Bhotta's Tears: Book Two of the Black Bead Chronicles (10 page)

Cheobawn looked up at the blue sky. The sun was out of zenith and on its way towards sunset. There was no breeze yet. That would come more towards dusk. A skyhunter circled off in the distance, a dark speck against the brilliant whiteness of the snow-covered Dragons Spine. Idyllic, until you realize the skyhunter waited for the bhottas to wake and start their run down the mountain, setting the wildlife in motion as it caught up all the little unwary things who - after evading a mountain full of minor predators all day - fell victim to the largest, seduced out of hiding by the promise of safety.

Cheobawn felt like one of those little den dwelling creatures; minding the details of its ordinary life only to get caught up, its mind ensnared in the bhotta’s psychic web, drawn out and swallowed by a juggernaut eating machine.

She crawled towards a particularly inviting dust puddle and sat down in the warm dirt. Lying back, she closed her eyes and thought about being caught in the guts of a thing so big it did not even know it had eaten her.

“What the …” Megan exclaimed in surprise. “When did you get back? Why didn’t you say something? We have been waiting for you.” Megan sounded annoyed. Cheobawn did not open her eyes. “What are you doing?” Megan asked, exasperated with her friend’s silence.

“Waiting to get pooped out,” Cheobawn said from behind her lids.

“Most people visit the flusher to do that,” Connor observed acidly.

“I am not the poop-er. I am the poop-ee.” Cheobawn said serenely.

Perhaps she betrayed too much from around the wall of silence she was building inside her head. Or perhaps Megan knew her too well.

“Ch’che?”

“Hmmm?”

“What happened? Did you have a fight with Amabel?”

“I do not want to talk about it right now, thank you.” Cheobawn said.

“Talk about what?” Tam asked.

“She and Amabel don’t get along,” Megan said.

“Does Amabel get along with anyone?” Alain asked.

“Sybille loves her and Sybille only loves her knives,” Cheobawn said, remembering the tribunal.

“Well, there you go. I always said Amabel’s tongue was as sharp as a knife. Oops, sorry Megan,” Alain said, remembering, too late, who her truemother was.

“No offense taken,” Megan said with a shrug. Her relationship with her truemother was only marginally better than Cheobawn’s with Mora. At least Megan had a natalmother and a nestmother, Cheobawn thought resentfully. She sucked that uncharitable thought back down from where it came. Megan did not deserve her anger.

“You know what I hate?” Cheobawn said randomly, opening her eyes and glaring at the blue sky, as if she had taken offense at its intense color. “I hate games with rules that make no sense. They make me angry. They make me not want to play.”

“Does anyone know what she is talking about?” Tam asked casually.

“Not a clue,” Alain said. Tam squatted down to better consider his littlest Ear.

“You know what I do when I don’t like the rules? I change them,” Tam said.
 

Cheobawn brought her focus out of the infinite sky, blinking hard. She looked into her Alpha’s eyes.

“How?” she asked simply.

“Just because somebody makes up rules doesn’t mean you have to play by them. Figure out where the endgame is then move yourself into position to play it out using your strengths. Everything else will sort itself out without you having to worry about what other people want you to do.”

Cheobawn considered that.

“What if you don’t know what the endgame is yet?” she asked doubtfully.

“Do you go running around the sparring floor looking for opponents?”

“No, you wait, in the center, until they move against you and reveal themselves.”

“I would imagine that strategy works for most things, don’t you?” Tam observed.

Cheobawn sat up and brushed the dust out of her hair.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not a problem. Are you going to tell us what this is all about now?”

Cheobawn got to her feet and brushed the dust off the seat of her pants.

“We are not going to say the word
Lowlander
ever again. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see it in fingersign. I don’t want it to ever pop up on anyone’s study station or comscreen. If we need to refer to Lowlanders or the lowlands or the Escarpment or Meetpoint we will have code words. Something ordinary like melon buzzer or bumbly grub or stalker. Stalker. Orphid’s weasel. I like that.”
 

“OK, sure. But are you going to tell us why?” Tam asked.

Cheobawn nearly said no. She looked up into Tam’s eyes and opened her mouth, set on denying him the truth. She could not bring herself to hurt him as the Mothers had hurt her.

