She doesn't say that things are already better in Baedal, because as true as it is she's well aware of how intrinsically horrifying that statement is when absorbed by someone who has been here long enough to be familiar with the city. Better doesn't mean good, it just means better than. It's a comparative statement. The comparisons are, often as not, not very pretty.

"I like the river," she says, finally, almost tranquilly. 'Like' is an insufficient word for her relationship with freshwater, and the Gross Tar is the first river that she's had the opportunity to...bond with, for lack of a better term. It helps in ways human language has no words for.