- and lands in a chalk drawing in a public park, late evening, no one in sight.

"It's pretty, though," says Cam, not quite answering.

"It's an improvement, but that's not saying much."

"You damn it with faint praise."

"Belike."

"So you're some sort of art critic, I take it."

"You could say that."

"What else could I say?"

"You could explain why you've been sitting on this bench watching people react to this act of inverse vandalism for the past half an hour," he suggests.

"I'm unemployed and people-watching is very informative."

"May I suggest that next time you have the urge to people-watch, Imperial Security Headquarters is not the place for it? Someone might become alarmed."

"Oh, is that what it is."

"Yes," he says. "Why, what did you think it was?"

"I didn't know. I suspected it of being official."

"And now we come back to: do you know who anti-vandalized the place?"

"Depends. Are they mad?"

"They're very startled," he says. "I would not characterize them as mad. In fact I think Simon Illyan wants to shake your hand."

"Then I may as well admit it's my hand he wants to shake, mayn't I."

"Yes," says Miles. "You certainly may. Do I get a name to put to our architectural savior?"

"I'm Cam. And yourself?"

"Miles. Do you plan to let us in on how you applied an interesting abstract mosaic to the outside of the building that quickly?"

"I will be happy to do that. Shall I wait until in the room with the aforementioned Simon Illyan or is 'us' somebody else?"

"...Before I answer that question, I want to clarify: do you know who Simon Illyan is?"

"Please assume that I am a friendly alien who has landed on your planet fluent in your language and spent several weeks eavesdropping on public conversations and reading publicly available books."

"Sure."

"Simon Illyan," he explains as he leads Cam towards the building, "is my boss. Chief of ImpSec. I have to say, among the hypotheses we generated, 'someone who had no idea what the building was for did it to affably stir up shit' did not appear."

"I'm deeply curious about this hypothesis list."

"Hm, 'hypotheses' might be overstating the point, really. It was more a list of questions. How could someone do that? Why would someone do that? What chain of causality could possibly lead to the result we observed? And then Captain Illyan observed that part of the result was some sketchy-looking fellow sitting on a bench watching the hive boil, and I was the poor sod tasked with investigating."

"What qualifies as 'egregious'?" wonders Cam airily, taking note of their route.

"I am not actually an alien. Per se. I a friendly magical demon."

"...Go on," says Miles.

"I have no idea why I'm here. Normally when I am summoned I appear on Earth or Luna or Mars and it is, most recently, the year 2159, with a somewhat different technological tree than you seem to have gone through. Plus the thing where everybody knows that you can summon demons et cetera. But here I am, probably until my summoner dies of their own accord because I have no idea who it is and don't care to do elaborate detective work to make them send me home. I cannot tell you for sure if you can summon more demons, or our counterparts angels and fairies, because I don't know how I wound up in the wrong universe in the first place, although I could tell you how to try it if assured of your attention to safety procedures. Demons and angels and fairies have different kinds of magic per species; demons make stuff. I did the mosaic to get some kind of moderately friendly official attention because I've always wanted to terraform a planet and the nearest one that needs particularly demonic terraforming's five jump points away and I don't know how to get across a wormhole, since those are not a feature of where I'm from."

"...Define 'stuff'," says Miles.

"...'Not antimatter'."

"...That's... heartening..." he says slowly, not sounding all that heartened. "Um. To what specifications can you make stuff...? If I told you to make, oh, a Cetagandan Order of Merit, and you didn't know what that was?"

"That's probably specific enough. Books, as an example, are title and author, hit-or-miss on things like title and first few words. I can put 'em in arbitrary formats, though, if I can make them at all."

"Let's have an Order of Merit, then. Not that I exactly doubt you, but we didn't catch your last supernatural feat on vid - none of our pickups are pointed at the building."

"I'm a little wary of making things I don't know what they are in case you are actually out to abuse my friendly nature. I haven't had lunch yet, though, want to see me make a grilled cheese sandwich? Or name me a book."

"An Order of Merit is an award. I own one. The point of the exercise is that you have claimed to be able to make things even if you don't know anything about what they should look like, and I want to verify that. You're welcome to make yourself lunch too if you feel like lunch."

Cam makes a sandwich and bites it contemplatively. After three bites he hands Miles an Order of Merit.

Miles looks at it. "Well, that answers that question," he says. "Now I have two of the things. God help me." He tucks the object in his pocket. "So. You're after a ride to Komarr? What do you plan to do when you get there, exactly?"

"Slip out of an arcology and make a whole lot of air. Possibly after consulting with people who are experts on things like 'what if there were suddenly a whole lot of air on Komarr', since you've got more relevant history of terraforming than I am acquainted with."

