Adam woke up slowly, and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. His muscles burned with day-old exhaustion and he was filled with a strange but somehow familiar sense of weary lethargy. It took him a minute to realize he had overused his magic and his mind was still recovering from the strain. A brief memory flashed through his head of feeling almost exactly like this after a particularly harsh battle during their adventure. He was starting to remember more and more of his first time here, the familiar sensations and locales jogging long-disused memories. He could remember fighting together with his friends, sleeping under the open stars, meeting the pegasi on the southern coast, listening to Amber’s music… “AMBER!” He tried to sit up, but all he managed to do was make his muscles spasm painfully. He fell back into the soft bed with a pained groan. “Don’t do that. The healers said you shouldn’t be moving for at least a few hours longer.” Adam looked over and found Sven sitting up in the next bed over, his forearms wrapped in ointment-coated bandages. The room seemed to be some kind of infirmary, and Adam could vaguely remember spending some time here after breaking an arm during their adventure. “Is Amber all right?” “She’s… uninjured.” “That’s good, but it’s not what I asked.” Sven looked a little bit uncomfortable. “Well, she’s… calmer. She’s not setting things on fire anymore. Lily’s taking care of her.” Adam nodded a bit distantly. “I suppose that’s for the best. Those two were very close, back then.” He sighed and shook his head. “This is so messed up. How did this happen?” “I don’t know, Adam. But I do know this. You saved Amber’s life last night.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe you should have been the prince of courage, not me.” “Prince of recklessness, more like. I’d have been dead if you hadn’t stepped in and stopped that beam.” “And Amber would have been dead if you hadn’t rushed in to save her.” Adam nodded slightly, and the two fell into a companionable silence. Not long thereafter a pair of servants came in to look over their injuries and feed them, but Adam’s thoughts were occupied with the girl in the fire. What had happened to Amber? Lily sat cross-legged on her bed with Amber in front of her. They used to sit together like this a lot during their last adventure, and it might even have felt nostalgic if not for the burn scars covering the other girl’s body. Lily brushed Amber’s hair carefully, untangling the knots while trying her best not to let the bristles touch her more vivid scars. She used to be rather jealous of Amber’s long, straight, lustrous hair, but now the scraggly patchwork that remained felt almost like a mockery of its former glory. A tangled, matted mess serving only as a reminder of what had been lost. Lily halted her motions, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Lily? Are… Are you still there?” Amber’s voice was a bit scratchy and dry, but it still sounded so much like the girl Lily used to know. It was like her speech patterns hadn’t changed at all in the twenty years they’d been apart. She sounded agitated and confused, like a lost child. “I’m still here, Amber. I won’t leave you.” The girl spun around and latched onto Lily with desperate strength. Lily gently put her arms around the scarred girl, humming a lullaby she remembered singing to the children in the nursery. Lily had seen all of Amber’s burns when the healers looked her over, and she was sure the more recent ones were still tender and painful to the touch, but Amber still pressed up against her as hard as she could, holding on like she was afraid Lily would just vanish into thin air if she let go. “Is this real?” Amber asked in pleading tones. “You won’t go away?” “I’m not going anywhere, Amber. You’re back with us now, and I’m not going to leave you alone ever again.” Amber’s vice-like grip softened a little, and Lily carefully shifted the girl into her lap. It really should have been harder to do, but Amber was stick-thin and barely weighed anything at all. “It’s all right, sweetie. Everything is going to be just fine.” Lily started humming the lullaby once more, gently rocking the scarred girl back and forth as she did so. Adam was sitting up in bed, reading from a collection of old scrolls with a slight frown. The healers still didn’t want him moving around, but after they helped him use the bedpan (and wasn’t that just the most mortifying thing he’d ever been subjected to) they’d agreed to let him sit propped up against the headboard instead of lying down. With nothing else to do, he had sent a servant to fetch him a few things from the castle library. He may not be the sociologist Lily had apparently become, but he was sure he could find a few things if he just looked hard enough. Currently he was looking through a record of case histories and legal rulings, and something wasn’t quite adding up. Sven had long since been cleared to leave the infirmary, but he still looked in from time to time. It wasn’t like he had much else to do right now. Not that Adam was great company at the moment, sitting with his nose buried in some dusty old scroll. Noticing a small frown on Adam’s face, he walked over to ask what the problem was. But before he could even open his mouth the frowning tailor proffered a scroll to him with an impatient gesture. “These are arrest records. I need to know what prisoners 01410331 through 01410386 were arrested for.” Sven took the scroll curiously and skimmed the dry, handwritten list until he got to the relevant section. “Well, 01410345, 01410367 and 01410372 were arrested for theft, but on all the others it just says ‘outstanding debt’.” Adam nodded, his frown growing deeper. “That’s about what I expected. Every one of those prisoners received a sentence of between one and ten years indentured servitude to the state. It seems like any time someone has an outstanding debt they can’t repay in time or causes purely financial damages to someone and can’t pay the fine, the state covers those debts and has the debtor pay it off with labour.” “But…” Sven checked the scroll again doubtfully. “All these people were arrested within a span of