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

Waterfall Dome’s First Mother and the Highreaches High Mother, was the holder of all the secrets under the dome. Cheobawn stared at her truemother and tried to form a rational question that would ease her mind about the Lowlanders.
    “Why have the Lowlanders never come up the Escarpment?”
    “We actively discourage it,” Mora said.
    Cheobawn blinked, startled. That answer seemed particularly sinister.
    “So,” she breathed out, trying not to feel sick, “I guessed right. The Fathers kill the Lowlanders.” She wrapped her arms around herself to keep out the horror of that thought. “Has Da … Hayrald, has he killed Lowlanders for you? Do you send the First Prime out like one of Zeff’s hounds to kill at your bidding?”
    The Mothers took exception to that accusation. Mora’s eyes narrowed. Sybille’s lips quivered in a barely suppressed snarl while Brigit gasped either at the sting of Cheobawn’s arrow or at her audacity to question the motives of the High Council. Only Menolly continued to smile serenely.  
    “Insolent chit,” snapped Amabel. She would have continued but Mora waved her wife into silence. Cheobawn glared back at the Maker, daring her to say more. Amabel met her glare with a secret smile, shaking her head. Cheobawn turned back to Mora.
    “If I am insolent, it is because you have made me this way,” Cheobawn said reasonably, squashing the anger that wanted to crawl up out of that deep place insider her. “What do I know? The maps are empty. You have erased all the knowledge of the Lowlands so I can only imagine the worst of you.”
    “It is not like that,“Menolly protested, a hurt look on her face. Cheobawn felt guilty. She did not like offending Menolly but it could not be helped in this company.
    “Menolly,” Mora said, warning in her voice. Cheobawn glanced back at her truemother. This game of question and answer, it seemed, had very specific rules.
    The priestess blinked and looked elsewhere for a moment. Then she looked back, her black eyes unfocused.
    “What we mean when we say discourage is this,” she said serenely as if she were reciting a passage from The Book of Mysteries. “We trade with the Lowlanders. Nothing special. Nothing that strains the resources of the tribes. Nothing that we cannot do without. They come to trade but only under our terms. It has been made very clear that the trade stops if our rules are broken. As a result, they help us by guarding the base of the cliffs to ensure no one climbs them from below.”  
    So many questions popped into Cheobawn’s mind. She spoke the first one that occurred to her.
    “Why would they agree to that? For worthless objects?” Cheobawn wondered curiously.
    Menolly looked confused.
    “They covet the things we bring down the cliffs,” Sybille said, her tone making it very clear that she thought little of the intelligence of Lowland traders. “It is worth more to them to stay away and take what we are willing to give than to risk stopping the flow of goods altogether.”
    Cheobawn could not imagine anything in the domes worth so much that she would allow it to curb her own natural sense of adventure and curiosity. But then Elders’ brains seemed to work differently, getting all tangled up and emotional about the strangest of things.
    “If I lived under the Escarpment, I would probably climb it, no matter what the Elders agreed to,” Cheobawn mused out loud, having just gotten off restriction for a very similar offense. “Patrols cannot be everywhere at once. Surely Packs intent on adventure have tried to climb the cliffs just to see if it were possible.” She looked up at her mothers. “Are the cliffs so deadly, then, that none make it to the top?”
    “The magic of the mountain takes care of us,” Brigit said. Amabel snorted, her opinions about magic were well known, the heated arguments between Amabel’s unforgiving logic and Brigit’s vague mysticism a favorite topic in the gossip circles around the