"From my very, very basic understanding, a whole lot of air wouldn't actually solve Komarr's problems on anything more than a temporary basis, where 'temporary' is measured in decades. If you really want to give them a planetary makeover, I'd go for expanding the soletta array. Much harder to hide, but if you're doing it all official-like, you might not have to. And you now have an in with some very official people. We'd just have to get Gregor's okay... please tell me you know who Gregor is."

"I have heard the name. Prefaced by the word 'Emperor'."

"Good. I would've been really embarrassed on your behalf if I'd had to explain that. How would you like to meet him?"

"Sure, why not."

"How do you feel about being gently questioned about your goals and motives under the influence of truth drugs? It isn't strictly necessary to the goal of talking to Gregor or cooperating with his government in general, but my fellow professional paranoids would find it immensely reassuring."

"Are we talking truth drugs that make it impossible to lie or truth drugs such that if the questioning were less gentle I'd be spilling all my deepest secrets?"

"The latter," he says. "I understand if it's not an appealing prospect."

"It is not. There will be none of that."

"I don't suppose I can convince you through the expedient of, oh, volunteering to let you do the same to me?"

"No, not really. It's not so much that I don't think you're operating in good faith, I just have what I believe may be an unusual amount of a thing about mental privacy."

"I do actually have some experience in the art of the extremely well-targeted fast-penta interview," says Miles. "But believe me when I say I understand your concerns."

"So since there will be none of that, what's next?"

"Since there will be none of that, next I generate some goodwill by letting you know that 'fast-penta antagonist' is a substance that exists and does exactly what you'd expect from the name - fast-penta being the galactic truth drug of choice. And I suppose I extend a formal request on behalf of the government of Barrayar that you please not counterfeit our money, and offer to find you a place to sleep if magical demons from the year 2159 do that, and see if I can get into that comconsole to call Illyan and ask if he still wants to shake your hand."

"Thank you... I did have to counterfeit a few marks because a bookkeeper was shouting at me for loitering in his store and not buying anything and I got a random little girl the pop-up book she was looking at rather than continue being yelled at. I can sleep, I can not-sleep if I keep sucking down coffee indefinitely, I've been doing the second thing rather than try to find a place to nap."

"Are you going to drown the planet in pee...? Do feel free not to answer that question unless the answer is pressingly yes," says Miles. "We can arrange a place for you to nap if you'd like one."

The answer not being pressingly yes, Cam doesn't answer the question. "That would be nice, thanks."

The first thing he says when his image materializes over the vid plate is, "Why not."

"Are we going there or the other way 'round?"

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of subjecting you to more walking around inside this building than is strictly necessary. I'll be there in just a minute."

"You're welcome!"

"And I think I'm going to suggest that you meet Gregor sooner rather than later. All evidence certainly seems to imply that you're the most helpful and benign magical demon we could have dreamed of."

"I really, really am, you're, uh, very lucky you got me."

...Illyan makes a 'do please elaborate' gesture.

"Demons don't as a species deserve all the bad press we get back in the mortal world I'm accustomed to, but the demons who answer summons aren't a nice subset, by and large. The usual arrangement is that you get a daeva in a circle and you offer them something in exchange for some magic. Demons are for obvious reasons hard to pay and the ones who show up looking for work instead of sitting around in Hell with interesting cocktails and going stuntflying are looking for intangibles of some kind. ...Are any of the people you intend on having me interacting with going to freak out if I get my wings and tail back? I miss them. Anyway, also the usual arrangement involves bindings preventing your summon from doing things besides the task you agree on. I did not have any of those in the circle that brought me here. So if you hadn't gotten me you'd have gotten some other demon who wants intangibles and was expecting constraints on their behavior and had a pleasant surprise."

"...I wouldn't advise you to go out in public on Barrayar with wings and a tail," says Illyan, not looking at Miles. "I would in fact strongly advise you not to do that. But if you're more comfortable that way, and don't mind being strictly limited in who is allowed to see you or interact with you, well. Miles certainly won't object, and neither will Gregor, and neither will I, and that's all the Barrayarans you have to interact with directly if you want to do things along the lines of terraform Komarr. But you might want to wait until you are out of the second most intensely surveilled building on the planet before you acquire extra limbs."

"I mean, I can take them off whenever, it's just messy," shrugs Cam. "Maybe when I know more about my schedule over a few weeks or so."

"...Messy...?"

"I make 'em without any nerves in the joints, but they still need a blood supply."

"Ick," says Miles. "All right. I assume I'm assigned to 'find lodgings for the nice time-travelling magical demon' duty, Captain?"

"You assume correctly."

"We could put you up in Vorkosigan House, God knows there's room."

"Pros and cons of that?"

"It's a big house. Lots of servants and guards and so on underfoot. Surprisingly easy to isolate yourself in despite same. A bit of a maze. You'd get to meet my mother. We have a decent library including some real print books."

"Well, I'll try it out if it's convenient, but if I don't like it much I may just want a bit of nowhere to park my lightflyer on and put a house in."

