Mica got outright fired for leaving a forensics gap.

I did in fact mean to get her in trouble, it was irresponsible to claim it'd been disproven off the evidence you had. 

No answer.

Not hard to guess why.

Jake's trial takes a long time to wind through the courts; a war crimes approach doesn't suffice, but they end up constructing a similar legal approach to evaluating crimes committed in the pursuit of the destruction of unjust social institutions like slavery, forced migration, factory farming, concentration camps, and so on. The burden is on the defense to demonstrate that there was an ongoing atrocity, the atrocity was permitted under local law and the actor had no meaningful expectation of successful legal recourse, the actor selected targets for their value in ending the atrocity and took reasonable measures to reduce collateral damage, and the actor is able to testify that given nonviolent avenues of pursuing an end to the atrocity they would in the future take them.

Jake's lawyer delightedly demonstrates each point, at some length. He is acquitted; one Elf animal rights group gives him a medal.

He's very pleased with his medal.

Does the GCP still have circles out for him?

Yup.

Then the Elves'll offer him one, no binding at all, so he can go back to Fairyland without having to deal with them.

They can't get the GCP to stop?

They can communicate to the GCP that he was acquitted, here's the trial transcript and the three court decisions necessary for his lawyer to even have the opportunity to present this defense.

...well, human courts do not accept this defense and it was humans he tortured to death and they regret giving his name to the Elves.

A thing about justice systems, writes Ingwë, is that sometimes they do not deliver the result you personally find most emotionally satisfying. This is not a bug, it is a feature.

The GCP is not seeking emotional satisfaction, and your people's persistent misunderstanding of our priorities is both condescending and a demonstration of the depth of the problem.

Having acquitted the defendant our courts will endeavor to ensure he faces no further harassment.

You don't have jurisdiction. You can't take criminals who harmed human beings and declare them innocent. If you don't care if demons hole your planets that's one thing but having determined you're incompetent to look out for the interests of human victims we find you unsuitable to try their attackers.

We will keep that in mind should any situation arise in which your opinion of our suitability is relevant.

Well, Jake's circles stay.

Jake gets offered a circle with no binding so he can return to Fairyland unmolested.

Cir's aunt Sirix shows up in Milliways stark naked with writing on her, is promptly locked up for violating the nudity rule, kills herself in the cell, is released to her family, and Cir informs Bright that Ingwë tries to start a war when Jake accidentally takes a new GCP circle.

Jake is very emphatically warned not to do that and maybe Maitimo should spend more time at home making sure that Valinor is stably handling the transition into multiversal superpower because fuck.

Ingwë asks what he is supposed to do if people who are his concern are imprisoned by the human lunatics.

"I don't know. We should be careful to avoid that."

"Sure. But given that it had happened -"

"Wars are very terrible."

"I know that."

"I permitted slavery to go on in Godspring for sixteen months in order to prevent wars."

"Well, I would have advised you not to do that if I'd known you were doing it."

"I don't know if I should have done that. But anyone who thinks it's obvious either direction is not someone I can collaborate closely with on fixing everything."

"If Jake had tortured slavers to death, and in so doing ended slavery -"

"Then I imagine the courts in Revelation would see it your way, and be inspired to invent the same approach to law that we were inspired to invent. Unfortunately, the actual nature of the crime and of the trial contributes to the humans' xenophobia and they have something of a crippling problem with that. War would not fix it."

"We would have won."

"No one would have won."

"That's very poetic but it's not true at all. We would have won."

Bright decides to do more work at home; he appoints his Larya to the lead role in dot-related concerns on Godspring. 

The president of Mars calls Maitimo.

" - hello."

"Maitimo! Look, can we talk? The GCP is up in arms about some jurisdiction problem."

"Yes, I heard, I cleared my schedule. Should I drop by?"