"—wait what language even is this, you don't have words for—makers—?"

"We do not."

"None of these languages do, where are we—uh, it's not important, I guess. ...man, this is way harder when I can't just loom menacingly."

"If this summons does not suit you I can dismiss you."

"No, it's just—usually the summoner just tells me what they want and starts offering stuff and if I'm not feeling bored I'll take their soul or wait until they get tired of offering but sometimes they hit something interesting, so... What do you want?"

"I wish to establish correspondence with makers of particular skillsets, especially terraforming, with a view towards frequent summonings by my people."

"...uh, terraforming? Uh, I don't think I know anyone but there's probably mailing lists..."

"Could you do some investigative conjuring for us instead?"

He blinks and looks at Kaede like he hadn't noticed her there. "If you tell me what to make, probably."

"It is possible you should conduct this exchange outside of the need for the summoner in particular," Avalor tells Kaede.

"You'll still need to be the one to agree," she tells Avalor, then turns to the demon. "Half an hour of investigative conjuring for... is there anything in particular you want?"

    "Uh, I don't know, I don't usually..."

"What sort of music do you like?"

    "Classic," he says apologetically.

"They might have an equivalent. Do you know any old composers?" she asks Avalor.

"As in from my childhood or from a century ago or...?"

"A century ago is probably closer to the mark."

"Yes, I do, although I can't promise they'll be to any given taste."

"We'll give you the names of five people who composed music a century ago and you've never heard before," she tells the demon.

    "—uh. For half an hour conjuring? Yeah okay sure why not."

Avalor lists five composers.

The demon conjures a chip in his hand and... stares at it. "Man, you're legit. Okay, shoot."

She asks for the records of a couple specific summoning license issuers, and checks for summoners who died. Checks for scale models of them after death. All of them are daeva. Asks for valid circles made by daeva versus limboites. ...there are a small few made by limboites, that's surprising—but conjuring for all daeva that answered a limboite's valid circle gets nothing.

The demon, it appears, is much more surprised than she is by these results. He suggests a couple of things, and in the end—" Yeah okay I'm pretty convinced now. Thank you—I never caught your name—"

"Rachnu."

"And I'm Kaede. Thank you, Rachnu."

"Thank you, Rachnu," agrees Avalor.

"As a last note, do you know any makers who might be more interesting in the terraforming project?"

    "Uh, maybe Jeska? Here, I'll write it for you—" He gives Kaede a note with the name for the specific summons.

"Thanks, we'll try them next." And Avalor can dismiss the demon.

She can and does.

"So, answer's yes it'll probably scale with your population."

"That is a relief."

"And I'm not actually sure we should be interviewing demons for terraforming now; it might be a better idea to figure out how to roll out summoning to everyone."

"What would the advantage of doing that without a terraforming project underway be?"

"Ending many of the causes of suffering for people currently alive is the main one. Also I'm not sure how long a terraforming project would take and the fact that every country had access to daeva helped a lot with that."

"I am not sure you appreciate the extent to which population control is a source of suffering."

"Perhaps but the coordination part remains a concern."