The Dragon Griaule

by Lucius Shepard

  Korrogly moved away from the table, folded his arms, and regarded the luminous globe overhead. ‘Of course that’s not always the case. Not all crimes of passion are considered acts of the moment. There is leeway left for obsession, for irresistible compulsion. But what I’m telling you is that the judge in his desire to avoid setting precedent might block these avenues of mercy in his instructions to the jury.’

  Once again Lemos appeared to have slipped into a reverie.

  ‘Have you decided?’ Korrogly insisted. ‘I can’t decide for you, I can only recommend.’

  ‘You seem to be recommending that I lie,’ said Lemos.

  ‘How do you arrive at that?’

  ‘You tell me the truth is a risk, that the secure course is best.’

  ‘I’m merely counseling you as to the potential pitfalls.’

  ‘There’s a fine line, is there not, between recommendation and counsel?’

  ‘Between guilt and innocence also,’ said Korrogly, thinking he might get a rise out of Lemos with this; but the gemcutter only stared at the table, brushed back his sandy forelock from his eyes.

  ‘Very well.’ Korrogly picked up his case from the floor. ‘I’ll assume you want me to go forward with the case as you’ve presented it.’

  ‘Mirielle,’ said Lemos. ‘Will you ask her to come and visit me?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Today . . . will you ask her today?’

  ‘I plan to see her this afternoon, and I’ll ask her. But according to the constables, she may not respond favorably to anything I ask on your behalf. She is apparently quite bereft.’

  Lemos muttered something, and when Korrogly asked him to repeat it, he said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  Lemos shook his head.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Korrogly; he started to tell Lemos to be of good cheer, but partly in recognition of the profundity of Lemos’ despair, partly due to his continuing sense of uneasiness, he thought better of it.

  The gemcutter’s shop was in the Almintra quarter of Port Chantay, a section of the city bordering the ocean, touched yet not overwhelmed by decay and poverty. Dozens of shops were situated on the bottom floors of old peeling frame houses with witchy-looking peaked roofs and gables, and between them, Korrogly could see the houses of the wealthy ranging Ayler Point: airy mansions with wide verandahs and gilt roofs nestled among stands of thistle palms. The sea beyond the point was a smooth jade-colored expanse broken by creamy surf, seeming to carry out the theme of elegance stated by the mansions; on the other hand, the breakers that heaped foam upon the beaches of the Almintra quarter were fouled with seaweed and driftwood and offal. It must, he thought, be dismaying to the residents of the quarter, which not so long ago had been considered exclusive, to have this view of success and beauty, and then to turn back to their own lives and watch the rats scurrying in piles of vegetable litter, the ghost crabs scuttling in the sandy streets, the beggars, the increasing dilapidation of their homes. He wondered if this could have played a part in the murder; he could discern no opportunity for profit in the crime, but there was so much still hidden, and he did not want to blind himself to the existence of such a motive. He did not believe Lemos, yet he could not fully discredit the gemcutter’s story. That was the story’s virtue: its elusiveness, the way it played upon the superstitious nature of the citizenry, how it employed the vast subtlety of Griaule to spread confusion through the mind of whomever sought to judge it. The jury was going to have one hell of a time. And, he thought, so was he. He could not deny the challenge presented him; a case of this sort came along but rarely, and its materials, so aptly suited to the game of the law, to the lawyerly sleights-of-hand that had turned the law into a game, afforded him the opportunity of making a quick reputation. His inability to discredit Lemos’ story might be a product of his hope that the gemcutter was telling the truth, that precedent was indeed involved, for he was beginning to realize that he needed something spectacular, something unique and unsettling, to reawaken his old hopes and enthusiasms, to restore his sense of self-worth. For the nine years since his graduation from law school, he had devoted himself to his practice, achieving a small success, all that could be expected of someone who was the son of poor farmers; he had watched less skilled lawyers achieve greater success, and he had come to understand what he should have understood from the beginning: that the Law was subordinate to the unwritten laws of social status and blood relation. He was at the age of thirty-three an idealist whose ideals were foundering, yet whose fascination with the game remained undimmed, and this had left him open to a dangerous cynicism – dangerous in that it had produced in him a volatile mixture of old virtues and new half-understood compulsions. Lately the bubblings up of that mixture had tended to make him erratic, prone to wild swings of mood and sudden abandonments of hope and principle. He was, he thought, in much the same condition as the Almintra quarter: a working class neighborhood funded by solid values that had once looked forward to an upwardly mobile future, but that now aspired to be a slum.

