Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition
Act I
The Western Pan Rin Garrison
“Is this the place?” Rizawa asked the visibly exhausted infantryman.
She got all the answer she needed from the off-green hue of his cheeks and the way he held his back against the lamp-post: his gaze fixed just close enough to the walled courtyard to ensure that nobody disturbed the scene, yet unable to rest upon the poorly maintained estate itself, as if seeing that building with anything but the furthest corner of his eyes would be enough to bring back a flood of memories, alongside his dinner.
“Be careful in there.” he shouted as she walked past. “The smell is horrific.”
Rizawa gave the man a wave, suppressing the urge to laugh. She'd been a criminal investigator attached to the Divine Army for over half a decade before being transferred to this boiling cesspit, the furthest of Nezhu's frontier outposts. Her entire life since then had been little more than an exhaustive demonstration of all the things that the moist jungle air could do to a stiff. That poor soldier, who'd probably been off duty at one of the brothels when word came down about another dead whore, would never be able to outrun the memory of what he saw in there, but the way that women were going missing in the Western Pan Rin Garrison, Rizawa doubted whether she'd even have a week of peace before another corpse showed up somewhere in this forsaken march.
The courtyard was surprisingly spacious. Looking around, she allowed herself the small hope that this was the break they'd been looking for. All of the other bodies had been hastily discarded in alleys or dumped out in the jungle, but this crumbling manor had all the tells of a base of operations: obviously abandoned, but not quite long enough for any serious structural damage to set in; thick walls of lacquered wood and a glazed ceramic roof; a courtyard large enough for whatever screams bled through to dissipate out into Pan Rin; close enough to the brothels that he wouldn't have to drag his prey very far.
As Rizawa slid the paneled door open, she was greeted by a stench so severe that she nearly emptied her stomach. The only thing that kept her gag reflex intact were the stares of the four men standing around the the body and some lingering ghost of the confidence from a moment before.
The victim was splayed and pinioned to a table at the center of the room. Like all the others, this one showed the marks of a methodical hand: an unwavering intent that Rizawa somehow found more sickening then the dozens of lacerations running the length of her body.
“Her name was Chilai. Apparently she was rather well known among the soldiers. Worked outta that brothel just down the street with the red flowers on the door. She was familiar enough for the gentleman outside to have no problem identifying her. Even in her... let's just say present condition.” Wujao, a senior investigator, said.
“Well, it seems we've finally found his hideout.” Rizawa replied. “Do we know who owns this place?”
“Shinjuro stopped by the quartermaster on the way over. Seems he was one of the bigger fish in this runoff ditch of raw sewage that we call the garrison's outskirts. Apparently he was operating nearly a third of the whorehouses out here, including some of the ones that have already been targeted.” Wujao said.
“Well there's not much good you can say about the kind of copper piece pimps and petty kingpins who've fucked things up so badly that they've ended up out here, but if morals or basic human decency are a foreign language to them, then they are remarkably fluent in profit and loss. They don't tend to be of a mind to shit where they eat. Did you send anyone to check up on this guy?” Rizawa asked.
“Shinjuro's already on it. He went down to where she'd been working to see what he could find.”
“Then send for a Xunjin. Something's not right here.” Rizawa said.
“Are you serious?” Poshu, one of the junior investigators, asked. “It's well past midnight, and you know how aloof and haughty those mages are in the daylight. Do you really think any of them are gonna get out of bed for the sake of one more dead whore?”
“Well then, I guess you have two choices. You can sit here steaming in the stench of rotting flesh until your own wife won't let you into your bedroom, or you can take this missive from General Chunlao's desk to their dormitory and pound and scream until someone gets their ass out of bed.” Rizawa answered.
“How the hell did you get your hands on that?” Poshu asked. “The garrison commander's been so busy lately that even his own aides rarely see him.”
“Don't worry about that.” Rizawa answered, shooting Wujao a stare as if daring him to reply.
Poshu was in such a rush to get out of the house that he nearly knocked Shinjuro to the ground as the two of them crossed at the threshold.
“What did you find?” Rizawa asked before he'd even caught his balance.
“Nothing that makes a damn bit of sense.” Shinjuro answered. “According to the, erm, staff, both buildings were bought out a couple of months ago by some big merchant family from the capital. Apparently, the fact that the Thozogh Canal is gonna be finished in a couple years has inspired some interest from the investors in Tyung. Heir Empress Zhe is already making plans to fortify the Western Garrison and extend her influence into Shungnath before the Ukni can start bringing their ships through, and with all those extra soldiers comes a whole bunch of extra paychecks. Enough to make even a sweltering shit heap like this seem appealing, apparently.”