“I will tell you this. I wanted you to go looking into the Low … the weasel business, but no more. You will not find anything. There is nothing to find. There are things that only the Mothers know and they do not share.”

“How do you know this? Where did you go? By the Goddess! You didn’t ask Amabel did you?” Tam asked, eyes gone wide in horror at the thought. Cheobawn shook her head, her lips pressed together for fear that what she had told them so far might prove fatal.

“Did Brigit tell Raddoc about your table?” Alain asked, a worried look on his face.

Cheobawn shook her head again, glaring at her feet. She looked up.

“You will laugh. It was my own stupidity. I asked Brigit about the … weasels … this morning. She did not answer and I thought that was the end of it. I was wrong.”

“Did Mora come to the infirmary while Amabel was patching you up?” Megan asked suspiciously, her intuition dead on. Cheobawn nodded at her Packsister, grateful for her understanding.

“Do you know what happens in a Tribunal?” Cheobawn asked her.

“Sure. You go in front of the High Coven - I mean High Council - and they judge you. Why? Oh, Goddess …” the older girl gasped, her eyes gone wide as she figured it out.

“It is nothing nearly so civilized,” Cheobawn said calmly. “They are like five great, fat hunting cats playing with a stone lizard. Batting it around until it bleeds from a dozen wounds. Then when the lizard lies still, too spent to even run away, do they put it out of its misery? No. They walk away as if it meant nothing, as if the lizard bored them. Perhaps it did mean nothing but the lizard is still beaten, broken, and bleeding.” Much to her own surprise, Cheobawn began to cry.

“Don’t be sad, wee bit,” Tam said softly trying to gather her in his arms.

She pushed him away and wiped her eyes. “Gah! Get off! Do I look that pathetic? I was just feeling sorry for that stupid imaginary lizard.” she sniffed. “I’m starving. Did anyone save some of their lunch?”

Tam did not look convinced but he obliged her by dropping the subject, organizing a food hunt instead.

Between the lot of them, they managed to scrounge up half a bag of trail rations and a sad looking bog apple. She ate it, too hungry to be picky.

Her Pack watched her eat, odd looks on their faces. It was fear. She had scared them. It could not be helped.

Connor looked around his silent Pack. He had a particularly confused look on his face.

“So? What? Have they won?” he asked, disgusted with them all. “Cheobawn gets beat up by the Coven and we flutter around like a fenhen playing broke-wing? Are we going to keep on pretending we are obedient little rule-followers forever?”

Tam cleared his throat, all the while staring at his little Ear. Cheobawn ignored him, too intent on eating to look up. The Pack’s alpha smiled as if he were amused by something that was not meant to be amusing.

“What?” asked Alain uneasily, wary of that look from long, hard experience. Nothing good ever came after Tam got that look.

“It’s nothing. I was just remembering what Hayrald said to us before our first foray. About the nature of Cheobawn’s gift. I don’t think we have to go looking for trouble. Trouble will come hunting us.”

Cheobawn looked up at Tam’s face, trying gauge the emotions that lay under his smile. Peacemaking was all well and good, his smile seemed to say, but sometimes a warrior leapt into the fray just for the joy of doing battle. It was the thing, she realized, that they had most in common.

“I am going to remind you of this moment,” she growled, smiling.

“I know. Did I not just say it? I know.”

Chapter Nine

By the fifth day of their duty in the maintenance hut, Finn trusted them to leave them on their own all day. After seeing that they were all gainfully employed, he went out on errands. He seemed confident they had learned their lesson and would think twice about doing anything foolish.

Alain and Connor were busy dismantling and reassembling an electric motor pulled from a cart after the Shadowwall Pack had complained that it was running poorly. Megan and Cheobawn put the finishing touches on their wing assembly, Megan had found a scrap of spidersilk in the sewing rooms to use as a membrane and Cheobawn had helped her tack it in place.

As soon as Finn disappeared around the corner of the dome, Tam jumped up to follow.

“Stay here until I get back,” he said over his shoulder.

“Where are you going, just in case I have to lie for you,” Alain said, assuming the worst.

Tam smiled, shaking his head. “It’s a surprise,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil it. Wait and see.”

