Sigh.

"Does it make sense to you? It just seems to be - horrible in ways that don't even get it what it wants."

"Uh, I don't find it unusually bewildering as governments go? Is there something in particular -"

"They have all! These! Rules! About what you can get arrested for and what happens if you do! So many rules! They formalized everything! And then a situation came up where the rules didn't apply so they just - did this thing - what's even the point of having the rules in that case - if I needed to arrest a lot of people for no real reason I could do that but I haven't gone to extraordinary lengths to write down all the possible reasons specifically so there'd be uniform application!"

"I was assuming they had some kind of, I don't know, 'state of diplomatic emergency' slate of powers they could pull out in case of rogue summoner with Anitami relatives about whom they need to be seen to do something. I didn't look into it though, do they not?"

Sigh. "Probably. But that's just - having a list of rules with one item on the list being 'also we can do whatever we want'."

"It happens in larger societies. Somebody pulls a scam, so you make rules against that sort of scam; somebody breaks one of those rules innocently without hurting anybody but wastes investigative time while you find that out so you make easy-to-check standards everyone has to meet; someone imports an invasive plant so you make rules against importing any plants so you don't have to teach customs officials botany; someone complains so there's an appeals process to get a plant looked at by someone who does know botany; somebody gets forgotten about in jail for a day with no meals, honest mistake, and sues the cop and the police department and the district, and you have too many lawsuits to handle so you make rules about who's liable and how to throw out frivolous ones, and rules about how prisons need to be structured and monitored and accountable... and they have a population of six hundred million."

"They arrested people just for being related to him!"

"Yes, well, all those rules don't make it any more palatable to have important people furious with you, so you build in ways to address that if it comes up."

Sigh. 

"Yep."

They fetch his father! His father would love to abuse stimulants and chart things in between reading physics textbooks! He scurries off to a room to do that.

Cam slightly limits his dose.

Probably a good idea.

Larya comes back to James with a proposal for a Valian court. Saniah approved it with only occasional handwringing ('you don't have an arrest mechanism'. '...we aren't worried they'll refuse to show up.' '...then you don't mind if I add a provision for if they don't, right?')

And James reads it over.

The countries of Valinor will host hearings over war crimes committed in the course of the recent war. If needed they'll import a fairy to make arrests and dismiss Cam for a resummons under an appropriate binding; they don't currently anticipate the need. The hearings will aim primarily to provide clarity over events and closure to their victims, and sentencing will be victim-guided; one past war crimes sentence issued in Valinor was for three thousand years' imprisonment, but this was not typical. The court will evaluate whether any of the defendants are a threat to other dimensions and restrict their movements in accordance with that judgment.

The rights of the defendants are pretty typical except that Elves do not recognize the right to a swift trial and do explicitly recognize the right of the defendant to speak in their own defense.

"With demons you generally don't... let them talk... I guess he's had lots of chances to talk to you. Uh, I don't see a timetable."

"It's hard to anticipate, honestly, it might be a few years before everything's straightened out and stable."

"...I think that until you're all set to evaluate how dangerous he is the circles will probably stay."

"I'm concerned that if something happened and he got picked up, getting him back would involve considerably more awkwardness and tension than resolving this now."

"It plays really badly - 'demon holed a planet, we're not doing anything, nothing is being done, sometime later we're told' versus 'we took down the circles to hand off the investigation to someone closer to the case, they're on it right now' -"

"I can, right now, put out circles on our end to rearrest him that way if he fails to cooperate with the investigation? I just can't go harass newly resurrected people involved in refugee relocation and go 'if we don't issue a verdict right now about Cam some alien society is going to render him unable to communicate in any way and imprison indefinitely based off a complete misapprehension of what happened."

"Putting up your own batch of circles for him - I mean, responsible circles, but I guess you can skip the gag if you can't stand it - would do it."

"Our souls are made of metal and you don't have to talk us out of them. I can put up our own batch of circles."