They turned into a clean narrow street of older buildings with cut stone fronts. The weapons shop was marked only by its name, Siegling's, in discreet gold letters. Evidently if you didn't know where you were you shouldn't be there. The liveried man waited outside when Cordelia and Droushnakovi entered the shop, a thick-carpeted, wood-grained place with a little of the aroma of the armory Cordelia remembered from her Survey ship, an odd whiff of home in an alien place. She stared covertly at the wood paneling, and mentally translated its value into Betan dollars. A great many Betan dollars. Yet wood seemed almost as common as plastic, here, and as little regarded. Those personal weapons which were legal for the upper classes to own were elegantly displayed in cases and on the walls. Besides stunners and hunting weapons, there was an impressive array of swords and knives; evidently the Emperor's ferocious edicts against dueling only forbade their use, not their possession.

The clerk, a narrow-eyed, soft-treading older man, came up to them. "What may I do for you ladies?" He was cordial enough. Cordelia supposed Vor-class women must sometimes enter here, to buy presents for their masculine relations. But he might have said, What may I do for you children? in the same tone of voice. Diminutization by body language? Let it go.

"I'm looking for a swordstick, for a man about six-foot-four. Should be about, oh, yea long," she estimated, calling up Koudelka's arm and leg length in her mind's eye, and gesturing to the height of her hip. "Spring-sheathed, probably."

"Yes, madam." The clerk disappeared, and returned with a sample, in an elaborately carved light wood.

"Looks a bit . . . I don't know." Flashy. "How does it work?"

The clerk demonstrated the spring mechanism. The wooden sheathing dropped off, revealing a long thin blade. Cordelia held out her hand, and the clerk, rather reluctantly, handed it over for inspection.

She wriggled it a little, sighted down the blade, and handed it to her bodyguard. "What do you think?"

Droushnakovi smiled first, then frowned doubtfully. "It's not very well balanced." She glanced uncertainly at the clerk.

"Remember, you're working for me, not him," said Cordelia, correctly identifying class-consciousness in action.

"I don't think it's a very good blade."

"That's excellent Darkoi workmanship, madam," the clerk defended coolly.

Smiling, Cordelia took it back. "Let us test your hypothesis."

She raised the blade suddenly to the salute, and lunged at the wall in a neat extension. The tip penetrated and caught in the wood, and Cordelia leaned on it. The blade snapped. Blandly, she handed the pieces back to the clerk. "How do you stay in business if your customers don't survive long enough for repeat sales? Siegling's certainly didn't acquire its reputation selling toys like that. Bring me something a decent soldier can carry, not a pimp's plaything."

"Madam," said the clerk stiffly, "I must insist the damaged merchandise be paid for."