"I am glad to hear it. I thought you might feel more comfortable helping us when you had a reliable means short of murder of stopping us from doing things you dislike."

"Yeah, I appreciate that. It doesn't have to be as convenient as mass drugging people to serve the purpose, sorry if that wasn't clear."

"I am apparently insufficiently creative about your abilities. I need to amend that. I'm badly needed here or I'd want to go out to the secret planet, I feel like there are probably other things I'm missing that I wouldn't if I got more accustomed to thinking in the terms your capabilities permit. Before you left for Valinor we spoke of ensuring you felt like you could ask questions of us and get true answers without damaging your working relationship here. I still have a great deal of interest in that being true."

"Well, if you have an idea of what I'd need to copy to get the Valar's FTL information transfer..."

He frowns. "Let me run it by Father."

"It'd be very handy! Ansibles!"

"How do you have that word, we cannot possibly have the same science fiction... I suppose it'd just need to be a corresponding word... obviously it'd be convenient, it's just not something we'd even know how to approach. But if anyone can do it my father'd be able to."

"No, we presumably have totally different science fiction but a corresponding word will do. Summoner doesn't have to know it, either, I get comparable fluency but not their exact vocabulary. Speaking of my science fiction do you also want the entire library of Hell? I won't even have to redact it to keep dangerous summoning-related information gatekept."

"I would love the entire library of Hell. I may not have time for much fun reading before the war's over but still."

"There's technical stuff in it too, it's not all aerial ballets... should I worry that the Enemy will hack into it if you bring a copy to Endorë though?"

"

...might be safer not to chance it. Until we know at least some things about his capabilities."

"Sorry. Here, have a copy of the best performance of my favorite aerial ballet." He hands it over. "Should be completely strategically innocuous."

"And much appreciated." He shakes his head wistfully. "Father says he can probably invent FTL communication but he can't do it in a week even with a demon to create anything he can specify. Have a safe trip and good skill, I guess."

"Can always install the ansibles later. Where're my passengers?"

"If it's also not likely to get anywhere on medicine in six weeks then you're taking thirty families with young children around Tasárinon's age and that's it."

"Okay. ...Should have mentioned this before but are there going to be awkward governance problems with me running a planet where everybody answers to a different monarchy, I haven't run into any obvious friction points yet but if we did."

"I will tell them to obey you within reason. We're an easy people to govern, in general. If you and we somehow end up very badly at odds then you'll be able to stop that knowledge from reaching them anyway."

"Okay. Anything that might seem like a 'within reason' to one of us and not the other you can guess at this time?"

"Hmm. Asking for oaths is for extreme circumstances - lives in danger, generally. Oaths to the effect "I did not lie in this conversation" are permitted in less extreme circumstances but in general don't do anything that resembles ordering an oath from someone, don't demand one in public, don't ask them of children at all, that sort of thing. Don't ask them for sexual favors. Don't ask them to have children. Don't ask them to withhold information from us."

"Okay, that all sounds fine although I am glad you mentioned the oaths part."

"If you ask Tasárinon for an oath not to dismiss you without your permission I am not sure if it'd work. It'd be a violation of our fundamental rights law, might be worth it anyway if it'd work. The general principle is that oaths not to do something just bar you from doing it - it's impossible - so they're fairly safe and can in fact be used safely to tackle bad habits and so forth. Oaths to do something are very dangerous. I am not sure if 'don't dismiss Cam' counts as 'do not have this thought' - the oath would block him from having it - or 'if you have this thought, stop it' which is risky. If he were an adult I would already have asked it of him but he's not."

"...that's really creepy however unlikely it would be to propagate beyond its intended effects."

"Yep. We have all these laws around Oaths because they are very dangerous."

"How do they even work?"

"'Magic'," he says, a bit skeptically. "They work through the same hardware we have for osanwe and for backups. Swear not to do something, Oath stops you from doing it. Swear to do it, the Oath - starts scrambling your thoughts about not following through. Really dangerous. Useful, if you're careful. Bit like demons, I guess. Swearing to things you've already done or haven't done is completely safe, and that's what most people use them for."