and school was out, children didn't swim here at Vila Ultima, where the fence came to the river and the forest came nearly to the fence. Only the soapmakers and potters and brickmakers came here, and they left again when the day's work was over. She could say what she had to say, without fear of anyone overhearing or interrupting.
She didn't have to wait long. The Speaker rowed up the river in a small boat, just like one of the farside farmers, who had no use for roads. The skin of his back was shockingly white; even the few Lusos who were light-complected enough to be called loiros were much darker-skinned. His whiteness made him seem weak and slight. But then she saw how quickly the boat moved against the current; how accurately the oars were placed each time at just the right depth, with a long, smooth pull; how tightly wrapped in skin his muscles were. She felt a moment's stab of grief, and then realized that it was grief for her father, despite the depth of her hatred for him; she had not realized until this moment that she loved anything about him, but she grieved for the strength of his shoulders and back, for the sweat that made his brown skin dazzle like glass in the sunlight.
No, she said silently, I don't grieve for your death, C o. I grieve that you were not more like the Speaker, who has no connection with us and yet has given us more good gifts in three days than you in your whole life; I grieve that your beautiful body was so worm-eaten inside.
The Speaker saw her and skimmed the boat to shore, where she waited. She waded in the reeds and muck to help him pull the boat aground.
"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."