In which two men find new places and new names.

Khana’s question to Joolia about the meaning of “Jeef” turns out to be exactly what Bar Jan needs, exactly when he needs it, but I don’t understand what prompts Khana to ask the question in the first place. Has he just had that much practice at anticipating what Bar Jan will need?

Khana is coping a lot better than Bar Jan in some ways, because he’s more used to being self-sufficient and because he has less damage to overcome, but he also has a question of personal identity to sort out which is somewhat camouflaged by the circumstances. Bar Jan has to face head-on the question of who he is without Lord Rinork, because everything he does reminds him of that absence. Khana also needs to figure out who he is without Lord Rinork, but he’s been able to dodge it to some extent because he still has Bar Jan, and looking after Bar Jan is similar enough to looking after Lord Rinork that the old patterns have largely served. But now that he and Bar Jan have officially redefined their melant’i from master and servant to friends and equals, Khana needs to sort out which of his habits are still appropriate to concern for a friend’s wellbeing and which should give way to new, more appropriate habits.

Khana mentioned the possibility of bounty hunters in the first chapter, but I let it get by me until this chapter brought more details. We saw in “Changeling” that after a person has been declared dead it’s considered inappropriate to hire someone to make them actually dead, but it might be that the main concern is that that would involve acknowledging the person’s continued existence. Hiring a bounty hunter to go to a certain place and deal with anybody who might happen to be using the name of a dead clanmember would sidestep that, and so might be technically correct behaviour. (The best and most Liaden kind of correct behaviour.) One might, in general, expect a mother to have other reservations about sending assassins after her son, but at this point we’ve seen enough of Infreya chel’Gaibin that I’m no more surprised she’d do that than I am that she’d hold a banquet and stiff the caterers.

Khana vo’Daran’s had a few years (accidentally?) shaved off his age: In Trade Secret, we were told that “vo’Daran had grown up with [Bar Jan], being a mere fifteen years his elder”; the story they tell Joolia here is that he’s been with Bar Jan for fifteen years but is only six years his elder.