"I also happen to know where you can find some nice nowhere," he says. "I own some nice nowhere, for that matter, but it was bombed to bits in my grandda's day and I'll probably have grandchildren by the time the radiation dies down enough for anyone to live there."

"Oh, that won't matter for me if I'm not going to have guests."

"...Good to know," says Miles, eyeing him. "Really?"

"I am indestructible. I am not invulnerable, just indestructible, but radiation poisoning doesn't get a chance to do anything."

"All right then. I'll show you my house and we'll see how you like it. It's very close by, that's another advantage it has over nowhere."

"All right."

"How much Barrayaran history and politics have you absorbed in two weeks of eavesdropping, by the way...? I'm wondering whether to take the half-hour walk so I can brief you on what to absolutely avoid bringing up about Komarr if you happen to meet my father. And other miscellaneous points of interest. You know the emperor's name, that's a start."

"It's surprisingly hard to figure out common knowledge by listening to what people consider worth mentioning in conversation. Do explain."

"All right... This story starts - I'm going to say this story starts in the year twenty-two-twenty-something. Six? I want to say six but I'm not sure. Anyway. Humanity discovers wormhole jump technology. There's a massive explosion of space colonization in a short span of time. People are throwing together stations at likely-looking jump points and shoveling microbes onto any planet with likely-looking soil. Barrayar was right there in the first wave, with a mixed group of British, Russian, French, and Greek colonists in the first batch. We never got a second batch, because that was when humanity discovered that wormholes can spontaneously collapse. Then we had six hundred years to lose hold of all the complicated technology we no longer had the infrastructure to maintain, rediscover feudalism, and claw our way back up from there. That period is known as the Time of Isolation. We were just figuring out gunpowder again when the wider galaxy rediscovered us, at the end of a five-jump route from Komarr. They were and are our sole gateway to the wormhole nexus at large."

"That's... an adventure."

"Okay. This place sure is interesting."

"Isn't it just? Anyway. Then some time passed and we got cocky and tried to invade another planet through a newly discovered wormhole connection and got our asses soundly kicked, which is just as well, but we lost Emperor Ezar's only son in the process, which is why the third planet of the Barrayaran Empire is named Sergyar. Empty habitable-ish place we turned up along the route to the failed invasion. And then we had a little bit of a civil war around the time I was born, because Gregor was five when Ezar died and that kind of situation attracts opportunists. But we've been pretty much war-free since then, except for the Komarran revolts I alluded to a minute ago, but they've been over for more than a decade now and we still own the place."

"Habitable-ish. Do I have an exciting career in terraforming ahead of me before I get bored and start whipping up my own planets from scratch?"

"If you find terraforming exciting, then yes, yes you certainly do."

"I said, I always wanted to terraform a planet, but nobody at home would let me at Mars. Or let me talk."

"...Er?"

"It's customary to summon demons incapable of talking except to agree to or refuse proposed deals. Kind of inconvenient. It's so we don't talk people out of their souls."

"I cannot, in fact, take your soul."

"Good to know. Why do people think you can take their souls?"

"Well, demons have this mythological presence in addition to the actual one, and for a long time only a handful of people knew we were real, so actual information was thin on the ground. We suffered for the comparison and since they don't let us talk we can't really correct 'em. Angels and fairies are nearly as dangerous - well, to the individual summoner, they can't destroy entire planets - and they don't get that kind of treatment."

"Entire planets...? Black holes?" he guesses.

"Right in one. I promise not to make a black hole on your planet."

"Thank you. Very kind. I would object if you did that, and so would a lot of other people. Granted not for very long."

"I know. I wasn't even slightly tempted."

"I suspected as much. You don't seem the black-holes type."

"Well, I have one at home. Personal gravity well."

"How... tidy," says Miles. "Here's a question: do you think you could make a wormhole? If you test it, please do so very far away from any jump route people actually need."

"I don't know. I can try it. I've been wondering the same thing."

"If you can pull it off, you may become Gregor's new favourite person."

"I assume this comes with all kinds of fun perks."

"Well, yes and no. Vor nepotism isn't like everyone else's. Do they have the phrase, 'the reward for a job well done is a bigger job', where you're from?"

"I've heard, 'don't pretty up your summoning products unless you want them knocking on your skull in the middle of a good dream'."

"I'm not sure it's quite the same thing, but it sounds close. The implication around here is, if you're good at something, expect to be called upon to do it. If you're good at something and you make that fact known to the people in charge of making other people do the thing, expect to be called upon to do it a lot. 'Person in charge of making other people do the thing' is a pretty good description of Gregor."

"Well, I don't mind, Hell is tacky and not exactly full of meaningful work."

"If you like meaningful work, I think you'll enjoy being Gregor's favourite person quite a lot."

"I like meaningful work! It is why I show up to summons. Unfortunately it is hard to say 'summoners, please, I like meaningful work, I will just terraform the entirety of Mars for you for a recent copy of the Extranet Crawler Report' when they won't let me talk."

