Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
Carl's vulgar, vaping nullian attorney, who never gives anything away for free and knows he's a target.
Quasar is Carl's lawyer, and he is exactly as much of an asset as he is a liability. When his niece Tempest comes to him needing an interview about Carl and Princess Donut for a school report, he refuses to just answer — he makes her fix a sink that does not work and is "more an art piece", on the principle that you should never give anything up for free, because people will only come back wanting more. He critiques her rough skin, deflects her disgust with a story about her father and a petting-zoo incident, and threatens to father a better-behaved sibling on her mother. She, in turn, gets what she wants by threatening to tell her father that Quasar claims to be her real dad; he approves of the tactic.
His actual recap is a masterclass in crude compression. He covers the card floor, Quan Ch's theft and death, Tserendolgor's sad end, Sister Ines's madness and the demon Amayon, the killing of the god Ysalte by Paz, and the tiara curse binding Katia Grim and Donut, while cheerfully refusing to explain how anyone got into the stairwells and dismissing the homeless shelter as "a non-event". He does insist on the part that matters: with the rich now killable, the ninth floor will be an epic shitshow.
Then Tempest switches off the recorder and asks whether representing Carl has put him in real danger. He considers lying, decides she deserves better, and says he thinks all of them are — and that for the first time in his life he is glad they live so far out in the middle of nowhere.
An adult nullian with visibly tough hide of his own, given to loud, ugly neckties and a vape he pulls on between insults; skin-quality is a subject he raises with everyone but himself.
Carl's legal representation in the crawl's byzantine contract system, and Tempest's obstructive but ultimately honest uncle.
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings: