"I actually think it might be valuable for the GCP to have relations formally with Elven polities other than the Noldor, but if you're shortstaffed at the moment perhaps it's the wrong time to encourage that. I have no assurances on offer but to the extent you are constrained by resources shortages that sounds like something I might be qualified to fix."

"It seemed like that to us too, until the Valar turned out to be dimwitted vigilantes unqualified to produce a verifiably arrested arrestee long after they claimed to have finished the job! That is not an ally, let alone a resource, that is an agent of chaos accusing us of barbarism in one breath and disappearing accused daeva to a location no one can reach without their assistance where they are held untried for weeks in an operation our sources suggest received no publicity in any daeva realm except insofar as word of mouth passed on the information that they returned home to only minor inconvenience and completely destroyed deterrent effect!"

"I regret not making it clear in advance that we would not use more force than necessary to ensure the criminals never harmed anyone again, and not asking you for your standards of 'verifiably arrested'. It is still not clear to me why the demon-aided forensic verification, which is quite straightforward, does not suffice, but this is the first I'd heard of a sabotaged forensics department."

Ms. Chua facepalms. "Yes, so straightforward, it is astonishing that I must give remedial lessons - demons create material objects! A binding is not a material object! A circle is, or can be, but a snapped binding will not be reflected in the circle! An individual's surroundings are a material object but the supposed magical protections placed by the Valar are not! And you have not even mustered that force; a fairy who tortured seven men and women to death because he did not care for their careers has been set as free as your preposterous excuse for a court can make him, by your own admission! With this sort of precedent about I would not be astonished to wake up on fire because I know what you all think of my line of work, how dare I organize the summoners who make sure that the furniture angel is contained in a safe binding in a facility that exceeds all pancelestial standards for humane conditions, how dare I make certain that my employees who are already at elevated risk of assassination by lunatics who wish to release their demons at least will not lose their souls on the way, how dare I object to benevolent aliens who had not heard of daeva five years ago or human trial procedures last month swooping in to insist that everything be done their way! Did I complain when you bought demons fancy lawyers? No! They can have all the lawyers they like! Do I complain about the Elves swarming my prison nightcycle and daycycle because they think the daeva are lonely? No! That at least is their right! But to fundamentally undermine the entire system with the grace of a kindergarten production of Elephant's Dance is too far!"

"Would you like me to outline the procedure by which I propose to demonstrate verified arrests?"

"By all means do, so that I will know which cases must be tabled with the legend 'could not secure for trial, abducted by Elves'!"

"When a daeva is on summons you can conjure for a scale model of their current summoner. The summoners can visit you in Ganymede; they each only have one summons, and you can look at them and check that the binding has not been snapped and is exactly as described. You can thus verify the whereabouts of the daeva, the binding they are under, and the intact state of that binding. You can do this on demand, I don't mind shuttling summoners around if it brings you peace of mind."

"You can bring me no peace of mind by demonstrating to me that the fairy who mutilated seven people and left them for their spouses and children to find is oh so verifiably released just as the trial transcript says! Do not insult me by pretending any of this is about peace of mind!"

"'people are acquitted who should have been convicted' is a separate complaint from 'arrests cannot be verified', are we in agreement on a satisfactory arrangement for verifying arrests such that we can move on to discussing the concern of wrongful acquittals?"

"Summoners who do as you describe may run afoul of unaccompanied daeva regulations and would be better handled at the Singapore office than on Ganymede proper," she says frostily, "but otherwise yes given the supposition that we can replace our forensic demons."

"We haven't had any trouble recruiting ours, are you anticipating difficulty there?"

"The ones we had were untrustworthy and took months to find in the first place."

"I imagine my suggestions on that would be very much unappreciated."

Glare.

"I've been impressed by your organizational competence, I'm sure you'll have no trouble sorting it out. Shall we talk about the wrongful acquittal?"

"What is there to say? We traded you the Swan demon for arrests and you didn't hand the daeva over for trial and I believe all but one now walk free one way or another."

"One was acquitted, three took plea deals and are under bindings that prevent them from ever causing harm again, one is serving three hundred years minimum. We do not have and never had the capacity to hand the daeva over for trial. I reviewed my transcripts of that conversation and I said 'we can travel into the daeva realms; it's not safe for us but the Valar can do it safely', from which I regret that it was misunderstood that we possessed a way to impose a binding on a daeva who was not taking a summons. We do not possess such a means, and you don't possess a way to handle them without it."

"You handled some of them for trial, for some definition of trial, and lawyers are portable. A parole officer visit once every decade is not what I would call 'serving' and your plea deals are ridiculous. No deterrent effect. Every daeva who hears that you offer deals like that will perform whatever mayhem they like so long as they only feel the need to do it once!"

"If we observe that to occur the court would consider that a reason to issue harsher sentences. Harsh deterrence also deters innocent daeva from taking summonses at all, leaving the pool of summons-accepting daeva one which is unusually willing to risk events with a serious downside for them; at this time our belief is that the effects on innocent people from artificially making it costlier to accept summons outweighs the benefits of deterring troublemakers."

"This is not up to you to decide! It is not up to you to risk it until you decide some event was caused by your leniency and not whatever the lawyer for the defense trots out as a justification! Did you consult any human polities on this?"

"Our defendants testify under a magical effect under which it is impossible to lie. They can be asked about their motivations directly, and sentenced off that."

"Because incentives are always so conscious," she simpers. "Of course you will never interview anyone who was deterred, that way, but why at this point I imagine you might have anything put together sensibly is purest optimism -"

"Before you got here I was saying to the president that I think we're past the point where a unified response to daeva can reasonably be hoped for, and it makes more sense to establish an agreement with respect to jurisdiction, so daeva who do wrongs in your world can expect to answer to Ganymede and daeva who do wrongs in ours to us. Does that work for you?"

"Will you turn over the five whose names we ill-advisedly gave you in a condition such that we can hold them?"

"I just explained to you that we do not have the means to do that."