"Happily, you have circumvented that problem here. Let's see... what else should I be giving you a crash course in? Have any questions been weighing on your mind since you got here?"

"I'm sort of curious about the two and a half dialects I got when I landed but that's hardly urgent... I found artificial gravity consistently enough in fiction I skimmed to suspect it's a real and nonmagical thing, can you confirm...? And why do people freak out so much about mutations here?"

"I'm not a genetic mutant, not that that stops people throwing rotten food at me if I walk down the wrong street. Anyway, I'm pretty well patched to begin with. If it weren't for the miracles of modern medicine they'd have to carry me around in a bucket."

"Okay," shrugs Cam. "Between you and your doctor and any angels you conjure up, just thought I'd mention."

"Thanks for the tip, I suppose. What was that about two and a half dialects?"

"Oh, daeva get languages of our summoners. Prevents translation difficulties. I already had English, but it's changed some in the several hundred years since the year and universe in which I learned it. I eavesdropped enough to use this one when I was talking to Barrayarans but I also have," he switches, "this other one, pretty well complete in vocabulary, and," he switches again, "a smattering of this thing."

"...What?"

"'This other one' is standard Betan English. 'This thing' is Vorkosigan District hill dialect. I am very likely to be the only person on the planet who speaks those three in that proportion."

"Oh. Huh. And have you been drawing demon-summoning circles in pink and green chalk in a local park?"

"Uh... oh, hell, there was that bunch of half-finished chalk art, and I went and filled in all the lines," he recalls. "Yep. I'm your man, apparently."

"Okay. Do you feel the need to know how to be rid of me right at this moment? Assuming you can be rid of me, I don't know how many of the usual rules apply."

"It would be handy, I suppose. I don't intend to be rid of you unless you want to be rid, or seem terribly likely to start dropping black holes on inhabited planets. But if I thought you were going to do that I wouldn't be taking you home to meet my mother."

"Well, in the interest of operating in good faith, all you have to do to shoo me is concentrate on wanting me shooed for about a minute solid."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind."

"But not with too much intense focus, please, you don't even know how to get me back yet."

Cam hands him a piece of paper. "That'll do it. Finish the circle part last, put it on a horizontal surface in any material with space for me to stand in the middle."

Paper. He is from 2159. Miles folds up the sheet and puts it in his pocket.

"That one doesn't have any bindings, you'll want to be more careful summoning random daeva."

"I definitely don't intend to summon random daeva until you've explained how to do it safely."

"Which, fortunately, I have a comprehensive knowledge of how to do."

"How convenient."

"I'm very convenient! I mean, I know demons who wouldn't have destroyed your planet, but they'd have probably gone wings-on into downtown Vorbarr Sultana and taken issue if people had thrown fruit at them and even if you'd gotten into a friendly-like conversation most of them have only seen the kinds of circles that get them and can't tell you how to omit the gag order or negotiate with a fairy or whatever."

"Thrown fruit? Hell, the only reason I wouldn't expect you to get shot walking around the wrong parts of town with wings on is because the people who live in the wrong parts of town aren't frequently the same people who carry plasma arcs or nerve disruptors."

"Well, if someone shot me with a plasma arc they'd probably be very alarmed when I spent three seconds with a scorch mark and then turned around and raised an eyebrow at them. I'm not sure a nerve disruptor would do anything to a daeva, although I'm not leaping to check."

"Yeah, I advise not making the experiment. I'm admittedly curious about whether and how well a stunner would work."

"That one I'm willing to try and also suspect 'quite possibly nothing'."

"But you weren't willing to expect you'd shrug off fast-penta, so...? Where's the line? It's not like stunners cause much damage besides the hangover you get after you wake up."

"I'm not sure you could get fast-penta into me at all without my cooperation, and we were talking on the level of 'would you be okay with this', not 'will you introduce dry ice to our abdominal cavities if we jump you with medical equipment'. I know needles won't go, I'm less sure about hyposprays. But if I cooperated, in it would go, and it'd affect me just as much as caffeine I voluntarily drink does, I assume. Stunners don't interface as much with bodily integrity and might well work without permission."

"Huh. I think I find the implication that your body runs on a permission-based physics more bizarre than the idea that you can create black holes and Orders of Merit out of thin air."

"Well, if I were indestructible at all times whether I liked it or not I wouldn't have been able to take my wings off."

"Which would have been highly inconvenient for everyone."

"I could've maybe hidden them under a coat. I kept my tail for a while that way, but got rid of it after I got wind of the anti-mutant thing."

Miles envisions what would have happened had the tail been discovered at an inopportune moment. "Good thinking," he says.

"Something on which I pride myself. I miss them, though, the tail's very expressive and the wings help a lot with my balance, which," stumble, "is otherwise not good."