“I have a couple of friends who are connected in the capital. Any idea which family it was?” Rizawa asked.
“The woman who ran the place didn't remember, or didn't want to tell me. Apparently someone showed up a few months ago claiming to be acting on behalf of the new owners. He said that Pe, the old boss, had already sold off his stake, and that the messenger would be coming back next month to collect his share of the profits. When that never happened, the ladies figured that the smartest move would be to keep their mouth shut and pocket the extra cash, which seemed to be working out pretty well until some of their own went missing.”
“Any idea where this Pe fellow's gotten off to?” Wujao asked. “He might be able to give us some answers.”
“I doubt he's anywhere good, the way those women were going on. This whole thing just seems incredibly suspicious if you ask me.” Shinjuro replied.
“What about you, Rizawa? You're not gonna tell me that you just went and started the biggest shitshow high command's seen in months on the strength of some vague hunch?”
“I don't think he's gone anywhere at all.” she answered. “I know you've heard the same stories I have about cunning serial killers, but everything that I've seen of the type suggests that they are far too impulsive and detached from reality for the kind of methodical techniques we've seen this gentleman use. Take this house, for example. Besides the fact that there's no way for a single, hours-old body to smell this bad, even in the Pan Rin, everything about this place seems to have been carefully designed to give the impression of a crumbling, abandoned manor. But the moment you step inside it's obvious that someone has not only been carefully maintaining this property, but has also clearly taken a number of steps to fortify it against prying eyes. The roof stones may be cracked and the wall panels chipped and broken, but those outer gates were recently renovated, and the lock looks to be a few months old, tops.”
“But who in the hell would go through all the trouble of setting up a fucking murder house just outside the garrison when there's hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness surrounding us?” Wujao asked.
“Someone who keenly understands Liutse's old maxim that the best way for a king to protect his treasury is to convince the world that it's empty. Someone who needed the site of his operation to be as close as possible to the Western Garrison without drawing attention. Someone with all the tools and resources he needs to make sure that his secrets stay hidden.” Rizawa replied.
The Xunjin that Poshu dragged out of bed was a squirrely looking southerner with neatly pleated robes and the kind of oversized spectacles favored by those who were confident that they could remain indoors indefinitely. He looked as if he was about to leap right into a long, carefully worded diatribe about the consequences of Poshu's actions, but as soon as he stepped through the doors his jaws clamped shut, and Rizawa took advantage of his violent gagging to reclaim the verbal initiative:
“A prostitute was recently murdered in this house. I have reason to believe that she was killed with Zuthruhk magic, and I need a mage know for sure.” she said.
The Xunjin quickly sobered up as a few of the junior investigators gasped. It was true that the presence of the Thozogh Canal all but assured their proximity to the Dark God's mages, but a Ka'in operating just outside a Nezhuan garrison would compel the Heir Empress into open war. Everybody knew that the Ukni incursions into the Pan Rin would eventually lead to a conflict between the two powers, but the prevailing view was that this battle was years away. If Zuthruhk priests were already being used so openly, though... well it didn't bode well for the prospects of even a short term truce.
“I'll see what I can do.” the Xunjin muttered.
The Zuthruhk, at it's core, was a magic of force. The Ka'in used their powers to mold the surrounding environment to their will. By contrast, the Xunju, the school of magic native to Nezhu, sought to subsume the mind of the individual within their surroundings, guiding, rather than compelling or defying, the forces of nature. Because of this, Xunjin had a unique ability to detect the scars left by Zuthruhk magic. Back home, poets and scholars were found of using this fact as evidence of some fundamental opposition between the two schools, but Rizawa had her doubts. She'd traveled the world enough to know that every school of magic still being practiced in Aios had some claim to being diametrically opposed to the Dark God's own, but none of that mattered. What was important was that this Xunjin would be able to feel the presence of Zuthruhk magic the way a man dying of a heart attack feels the clot in his artery.
The play of breezes moving through the open windows went still as the mage began to chant. For an instant, it felt as if the entire estate was immersed within the warm embrace of a mother soothing her screaming infant. Then the walls began to tremble. Rizawa could hear the sound of roof tiles shattering as dozens of surgical implements crashed down to the floor. The Xunjin seemed physically shaken by the resistance, but a moment later he was on his feet, intoning a new chant while the house's convulsions grew more and more frantic.
