Character Analysis
Quee Long is a Kaniere goldsmith associated with the zodiac sign Virgo. He is part of the council of twelve men who meet at the Crown the night the book opens.
He ends up causing a lot of trouble/confusion when he steals the gold hidden in Anna's dresses, smelts it, and tries to bank the bars for the Aurora gold mine, which (as its previous and current owner know) is a duffer claim. Which means it shouldn't be producing any gold. He does this because otherwise he's never going to pay his way out of his indenture, but it definitely puts a wrench in Staines's plans to pull a fast one on Frank Carver—and, again, causes a lot of confusion.
The narrator describes Quee as a nice, self-deprecating guy with a barrel chest and not-so-great teeth:
The gaps in his smile tended to put one in mind of a child whose milk teeth were falling away—a comparison that Quee Long might well have made himself, for he had a critical eye, a quick wit, and a flair for caustic deprecation, most especially when that deprecation was self-imposed. (I.9.3)
We definitely like a guy who can laugh at himself, so he sounds like a good guy to us.
Of course, too much self-deprecation can indicate a self-esteem problem, and it seems that Quee might have suffered from just that, often taking the jokes about himself a little too far for them to be pure ha-ha's:
He painted a very feeble picture whenever he spoke about himself, a practice that was humorously meant, but that belied, nevertheless, an excessively vulnerable self-conception. For Quee Long measured all his actions by a private standard of perfection, and labored in service of this standard: as a consequence, he was never really satisfied with any of his efforts, or with their results, and tended, in general, toward defeatism. (I.9.3)
Hmm, we seem to have at least a couple of characters who are pretty tough on themselves, huh? Te Rau is as well …
As part of Quee's standard of perfection, he refuses to take opium—and is pretty judgy about drug use, despite the fact that opium is what made it possible to steal thousands of pounds worth of gold off of Anna's dresses. You know what they say—a person's actions tell you everything you need to know.