"Good. Is there anything we should discuss before I find Miranda?"

"No, sub-Visser."

"Good."

She finds Miranda and stuns her and replaces Andi's Yeerk so Kestil can go check out Miranda, then emerge, be replaced with Passan instead, and be sacrificed gloriously to advance the knowledge of the empire. Kestil is then summoned as an angel successfully, given morph, given Miranda's form, and goes looking for Minor with the sub-Visser in tow.

"Hi Minor!" says Kestil. "Did you hear about the new me yet?"

"Hi!" says Antren.

"Oh, hi, new Bell! I didn't hear." He puts down a physics textbook. "Picked a nickname -"

"Nah, I'm still thinking about it. Uh, weird question."

"Really weird," says Kestil.

"Hmmm?"

"So like new Bell's world has these aliens that go in people's ears and can move them around and imitate them?" says Kestil. "And it might be important to know if they work on daeva, and if they work on daeva whether they can use their powers. Buuuut there's probably no convincing Cam to try it."

"But I can hand out shapeshifting scientific-mumbo-jumbo-technically-not-magic," says Antren. "So now Miranda can shapeshift into a brain alien, if you can tolerate just checking -"

"Whether they can use daeva powers - ugh. It just moves you around -"

"And kind of muscle memory type stuff, it's enough to put Cam way off it but it's not that big a deal, we're just kinda as a template all," handwave.

"- yeah, that's okay if it's Miranda." 

"Fair warning morphing is super gross," says Antren.

"And so are brain aliens but please don't just leave me on the floor they're aquatic," says Kestil, and she demorphs.

He does not leave Miranda-as-super-gross-brain-alien on the floor. He holds her to his ear and lets her in.

After a minute - so does that mean you can't use the powers -

- I'm not actually Miranda and you're hilariously gullible and I can use the powers fine, we already checked that -

- you should really hope, Minor says after a minute, the Elves are the ones to stop you because Timothy will learn the Cruciatus and then torture you all to death and I don't even think Cam'll leave him for it.

We already have that one. 

Something'll go wrong and then you won't and then he will super definitely no question torture you to death - also I no longer consider DNA part of my body - or my wings - or my hair -

"- uh," she says out loud.

"Uh?"

"The daeva thing is like - the parts of them which they consider parts of themself are indestructible? But he controls the body plan, I don't -" the wings drop off -

"Can you or can you not come up with an explanation for that?"

"For going without the wings, sure, if he successfully decides his left leg isn't part of his body -"

"I see. How does it affect this calculus that we do in fact have Miranda."

" - uh, doesn't help like you'd expect, he will be very bothered by it if we hurt her or make him do it but I do not think it'd deter him from ceasing to have legs if he can pull it off -"

"We could let her go. Turn her loose in Hazel. The default option is that she regains consciousness with Passan in place. I'm not even being particularly nasty to this one and she's scarcely coherent; it wouldn't take much creativity to leave nothing left of Miranda to congratulate him on his game theory."

"- that he's thinking about."

"While he thinks stash him neck-deep in some plausible research project, why don't you, and if confronted say he meant to get around to sizing up the wings but got distracted."

"Sure.

- ah, doesn't think we could verify it, would go for it if we could but mostly because he thinks Miranda free is more of an asset than trying to explain leglessness away is a liability -"

"Do you think you could let him conjure for her whereabouts without letting him do anything extraneous?"

" - yeah, same as moving one finger."

"Does that suffice to verify our cooperation? We don't need Miranda in particular for anything."