"That'll probably help. Panopticon enforcement is possible in theory, 'valid circles' is a conjurable parameter, but it'd be less politically palatable to actually track down everybody drawing a gagged circle in their garage..."

"I heard there's a thing now where daeva can complain to the government, as long as they're willing to do that it's enforceable without breaking into anyone's garage."

"They can do that if anyone will miss them at home or they can do it from the garage," Cam says. "But yeah, Matt set that up."

"Matt?"

"I know the guy who set it up, and his name is Matt. He found a demon who wants a baby, that's one thing you really can't get in Hell, and she's doing correspondence, maybe there are more of them by now."

"Oh, clever. Someone you taught?"

"Nah, met him recently on summon."

"So," she says, "I did not really expect this to work - I mean, I meant what I said, but I mostly expected that you got hundreds of those and I figured when someone asked me 'what happened to marrying the best person in the world' I could at least say 'I asked him! He was busy with more stealth saving-the-world!"

"I got way fewer proposals than Elvis. Who sorted mine for me for vicarious enjoyment - he's married already, see - and gave me three of them to actually read. I'm reserving judgment on what happens after I've met querents two and three as well as you, but if you'd rather say 'he introduced me to sauce-infused sea bass and we parted ways' then even if I objected I would surely bow out under the wrathful glare of our fairy chaperone."

"Elvis is married? And I wasn't planning to say anything, I do get the sense you're involved in vaguely mysterious stuff for good reasons and even if your reasons weren't good someone who literally got murdered over people finding out who he was is entitled to be as mysterious as he pleases. I told my roommates I was going on a date but they probably assumed it was not literally with Revelation."

"Elvis is married and Elves are super monogamous even though he hasn't seen his wife in thirty thousand years, yeah. You can tell people you went on a date with me if you like, I don't mind."

"Maybe if it's the absolutely perfect moment for it. Thirty thousand years? Are they, like, psychologically different from humans - or demons - are there daeva that old and would they even remember someone they knew that long ago?"

"There are not daeva that old and we probably wouldn't. He spent most of the intervening period dead, and, yes, Elves are very different about time."

"Huh. Anyway, I have no desire to, having extracted lunch, ask my fairy to whisk me away. You are in addition to being the vaguely mysterious best person in the world really hot and I probably have, like, a civic responsibility to run policy problems by you, you got a head start on everybody at thinking about them."

"Thank you. - I should publish a version of my notes on that, actually, spread the head start around."

"Ooooooh. You should definitely do that."

He writes that down. "I shall! Feel free to run policy things by me, but it's possible I will wind up trying to steer things larger than Kentucky, fair warning."

"I will not have any hard feelings if you become emperor of Saturn. A good prison solution is exportable, that's the thing, a good daeva-rights arrangement probably is too."

"Ooh, emperor of Saturn. Might be a little gassy. I'd have a great time terraforming Mars though. And yeah, that's true, and Kentucky-sized experiments of things are potentially useful precedent."

"I really don't want any of our approaches to result in Kentucky-sized disasters but I guess it's a lot better than Mars sized disasters. What would you do with the place after you terraformed it?"

"Declare myself emperor? I'm not sure, I don't even have enough relevant science yet to know how to keep an atmosphere on it."

"Have you just been spending the last couple years taking summonses, pretty much -"

"And teaching myself violin and trying to learn Lagalann, but yeah, when I knew my parents would both be awake I was trying to grab summonses."

"It's tricky?"

"It's not hard so much as it requires very fast reflexes. There's more demons who want summonses than there are circles at any given time - that's why if you draw a random up you get one right away. So you have to pay attention to catch one before it's gone. Kind of like whack-a-mole but you only need to whack one mole."