synecdoche (n.) a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something or vice versa.

äiti spent every day in bed. she slept a lot. when she was awake, she cried. she would hold his face in her hands, and look at him very intently, and cry when she found whatever answer she was searching for in his face. her skin was slate grey, rising in red patches along her neck and shoulders. her eyes were painfully perpetually bloodshot, made moreso when isä applied the treatments, wincing all the time, as though it hurt him the same as it hurt her.

isä never cried, but he got quiet, so quiet. he would spend the whole day on the water and on the docks, bringing in just enough money and fish to keep their little family alive and fed, and, when the sun went down, he would sit beside äiti's bed and he would not move. he often slept there, and would have to be woken when dawn broke to return to work.

when the boys were old enough, they could go and help isä on the docks; old enough meant five or six years old, and that in turn meant that, while his brother went off to the ports, he could stay at home and curl up beside äiti, carefully, so as not to jostle her, and listen intently as though, if only he concentrated hard enough, he might be able to hear what she was dreaming about.

he had said to her, once, just once, "promise me you won't go."

and she had said, "we must never make promises that we cannot keep, petja."

she called him that often, though it wasn't his name; she and isä had fought over his name for a long time, as they had fought over his brother's – not even over the name, but about whether it would be a swendish name or a kur name. she had wanted the first boy to be erik, but they already had a cousin erik, and a neighbour erik, and isä hadn't liked how harsh the name, how abrupt the ending, how clearly it delineated their kur heritage. she had wanted the second boy to be pjotr, and this fight she had also lost. she hadn't even wanted to be äiti; she had wanted to be mama.

she didn't seem to mind it now, even though it meant that her boys had no idea what the word mama meant and sometimes got themselves in trouble by proclaiming random neighbours to be their new mamas. hani, who provided äiti's salves and treatments, disliked it least; she always threatened to take them home with her, and brought sweet pastries with her when she visited, and sometimes arrived at the door with clothes for the boys saying that ishkur had grown too tall too fast and that they would go to waste otherwise. isä would accept these gifts but stiffly, for fear of encouraging charity, and hani would say, "without lips, the teeth feel cold, kaapo. this is what neighbours are for."

and isä would relent. later, he would tell them, "hani was good to give us these things; she was right to give us these things. you must always look after those around you, and notice when they are struggling, and help them without any badness in your heart. and we must make sure to pay back her kindness when we can, however we can. that is the purest form of duty."

äiti had woken up then, and isä had hurried to her, and that had been that.

If he wasn't Petja – Pjotr – the Watcher – then who was he?

Could he call himself he, transformed so, made so monstrous, made druj-like, less human somehow than even the druj - for they, at least, could direct their own motion, perceive through their own eyes?

Who had he been?

The World said, you have always been thus.

The Tower said, I will always be thus.

äiti spent every day in bed. she slept a lot. when she was awake, she did not even have the energy to cry, or rise from bed, or hold his face; she could only lie there, eyes half-open, slate-grey skin slick with sweat like sea spray. while his brother went off to the ports with isä, he had stayed at home and curled up beside her, carefully, so as not to jostle her, and listen intently as though, if only he concentrated hard enough, he might be able to hear what she was dreaming about. he had lain thus for the whole day, and became slowly, uncomfortably aware of how little äiti had woken, how little she had moved.

when isä returned, he had tried to shake äiti awake for her salves, and found that she would not wake; he had called her name, and found that she would not stir. isä said, tersely, "take your brother", and his brother had lifted him from the bed, though they were nearly the same size as each other, and carried him out, out of the bedroom and out through the little cramped kitchen littered with fishing wire and half-made lures and out into the little square courtyard they shared with five other houses as small as theirs. his brother had set him down, his face pale and drawn, and ran for hani, while isä's voice drifted from the bedroom, scared and shouting, wavering like he was about to cry. he sounded hurt. being äiti's husband seemed painful.

love seemed to always hurt in the end.

hani's husband had come round then, because they lived only across the street, and it was easy for him to walk into the courtyard, and kneel beside him, and put a big, reassuring hand on his shoulder. hani pushed past, on her way into the house, but it was pointless. he could have told her that. he should have told her that. äiti was dead. any child of irij could recognise a corpse, when they needed to. hani's husband must have known that as well – he bowed his head, and was silent for a moment before he spoke.

and then mr nirari said, very kindly, "come and have breakfast with us, pekka."

