"I promise not to disintegrate you," Cam says.

"I appreciate it tremendously. Want to come learn to throw off the Imperius and/or test whether it works for you at all?"

"Sure."

"Parameters of things that can happen? Miranda wanted my little brother present -"

"I don't have any school chums handy to supervise. I will assume you would consider it a disaster if I decided I'd rather wait around in the bar for fifty years waiting for somebody else with a Mars I can terraform to come along instead of helping you."

"That would be terrible. Also I'm not actually evil." Upstairs.

"I know." Follow follow.

And if before they've reached the fifth landing he murmurs "Imperio" and continues up the stairs like nothing happened, and wants Cam to do the same?

- Cam startles and tumbles down the entire flight of stairs, making an undignified noise.

- he can soften the landing slightly - "sorry, are you okay?"

"I'm indestructible," says Cam, as a shallow split in his lip knits together good as new. "I assume falling down the stairs doesn't count as throwing it off."

"Nope but it suggests it does affect you, so we can't just go give my world daeva. Damn it."

"It's possible it doesn't affect us very much, in the same way I can be scratched but not very deeply, but it doesn't take long to make dangerous things..."

"If you want to check that we can find some steady ground and test it. I actually expect a popular application would be making daeva agree to deals - but you can just then refuse to follow through on your end, right?"

"Yeah, the function of a deal is to make some bindings relax if they specify that they only apply outside the scope of a deal, and summoners can't dismiss us without paying for a completed task but can if the task is incomplete."

"Could you, like, demand 200 of something and dismiss without payment once you have 199 -"

"I mean, yes, but dismissal takes a minute so you'd have to time it a bit carefully to avoid the 200th thing appearing and the demon being authorized to shake you down for whatever."

"What does 'authorized to shake you down' look like -" climbing the stairs again -

Follow follow. "If it looks like you're not going to pay up, bindings will not stop the daeva from attempting to increase the chance that you pay up or negotiate an acceptable alternative. Can't escalate instantly - I used to hope somebody would stiff me because the gag would have been the first thing to go - and can't do unrelated things that the bindings do not otherwise allow."

"That'd be terrifying as a summoner.

- so if you can take Arda souls back, and someone agreed to that -"

"That probably wouldn't actually work for the reason that the chip can't be removed without killing the body, which probably does instant dismissal. But in theory yeah. It wouldn't oblige the daeva to actually take it though, I have in fact just stared at summoners who volunteered stuff I didn't want until they got the picture and renegotiated because if I'd turned down the deal they'd just try again."

" - with a demon more inclined to accept? Why would that be bad?"

"Uh, demons are hard to pay. Since we can make whatever we want. And are traditionally paid in intangibles. And not everybody composes music."

He is very briefly tempted to say 'so how much do I owe you for Mars?' but this is not discernible even a little bit from his face.

"Oh, and you can't talk so you can't just say 'no, it's okay, I'll put dinner on the table for free, honestly -"

"The case I was thinking of was actually 'fill up the warehouse of a charity' but yes."