The mention of their mother silenced them.
"I assume she's at work. If she were here, I would expect these exciting events would have flushed her out into the open."
Olhado smiled a bit at that, but the older boy darkened, and Ela got a nasty, painful expression on her face. "Why do you want to see her?" asked Ela.
"Actually, I want to see all of you." He smiled at the older boy. "You must be Estevao Rei Ribeira. Named for St. Stephen the Martyr, who saw Jesus sitting at the right hand of God."
"What do you know of such things, atheist!"
"As I recall, St. Paul stood by and held the coats of the men who were stoning him. Apparently he wasn't a believer at the time. In fact, I think he was regarded as the most terrible enemy of the Church. And yet he later repented, didn't he? So I suggest you think of me, not as the enemy of God, but as an apostle who has not yet been stopped on the road to Damascus." Ender smiled.
The boy stared at him, tight-lipped. "You're no St. Paul."
"On the contrary," said Ender. "I'm the apostle to the piggies."
"You'll never see them. Miro will never let you."
"Maybe I will," said a voice from the door. The others turned at once to watch him walk in. Miro was young--surely not yet twenty. But his face and bearing carried the weight of responsibility and suffering far beyond his years. Ender saw how all of them made space for him. It was not that they backed away from him the way they might retreat from someone they feared. Rather, they oriented themselves to him, walking in parabolas around him, as if he were the center of gravity in the room and everything else was moved by the force of his presence.
Miro walked to the center of the room and faced Ender. He looked, however, at Ender's prisoner. "Let him go," said Miro. There was ice in his voice.
Ela touched him softly on the arm. "Grego tried to stab him, Miro." But her voice also said, Be calm, it's all right, Grego's in no danger and this man is not our enemy. Ender heard all this; so, it seemed, did Miro.
"Grego," said Miro. "I told you that someday you'd take on somebody who wasn't afraid of you."
Grego, seeing an ally suddenly turn to an enemy, began to cry. "He's killing me, he's killing me."
Miro looked coldly at Ender. Ela might trust the Speaker for the Dead, but Miro didn't, not yet.
"I am hurting him," said Ender. He had found that the best way to earn trust was to tell the truth. "Every time he struggles to get free, it causes him quite a bit of discomfort. And he hasn't stopped struggling yet."
Ender met Miro's gaze steadily, and Miro understood his unspoken request. He did not insist on Grego's release. "I can't get you out of this one, Greguinho."
"You're going to let him do this?" asked Estevao.
Miro gestured toward Estevao and spoke apologetically to Ender. "Everyone calls him Quim." The nickname was pronounced like the word king in Stark. "It began because his middle name is Rei. But now it's because he thinks he rules by divine right."
"Bastard," said Quim. He stalked out of the room.
At the same time, the others settled in for conversation. Miro had decided to accept the stranger, at least temporarily; therefore they could let down their guard a little. Olhado sat down on the floor; Quara returned to her previous perch on the bed. Ela leaned back against the wall. Miro pulled up another chair and sat facing Ender.
"Why did you come to this house?" asked Miro. Ender saw from the way he asked that he, like Ela, had not told anyone that he had summoned a speaker. So neither of them knew that the other expected him. And, in fact, they almost undoubtedly had not expected him to come so soon.
"To see your mother," Ender said.
Miro's relief was almost palpable, though he made no obvious gesture. "She's at work," he said. "She works late. She's trying to develop a strain of potato that can compete with the grass here."
"Like the amaranth?"
He grinned. "You already heard about that? No, we don't want it to be as good a competitor as that. B
ut the diet here is limited, and potatoes would be a nice addition. Besides, amaranth doesn't ferment into a very good beverage. The miners and farmers have already created a mythology of vodka that makes it the queen of distilled intoxicants."
Miro's smile came to this house like sunlight through a crevice in a cave. Ender could feel the loosening of tensions. Quara wiggled her leg back and forth like an ordinary little girl. Olhado had a stupidly happy expression on his face, his eyes half-closed so that the metallic sheen was not so monstrously obvious. Ela's smile was broader than Miro's good humor should have earned. Even Grego had relaxed, had stopped straining against Ender's grip.
Then a sudden warmth on Ender's lap told him that Grego, at least, was far from surrender. Ender had trained himself not to respond reflexively to an enemy's actions until he had consciously decided to let his reflexes rule. So Grego's flood of urine did not cause him to so much as flinch. He knew what Grego had been expecting--a shout of anger, and Ender flinging him away, casting him from his lap in disgust. Then Grego would be free--it would be a triumph. Ender yielded him no victory.
Ela, however, apparently knew the expressions of Grego's face. Her eyes went wide, and then she took an angry step toward the boy. "Grego, you impossible little--"