Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga 2)

"Sorry to get you muddy," he said. "But I haven't used my body in a couple of weeks, and the water invited me--"

"You row well," she said.

"The world I came from, Trondheim, was mostly ice and water. A bit of rock here and there, some soil, but anyone who couldn't row was more crippled than if he couldn't walk."

"That's where you were born?"

"No. Where I last spoke, though." He sat on the grama, facing the water.

She sat beside him. "Mother's angry at you."

His lips made a little half-smile. "She told me."

Without thinking, Ela immediately began to justify her mother. "You tried to read her files."

"I read her files. Most of them. All but the ones that mattered."

"I know, Quim told me." She caught herself feeling just a little triumphant that Mother's protection system had bested him. Then she remembered that she was not on Mother's side in this. That she had been trying for years to get Mother to open those very files to her. But momentum carried her on, saying things she didn't mean to say. "Olhado's sitting in the house with his eyes shut off and music blasting into his ears. Very upset."

"Yes, well, he thinks I betrayed him."

"Didn't you?" That was not what she meant to say.

"I'm a speaker for the dead. I tell the truth, when I speak at all, and I don't keep away from other people's secrets."

"I know. That's why I called for a speaker. You don't have any respect for anybody."

He looked annoyed. "Why did you invite me here?" he asked.

This was working out all wrong. She was talking to him as if she were against him, as if she weren't grateful for what he had already done for the family. She was talking to him like the enemy. Has Quim taken over my mind, so that I say things I don't mean?

"You invited me to this place on the river. The rest of your family isn't speaking to me, and then I get a message from you. To complain about my breaches of privacy? To tell me I don't respect anybody?"

"No," she said miserably. "This isn't how it was supposed to go."

"Didn't it occur to you that I would hardly choose to be a speaker if I had no respect for people?"

In frustration she let the words burst out. "I wish you had broken into all her files! I wish you had taken every one of her secrets and published them through all the Hundred Worlds!" There were tears in her eyes; she couldn't think why.

"I see. She doesn't let you see those files, either."

"Sou aprendiz dela, nao sou? E porque choro, diga-me! O senhor tem o jeito."

"I don't have any knack for making people cry, Ela," he answered softly. His voice was a caress. No, stronger, it was like a hand gripping her hand, holding her, steadying her. "Telling the truth makes you cry."

"Sou ingrata, sou ma filha--"

"Yes, you're ungrateful, and a terrible daughter," he said, laughing softly. "Through all these years of chaos and neglect you've held your mother's family together with little help from her, and when you followed her in her career, she wouldn't share the most vital information with you; you've earned nothing but love and trust from her and she's replied by shutting you out of her life at home and at work; and then you finally tell somebody that you're sick of it. You're just about the worst person I've ever known."

She found herself laughing at her own self-condemnation. Childishly, she didn't want to laugh at herself. "Don't patronize me." She tried to put as much contempt into her voice as possible.

He noticed. His eyes went distant and cold. "Don't spit at a friend," he said.

She didn't want him to be distant from her. But she couldn't stop herself from saying, coldly, angrily, "You aren't my friend."

For a moment she was afraid he believed her. Then a smile came to his face. "You wouldn't know a friend if you saw one."

Yes I would, she thought. I see one now. She smiled back at him.