"Yeah, I've been noticing. You can probably get away with reinstating the tail if you hide it around anyone who is not Illyan, Gregor, or a member of my family or our armsmen, but unless the wings were very small I can't imagine a coat would be enough."

"Well, they're not very small, but they fold up and I wouldn't think 'gigantic blue functional bat wings' would be high on anybody's hypothesis list."

"No, but 'what the fuck has that man got under his coat, is he some sort of hunchback' could have similar if less dramatic results."

"True. Oh well, they're out of the picture for now."

Cam follows him.

"Mother, this is Cam, a magical time-travelling demon who wants to terraform Komarr. Cam, this is my mother, Countess Vorkosigan."

"I'm pretty sure I didn't strictly time travel," Cam clarifies. "I think I'm from an alternate universe, in which, by coincidence, it is an earlier calendar year. Hi, Cordelia."

"I hope you'll forgive me if my first question is Miles, what did you do?"

"I didn't know I was summoning a demon!" he protests. "I didn't even actually know I had summoned this particular demon until ten minutes ago, well after I met him!"

"Yes, frankly we'd be in more or less the same situation if my actual summoner were anyone else at all except that I'd be harder to get rid of."

"Exactly!"

"Why don't you come sit down and explain from the beginning," Cordelia invites, gesturing at the door to the nearest sitting room.

"I assume someone's mentioned you to Gregor by now."

"Count on it," says Miles. "And I've offered to let him stay in the house until we get him on a jumpship. If he likes it here. Do you like it here?"

"It seems nice enough."

"I'm glad you think so. I'll call Gregor and invite him to lunch; that should simplify whatever intricate scheme they're concocting to get the two of you safely in communication."

"All right. This place seems... populated enough that you probably don't want me to make lunch on account of it would upset someone whose job description is 'cook'?"

"If you make lunch for Gregor, with magic, it's likely to upset someone whose job description is 'bodyguard'," says Miles.

"Someone whose job description is 'bodyguard' and suspects me of wanting to poison Gregor should really get upset much earlier than that."

"It's not about suspicion so much as procedure. Upsetting the established order of things. An established order which is designed to make it easy to verify that no one is poisoning Gregor."

"If someone suspects me of wanting to poison Gregor they should not let me near Gregor. I am not attached to the idea of making lunch, but, in principle, if the literal inability to poison Gregor is very important here, he should not be coming over for even perfectly ordinarily sourced lunch."

"Yes. I know. This is not a system that was designed with magic in mind, and it is not going to handle the addition gracefully. In the interests of preserving your future access to Gregor, I suggest that you not bring up this line of reasoning around any actual bodyguards. I can figure it out, Illyan can figure it out, Gregor can figure it out, and that is as many people as need to know."

"Okay."

"For the record, if any of us thought it was remotely likely that you might poison Gregor, we wouldn't be suggesting you meet him. But please don't poison Gregor. We've been doing so well with our lack of civil wars lately."

"I will not poison Gregor. Or assassinate him in any way."

"The Barrayaran Empire thanks you for your restraint."

"Good, I'd hate to be unappreciated. What's for lunch? I haven't had lunch I didn't pick out in a hundred and fifty years."

"I'm not sure. I don't even know when is for lunch. Gregor has a busy schedule. Mother?"

"I'll go find out. But I suspect the answer to the second question is 'tomorrow', and the answer to the first question can be dictated within reason."

"Eh. Surprise me. I'm not picky."

"Oh, Miles, there is something I should probably mention since you are my summoner."

"Yes?"

"Back home - I cannot begin to speak to here - there is an afterlife. Most dead people wind up in Limbo, which is disappointing but not too awful. Dead summoners become daeva instead."

"...I see," says Miles. "I'm not immensely eager to test this, but I suppose it's good to know."

"It's a much better deal than being a Limboite, but I don't know what you were in for absent potential intervention from my afterlife system. If it weren't for daeva running around everywhere in my world I couldn't come up with a reason to expect an afterlife at all, and - there are not daeva running around everywhere here. Or, more tellingly, there are not people from Barrayar running around in Limbo."

"You've read the latest Limbo census, have you?"

"They don't quite take a census. But I have pen pals."

"Right. And there's no one from Barrayar, or - Beta Colony, Illyrica, Tau Ceti, Marilac, Jackson's Whole, Cetaganda, et cetera - running around in Limbo. And I suppose it's reasonable to assume that if we all went there, you would've run into a few by now. So. My universe is just as much of a theological question mark as it was this morning."

"Quite, except now there's a possibility you'll be hijacked by what is at least a known quantity."

"Right, which is either reassuring or the opposite, depending on the outcome of that question mark."

"Yeah. If you're curious, I'd peg you for an angel if you're headed for daevahood."

"And you can tell this how?"