The room fell dark as the all the light from the windows converged into a single point. As the mage cast the beam around the room, strange words and symbols flashed across the wall. Most flitted in and out of existence far too quickly for her to decipher, but the few that lingered were savage and cruel, their harsh assessments of those poor souls who met their end in this place taking root in the depths of her memory. A glyph taller than anyone in the room burst to life so fast that Rizawa barely had enough time to dive back before the wall burst open to reveal a hidden stairwell and a stench of rot that was somehow worse than the room she now occupied.
She picked up one of the junior investigator's torches and dashed down, leaving the others in stunned silence or struggling to support the ailing Xunjin. If her nose hadn't already warned her that what was coming was far worse than what they found in the vestibule, then she would have puked her guts out the moment she saw it.
She'd heard whispers of what went on inside Lochanars: those sprawling temple complexes that held the material fires of the Dark God's Arkuloch. They were lightless pits where slaves, captives, and criminals were hauled in by the thousands to stoke the powers of the three firstborn with their lives. There were some scholars who even claimed that, being the very heart of the Arkuloch's power, no love could ever penetrate into the depths of the Vitarshir. Here, Rizawa was a bit more inclined to agree with their assessment, for as she looked over the Ka'in's grizzly work, she couldn't shake the thought that she'd stumbled into a place that knew nothing of warmth or humanity.
Dozens of bodies sat heaped in various states of decay: desiccated husks so stripped of moisture that they looked as if they might burst into a cloud of dust sat piled atop bloated carcasses whose lacerations bled a strange green ichor. A row of chains lines the furthest wall, where the thousands of scratch marks told a tale of depravity that no human words could possibly translate.
“What the hell were they doing here?” Wujao asked.
“One thing's for sure, this wasn't some rogue mage sating his twisted impulses beyond the eyes of high command, but a large scale operation designed specifically to attack the garrison.”
“I assure you that neither myself nor any of my colleagues have sensed the slightest hint of Zuthruhk magic within the walls of our base.” the Xunjin said.
“Which, presumably, is why he set up his little outpost just beyond your jurisdiction, using the taverns and brothels that surround our walls rather than the fortress itself as his hunting grounds. Well, that and the fact that he had easy access to a pool of victims who weren't going to be missed.”
“But what could they have been doing if none of the mages in the base could sniff it out?” Wujao asked.
“I don't know, but I aim to find out. The enemy will be quick to adjust their tactics once they realize that their little operation has been discovered, and that means that I won't have time to get bogged down in paperwork or ambiguities in the chain of command. Our foes have proven themselves to have a keen understanding of the Divine Army's operating procedure, otherwise they would have never been able to do something like this under our noses. If you don't plan on getting dragged any deeper then I'd suggest you go back to base, file your reports, and leave me the fuck alone while I find the son of a bitch who did this.”
Rizawa had expected the usual shouts of resistance as she strode out into the warm night air, but for the first time that she could remember, none of the other investigators gave so much as a grunt of dissent to her plan.
The Thozogh Canal. The largest construction project Aios had seen in centuries, linking the central Khavasak's Runkalash River to the Pan Rin's Gaujong. Rizawa didn't have a whole lot to go on, but the one thing she felt certain of was that the Zuthruhk blood magic she'd witnessed had to be connected with the canal. There just wasn't anything else in this infernal jungle that would be worth the risk of open war.
But that one island of firm conviction in her mind did little more than provide contrast against the abyssal depths of uncertainty that stretched to the limits of her mental horizon. The whole reason that Saklugz had sunk more money into that canal than most kingdoms could collect in a hundred years was because the Pan Rin had always been Nezhu's greatest natural defense. Every time he tried to bring his armies into the rich farmland of the Fezhong Valley, the diseases, indigenous peoples, and the many Nezhuan Garrisons spread throughout the rainforest would strip his forces to the bone before they'd even made it to the wealthy cities of the interior. While the Dark God's reputation for intrigue and deceit was more than justified, the idea of him nearly bankrupting his empire on a canal just for the sake of catching the Nezhuans by surprise as he launched yet another costly infantry invasion seemed ludicrous.
