In considering the nature of the various Houses recently, I'd been attempting to imagine what the social/governing structure of each House must be like. One thing I came to realize is that the idea of a "ruling council" for each House is probably an incorrect one. That is, there is a top and someone through either wealth, power, or strength is at the top, but a government that is standard among all the Houses is a formality at best and more likely simply non-existent. As an example, I ended up imagining House Yendi as not being truly a House at all. Rather, House Yendi is like a secret society which is, itself, nothing but a coalition of countless smaller secret societies. It might be difficult to even know who is truly in charge, let alone say who is the "ruling council". With that fresh in mind, I was interested to notice in _Paths of the Dead_ that Galsten (that is, Pel) and the Sorceress in Green use a secret sign and countersign to recognize each other as fellow Yendi. The Sorceress is even surprised and startled to find out that Sethra already knows that Galsten is a Yendi. Galsten has political aspirations so it shouldn't really be that surprising that he'd have to tell people about his House sooner or later, but the reaction of the Sorceress makes it clear that it's an uncommon thing. I suspect that this may be one of the things that Steve, in retrospect, disliked about the novel _Yendi_. In that novel, Morollan thinks nothing of revealing the House of the Sorceress and it's actually Vlad's own impatience that keeps him from learning the truth despite several opportunities throughout the story. If the Sorceress' House was a closely guarded secret then Morollan ought to have not known or at least been more sensitive about telling it to his employees, particularly to a Jhereg. It might have been more in-character and at the same time more interesting for Vlad to have discovered her House through the plot instead of as a running joke where he keeps interrupting Morollan just before Morollan can tell him that she's a Yendi. Of course, Paarfi could be simply adding "romance" to the story where none actually existed and the Sorceress, while not advertising her House, may never have actually gone to any trouble to hide it either.