"What is it?" Annan asked.
I've been gone less than a week. Nothing serious could have happened, right?
Could it be... the Elf Mentor is back!?
"The Otherworld Tree is growing more and more slowly." Dade gave Annan a strange look. He seemed both delighted and nervous.
Annan relaxed a little. "Are we running low on 'fertilizer'?"
Beside her, Shadow Song said, "Free City's public safety is too good. We've collected almost all the death-row inmates in the surrounding areas."
"That's all right. Death-row inmates are like weeds. Another crop will spring up."
"Normally, yes..." Shadow Song said awkwardly.
But Free City had changed everything in western Middle Earth.
Normally, the death-row inmates captured by the various powers fell into several groups: bandits who terrorized the countryside, unlucky souls who had offended someone important, and wealthy outsiders.
The first group existed in fairly fixed numbers in any given area. Like merchants, their numbers depended entirely on local prosperity, and some were even nobles' hired thugs. But Free City had bought them all up without asking questions.
Most of those unlucky enough to offend someone important were innocent. At first, the local rulers had hoped to get paid twice: once by the powerful people who wanted someone arrested, then again by Free City when they sold the prisoner. But Free City put each prisoner on trial again and released the innocent.
As far as the powerful were concerned, they had paid for a job that never got done. They might not dare cross Free City, but a petty lord was another matter.
As for outsiders, local officials usually invented charges to fleece them. They wanted money, not lives; a ransom would set the prisoner free.
The outsiders had once been reluctant to pay up. But a threat to sell them to