  The gemcutter’s apartment was on the second floor of one of the frame houses, located directly above his shop, and it was there that Korrogly interviewed the daughter, Mirielle. She was a slim young woman in her early twenties with long black hair and hazel eyes and a heart-shaped face whose prettiness had been hardened by the stamp of dissipation; she wore a black dress with a lace collar, but her pose was hardly in keeping with the demureness of her garment or with her apparent grief. Her cheeks were puffy from weeping, her eyes reddened, and yet she lay asprawl on a sofa, smoking a crooked green cigar, her legs propped on the back and the arm, affording Korrogly a glimpse of the shadowy division between her thighs: it appeared that grief had offered her the chance to experience a new form of dissolution, and she had seized upon it wholeheartedly.

  We’re proud of our little treasure, are we not, he thought, we like to give it lots of ventilation.

  But Mirielle Lemos, for all her dissipation, was an extremely attractive woman, and despite his sarcasm, Korrogly – a lonely man – felt drawn to her.

  The air in the apartment was thick with stale cooking odors, and the living room was a typical bachelor’s disarray of soiled dishes and tumbled piles of clothing and scattered books, all strewn across furniture that had seen better days: the sprung sofa, a couple of easy chairs shiny with dirt and grease, a thread-bare brown carpet with a faded blue pattern, a small scarred table that bore several framed sketches, one depicting a woman who greatly resembled Mirielle and was holding a baby in her arms – thin winter sunlight cast a glaze of reflection over the glass, imbuing the sketch with a mystical vagueness. On the wall were several paintings, and the largest of these was a representation of Griaule half-buried beneath centuries of grass and trees, only a portion of a wing and his entire massive head, as high as a hill itself, left visible; this painting, Korrogly noticed, was signed W. Lemos. He pushed aside some dirty clothing and perched on the edge of an easy chair facing Mirielle.

  ‘So you’re my father’s lawyer,’ she said after exhaling a stream of gray smoke. ‘You don’t look competent.’

  ‘Be assured that I am,’ said Korrogly, who had been prepared for her hostility. ‘If you were hoping for some white-haired old man with ink on his fingers and crumpled legal notes peeping from his waistcoat pockets, I’m . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I was hoping for someone exactly like you. Somebody with a minimum of experience and skill.’

  ‘I take it, then, that you’re anticipating a hard judgment for your father. That you’re embittered by his act.’

  ‘Embittered?’ She laughed. ‘I despised him before he killed Mardo. Now I hate him.’

  ‘And yet he saved your life.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ Another laugh. ‘That’s scarcely the case.’

  ‘You were drugged,’ he said. ‘Lying naked on an altar. A knife was found on Zemaille’s body.’

&n
bsp; ‘I’ve spent other nights lying on that altar in exactly the same state,’ she said, ‘and never once have I experienced other than pleasure.’ Her sultry, smirking tone made clear the nature of that pleasure. ‘As for the knife, Mardo always went armed. He was in constant danger from fools like my father.’

  ‘What do you remember of the murder?’

  ‘I remember hearing my father’s voice. I thought I was dreaming. Then I heard a crack, a splintering sound. I looked up and saw Mardo fall with blood all over his face.’ She tensed, looked up to the ceiling, apparently made uncomfortable by the memory; but then, as though also inflamed by it, she ran a hand along her belly and thigh. Korrogly averted his eyes, feeling an accumulation of heat in his own belly.

  ‘Your father claims there were nine witnesses, nine hooded figures, all of whom fled the chamber. None of them have come forward. Do you know why this might be?’

