The Valar announce that they've done as much as they can in Singularity (they can't bring back peoples' babies in that critical period either, but they can get them earlier versions) and are setting up portals between there and Sanity as soon as they are confident they've cleaned up the plague. A bunch of Elf architects have this wild idea for a fivedimensional city where alternating intersections are interdimensional portals between various Valinors and they get eagerly to setting it up.
"Ah, for that reason it's a conflict of interest to have you as another defendant's summoner and you handed him off to someone else."
"Might kind of undermine some of the diplomatic progress we've made. Saying I can't be his summoner because I'm a witness in the trial would be easier."
"I think you can technically be a witness and a defendant. You could also just have a separate trial you don't tell anybody about if you need not to mention being a defendant in mine."
"Or tell people about but not the prickly governments of Revelation while we're trying to convince them to improve their treatment of daeva. If the Sanity Valar are really this good maybe they will be able to do a lot of the work themselves, though. I agreed to get them some mass murderers they've been trying to arrest, in exchange for Cam. Maybe I will bring those by, notify them of another change in custody, and then Cam can be free till the trial."
"I think I will go eat something from Bar and go to my room and nap. If the time dilation is friendly you might not be inconveniencing me at all to look properly straitlaced."
Nod. "Ambela - nice to properly meet you, incidentally - are the Valar available for arrest excursions?"
The Valar are willing to be more interventionist in daeva relations if that's what their Elven advisors think their role should be, but they are not especially inclined to hand people over to human authorities who seem uncertain of whether their prisoners are really people.
She relays this. "Will they settle for the opportunity to verify that we have them in custody like with Cam?"
"I don't know but if they're displeased they're displeased, so be it. Maybe I can invite them to your Taniquetil to discuss it with the Valar if they're upset."
"With my set it'd be a terrible idea. If it'd be a terrible idea with yours I will not do it."
"It's not terrible but I'm not sure it would soothe people from Revelation with no reason to be impressed by the Valar."
"They're - scared. There's a lot more to it than that but - fundamentally they think they are the protectors standing against hostile forces that cannot be reasoned with in defense of the innocent and - there are a lot of human things Elves just wouldn't do but the way Revelation treats daeva isn't really one of them. And the - point of the Valar, if I am to concede that they have one after having orchestrated the murder of my whole set - is to build spaces where people don't have to be scared, and are better for it. I don't know that it'd work, but it might get somewhere."
"Yes, that's what we're talking about. I wouldn't have had you see it, honestly."
"I am really glad I did, I want to go back, the people there need me some of them are very lonely."
"It's safe to try sending people to visit ours if you would like to." She scoops up Mingling and hugs him.
Such hugs. "It's a very ugly place and they're not allowed to go near anyone and they're not allowed to hug anyone unless a stranger who has never met them and can't talk to them wants to hug them just because anything's better than being completely alone. They can't talk. They can't sing. They can't write. They can't make new files on the computer. They can't pick out letters on a board. They are not very good people but I think after ten Years in that place I would not be a very good person either."
"The angels and fairies can talk and write, they're not just being gratuitously terrible. And the architecture is unremarkable by human standards."
"They could train their staff to not give demons their souls and then let the demons talk and write. They are too being gratuit- gratuit -"