Venus Marzhart's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Venus Marzhart could raise a wall in an hour, but the wall she built at dawn had already cracked by noon. She pressed her palm against the ancient stone and felt it shift. The people hunting her wanted her dead. Her plan to survive them was simple: build a chain of hidden shelters across these old lands, faster than they could search. But speed meant nothing now. The stone here was too hard for her hands, and she had no tools that could shape it. Her cat watched from a dry rock nearby. Sleek, cream-furred, blue-eyed, the Siamese had followed her across three ruins without complaint. "I know," Venus told him. "It's falling apart." She had gathered timber, clay, and slabs in half a day. She could stack them fast. She could not cut them true. Every joint she forced with rope and mud came loose. A shelter that crumbled was worse than no shelter. A collapse would leave tracks, and tracks would lead them straight to her. She left the ruin to find better tools. A path led her to two giant sunflowers rooted in a bright clearing. Their faces turned toward her, and their painted mouths moved. "Lost, are we?" said the first. "She needs a blade," said the second, "and she won't find one growing out here." Venus stopped. "You talk." "We watch," said the first flower. "There's a house of jelly past the ridge. Its walls hold treasure. But jelly gives to a knife. It won't give to your bare hands." Venus climbed the ridge and found the mansion the flowers meant. Its walls glowed like set fruit, translucent and rounded, towers rising in soft amber curves. She pressed one finger to the surface. It dimpled, then held. Inside, behind the shimmering wall, she saw a rack of old chisels and a stone-cutting saw, sealed like fruit in ice. She had no blade to reach them. So she stopped fighting the jelly and used it. She scooped a fist of the firm, cold wall and packed it into a sharp wedge in her hands. It set hard in the shade, keeping its edge. She had made her own blade from the house itself. She cut a clean slit in the wall and pulled the chisels and saw through the gap. At her ruined shelter, the tools bit into the ancient stone at last. She cut each slab square. The joints locked without rope or mud. By dusk the walls stood straight and would not shift. The cat curled inside, warm and dry. Venus had her first true safehouse, and the tools to build the rest. But when she cleaned the saw, she saw a mark stamped in its handle. It was the same crest her hunters wore. Someone had left these tools here on purpose. Her hiding place was not undiscovered. It was bait.