"Yes but I'm not really trying to grade these people based on when in their plans you happened to show up."

"That's fair. It was a really incompetent murder, though, he used knives made of my father's own glowing stone to carve up his boyfriend."

"Is that supposed to make it worse? I don't think being good at murder is all things considered a redeeming trait most of the time."

"Well, yes, but normally when you fail at murder the result is that your victim is alive, not that they're dead but also an angry god that doesn't give a shit about collateral damage."

"That's fair. Why did he want to kill his boyfriend?"

"Uh, the Masters aren't super happy with how their deal with the Bazaar turned out and Veils thought Candles might have been at fault for part of it."

"Their deal with the Bazaar?"

"I don't know all the details. But there's a reason they're here--there I mean--in the Neath serving the Bazaar instead of out in--space--doing what they were doing before. They made some kind of deal. I don't know what it was, not really, but I know that something went wrong. I want to fix it but I don't know if it's the kind of thing I can fix."

"Huh."

"Anyway, Fires is very what the fuck but I suspect his plan would have failed even without me and also, like, he was attempting to achieve a result that would actually make him happy, whereas Veils was just being a vindictive bastard. Like, I'm not saying you should punish people for the contents of their heads or anything, but people who want things that make them happy are so much easier to forestall from doing more fucked up things than people who just want other people to hurt."

"I guess."

"Veils scares me. Fires doesn't."

"That seems like your prerogative."

"Yeah. I--I could be wrong. But the read I've gotten off them is that Fires is--well, like a burning house, or a forest fire. Dangerous, but--only to a point. Veils is actively malicious. That's what I mean when I say he's the worst. It's not a measure of which one has objectively caused more suffering, it's--which one you should be more careful of." 

"If a burning house did mind control..."

"She's got a thing about mind control. Firmly against. Unless she can get magic powers by letting an eeeeensy bit happen."

"That's so valid honestly. I mean, the evil cult doesn't not involve mind control, but mostly only of its members unless you count the nightmares."

"You didn't specify."

"Yeah. Seekers aren't not a danger to others but they're much more of a danger to themselves, up until they get to the point of being at risk of succeeding far enough to call the space cops I mean which they mostly don't, and the nightmares are, uh, kind of...easy for me to forget about because I don't get them."

"Makes sense."

"And now I get to worry about the space cops getting called while I'm not around to thwart Seekers, well that's unproductive and should be squashed, since I can't do anything about it and also no Seekers ever managed it in the centuries between the advent of Seeking up until I showed up."

"What law do the space cops mean to enforce?"

"'No amalgamy.'"

"...aren't you amalgamy? ...what amalgamy are the Seekers trying to do?"

"The Seekers aren't doing space crimes, the Seekers are trying to call the cops on my family for our space crimes because the Bazaar didn't stop Veils."