less than a month, and these are just from the capital! What does the state need with so much labour?” Adam handed him another scroll. “That’s a summary detailing all the land owned directly by the crown. As far as I can work out, about 70% of the nation’s farmland, 80% of its forests and 95% of its mines are state-owned. There seems to be on average about a hundred and eighty thousand indentured servants in the nation at any given time, and even that isn’t enough to cover all their labour needs.” “That… can’t be right. The last time we were here it seemed like everyone outside the city owned their own farm or plot of woodland.” “That was ten thousand years ago. Ten thousand years being ruled by a stable, moderate government with no real enemies and lots of money. The normal taxes levied from the citizens aren’t high, but they’re enough to cover the costs of running the nation in peacetime, and while the tithe collected to ‘fund the Great Goddess’s interests’ is an almost symbolic payment these days, it was ten times as high just a handful of centuries ago. For over nine thousand years the state’s tax income remained the same while the disbandment of most of the army and the lowered upkeep from castles and garrisons meant its costs plummeted.” “So the state has money to burn. How does that translate to them owning almost everything?” Adam motioned towards another bundle of scrolls. “Purchase records, property transfers, records of land feuds… I don’t think anyone did this on purpose, and it was probably all done with genuinely benign intent, but… Well, the government had money to spend and nothing to spend it on, so they started buying up land. If a farm was performing poorly and the owners going into debt, the state would buy the land at a generous price to give the farmer a chance at a fresh start somewhere else. If a plot of land had been too splintered by inheritance squabbles to be much use, the state came in and purchased the land so it could be used effectively. And the state is using the land very effectively. An individual farm has to produce a variety of things just to keep the family properly fed and barely gets anything left to take to market, but the state-run farms are provisioned just like the military and can focus entirely on the few things they produce best. It’s a bit different with mines, woodlands and other businesses, but the general principle remains.” “All right, I can see how that would add up over the years, but… 70 percent! Why are so many farms failing?” Adam sighed wearily. “Because the state is producing far more resources than it needs. You can’t just let it go to waste, of course, so the state sells most of what it produces on the open market. At low prices, too, since the state has more money than it needs already. That means any private farmer has to lower their prices as well, because no-one is going to buy your produce if they can get the same thing cheaper somewhere else. That makes the farms less profitable, meaning more of them fail. The state purchases the failing land at a good price, but that money doesn’t last forever. So the farmer either has work for a state-owned farm or try his luck in a new profession, where he probably won’t be paid well given his lack of experience…” “Wait, are you telling me everything is gradually getting cheaper, but everyone is getting poorer at the same time?” “Everyone but state employees and the independently wealthy. No-one can compete with the state-owned businesses, so people are losing money and taking out loans to get by, often directly from the state treasury, and when they can’t pay back…” “They’re sent to work off their debts as indentured servants. Yeah, I think I see the problem.” “The standard of living doesn’t actually seem any worse than when we were last here, maybe even a bit better, and the fact that anyone can take out a loan from the state whenever they need one means very few are truly destitute, but…” “But individual enterprise is pretty much non-existent?” Adam nodded, and the two men lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Lily lay down in her bed, trying to ignore the sweet and slightly bitter herbal smell of burn ointment. The ointment stains were absolutely everywhere, on the sheets, on her clothes, in her hair… The healers had wanted to wrap Amber’s body in bandages coated in the stuff, but the Princess of Fire had outright refused any treatment that would make her feel like she was being bound or constrained. In the end the healers had relented and simply slathered a long, linen nightgown in the stuff and made her wear that. The yellowish gunk ended up going all over the place, but Lily found she couldn’t get even a little bit irritated at the sticky girl who lay curled up against her side. “Lily…?” Amber started a bit hesitantly. “What is it, Amber?” “Am I… Am I making trouble for you?” Her voice was faint and hesitant. “I know I’m not… right. Not whole…” Lily just lay there for a while, gently stroking Amber’s ointment-stained hair as she considered what to say. “I’m not going to lie and say you’re no trouble at all. The portal room is a mess, Adam and Sven got hurt rescuing you, and I’m honestly worried what would happen if I didn’t watch over you…” Amber’s face fell and she opened her mouth to reply, but Lily kept on talking before she could. “But none of that matters! You’re my friend, Amber. You were the best, most wonderful friend I have ever had and you’ve helped me more times than I can even remember. I don’t care how troublesome you get, anything I can do to help you will always be worth it, no matter what.” “Really? No matter what?” Amber’s voice was a bit brittle, but it was still brighter than it had been all day. “No matter what. I promise.” Lily stretched as far as her position would allow, chasing some of the stiffness from her muscles. Wrapping her arms around the little princess, Lily shot her a warm smile. “Do you want me to sing the song again?” “Yes please.” Lily started singing the lullaby once more. Amber sank happily into her embrace, feeling warm and loved and protected. For the first time in many, many years, the Princess of Fire smiled a real, happy smile. She was home.