like that… don't you love your family, Chrzanowski? How many lashes do you think your sedition would earn them?"

Ilja had realised, quite belatedly, that Kinga was not being serious. His laughter was loud, and somewhat incongruous, tinged very slightly with relief. "If final assessment goes wrong for you, Kinga, have you considered joining the Security Bureau? You'd make great secret police."

Kinga shook her head and lowered her knife. "Oh, they have higher standards than to take a Kur." She pushed her braid over her shoulder. When she spoke, it was with a sly smile. "It's fine, Uriasz. You're not at any risk of inheriting the curses, anyway."

Uriasz was clearly reaching for a piece of bread to throw at her when Pekka interrupted, speaking low. "Don't waste food."

He sounded like his father when he said that. He sounded like Eero, who had always sounded like their father. Pekka could almost see them now, like a photograph projected against the back of his eyelids – framed against the docks, rope over shoulder and hammer in hand, exchanging some quiet joke that had their faces alight with mirth.

His father had been so proud to think of his sons as Warriors.

His thoughts were broken when, abruptly, two slender arms wound their way around Pekka's shoulders as his girlfriend hugged him from behind. He had been so absorbed in his memories that he had not even heard her approach. "Sorry to keep you waiting." She pressed a kiss to his temple, very gently, like she was afraid that her lips might bruise him. Across the table, Kinga and Uriasz exchanged vaguely derisory looks. "Finished lunch already?"

Zoran and Ina had arrived together, too quickly to have walked; they must have been able to secure the last two horses for themselves. Pekka could not help but smile when he saw her. "I can wait while you get yours."

"My hero."

Ilja and Zoran exchanged looks as Zoran eased himself onto a seat at the end of the table, wincing as he did so. "I think there's a chance," Ilja said, thoughtfully. "That Commandant has decided none of us are good enough to initiate."

Zoran shook his head. "Maybe there aren't any final assessments. Maybe they've decided to keep the rankings we already have."

Kinga frowned. "You think Konrad would sacrifice the opportunity to torture us a little more creatively?"

"He mentioned class," Ilja said slowly. "We have class today?"

"Mielikki will be glad," Uriasz said. "She was saying she needed to get her hands on some ink for Hyacinth's tattoo."

The pace of their conversation was slowing as the newcomers slowly became further absorbed into their meal. Ina returned, balancing a bowl in either hand, and threw her boyfriend a reproachful look. "You didn't eat?"

"I've had a ton of bread."

She set the fresh bowl of stew in front of him. "How is he? Ragnar, I mean."

"Stubborn."

"Sounds like someone I know." Inanna smiled, and he was almost speechless all over again. She set a hand, very gently, on his forearm. Was she ever anything other than gentle? Sometimes, he thought wryly, when she was being protective. When they had been much younger – before he had grown to a foot taller than she was – yes, there had been some call for protectiveness then. "It was good of you to think of him."

Sometimes Pekka wondered if he did these things because he thought that Eero would. Eero had always been his better – thoughtful without needing to think, brave without needing to fear, kind without hesitation. If Pekka could only hope to dwell within the shadow of his goodness, that would be enough.

It was very different from now, here, with Ina. She was like the sun – being warmed by her was enough. He could not compete; he felt no need to try. To be loved by her, in this moment, was enough.