Devrim's Discipline (Court of Paravel 1)

“That doesn’t change the fact that if the King’s Guard hadn’t failed us, we wouldn’t have suffered twenty-seven years of the People’s Republic.”

How can she say such a blatantly untrue thing? According to everything I’ve been told over the years, by supporters of both the People’s Republic and Mama herself, old Paravel was lost to the rebels because of the riots, not because the King and Queen were slaughtered. They were just the final, brutal nail in the coffin.

I look between Mama’s stubborn expression and the paper she holds in her hands. I can see what’s going to happen. Devrim will become a scapegoat for the entire fall of old Paravel. People always search for someone to blame when there’s been a disaster.

I grab a fistful of the newspaper and shake it at her. “Is it going to happen all over again? Lies parading around as the truth? I thought we were all sick of that under Varga. Paravel is mighty. Paravel is prosperous. Lies. Now, instead of embellishing the present, we’re rewriting the past, and laying the entire blame for the revolution at one man’s door. I won’t believe it, and you can’t make me.”

Mama takes the paper from me as tears spill down my cheeks. “Wraye. Calm down, please. I know you’re worried about your friend, but perhaps Lady Aubrey would be better off if she left Paravel and went back to France. She had a good life there.”

I wipe at the tears, but they continue to fall. Aubrey must be suffering this morning, too, as much as Devrim is. This must have been what he was so afraid of, when she asked him questions about the past, reliving the moment when he saw his King and Queen die.

Mama straightens her shoulders. “When everything resettles and the Levanters have left Paravel, perhaps you and I can move up the social ladder a little. What? Don’t give me that look. We must take our opportunities where we find them.”

I sink down into my chair, feeling hollowed out. I never wanted to climb any ladders, and if I have to step over the bodies of my friend and my lover to get where Mama wants us to be, I want it even less. “It’s not worth it. Nothing’s worth this.”

“Everything is worth this. Everything, and more. The Rugovas will be acknowledged, and we will be restored. It killed your father knowing how he failed us.”

“Oh, now it’s Papa’s fault there was a revolution? I thought it was the Archduke’s.”

Mama hesitates, and then sits down. “I wanted to protect you from this, but seeing as the truth is emerging on its own, perhaps you should know.”

I study her face. “Papa took his own life. You tried to keep it from me, but I already found out, remember.”

“Yes, but I didn’t tell you why. Your father was a gambler. He gambled a great deal, and he lost a great deal. In the end, he lost our entire fortune and our home. This was before you were born. Before the revolution. He was so ashamed. We were just two days from departing Rugova House, for good, when old Paravel fell. Very few people knew what he’d done. The bank that took the house from us collapsed just after the revolution.”

A gambler. I thought the revolution had driven him to suicide, not his own addiction.

Mama takes my hands in hers. “If we just hold on a little longer, I can find a way to petition the King and tell him that there’s been a mistake, and then you and I will have everything that’s due to us.”

But it’s not a mistake, if Papa lost everything before the revolution. I open my mouth to point this out, but Mama speaks over me.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I have some excellent news, and it’s a happy day, so no more tears. We’re going to look at apartments to rent. Isn’t that wonderful?”

It takes a moment for my mind to change gears. “What? We can’t look at apartments. We’ve got no money.”

“We have enough for a modest two-bedroom apartment, closer to Royal Park. Not on the park, of course, but a more respectable neighborhood than this one. You can have friends over and tell them that we’re renting, while our home is being renovated. Won’t that be nice?”

I feel like I’ve fallen into Wonderland. I push both my hands into my hair, grappling with the thoughts racing through my head. I want to focus on Devrim, and only on Devrim, but something’s telling me to pursue the issue about the apartment. “But where did the money come from?”

“I sold something.”

“You said that when you bought us new shoes and hats. There was nothing left to sell then.”

Mama’s eyes slide guiltily away. A hot, tight ball of fire forms in my chest. I don’t think I want to ask the question I’m about to ask. I feel like it’s going to plunge me over a precipice that I can never come back from.