If the demon has any secret schemes, none of them let him bust his gag.

It's a long walk back to where the trailer office for the project is set up. Their summoner is sitting outside of it with a book, occasionally glancing up to watch robots apply sunny layers of paint to the station that the track they were laying was meant to serve.

"Summoner," says Sikandros. (In case anyone has forgotten, Duke Sikandros is a bit over six feet and has black plates of rune-inscribed metal for skin.) "We have located flaws in the task set," He gives a sweeping bow, and then rises, "and it fails to accomplish your set goals. We must therefore renegotiate or correct this failing, and so bring our instructions into union with your goals."

And if the demon doesn't, he's prepared to point out the problems on the blueprints!

The demon does have the ability to point, but the summoner isn't looking at him, just at Sikandros. "...I didn't draw up the plans. What's wrong with them?" he asks.

"It will collapse in the next major earthquake. If you happen to see here, here, and here -"

And then he can talk quite a lot about bracing and support and the nature of the rock they're driving it through and why this is clearly irresponsible. The engineering textbook he most commonly cites is more than a hundred years old, but that mostly just meant that it was written in the days of 'materials budgets' than that the nature of substances has changed.

"Huh. I can talk to the project lead about it. How about you keep going in the meanwhile so we're not behind schedule if they say it's fine?"

The demon folds his arms and sits on the ground.

"Upon my honor and cold iron, to the best of my knowledge or power, I will not suffer to pass or be privy to the passing of bad worksmanship or faulty material. This oath I have sworn before and this oath I swear again." A dark smile plays on his lips. "I think you had better speak to the project lead, yes."

"You are the most drama queen angel I have ever met in my life," says the summoner, but he goes into the trailer.

"Ah, the mortal realms," he'll say quietly to the demon, after the summoner's goes in. "They never cease to remind me why I forsook them." He considers. "Other than my death, that is."

Not being able to manufacture electronics himself, he's going to make an ear trumpet out of a fleck from his armor so he can try to eavesdrop on the conversation. He'll vanish it if it looks like someone's coming out.

The demon flicks his tail in what might be an agreeable fashion.

"So, yeah, the angel found some earthquake tolerance problem with the specs," the summoner's saying to the project lead. "We can replace him but the demon's striking too, and it took me a while to find one who'd work within budget."

"Discussing dismissing us," Sikandros says, very quietly. "Hasn't made the decision yet." The post's already written and it takes a minute's concentration to dismiss a daeva. He'll start on his extortion if the summoner starts concentrating.

The tail lashes harder, scoring a shallow line in the dirt.

"I hired you to summon the daeva, not put us weeks behind schedule with a respec," says the project lead. "Engineering signed off. Maybe if there was a cloudfluff quake it'd collapse but with rock it's fine, or something."

"Yeah, I thought you'd say that. I can't actually make them work, though."

"I'm aware of the limitation. Go have a talk with the angel about it."

The trailer door opens.

"Trying negotiation first," he says softly, as he makes the ear trumpet disappear.

Wing-rustle.

And he can pull out his computer's projector (a small, dark wand), and display on a wall a section of the relevant building code with his already-written-down explanations of how the project fails to live up to them included!

Their summoner looks at this, rather baffled. "I'm not an engineer, I'm a summoner," he points out.

"Should I show this to the engineers, then? It is they who must correct it, or be liable in front of their fellows among the craft and their superiors beneath the law." 

"They aren't on site, why would they be on site?"

"What engineer would not supervise their work?" he says, confused. "It is the twenty-second century and the cost of travel is minuscule."

"It is the twenty-second century and they can email the plans without getting out of bed and putting on pants," says the summoner, rolling his eyes. "If you have an Earth-networked email setup I suppose you could send it to them but I'm not actually sure what time zone they're in or whether they speak any languages you've inhaled so it doesn't really seem like it should be a blocker on what's next for today."

"What is next for today is mending the flaws in your design, and I would rather expect you would want an engineer to oversee this, since you hardly have a reason to trust the talents of Duke Sikandros if you are not an engineer yourself."

"It isn't my design. I could check your Davidson's profile but you fancying yourself an engineer isn't actually what I was filtering for here, we just needed the tunnel."

I wrote the book on this you imbecilic - (He can't commit physical violence under this binding, very sensibly.) His armor bristles, for a moment, before he regains control of himself.

"I had intended the plural you," he says, with strained precision. "You and the firm you represent. And the demon has the same concerns as I."

"Well, I can send some emails, but if you aren't going to work for the rest of the day I should probably just send you home."