But he figured it had to be all right—Jamal kept the galley so clean, if green stuff turned up it was legit, and safe, and probably expensive. And once you thought that, it began to taste fairly good.
Not surprising, he told himself, what Tink had said. He’d had a halfway instinct about it, that he couldn’t trust Christian’s motives.
So Christian had him beaten to hell so he could get him to believe what he was going to say.
So he’d been a fool when, for about a dozen heartbeats, he’d leaned on Christian Bowe, believed he’d found someone in the universe who gave a damn slightly more than Marie gave.
Stupid, he said, to himself. He was ashamed, outright angry that he’d given serious credence to Christian’s persuasions.
But hell if he’d let on. He’d be far more foolish to let on to Christian that he knew what he did know—and he had confidence in what Tink had told him. Tink didn’t have any motive to lie to him. Christian did. Tink hadn’t looked at all comfortable telling him what he’d told him—Christian had been so, so smooth, not a flicker of conscience in his delivery.
All of which argued that he had an ally in Tink, if he wanted to put it on Tink’s shoulders, but he could get Tink in a helluva lot of trouble on that account, too, and he didn’t damn want to, for Tink’s sake.
He ate the pastry, thinking about that. It was as good as it looked, dark, with a rough, smoky flavor different than any chocolate he’d ever had. He thought it might just be real, and he wasn’t sure if everybody got it, or just people Tink wanted to do it for.
Whatever—it was good. Whatever—Tink didn’t need to apologize for being absent. Whatever—Tink had no reason to tell him what he’d told him, except some sense of fairness, except maybe everything he thought he read in the man was true—because Tink didn’t read out to him as vengeful, or a habitual or purposeful liar. He’d do a lot for Tink. He hadn’t met anybody like Tink, on Sprite or on the docks, and Tink had a piece of his priorities, if Tink ever somehow needed something he could do.
But he could think of a thousand reasons for Christian to lie, and to want him off the ship—if only for the reasons that Christian had plainly admitted to him as his reasons.
It made… not quite a lump in his throat, but at least welling up of feeling he hadn’t expected to apply, on this ship. Didn’t know why he should be surprised. Even Marie’d double-crossed him, in her way—played him for a fool, ditching him on the docks the way she had.
The truly embarrassing thing was, he couldn’t learn. Cousins had caught him in sucker-games, and you’d think he’d get cleverer—he had, give him credit, grown more reserved with them. But the harder Marie had shoved him away the more desperate he was to get close to her—
Kid mentality. Panic instinct. Once, in a corridor downside she’d told him she wasn’t speaking to him, and walked off-he’d followed, gotten slapped in the face, and kept it up, and gotten slapped… he’d been, maybe, five, six, he wasn’t sure, but it came back to him sometimes with particular clarity, the smothered feeling, the feeling he had to hold on to Marie, and he’d known he was making her madder, he’d known she was going to hit him every time he caught her, but he kept doing it, and grabbing at her clothes and screaming his head off—she kept hitting him, until Marie got a better grip on her panic than he had on his—it was panic, he’d figured that out somewhere years later, panic on her side, panic on his.
God knew. They did it to each other, simply existing. He’d gone to that warehouse in some confused sense of responsibility for Marie he would have thought he’d learned not to have.
She’d kept him, Mischa had said, for reasons that had scared him—that ought to scare anybody with a conscience and a responsibility—but had Mischa done anything to protect him’