Becoming the Tower was easier now than it had been – it felt like a strengthening, a reinforcement, rather than a capitulation to the curse, to the enormous stone thing that would take his place.

This was not a surrender; this was merely putting on his armour.

he hit the dirt hard, very hard, and for a second the world swam around him in wavering lines. his brother, over him, said, "not quite fast enough, petja," and he flushed deep red, less for his defeat than for the fact that inanna nirari had watched it all from her doorstep, beaming at this latest victory for eero.

he said, "don't call me that," for that had been äiti's name for him, and his brother swung back to look at him, surprise on his face for the venom in those words, and before eero could react he had scrambled up from the ground and charged, going in low towards his brother, and hit him hard and

and the Tower was so much faster than it looked, flinging up an enormous granite hand to catch whatever poor bastard had thought to go for the eyes. It was a good instinct, the World thought, a correct instinct, the Tower concurred, but instincts meant little against an enemy so overwhelming in its superiority, which meant that the Tower could curl that hand closed, tightly, and toss the body aside like crumpled paper, like

the crumpled ribbon on the cobbles outside the toy shop was their first hint that something was wrong, terribly wrong. ahead of them, in the square – what kaapo called derisively the whipping post, from which he always averted his eyes when they moved through – there were screams, horrible keening screams, like those that emanated from a slaughterhouse with a novice butcher. eero had started running first, and he had followed, because that was what he did in those days, wasn't he?

he followed.

mr nirari was being beaten, held back by two guards while a third lashed at him with the bullwhip held by all who patrolled the old kur quarter. he must have tried to fight back; he was still trying to fight back, screaming something about his daughter, rage urging him forward.

beside him, inanna, her back flayed open, blood mingling with her father's on the stones.

this, then, was the purest form of duty.

they had told kaapo, afterwards, "you can give him to the programme, or he can hang for it."

eero had said, still callous despite the beating they had given him, despite the blood trickling down his face and back, and the purple fingerprints on his throat, and the black marks around his eyes, the swelling in his cheek, "i think i'd rather swing, actually."

"tch." kaapo's face had been drawn, drawn and scared. he had said, "take him. make a warrior of him."

his father's voice had shaken. for a split second, he had hated him for it. for a split second, he had

turned, and staggered; the Tower was still caught half-transformed, and one of the Illéans had tried to take advantage of that fact, hissing low and circling to try and destroy the joints, sever the ligaments, to fell the Tower while it was still demi-formed and misshapen, before it could fully achieve its true curse-wrought form. That was smart; that was clever.

Did someone in this place have experience fighting xrafstars? The World hoped it wasn't who he thought it was, but he had an uneasy feeling that

they had separated them into two groups, two classes, and ina wasn't in his. ina wasn't in his.

ina wasn't here anywhere.

he had joined this fucking programme just for ina.

he had searched twice, and concluded that, not only was ina not here, but he was also the third-smallest in this group of twenty five children, a full inch shorter than the glowering dark-skinned boy with which he was paired for his first round of sparring, who had hit him, hard, in the same second that the instructor had ordered them to fight, and who followed it up with a kick to the head that left his vision swimming and

had the Tower scanning the surroundings for whatever devil could have made him stagger so; this was one of the drawbacks of inhabiting a body so gargantuan and facing gnat-tiny devils. Perception was virtually impossible; everything beneath was small, and broken, as it ought to be.

The Radiance, the World thought, the Radiance had not revealed itself –

he bent his head, and let azula run her hand along his scalp, giggling a little at how strangely soft his skin was; he had never worn his hair all that short as a child. there were a few scabs here and there where the army cadets had been less than careful in shearing his head. he said, "i might keep it like this. much less maintenance."

ghjuvan chuckled and said, "congrats on finally seeing the light, hämäläinen."

"i should have listened to you sooner, mannazzu. i don't deny it."

kinga said, laughing, "did your demerits counter reset after this?"

azula looked a little shame-faced at that comment; she was, after all, the source of so many of the scoldings doled out to the other cadets.

"it shouldn't," uriasz said, "i want to see how many he can get before they kick him out. this has to be some kind of record, right?"

