He shrugs. "Why?"

"Large transfers of wealth draw attention; we have known each other for less than two weeks; the fact that we're going to be traveling together doesn't diminish the fact that then you wouldn't have it anymore. I suppose I'm a slightly longer-term caretaker than any of your myriad identities, since I age as I am expected to, but it will still add an extra step if you want to buy anything."

"Oh, I wouldn't give it to you on the books," he laughs. "I'd just take it all with us, and if I had you I wouldn't need a legal identity of my own, I could just let you buy all the groceries."

"Being without a legal identity could probably be inconvenient under some - admittedly unlikely - circumstances."

"Oh, sure," he says, shrugging. "But I still wouldn't need one."

"I begin to suspect you have an unconventional definition of need."

"Of course I do."

"What does it mean when you say it, then?"

"Different things, depending. Right now it means that I wouldn't have to have one just to make my everyday life convenient. I could get most of the same things out of living with you, in mostly the same ways, whether I officially existed or not."

"That's true. If you give the Harlequin to a museum you won't need the identity to keep your ship registered either."

"See? And if something else comes up, well, then it comes up. I can always start existing again."

"What's the procedure for that like?"

"Mostly, I make the old name disappear as much as I can and start using the new one. Sometimes I invent records; sometimes I just let the new paper trail speak for itself. The methods tend to change over the years."

"What was your original name?"

"There was a first thing I was called, but it wasn't a name and I don't like it," he says.

"...Oh?"

"What part of that do you want me to elaborate on?"

"Any of it you're disposed to."

"I'm sorry."

Isabella reaches out and puts her hand on his arm.

"I have been known to experience mixed feelings about my parentage, but - nothing comparable."

"Yeah," he says with a quirk of a smile, squeezing her hand gently. "You had parents, for one thing."