"If you did, I'd think I'd been wholly incorrect in my estimation of your instincts." Lestat means it as a compliment, and he even means it genuinely. While it's rare that he enjoys being challenged, that's largely because most challenges are tedious, levelled at him by men who are far less than his equal.

Rorschach is not his equal. Few are. But circumstances have conspired as they have, and Lestat's lowering in life has seemingly been the uplifting of the strange, cantankerous man perching like a hissing alley cat above.

"What could I do to earn your trust?" He asks, most of the guile emptied from his eyes as he studies the shifting patterns of Rorschach's mask, allowing their undulations to draw his gaze this way and that. "Or does the question itself prove how little I ought to be trusted? After all - is it not only the untrustworthy who ask such things?"

"So perhaps we should not think in terms of trust. A better question - what guarantee could I give you over me, that you would know I couldn't take advantage of you?"