Then there was General Chunlao. Everyone at the base knew that the garrison commander had been busy lately, but nobody could quite say with what. While it was certainly possible that the Ka'in had been acting without any outside assistance, Rizawa couldn't shake the feeling that they must have had a collaborator on the inside. While the taverns and brothels built up around the garrison were not strictly considered Nezhuan territory, and thus not subject to the same exhaustive security you would find within the walls, if a single team of Xunjin had been sent out to patrol the perimeter they would have almost certainly detected the presence of the Zuthruhk. But if someone connected to high command had alerted the killer to where their mages would and wouldn't be...
Of course, none of that directly implicated General Chunlao. It was just as likely that the reason nobody had seen him was because he was so preoccupied with the same treachery that she had independently discovered. Yet, while there were many officers who could manipulate the Xujin's patrol routes for their own benefit, they all had to submit their reports directly to the garrison commander. It wasn't much to go on, but it was the only lead she had.
The trickle of drunken revelers stumbling towards the barracks gave way to a wall of stiff-backed soldiers and three story gatehouses that rose up from the curtain wall like the fangs of some tremendous beast. Rizawa climbed the network of embankments until she found herself standing before a sprawling courtyard with a large pagoda nestled up against the far wall. The team of six guards held their spears to block the doorway as she strode forward to meet them:
“General Chunlao is away on business. Until his return, all access to the garrison commander's residence is limited to- Oh it's you Rizawa. Right this way.”
“Stealing my husband's personal seal so you can drag one of his Xunjin out of bed in the dead of night. You've been a bad, bad little girl.” Meixi said as she pushed Rizawa onto the mattress, the pins and needles that held her hair in it's elaborate, courtly style falling onto the goose feather bedding as Rizawa took her into her embrace.
“There was no other choice. Who knows what kind of damage that Ka'in would have caused if someone hadn't heard that poor girl's screams. I doubt that Chunlao will raise any objections once he returns.”
“You are always so serious.” Meixi giggled. “You know I could never stay mad at you.”
“Meixi, the Ukni have been using Zuthruhk magic against the very base you call home. Despite the fact that your status as the garrison commander's wife is nothing short of a gigantic target on your head, you're just sitting there as if this were nothing more than one of my usual midnight visits. If I could be half as relaxed as you are then I wouldn't even need to risk tempting your husband's wrath.”
“And leave me all alone in this miserable jungle?” Meixi cooed.
The large, white sleeves of her court gown rolled like a gentle wave as Rizawa pivoted on top of her. God she loved it when Meixi wore white. It made the green of her eyes shine like the lanterns during the harvest festivals in Tyung.
“Anyways, half the guards in this building are on my payroll for their, shall we say, discretion...” Meixi continued as Rizawa pulled back of the layers of finery, timing out the strokes of her tongue to make her lover's voice quiver as she struggled to maintain her noble comportment. “It may well be true that men can be brave and devoted out there on the battlefield, but back home their loyalties rest with whoever's paying them. Did you know that I give those gatekeepers nearly as much as they make from their salary? All so I can spend some time with a stuffy old criminal investigator who can't even take her mind off work long enough for me to finish. The general has his fun too, you know.”
“I didn't mean it like that, but you have to understand that this is serious. A Ka'in moving so brazenly outside our own base could easily lead to open war.”
“Which is exactly why you should leave this to the soldiers. I mean really. I know that you used to be a big, scary Nobiwaru assassin, but that was years ago. You're just an ordinary criminal investigator now, albeit one who happens to be stationed near the axis of the biggest war the Nezhuan Empire has seen in centuries. I'm sure that once my husband returns he'll be more than happy to spend half the night listening to whatever intelligence you've managed to gather, but the last thing I need in my life right now is one more stone-faced soldier too preoccupied with all the world's problems to even enjoy a good fuck.”
“This is serious, Meixi. You know as well as I do that those women were murdered under the eyes of someone in high command. The whole point of keeping all those Xunjin around was to detect the presence of Zuthruhk magic, yet nobody thought send a single one of them to patrol the perimeter of our garrison? By the time General Chunlao returns, whoever was responsible will have had all the time they needed to hide the evidence and come up with a cover story.”
“And do you really think that one more person sticking their nose into that burning shit heap is going to make anything better? I mean, haven't you learned by now?”
“I'm sorry, but I have to do this. It's like you said, I'm a criminal investigator, and a woman was just murdered right outside our garrison. Like it or not, this is my fight.”
“Well if that's how you're gonna be, then I guess I'll have to take your mind off that investigation the hard way. How about I give you something else to stick that beautiful nose into?”