  ‘Why should they come forward? To experience more persecution from people who have no idea of what Mardo was attempting?’

  “And what was that?”

  She exhaled another stream of smoke and said nothing.

  ‘You’ll be asked this question in court.’

  ‘I will not betray our secrets,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what happens to me.’

  ‘Neither does your father . . . or so he says. He’s very depressed, and he wants to see you.’

  She made a noise of contempt. ‘I’ll see him on the gallows.’

  ‘You know,’ Korrogly said, ‘despite what your father has done, he really does believe he was acting to save you.’

  ‘You don’t know what he believes,’ she said, sitting up, fixing him with a dead stare, her voice full of venom. ‘You don’t understand him at all. He pretends to be a humble craftsman, an artisan, a good honest soul. But in his heart he considers himself a superior being. Life, he used to say, had thrown obstacle after obstacle into his path, keeping him from achieving his proper station. He feels he’s been penalized with bad luck for his intelligence. He’s a schemer, a plotter. And his bad luck stems from the fact that he’s not so intelligent as he thinks. He bungles everything.’

  The first part of what she had said was in such accord with Korrogly’s impression of Lemos that he was taken aback; hearing his feelings issue from Mirielle’s mouth acted both to reinforce his impression and – because she was so obviously her father’s antagonist – to invalidate it.

  ‘That may be,’ he said, covering his confusion by shuffling through papers, ‘but I doubt it.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll find out,’ she said. ‘If there’s one thing you’ll end up knowing about my father, it’s his capacity for deceit.’ She settled back on the sofa, her skirt riding up onto her thigh. ‘He’s been wanting to kill Mardo ever since I got involved with him.’ A smile hitched up the corners of her mouth. ‘He was jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’ said Korrogly.

  ‘Yes . . . as a lover is jealous. He delights in touching me.’

  Korrogly did not reject the notion of incestuous desire out of hand, but after going through the mental file he had begun on Lemos, he refused to believe Mirielle’s accusation; she had been so committed to Zemaille and his way of life that he could not, he realized, believe anything she told him. She was ruined, abandoned to the point of dissolution; the stink pervading the apartment, he thought, was scarcely distinguishable from the reek of her own spoilage.

  ‘Why do you despise your father?’ he asked.

  ‘His pomposity,’ she said, ‘and his stodginess. His stale conception of what happiness should be, his inability to embrace life, his dull presence, his . . .’

  ‘All that sounds quite adolescent,’ he said. ‘Like the reaction of a stubborn child who’s been denied her favorite treat.’

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. He rejected my suitors, he prevented me from becoming an actress . . . and I could have been a good one. Everybody said so. But how I am, how I was, doesn’t have any bearing on the truth of what I’ve said. And it’s not relevant to what my father did.’

  ‘Relevant . . . possibly not. But it speaks to the fact that you’re not in the least interested in helping him.’

  ‘I’ve made no secret of that.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. But the history of your emotions will be helpful in pointing up that you’re a vindictive bitch and that your idea of the truth is whatever will hurt your father. It has no relation to what really happened.’

  He had been trying to make her angry, wanting to get an idea of her boiling point, knowledge that would come in handy during the trial; but her smile only broadened, she crossed her legs and traced a florid shape in the air with the tip of her cigar. She was very cool, he thought, very cool. But in court that would work against her; it would cast Lemos in a more benign light, show him to be the patient, caring parent in contrast to her vengeful ingrate. Of course that would be more significant to a defense based on compulsion, on wrong-headed passion; but Korrogly believed he could color his actual defense with this other and so win the jury’s sympathy.

  ‘Well,’ he said, coming to his feet. ‘I may have some more questions later, but I don’t see any use in continuing this now.’

  ‘You think you’ve got me, don’t you?’

  ‘Got you? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You think you’ve got me figured out.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘And how you would portray me in court?’

  ‘I’m sure you must have an idea.’