"Well, I can't claim to be particularly accurate, lacking many opportunities to check my guesses, but my guesses are based on personality-related sympathy to the magic type, and from you I'm getting a 'change the thing that is there' rather than a 'move it around' or a 'start with an entirely new thing' attitudinal vibe."

"Hm," says Miles. "Possibly accurate."

"No way to check that doesn't have its drawbacks, of course. And I could be wrong about how the assignment works."

"Yes. I'm not keen on dying, dubious potential for immortality or no."

"I cannot claim to recommend it."

"...Oh...?"

"Oh, I'm a dead summoner myself. Bullet to the head, I was twenty-two, not fun - being a demon's great and all but I didn't manage to get in touch with my parents again before they died too, and it's hell on career aspirations, wouldn't you know it. So to speak."

"Ouch," says Miles. "Condolences, if that's even the word."

"I'll take 'em."

"Oh good. Would've been awkward otherwise."

It turns out that lunch with Gregor is indeed scheduled for the next day, which Cam will find out if he deigns to interact with any members of the household after he wakes up.

And lo, Cam turns up for lunch. Lunch he doesn't make! That will be exciting.

Miles turns up for lunch too.

"Gregor, Cam; Cam, Gregor," says Miles.

"Hi. Pleased to meet you. I have never actually met an emperor before."

"We pardon you for the crime of counterfeiting," says Gregor. "Excuse me for bringing business to the table, but I thought it was best to get that one out of the way quickly."

"Ah, thank you, I imagine it would be slightly awkward if I were on the hook for that."

"Yeah, how literal is that particular hook, Gregor? I can't remember off the top of my head..."

"I had someone look it up, but I can spare the gruesome details, if you'd rather not hear them...?" He looks at Cam inquiringly.

"Have been indestructible for a century and a half, not squeamish."

"As of the last recorded case that went to trial, forty lashes followed by hanging. And there's no precedent for mitigating the sentence based on the amount, possibly because no one has stopped at under ten marks before. It would be a target for legal reform if we had any serious counterfeiters to deal with, but happily we don't."

"Okay. ...I wonder how long I would have wound up being left dangling there if I didn't burn the rope or anything? Huh. Anyway, pardon, much appreciated."

Cam eats it and makes thoughtful noises.

Gregor makes hardly any noise at all. You could almost forget he was there.

"Rumor has it," remarks Cam after a while, "that you might let me terraform your extra planet in some fashion, or possibly duplicate its solar mirror."

"I'm seriously considering the idea. It would be very convenient to be able to expand the soletta without having to pay construction costs. You'd have to consult with some terraforming experts to find out what other interventions would be helpful, but the soletta would definitely be a nice start."

"Cool. Also, it has been wondered if I can make wormholes, which I don't know because I shouldn't try it near anything important and we don't have them where I'm from."

"Please do not try it near anything important," Gregor agrees. "But... I was going to say 'please do try it', except that I can't think of a way to safely experiment. You may be indestructible, but I assume being stranded hundreds of light-years away from the nearest inhabited planet would still be a major inconvenience, if it turned out that you couldn't create stable wormholes but you could collapse any nearby ones in the trying."

"If you don't hear back, have Miles dismiss and resummon me," shrugs Cam.

Gregor looks at Miles.

"I swear I didn't do it on purpose, why does everyone think I did it on purpose," says Miles, aggrieved.

Cam snorts. "There, there. At least you didn't get a hostile accident-demon. Then there would be some serious upset aimed at you."

"Yes, I'm told we're very lucky to have you."

"You're told correctly. I am awesome. Appreciate me. Give me terraforming instructions, I have always wanted to terraform a planet."

"Far be it from me to waste such enthusiasm."

"I would wag my tail but it is not on my person at the moment."

"On the one hand, I must thank you for maintaining public order by not walking around with wings and a tail. On the other hand, I'm curious about what they looked like."

"I'll show you if you like and if there's someplace to dispose of or burn them the next time I need to take them off."

"...I have no objection, but it's not my house." He looks to Miles.

"Oh, go ahead. If nothing else, I can mount them on a plaque and stuff them in the attic."

"That feels much better. You wouldn't believe how accustomed I've gotten to the extras. I didn't even add the tail until a few decades ago."

"Well, I'm sure we can arrange for you not to have to go without them for too long on the way to Komarr."

"Excellent. Here's hoping I don't get jumpsick."

"Yes. Miles, I realize sending you to Komarr as a liaison is not an ideal plan..."

"...but somebody has to do it and the list of people trustworthy enough to handle it and modern enough not to mind the wings and tail is full of people busier than I am," Miles finishes for him with a sigh.

"The idea that this is a modernity thing is very strange to me, coming as I do from the twenty-second century."

"Yes, well, Barrayar," says Miles.

"Coming as I do from Earth, if you like."

"If you came from our Earth you'd be at least somewhat more prepared for our planet's tangled history."

