"They scale perfectly well."

"Lovely." Cam makes one, peers at it, says, "Unfortunately it's really hard to get any sort of outfit that interacts well with wings which are, in fact, persistently attached to one's body," and then makes more of them, all attached, in two layers to cover one another's gaps and plated in clear diamondlike carbon substance. He drapes it over his shoulders, wings folded. "Give it a spin."

"Would it go around and hit me in the head or would it go through, and if the latter would it wreck my shield cloak?"

"Through, and no."

"Huh. I mean, I could make it more layers but that would make it really bulky and I was imagining the end version would have all of the kinds of shields there are... Maybe I could keep it to two layers, or three or four, and have them be really really thin and in stacks a few molecules thick? Anything the matter with having a fire shield directly on top of a stun shield et cetera?"

"The thinner the shield, the less effective it is," says Inlaith. "A strong enough stun bolt will pass through your cloak not because there are gaps but because it won't care about shields that small."

"Interesting. Even if the surface is wholly tiled with them? Why is that?"

"It's one of the most basic principles of magical weapon and shield design. Strength is proportional to size. It's possible that with your ability to completely ignore the practical necessities of manufacturing and materials costs, you could help us develop a shield cloak that matches your ideals, but no one has tried to layer together hundreds of tiny shield-circles coated in diamond before so no one currently knows how to do that effectively."

"Hollow wands exist. It's the weight rather than strictly the size that holds in that case."

"Okay. But there is a limit to how dense I can make a specific kind of metal while it retains the various features of the metal that might be important. So I don't know how far that gets me."

"Well, which would you prefer: taking days or weeks to develop the perfect shield-cloak, or venturing out with the one you have?" inquires Dalvor.

"Does it seem likely that if the evil aliens discover that they can't kill me they will keep me stunned indefinitely?"

"It's possible," he says. "They haven't yet been observed to capture anyone they couldn't kill. But we can send an escort."

"I mean, I might have a way around that sans escort if someone would like to help me test it out. I have no idea why I'm here and presumably you don't want to be rid of me as long as I am open to helping you with your evil aliens, but if summoning is working as normal, I can be dismissed at arbitrary range and re-summoned. Unfortunately, if summoning is not working as normal - if I am here now for some reason other than 'nobody else made that kind of shield flat on the ground in sufficient size before' - I have no way to predict accurately in what respects it's different. So testing would involve risking stranding another daeva here indefinitely."

"I am very interested to know how you can be dismissed at arbitrary range and re-summoned," says Dalvor. "I don't wish to strand another daeva here indefinitely, but if it would help win the war without significant risk of the stranded person causing more trouble than they solved, I'm not opposed to trying."

"I'm opposed to trying. Daeva are in general very dangerous, I don't object to the use of bindings for temporary summons but it's a hell of a thing to do to a person who's going to be around forever, and the first thing they'll try if it turns out they object to being stranded is killing their summoner on the assumption that the summoner must not be really trying to dismiss them."

"I'm sure I will have no trouble finding a prospective summoner who would willingly assume that risk, if the reward is potentially being permanently rid of the Enemy. What exactly do you propose to test, and what exactly are your objections to it?"

"...I was thinking that someone could summon and dismiss another daeva and demonstrate that summonings and dismissals are both working the way that I expect them to, if they are, without risking sending me home and not being able to get me back. But. Daeva are really really immortal. If something goes wrong they will either be bound, forever, which is not all right as a permanent condition, or they will be loose and likely pissed off. I guess you could keep stunning one around the clock forever but that's not something I want to do to an innocent bystander either. I can think of one angel who might be okay with being stranded if nothing significant has changed in the last hundred fifty years, and I think they'd be okay with it specifically because they've always wanted to meet aliens."

"I don't know what precisely you mean by bound; I concede that it may very well not be all right as a permanent condition. However, neither is death. I am deeply, deeply tired of the rate at which my friends and subjects keep dying. My goal is to end this war, and in that I beg your assistance." He glances aside for a moment at some subtle signal. "Yes, Faidre?"

"Cam claims to be able to trivially destroy the planet. I judge it not unlikely," he says.

"I don't know if I could trivially destroy this planet because it's a weird planet and I'm not about to try it and see. I'm... still uncomfortable with bringing a non-immortal escort along but I suppose the situation is in fact lethally urgent for exactly the sort of person you'd be drawing the escort from. I can at least give them shield suits, I guess. I'll want to try using my computer to try to decipher their language if they have one and you don't already have someone who can translate."

"No one has ever made much progress learning the language of the Enemy from the fragments we hear," says the king. "Azair?"