"I'm not in general confident in any of our plans that run on 'don't let the daeva learn about this' but the fact they can be wizards might be an exception, that one is legitimately hard to figure out and you'd have to take a summons and get a wand."

"It didn't take Cam long to figure out."

"Okay, anyone who was formerly a summoner and therefore has genes, and knows enough genetics to identify the wizard gene and figure out how to splice it in, and is willing to do lots of gruesome transplants on themselves, can get it in a week and still can't check whether they've got it because no wand."

"Yes. Exactly."

"So, even if someone publishes in whatever is Hell's widest-read paper that it works, it works for only a tiny fraction of daeva, they have to learn a ton of science to have any hope of getting it to work, they have to put themselves through a ton of unpleasantness, they still don't have a wand, and it lasts until they get distracted."

"I'm not actually sure a naturally occurring daeva couldn't get themselves a genome if they wanted to, copying some wizard's wholesale even. They don't naturally occur with horns either and those are popular. Cam is not even a genetics specialist, he guessed-and-checked and could maintain the thing off science he'd learned by the time he was my age. And if you're going to pay them in magic items they will eventually wind up with something that could work as a core."

"Wandmaking's pretty specialized. I don't recommend publishing that it works in Hell's widest-read paper but if we don't do that I think it's pretty unlikely - I mean, to us Hazel is salient, getting wizarding in particular working is really important. If you're a daeva who stays very very apprised of events you are now aware of the existence of five new worlds and three new magic systems, you've got no particular reason to check 'can I acquire a genome and by that means be a wizard' as opposed to 'can I give myself an Elf brain and thereby get chips to work' or 'can I give myself Elf blood and thereby get osanwë and artifact magic working' or 'can I figure out how to compose magic songs' or 'can I make myself into a goldmage'. It happens it looks like exactly one of those is actually genetic, but it'd surprise me if there are that many people systemic enough to try all that stuff for every single new magic system they're introduced to when we're throwing dozens at them, and by the time Hazel gets up and running we're going to be throwing dozens at them."

"I think there are probably demons who don't have anything better to do."

"I guess we'll see. Like I said I'm not happy about security-through-obscurity in general, at all, but if I had to identify things that are probably safe that way, 'doesn't work naively, there are a lot of complicated things that might make it work, only one of them does, and it's temporary and all but impossible to test that you got it working' are the more promising ones. We can have people conjuring for wands, get a sense of whether anyone's attempting it."

"Okay."

"Maybe I'll suggest to Cam that the textbooks we distribute in Godspring teach bindings that prevent wizards and mages from making trouble."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Anyway, happy birthday. May the next year be as exciting as this one."

"I think most things that would be this exciting would be bad."

"Okay, true."

Elsewhere at the party: "So you didn't bring the boyfriend you bought from the mage world who nobody's allowed to touch?"

"Who told you that?"

"Um, I can tell you didn't bring him because he is not here but Mingling told me he existed."

Sigh. "Cir doesn't do parties and doesn't like the main bar much, someone might touch him. That's a hell of a phrasing for the situation."

"Yeah, you should probably tell Mingling to describe it differently."

"I don't know, if he's going around telling everyone that and absolutely no one has bothered confronting me about it that's sort of informative."

"I have no idea how many people he's told that."

"Everyone in Godspring thinks it too. Charming, humans."

"Hey!"

"I know, I know, I'm being horrifically uncharitable. Not quite as uncharitable as 'bought a boyfriend from the mage world who no one's allowed to touch' but close."