"From what I've been able to gather, the timelines didn't diverge that much until well after the date of my death. Anyhow. I will not suffer terribly from being a wingless tailless creature whenever this is convenient."

"Right, but you still need someone to generally interface between you and people who aren't prepared to hear that you're a magical demon from another universe, and that person might as well be someone who won't mind the optional anatomy. Hey, Gregor, can I steal Ivan for this?"

Gregor blinks. "I don't see why not. Whatever for?"

"I just have the feeling it might be handy to have someone around who'll do what I say without fussing too much. In case of Komarrans who won't touch me with a ten-foot pole, or whatever."

"Who's Ivan and why does he do what you say?"

"My cousin. Sort of thoughtless but generally helpful."

"And he will not object to the optional anatomy either?"

"He'll probably make some stupid remarks, but he won't run away weeping or start a riot or try to shoot you, and I expect he'll get used to it soon enough."

"Okay. I am sort of curious about what sort of stupid remarks."

"Well, you'll get to find out soon enough."

"Apparently. What kind of schedule are we on here?"

"What kind of schedule would you like?"

"My understanding is that getting all the way to Komarr takes a while, so whenever's convenient for my escorts, I suppose, I'm excited about the project but I've waited this long. In the meantime I can give somebody a crash course on generic summoning in case you want more than one demon's worth of magic done. I'll help you pay the fairies and angels if you like."

"I'll take the crash course," volunteers Miles. "Since I'm already in line for the uncertain side effects."

"And we can start seeing how, exactly, it works to have daeva summoned here, since as far as I know that's unprecedented, and I'd like to be sure that you can dismiss and resummon me before I go off to the middle of nowhere to attempt to make wormholes."

"...If I can't dismiss you, I want to find that out before I summon anybody else; but if I can't resummon you, I want to find that out after you do whatever you're going to do to Komarr," says Miles.

"I could look through my old notes and see if there's any daeva I can specify for you who wouldn't object to the change of scenery? But yeah, reasonable point."

"By all means, look through your old notes."

Cam pulls out his disguised computer and starts poking around on it. "Here's hoping there's overlap between that set and the set I'd trust unbound, because being stuck here indefinitely bound would kind of suck..."

"Yeah, sounds like it."

"Eh, bindings aren't that bad, you can make them nice and loose even, but there's being attached to a particular task for a couple of months for a big project and then there's years and years where you can't just - do things." He gets to where he was going in his notes. "And - nope, there's no crossreference. Sorry. So I guess get the essentials out of me and then I'm guinea-pig for resummonability."

"Looks like a plan," Miles agrees.

"I admit," says Gregor, "I'm curious about why exactly you're so excited at the prospect of terraforming a planet."

"Okay, picture this, I'm twenty-two, I have successfully publicized the existence of daeva after finding dusty old manuals for summoning in an abandoned house, and somebody with economic incentives to be pissed off at everybody knowing daeva exist figures out who exactly screwed up his business model and shoots me in the head. I wake up in Hell with magic powers and no way to get back home and on track with my plans for doing exciting things unless people summon me, and since I was a demon, nobody would even let me talk when summoned beyond 'yes, summoner' and 'no, summoner'. I spend the next hundred and fifty years catching up on my reading, waiting for my parents to die so I can send them letters, and wishing to no end that somebody would summon me and let me bloody well -" This is an interesting dialect of English, isn't it - "do something more sophisticated and worthwhile and scaled up than the highlights of 'confirm translations of things into demonic languages' and 'build them a house' and 'demonic booty call'. I'm a demon, my material needs are absolutely taken care of for all eternity to a standard that arbitrarily privileged mortals could envy, and much as I like reading and flying and reading and flying and reading and flying and reading - that's vacation. I have had a century and a half of nearly unbroken vacation and I'm sick of it. Let me terraform your planets please."

"I will be very happy to let you terraform my planets."

"Yay!" Wag wag.

Miles, having less self-control than his emperor, cracks up.

Cam grins at him.

"And if we run out of planets for me to terraform I can make 'em from scratch. That'll take longer, though."

"...I'm intrigued," says Gregor. "How long, exactly?"

"For an Earth-sized planet? Probably months. Longer if you want it completely flora'd up instead of with just seed populations. Longer if you need anything smarter than bugs running around on it, demons can do live stuff but aren't so good with brains."

"Hmm," says Gregor. "Well, I probably have many better uses for your time than generating planets from scratch, at least if it takes that long. But I'll keep it in mind for later."

"Sure. I'm immortal, I can wait on getting around to that until after I have solved all of the other problems that there are."

"I'm not sure I'd put it behind all the other problems," says Gregor. "There are plenty of problems whose solutions are worth less than a planet."

"Yes, but terraforming an existing rock is faster. Are you short on large space rocks?"

"We might end up wanting a planet in a place where there aren't any conveniently located large space rocks. I haven't given the matter extensive thought yet."