  ‘Oh, but I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘All right. If necessary I’ll paint a picture of a spoiled, indulgent creature who has no real feelings for anyone. Even her grief for her lover seems to be no more than a kind of adornment, an accessory to be worn with a black dress. And in her degeneracy, a condition prompted by drugs and the black arts, by the depraved rituals of the dragon cult, the only emotions she is capable of mustering are those she thinks will serve her ends. Greed, perhaps. And vengefulness.’

  She let out a lazy chuckle.

  ‘That strikes you as inaccurate?’

  ‘Not at all, lawyer. What amuses me is that knowing this, you think you can use it to your advantage.’ She turned on her side, supporting her head with one hand, her skirt twisting beneath her, exposing even more pale firm flesh. ‘I’ll look forward to our next meeting. Perhaps by then your understanding of the situation will have grown more complex, and you’ll have more . . . more interesting questions to ask.’

  ‘May I ask one further question now?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She rolled onto her back, cutting her eyes toward him.

  ‘This display of yours, the dress up to your waist and all that, is it intended to arouse me?’

  She nodded. ‘Mmm-hmm. Is it working?’

  ‘Why?’ he said. ‘What possible benefit do you think that’ll gain you? Do you think I’ll defend your father with less enthusiasm?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . will you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then it’ll be for nothing,’ she said. ‘But that’s all right, too.’

  He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her legs.

  ‘Really, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need a lover now. And I like you. You’re funny, but I like you anyway.’

  He stared at her, his anger alternating with desire. Knowing that he could have her alarmed him. He could go to her now, this moment, and it would affect nothing, it would have no resonance with the trial, it would merely be an indulgence. Yet he understood that it was this increasing openness to indulgence that signaled his impending moral shipwreck. To reject her would not be an act of prudishness, but one of salvation.

  ‘It’ll be good with us,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling for these things.’

  His eye followed the line of her thigh to the white seashell curve of her hip; her fingers were long, slender, and he imagined how they might touch him.

  ‘I have to be going,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I
think you’d better.’ Her voice was charged with gleeful spite. ‘That was a near thing, wasn’t it? You might have actually enjoyed yourself.’

  Two

  During the next week Korrogly interviewed many witnessess, among them Henry Sichi, who reported that when Lemos purchased the gemstone, he had been so entranced by it, so absorbed, that Sichi had found it necessary to give him a nudge in order to alert him sufficiently to complete the deal. He spoke to various members of Lemos’ guild, all of whom were willing to testify to the mildness and honesty of his character; they described him as a man obsessed with his work, obsessed to the point of absentmindness, drawing a vastly different picture of the man than had Mirielle. Korrogly had known quite a few men who had presented an exemplary public face and a wholly contradictory one in private; yet there was no doubt that the guildsmen’s testimony would outweigh Mirielle’s . . . in fact, whatever Mirielle said in evidence would, no matter how hostile, benefit Lemos’ case because of its vile context. He sought out experts on Griaule’s history and talked to people who’d had personal experience of Griaule’s influence. The only witness whose testimony ran contrary to the defense was that of an old man, a drunkard who was in the habit of sleeping it off in the dunes south of Ayler Point and on several occasions had seen Lemos hurling stones at a sign post, hurling them over and over again as if practicing for the fatal toss; the old man’s alcoholism would diminish the impact of the testimony, but it was nevertheless of consequence.

  When Korrogly related it to Lemos, the gemcutter said, ‘I often walk out past the point of an afternoon, and sometimes I throw stones to relax. It was my only talent as a child, and I suppose I seek refuge in it when the world becomes too much to bear.’

  Like every other bit of evidence, this too, Korrogly saw, was open to interpretation; it was conceivable, for instance, that Griaule’s choice of Lemos as an agent had been in part made because of this aptitude for throwing stones, that he had been moved by the dragon to practice in preparation for the violent act. He looked across the table at his client. Jail, it appeared, was turning Lemos gray. His skin, the tenor of his emotions, everything about him was going gray, and Korrogly felt infected by that grayness, felt that the gray was the color of the case, of all its indistinct structures and indefinite truths, and that it was spreading through him and wearing him away. He asked again if he could do anything for Lemos, and again Lemos’ answer was that he wished to see Mirielle.