Venus Marzhart's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Venus wiped the crested saw clean and set it down. The tools were bait. That meant the sunflowers who sent her to them worked for her hunters. She stared at the safehouse she had just built. Trusting those flowers again could walk her straight into a trap. But she needed to know for certain before she abandoned this shelter. She walked back to the bright clearing. The two flowers turned their painted faces toward her. "Back so soon?" said the first. Venus crouched close. "You sent me to those tools," she said. "They carry my hunters' mark. Tell me who you answer to." The second flower's mouth trembled. "We only say what we're told to say," it whispered. "They water us. We point. We didn't want to." So the flowers were spies, but scared ones. Venus stood. She could not silence them, and she could not trust their next word. Then a shadow fell across the whole clearing. Something tall as a tower stepped over the ridge. A devil, red-skinned, horns curling high, eyes like two coals. He stopped and looked down at her the way a person looks at an ant. Venus froze. She had heard rumors of a giant who chipped at the world's floor, but she had thought them stories. "You're loud," the devil said. "Your hunters heard you already." Venus kept her voice steady. "Then help me or leave." He tilted his head. "I help no one." He looked at the flowers, then back at her. "But those things sing to whoever feeds them. Feed them yourself." He said nothing more. He turned and walked off, each step shaking loose stones from the ridge. Venus watched until he was gone. His words landed hard. The flowers were not loyal to her hunters. They were loyal to water. Venus knelt at the base of the two stalks. She unhooked her waterskin and poured it slow over their roots. The soil drank it. The flowers leaned toward her, softer now. "You'll tend us?" asked the first. "Every day," Venus said. "And you point my hunters wrong. Send them east. My shelters go west." The flowers were quiet a moment. Then the second one spoke. "They come tomorrow. We'll tell them the river crossing. You won't be there." Venus felt her chest loosen. She had not silenced the spies. She had bought them. A figure stood at the far edge of the clearing, small, white-robed, watching without moving. Venus met the calm gold eyes for one breath. "You changed a spy into a shield," the figure said. "That is not the same as being safe." Then the figure was gone, like a candle pinched out. Venus gathered her tools. The flowers would misdirect the hunters at dawn. She had one clear day to build the next safehouse westward, before they learned the river was a lie.