"you wouldn't believe how many excuses they'll make for a competent soldier, chrzanowski," ghjuvan said.

khalore nodded seriously and added, "and you must never expect the same treatment, pekka is special."

he had shaken his head and said,

"Stay focused. And be careful. There are other xrafstars in play."

Other? Hadn't they all felt it – the awakening of another, the passing of a curse? It had hit him, but dulled, as though filtered through fog; he had been aware of it, of the shivering frisson that ran through the air, but he had no words for it, no true comprehension of what it meant, not without the World telling him such – as the World told him now. Be careful.

Careful? The Tower? Why on earth would the Tower ever need to be

"careful," the boy said, holding out a hand to inanna as she stepped down out of the truck, "the ground is a little uneven here, so – "

the poor cadet may as well not have been speaking at all. she was paying him not a whit of attention; her golden gaze was fixed elsewhere – she had searched the whole of the courtyard, and she had found what she was desperately seeking, and she had shouted out in glee. "pekka!"

he turned and caught her as she ran to him, swinging her in an enormous circle and laughing at just how tightly she clung to him. she felt small in his arms – or maybe he had just grown bigger. they were reluctant to release one another, but eager to scan one another's faces for whatever little differences might have appeared in their separation. it had only been a few months, he thought, but every part of him rebelled against the use of the word only.

it had been months.

she hadn't seen him with his head shaved thus; she clapped her hands over her mouth in shock when she noticed it. he ran his hand over his head, feigning confidence that she would approve. she would hate it; he had known that she would hate it. ina hadn't cut her hair since they were very young children – it hung to her waist in an ink-black sheet, though today she had braided it and pinned it up to keep to the programme's strictures. it was cute. inanna specialised in cute.

"oh, it's not that bad, is it?"

"it's not bad at all," she said, quietly, shyly.

"who's your friend?"

"oh!" she beamed. "this is zor. zoran – this is my pekka."

my pekka.

they shook hands. it felt stilted and oddly adult to do so; zoran stared fixedly at their hands, and said, rather pointedly, "i won't interrupt. you must have a lot of catching up to do."

he said, "not sure we'll get the chance."

they were already being herded into the sparring fields to establish their new rankings. there had been enough eliminations that the two classes were being merged; hasty introductions were being made, up and down the lines. he pointed out the closest members of his group, murmuring their names – kinga, glowering at the new competitors, and ghju, making new friends as quickly as uriasz was making enemies. dominik was over here, claudio was over there, and little azula was regarding the influx of new people with an expression of pure

Terror, that was the word for it. That was the only word for it.

Terror – that was what the Tower trafficked in, properly utilised. The World could almost feed on it; the world was utterly drenched in fear as the stone golem exploded into being in the precise centre of Ganzir, gazing down at the world below with those pale golden eyes, as austere as they were unseeing.

Golden eyes. Why had that seemed so…?

What was the Tower waiting for now?

kaapo was waiting for him by the gates of the compound; his hair had greyed since the last visiting day, and he looked a little tired, but he had smiled to see his son, and smiled even wider to see ina. "dinner tonight, ina?"

ina had demurred, saying something about getting home to see abzu and nanshe, who were only four years old and therefore liable to have forgotten her already. kaapo seemed almost more crestfallen to hear this than his son was; he said, "is there anyone else who might want dinner, pekka?"

and he, thinking of the number of cadets without a family to go home to, said, "give me a second."

ilja must have already headed out to the orphanage, for the boys' barracks was empty. he knocked on the door of the girls' dormitory; within, there was a near-silent scramble and then someone barked, "what?"

kinga szymanska was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a book in front of her. that was his first hint that she was hiding something. his second hint was that she did not look particularly lonely as she, in his experience typically was – though perhaps this was something apparent only to him.

he said, "szymanska. kaapo wants to know if you'll come to dinner."

she didn't bother hiding her surprise. kinga szymanska wasn't a person often invited to dinner.

she said, rather suspiciously, as though expecting a trap, "dinner?"

"it's a meal, comrade, typically eaten in the evening."

she was trying to hide a smile. she said, "i shouldn't. i have a lot of studying to catch up on, and then konrad said he might show me how to use a squad support weapon after mess. and then i have to clean out the weapons room - "

and then someone sneezed.

he said, "bless you," and looked at kinga, and said, "you could have said."

she said, smiling slyly, "they're not meant to be here."

they had clearly decided that their efforts to go undetected had been in vain, for the closet door had burst open at the end of the dorm and jaga szymanska and matthias kloet had spilled out onto the floor, jaga protesting about dust and the folly of having a nose again after so long, matthias clutching an opaque bottle of something that probably wasn't water.

kinga swung back to glare at him in a silent expression of tell no one.

he said, "you know, she's fourteen."