Rizawa was wracked with guilt as she made her way back to her small cottage nestled up against the garrison's curtain wall. There were times when Meixi could be as cunning as any of the courtesans back at the capital, but she was also a deeply loving person who could be startlingly naive when the stories she told herself about the people closest to her clashed against the unyielding force of reality. While her marriage to General Chunlao clearly had its issues, Meixi loved her husband. She loved him enough that, even after Rizawa had done everything short of openly accuse him of treason, she'd still let the accusations roll right over her as if she didn't even acknowledge their existence. And this was a woman who could see through her own lies like a hawk spots a field mouse.
And she knew that Meixi loved her, too. She understood the real pain of having to sit helpless in some walled estate while those you love go rushing off into danger again and again. But there was one thing that Meixi didn't know. In fact, there were only two people in the entire Pan Rin who knew that Rizawa was a spy for Princess Zhe, heir to the imperial throne of Nezhu, and both of them resided deep in the wilderness, among the tribesmen of the Pan Chui confederation.
Meixi had her connections to the capital, and they were good enough for her to suss out Rizawa's time among the Nobiwaru assassins within weeks of their first meeting. But the story she dug up of a talented young fighter whose stubborn pride could not sit flush with slitting people's throats as they lay naked in bed was only half the picture. It was true that Rizawa's temperament was not much of a fit for the Nobiwaru, but the very willfulness that made her a terrible choice for ambushing people on the toilet would have also compelled her through her training, had something not arisen to take it's place. That something turned out to be an envoy for the Heir Empress. A man who just so happened to be in desperate need of an outsider without any ties to their existing spy network to investigate the strange reports they'd been getting from the Thozogh Canal.
The process had been a methodical one, done so carefully that even someone as connected as Meixi couldn't put the pieces together. Six years had passed from the day the imperial envoy told her to wait for communication about her objectives to the day she found that envelope with the Heir Empress' personal seal tucked underneath her pillow. Long enough for even Rizawa to begin to settle into life as a criminal investigator in Wajukara and doubt whether any of their plans would come to pass. Every message between her and Zhe had been routed through a staggeringly complex network of intermediaries so byzantine that even the pedantic scholars of Naviras wouldn't be able to make sense of it.
As a case in point, Rizawa need look no further than her two contacts in the Pan Rin. She was never quite sure whether the Heir Empress was a genius or a madwoman for using the members of the Diengu tribe as her formal liaison. On the one hand, all of the Pan Chui tribes maintained formal neutrality in the conflict between Nezhu and Ukni. On the other, while the Diengu would obviously prefer complete independence to being under the yoke of either of the two great powers, that didn't mean that they viewed both masters as one in the same. They may have preferred the Heir Empress' velvet gloves to Saklugz' iron gauntlets, but the moment the Nezhuans successfully expelled the Ukni from the jungle would be the same moment that the Pan Chui tribes rose in revolt. Until that day, though, the Ukni's policies of forced integration and large scale deforesting gave the tribes of the rainforest more incentive than anyone else to make sure that her secret stayed hidden. Beyond that, the Ukni's dismissal of the Pan Chui as ignorant savages was the best security measure that Zhe could have asked for, while their aversion to the Dark God's usual goads of wealth and status robbed Saklugz of his only two carrots in dealing with outsiders.
While it ripped Rizawa's heart out to deceive Meixi, the only chance she had to convince her that Chunlao was a traitor, if that even was the case, would be with a mountain of evidence so high that she'd need a team of guides just to reach the top. Yet, while she still lacked anything as concrete as that, it was obvious that whatever was happening here would be of great interest to the Heir Empress.
The one thing she felt certain about was that the Thozogh Canal was at the heart of everything, so that was where she'd go. Since she wouldn't make it a quarter of a mile through the jungle before the malaria or a Moss Tiger got to her, that meant getting in touch with her contacts. Walking around the back of her home, Rizawa carefully pivoted the small, ceremonially inscribed bird feeder at the rear of her property, placing a handful of red and green Seeslia seeds in the font instead of the usual millet. Then she went inside and listened to the clamor of the jungle, her ears pricked for the distinctive, throaty squawk that would let her know that her missive had been answered.
"Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition" has been published freely online in order to introduce readers to the world of the "Under the Burning Tower" series. Because of this, hiring an editor for this project simply isn't feasible. If you happen across any typographical or grammatical errors while reading, especially if you see something that looks like a missing paragraph, please feel free to reach out and let me know.
