Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

Author:Brandon Sanderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Ltd

28

That soup tasted better than the blood of my enemies.

Considering I’d never actually tasted the blood of my enemies, perhaps that didn’t do justice to the soup.

It tasted better than soup should. It tasted of laughter, and love, and appreciation. The warmth of it glowed inside me like ignited rocket fuel. I snuggled in the blankets, holding the big bowl in my lap, while Kimmalyn and FM chatted.

I fought down the tears. I would not cry.

But the soup tasted of home. Somehow.

“I told you the costume would make her come with me,” Kimmalyn was saying as she sat on her bed, cross-legged. “Black is the color of intrigue.”

“You’re insane,” FM said, wagging her spoon. “You’re lucky nobody saw you. Defiants are all too eager to look for a reason to be offended.”

“You’re Defiant too, FM,” I said. “You were born here, like the rest of us. You’re a citizen of the United Defiant Caverns. Why do you keep pretending you’re something different?”

FM grinned in an eager way. It seemed that she liked that sort of question. “Being a Defiant,” she said, “isn’t just about our nationality. It’s always expressed as a mindset. ‘A true Defiant will think this way’ or ‘To be Defiant, you need to never back down,’ things like that. So, by their own logic, I can un-Defiant myself through personal choices.”

“And . . . you want to?” I said, cocking my head.

Kimmalyn handed me another slice of bread. “She thinks you all might be a touch . . . bellicose.”

“There’s that word again,” I said. “Who talks like that?”

“People who are erudite,” Kimmalyn said, sipping her soup.

“I refuse to be trapped by bonds of autocracy and nationalism,” FM said. “To survive, our people have become necessarily hardened, but alongside it we have enslaved ourselves. Most people never question, and doggedly go through the motions of an obedient life. Others have increased aggression to the point that it’s hard to have natural feelings!”

“I have natural feelings,” I said. “And I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.”

FM eyed me.

“I’d insist on swords at dawn,” I said, eating the bread. “But I’ll probably be too full of bread to get up. Is this seriously what you all get to eat every day?”

“Well, what do you eat, dear?” Kimmalyn said.

“Rats,” I said. “And mushrooms.”

“Every day?”

“I used to put pepper on the rats, but I ran out.”

The two of them shared a look.

“It’s an embarrassment to the DDF, what the admiral has done to you,” FM said. “But it’s a natural outgrowth of the totalitarian need for absolute power over those who resist her—the very example of the hypocrisy of the system. Defiance is not ‘Defiant’ to them unless it doesn’t actually defy anything.”

I shot a glance at Kimmalyn, who shrugged. “She’s extremely passionate about this.”

“We are propping up a government that has overreached its bounds in the name of public safety,” FM said. “The people must speak up and rise against the upper class who holds them enslaved!”

“Upper class, like you?” I asked.

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