"Of course, I have no way to reply."

"Yeah. I mean, I'd have to summon you. But uh, if it had occurred to me and I'd known what your string was then I would have at least, y'know, told you about how the colony was doing, possibly without feeling the need to incompetently triple-check the new binding you made beforehand. Probably. I suppose saying words at people is not my primary area of expertise."

"That would've been nice! Summoners don't usually keep in touch."

"Oh. Well. If it would be nice, then I can totally write sometimes."

"It would."

She smiles probably a little wider than is strictly justified.

"OK. Well. Thanks again. Have fun with violin practice."

And she dismisses him.

And he's gone, violin and all.

OK, see, that was only slightly stressful this time, and it all went fine, and he did not seem particularly annoyed at her at all. Part of her is still distantly protesting that he might be secretly evil - which, yes, OK, he probably could be secretly evil, and for that reason she should try not to do anything extraordinarily dumb, but it's probably not extraordinarily dumb to summon him. Probably.

The next day, she writes him a letter. She puts a fair bit of effort into making it not be obnoxiously verbose, she's really bad at not being obnoxiously verbose.

Letter to Cam

Hi Cam! Morris is feeling way better, he's really glad to have his wallaby back. Everyone else is really glad that Morris isn't crying. He's a really sweet kid, I'm glad he didn't have to lose his favorite toy.

I've been thinking about how you said you'd be happy to teach me more about summoning? I've been reading a little on my own, just out of general interest, but I bet I'd learn way more if I had someone to help me. I understand if you're busy now, I just thought I might as well ask. Planning to summon you in two hours, so we can talk about it then. I don't know what time that is for you, I have no idea how time zones work in Hell. If I'm late it means the baby is crying, not that anything more emergency-flavored is happening.

Sincerely, Kalia

The baby does, in fact, interrupt her plans. Cam is summoned in three hours and forty-three minutes.

He arrives promptly; his computer is clipped to a belt loop on his pants. "Hi there!"

"Hi! Sorry about the delay, Zana was very sad about the human condition for a bit. Is the offer to teach me about summoning still open? It's OK if it's not."

"Sure it is, I updated some old lecture notes and everything."

"Gosh. Do you like, teach classes on summoning theory in Hell? I suppose it makes sense to want to understand all the rules from the other side."

"I have taught summoning classes! It was a hundred fifty years ago, though, when experience with summoning was more of a rarity."

"Oooh. Fancy." (Occasionally she remembers that he's an immortal demon, and that it's actually really unreasonable to expect to know more about stuff than an immortal demon, when she's existed for like nineteen years in total.) "I wasn't super sure how to word a request for tutoring. Or if stuff that didn't involve conjuring necessarily had to be an exchange at all? Hopefully this is covered in the material."

"I will spend some number of hours tutoring you in exchange for whatever you feel like trading."

"This is a very vague deal but I have no idea how you could theoretically do massive harm to me with it. I accept."

"I guess in principle I could have an elaborate plan to drug you and make you suggestible so you'll feel like trading me some awful thing? But if I were going to do that I wouldn't need the step where I accept an open ended payment."

"Oh, if you're secretly evil then your plan is much more complicated than that. I think it'd have to involve wanting me to snap your bindings. If you wanted me to trade you something you could've gotten it the first time we met."

"A part of a good summoning curriculum is going to be about thinking like the kind of daeva bindings are designed to thwart, do you in fact wish to use me as an example case?"

"If you want. I can imagine circumstances under which this would be unproductively stressful, but I feel like the suspecting you might secretly be evil and successfully tricking me into helping you destroy the world ship has already sailed, so if we could bring it back into port that would be awesome." She frowns. "I dunno if that metaphor made any sense by the end, but yeah, go ahead."

"Okay, so if we assume I'm secretly evil, I've already - conspicuously! - passed up opportunities to do you harm, so that suggests my sinister plan is not about harming you. It doesn't necessarily have to be about getting you to snap my bindings; maybe I want you to recommend me to other people who are more vulnerable or closer to whatever evilly interests me. If there's an evil demon conspiracy, I'm just trying to elevate our general reputation so that over time people gradually get less cautious with demons until finally we have enough people in place to do some huge evil thing."

"Oooh. Be a lot of effort to put into something like that, given that I don't think incompetent weirdos on Pluto are particularly useful long-term investments, but you do have forever and seem to have very few chances to make full use of your persuasiveness."

"All true! That one guy who put out that book series about gagging demons has done a lot of harm to the evil cause."

"I do imagine that was his goal. Though it'll be super embarrassing if it turns out we've been wrong about the evil conspiracy and have in fact been shooting ourselves in the foot all this time."

"And finally we will achieve our real aim: fielding a demon team in the Olympic games."