Lunch came and went. Tam had still not returned. Megan decided they needed to test their wing, so she took it outside. Standing well clear of the building, she threw it like a spear. It fell with a soft thud into the dust, the sails between the membranes not finding enough air to fully extend the collapsible struts.

“Well, that was fun,” she said dryly.

“Maybe adding the tail made it too heavy,” Cheobawn ventured, staring sadly at their invention. It looked like a pale skyhunter had fallen out of the sky.

“Maybe it just needs a running start,” Megan said. She picked it up and spread the struts once more. Lifting it high over her head, she ran down the dirt road. The wind filled the sails and the struts stiffened, the memory steel in the joints responding to the added energy by spreading themselves wide. The tall girl tossed the kite into the air.

Cheobawn watched the mechanism critically. It had taken her most of a day to get the extruder to make the joints for her. Finn, at loose ends with all his apprentices being out in the fields either harvesting or maintaining equipment, had been more than glad to help by explaining the menus in the extruder’s complex programming. He shared that strange quality common to all Masters, a passionate love of his craft and the ability to expound for hours about the simplest subjects. All Cheobawn had to do was look interested, nod occasionally, and pretend she knew what he was saying. She didn’t - not really. She got tangled up in the words. It helped to listen with one ear open in the ambient as Finn had a very visual mind. Shapes, colors, and strings of numbers streamed out of his head when he was trying to explain something. It was as if Finn made you learn just by sheer force of will. She and Finn passed hours in this way; him talking while she absorbed his passion from the ambient.

The kite had amused Finn. He had called it pretty.

The wing hovered for a moment after Megan threw it, before falling into the dust once more. Megan picked it up and lugged it forlornly back to where Cheobawn stood. Cheobawn, not about to give up, looked around.

“Give it here. I have an idea,” she said, taking the wing from Megan. She carried it over to a stack of green lumber curing under its protective tarp. Tossing it up on top, she followed, free climbing up the stack using the tie down ropes for handholds.

“You are just going to throw it off, right?” Megan insisted.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Cheobawn said, standing on the back edge of the stack. She set her toes, lifted the wing above her head, her hands around the main struts, helping them stay rigid. Then she put her nose into the wind and sprinted down the long stack of wood.

“Cheobawn, no!” yelled Megan, as if she knew what her small friend was going to do before she did herself. Perhaps she did. Cheobawn felt the wind resistance vibrate through her hands as she picked up speed. It seemed a shame to let go when she reached the end of the pile, so she didn’t. Instead she leaped off into the air with a whoop of joy.

Megan’s was not the only voice shouting at her as she half fell, half flew down to the ground but she did not have time to listen. She was too busy watching the wing over her head. In the few seconds of flight, she saw what they had done right and began planning their next wing design.

At the very last moment, she remembered to roll as she landed but she forgot to let go of the wing. She tumbled, tangled up in spidersilk and plasteel struts. A joint gave way with a sharp pop followed by the unmistakable sound of ripping silk. She didn’t care. It was worth it. Cheobawn rolled out from under the ruined wing, laughing in delight.

“Did you see that?” she yelled excitedly. “That was so amazing. We need to make the next one bigger and find somewhere higher to jump …”

“Absolutely not,” Tam snapped, his voice slicing through the fun like a knife.

Tam was back. Cheobawn beamed up at him, glad that he had seen her fly. Surely he could see the fun possibilities in such a toy. Sure, he was mad, now. She had scared him. But after he got over the shock he would come around.

But right now, Tam’s face reminded her of Mora’s face when her mother thought Cheobawn was being particularly dense. He turned away, his glare finding Megan.

“I thought you said you were building a kite.”

“We were. I was, at least. Who knew she was inventing a new way to kill herself,” Megan said with an apologetic shrug.

“Oh, come on,” Cheobawn said in exasperation, as she brushed the dust out of her hair. “It worked. Did you see how far I went? I was just too heavy, is all. We need a bigger wing surface to accommodate more weight.”

“I’ll help you build the next one,“ volunteered Connor, a gleam of interest in his eyes. “What do you think? Twice as big?”

“At least,” agreed Cheobawn enthusiastically, spreading the wing to its full length. At twice her height it had seemed enormous and more than adequate. So much for guessing.