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.

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.