Blood Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page A

then thought better of it. His power signature would be felt—no doubt about that—and he had no desire for anyone to know that he and Tory had come to visit without asking permission. Ry nodded to Tory, who skipped them back to the palace.
    * * *
    "He was a little bitter, don't you think?" Ry asked quietly as they walked down the long hall toward their schoolroom.
    "Can you blame him?" Tory asked, a thoughtful expression in his blue eyes. "He's getting bullied. Too bad he isn't here with us. Mom wouldn't stand for that."
    "What's he doing there anyway? If that's not a fish out of water, then I don't know what it is," Ry snorted.
    "There you are, and late on top of everything else." Morwin, Ry and Tory's tutor, glared at the two boys as they walked toward their classroom. Master Morwin's school lay at the back of the palace, far away from the rooms and hallways the tourists visited. Morwin was an Amtearean Dwarf, knew more things than most people ever wanted to know and was over four hundred years old. Morwin was shorter than Ry by at least a foot, with thick, red hair and bushy red eyebrows that Ry imagined would look infinitely better if Morwin would only trim them now and then. Ry knew not to suggest it—the one time he'd made the hint, he and Tory had gotten extra homework for a week.
    "We are very sorry—the tourists, you know," Tory ducked his head. Ry wanted to snicker—there hadn't been a single lie in Tory's words.
    "Hmmph," Morwin grumped and stepped aside so the two boys could enter the classroom.
    "Today we will cover the destruction of Trell," Morwin said after both boys were seated at their desks. "Not the official version being taught in other classrooms around the Alliance, but the truth of what happened," Morwin said. "We may only discuss the topic inside this classroom, as you know. You may talk with your uncles, too, who have firsthand knowledge." Morwin's bushy eyebrows wiggled while he spoke, and Tory often had to look at the comp-vid on his desk to keep from laughing.
    "I warn you, however, that speaking of this topic around your Lady Mother may upset her, so I caution against it." Morwin liked the Queen of Lissia very much and often had dinner with her and the Inner Circle.
    "We know," Ry was ducking his head, now. He and Tory both knew. Trell had been destroyed because someone betrayed their mother. Her enemies, thinking she was still upon Trell as their spy reported, had used a terrible weapon to blow the planet to bits. Their mother found it extremely painful to hear anything concerning Trell.
    "I am sending the information to your comp-vids now. I would like a ten-page paper on the subject, with emphasis on the economic impact Trell's destruction had upon the Alliance. It will be due at this time next week."
    * * *
    "Trell had the exclusive rights to manufacture components for the solar collectors," Ry scanned through information on his mini comp-vid while he and Tory walked toward their shared suite of rooms after class.
    "Who made them after Trell was destroyed?" Tory glanced over Ry's shoulder at the information.
    "The contracts went to Refizan, but only after months of negotiations with the Alliance members. The Grand Alliance Council finally had to intervene—the rest of the Alliance came to a locked decision. Refizan had the factories already in place; they just had to rework the assembly robots," Ry added.
    "Then we'll start with that," Tory said. "There has to be something else, though. Morwin expects us to go digging. There's something else he wants out of all this; I just know it."
    "Yeah. He always wants us to look deeper than he says to look." Ry didn't mind, actually—he learned new things that way. The boys passed down a long hall leading to the residential wing of the palace, nearly reaching the door to their shared suite when the floor shook beneath their feet and the lights went out.
    * * *
    "Casino City almost had a five-second meltdown before the backup generators kicked