"Fair enough. Then I will make a planet before addressing - I don't know what classic minor annoyances are operative in this world and century. I'll say something bound to be hilariously dated. Spam e-mail."

"I think that's past hilariously dated and into the realm of 'I genuinely don't know what you're talking about'," says Gregor.

Cam cackles. "I assume you still have electronic communication. It used to be very common for people to propagate excessive advertisements and incompetent scams and chain letters with it."

"I suspect excessive advertisements and incompetent scams are eternal, but apparently they've changed sufficiently in the last several hundred years to make that phrase out of date."

"Fair enough." Wag, wag.

"Hullo, coz."

"Hello, Ivan," he says brightly. "Care to come for a visit? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

"You look entirely too pleased with yourself. What gives, Miles?"

"Mysterious top-secret doings which present no danger to your life or limb and which I will explain in full when you show up."

"Because you're terribly uncreative and the only things that I might regret coming to have a look at are the ones that result in me hopping home on one leg? Well, that's me wholly reassured."

"I asked Gregor if I could borrow you and he said yes. Consider yourself officially reassigned to Whatever You Say, Miles duty for the forseeable future."

"...whatever you say, Miles. Does this mean I'm begging off work now or merely that I'm turning up for dinner?"

"Eh, turn up for dinner. It's not scale-of-hours urgent."

"Right then. I'll be by."

"See you then," he chirps.

And at dinnertime, Ivan is by. Apprehensive, but still by.

Miles greets him at the door, just as suspiciously cheerful as he was around lunchtime.

"Okay, get it over with, what's the story, coz?"

"It must be seen to be believed," he intones. "C'mon."

Ivan sighs long-sufferingly and follows.

Miles takes Ivan up to Cam's room - Cam has been pre-warned; Miles is not totally without mercy - and knocks.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

...Miles snickers.

"AAAAAH," adds Ivan for good measure. "Miles what the hell did you do?!"

"I swear on my name's honour that I did not have any reasonable way to predict that screwing around with some crappy chalk drawings in a public park would result in this," says Miles. "But anyway. Cam, this is indeed Ivan, on whose behalf I apologize for all the screaming, I actually didn't expect that. Ivan, this is Cam, who is very nice and has impressed both Illyan and Gregor with his general benignness, and who is going to accelerate the terraforming of Komarr with magic because he is a magical demon from another universe. Did you hear what happened to Cockroach Central? That was him."

"I heard, I thought it was - I don't know what I thought it was - you summoned a demon?"

"Yes. Be glad it was me. Could've been anybody. Apology accepted."

"Yes, demons in general are apparently very scary, but this demon in particular is just adorably enthusiastic about public works projects," says Miles.

"Am I? Adorable?" chuckles Cam.

"Not the word I'd use," mutters Ivan.

"For obvious reasons, people who can be trusted to hang around Cam are thin on the ground. I won't be weird about him, but the Komarrans will be weird about me, hence including you in all this. I am Cam's native guide to this universe, and you are my errand boy."

"Whatever you say, Miles," says Ivan.

"If it's any consolation I can improve dramatically on shipboard food."

"I feel very consoled, personally."

"A magical demon who cooks."

"A magical demon who can conjure up arbitrary matter out of nothing," corrects Cam. He makes himself a seedless raspberry and eats it.

"I now have a second Order of Merit," Miles contributes. "I had him conjure one up to prove he could. It's tucked away at the bottom of a drawer next to the first. I put a stupid-looking ribbon on the fake one so I could tell them apart in case that's ever important."

"I don't see why it would be. They should be precisely alike apart from the ribbon itself. Well, maybe if the original has fingerprints or something."

"Arbitrary matter out of -?"

"Like I said. Be glad he got me."

"And it's not quite absolutely arbitrary, he has to have some idea what he's making before he makes it. But yeah. We're all very lucky our planet hasn't been swallowed by a black hole."

"I mean, a demon who was really interested in creating havoc wouldn't have swallowed the planet they were summoned on. Fun's over when the summoner dies. But yes."

"And - we're taking him to Komarr why exactly?"

"I mentioned the adorable enthusiasm about public works projects, yes? He's going to expand the soletta mirror, then consult with the local terraforming people and figure out what else to do to get the place on track for wider human habitation."

"Oh...kay. Nice magical extremely dangerous demon."

"Yes," Miles agrees. "I'm so glad you're keeping up."

Ivan shoots Miles an exasperated look, then says, "So, does the demon improve on shipboard food only or is he putting the cook out of work?"

"I've been letting the preexisting kitchen setup feed me. It's sort of nostalgic."

"...What?" says Miles. Confused, not defensive.

"...Oh, lord, you didn't even notice. Miles, either you've had a facial expression transplant or you have the next thing to a demon fetish."

"What," says Miles. "No I d—! I just—!" He stops himself, confused and mildly alarmed.

"It's funny, I wouldn't've guessed it, but hey."