Free Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles by J. D. Lakey Page A

minute and then spoke.
    “What lies below the Escarpment?” she said, by way of an opening gambit.
    “It was once a land very much like what you see about you, outside the dome,” Sybille said, her eyes glittering. Mora’s Third liked this game. It was apparent in every line of her body. “A natural extension of the local ecosystems.” Cheobawn absorbed this, puzzling over the words to see if they contained any hidden clues. She settled on the next most obvious question.
    “Once, but no longer? What is it now?”
    “Less,” Menolly said. “and more.”
    Cheobawn eyed the Priestess. Riddles. What did Menolly see in the depths of their collective ambient.
    “Less. Less than what?” Cheobawn asked, leaping on the clue while resisting the urge to smile. She good at this game. She wondered if there was a limit to how many questions she might ask before the game was counted over.
    “Ninety percent fewer species live in the forests,” Sybille stated, “but this is as expected since ninety percent of the lowland forests have been destroyed.”
    This fact was jarring. Cheobawn was not sure she liked where this game was taking her. What if Tam was right? What if the Mothers kept things hidden for a reason? What if she did not want to know what the Mothers seemed intent on telling her? What if she got up and left, refusing to play the game? She looked around at the faces arrayed around her, identically expressionless yet intensely focused. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Cheobawn doubted that retreat was an option anymore. The game had begun and must be played to its end. She set her mind to it in earnest.
    As unpleasant as it was, Cheobawn tried to imagine the world without a forest full of life. This was a perversion, this thing Sybille spoke of, yet the Mothers did not flinch when Sybille spoke of it. They were long used to the unspeakable, it seemed.
    This string of logic was too disturbing to pursue. Cheobawn backtracked in her mind. She looked back at Mora.
    “How is it more?” Cheobawn asked, following the next clue, hoping for a better answer.
    More people, more roads, more villages,” Amabel answered. “There are over a ten thousand Lowlanders for every tribesman. The largest lowland village contains over three million people.”
    Cheobawn shook her head. The numbers made no sense. She could not conceive of such a mass of humanity living inside one dome. The maximum capacity of any dome in the Highreaches was five hundred people but they usually held half that. She wanted to ask more questions to make them help her understand how this was even physically possible but was terrified that they would actually answer it.
    It was time to carry the battle into their court.
    “I used Bridget’s passcode this morning. She does not have access to this information,” Cheobawn said, “and yet here you are, spouting book and verse about Lowlanders. Why?”
    “You what?” squeaked Bridget.
    “Imp!” snapped Amabel, outraged.
    Sybille, unaccountably, threw her head back and laughed.
    Mora held up her hand and waited for the room to grow silent again before she spoke.
    “Which is why we do not commit it to digital memory. The Fathers do not need to know this.”
    Cheobawn looked at the First Mother in disbelief. “You do realize that the Father’s have any information related to Lowlanders locked behind a double wall of security in the hub-mind, right? Gender Inappropriate, the warning said. Are they not the arbiters of this secret?”
    “Yes and no,” Menolly said. “How do you hide a secret? By breaking it apart and giving it to both parties. Forbidden to speak of it, neither knows what the other knows.“
    Cheobawn shook her head in disbelief. “Someone must know the whole of it, surely? How else can the dome make a decision if no one has the right information?”
    “What decision do you want me to make?” Mora asked.
    Well. That answered that question. As she suspected, Mora, as the