"so was i," jaga said, quite cheerily – as thought they were discussing first kisses or growth spurts. she seized the bottle from her friend and waved it at him, triumphantly. "do you want to come with?"

"yes," matthias said, "bring him, kingusia. poor bastard doesn't have long to live anyway."

kinga said, "it'll be more fun than the alternative, comrade."

she unfolded herself from the bed; jaga linked arms with her, and pulled her from the room, giggling. he caught the Hierophant as he passed and said, "is that true? what you said?"

and matthias said, "if i told you that it was – that you'll be one of the first to go – that you are going to wish that you had died at initiation – would you shut up and come with?"

The excubitor came at the Tower again, and was struck from the sky in a single motion, like slapping a fly out of the air. The Tower had no particular need for radical action against the tagma – their swords had no hope of piercing the marble armor which made up the body and limbs of the enormous stone golem – but it didn't hurt to hurt them. The fewer tagma, the less trouble they could cause when the moment came.

(Ah, but Evanne)

(...who was Evanne?)

(...whose name had the Tower spoken, in the moment before the World had triggered him from afar?)

And where was the

"radiant." ilja's voice was flat and unamused.

he smiled at ilja, and flicked the little origami crane in his hands at the other cadet; it hit him, square in the forehead, and fell onto the blankets pooled around his lap. the infirmary was very quiet at this time of day – too early for visitors, too late for healers. "there you go."

"i appreciate the swan, pekka."

"it's a crane."

"and the meal."

"say nothing of it."

"but i'd probably prefer an apology."

"i'm not nez."

"i know that," ilja said, "i'm just saying – it's hard to really get invested in origami when i'm incandescent with rage."

"this is rage?" myghal blanched. "you have a very relaxed sense of rage, iliusha."

ilja said, tiredly, "yes, but i'm working up to it."

he had picked up the paper crane and set it, very carefully, onto ilja's head, so that it nestled amongst his messy hair; ilja had permitted this to happen with a tired smile. ina's sister, sherida, had taught him origami the last time that he had gone home, delighted to at last have learned something of which the brawny neighbour boy knew nothing. she had spent hours showing him all the shapes she could make: butterflies, and hearts, and little flower chains, and cranes.

beside him, kinga said, her voice coming out thick through a freshly-broken nose, "will you apologise to me, hämäläinen?"

he smiled sweetly and said, "fuck, no, szymanska. you went before three."

"bold of you to assume i can count that high."

he laughed and

froze in place to assess this new danger coming from below: cannons firing, bang bang bang, stuttering out a strange staccato of destruction. One round hit the Tower's shoulder, embedding deep, but lifted little from the armor; the Tower only staggered, very slightly, before being hit by another volley which did even less damage, if that was possible. Bang bang bang.

The Tower thought, the cannons, and the World concurred, yes, the cannons.

The Tower swivelled in search of them – there, by the walls – and charged, faster than its enormous shape should have allowed, more nimble than sheer mass would ever have suggested. It hit Wall Schreave shoulder-first, as it had struck Wall Alliette on the day it had been felled, and

low chatter, a rumble of conversation. was this a memory? a dream? some remnant of a former life?

"my hero."

"i think there's a chance that commandant has decided none of us are good enough to initiate."

"maybe there aren't any final assessments. maybe they've decided to keep the rankings we already have."

"you think konrad would sacrifice the opportunity to torture us a little more creatively?"

"he mentioned class. we have class today?"

"mielikki will be glad, she was saying she needed to get her hands on some ink for hyacinth's tattoo…."

"it's like she doesn't know what being a warrior means. is she going to tattoo the enemy to death?

"you didn't eat?"

"he didn't eat."

"talking to us about wasting food..."

"i've had a ton of bread."

"how is he? ragnar, i mean."

"a fucking moron."

"that's not nice."

"she's not wrong, ilja."

"stubborn."

"that sounds like someone i know."

she had 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? 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.

….who had she been?

...who had he been?

Who had he been?

The World said, you have always been thus.

The Tower said, I will always be thus.