“So what is it?”

“A cleon. C’heran weapon,” she added, when a trace of confusion entered his face to mingle with the admiration. “I grew up learning to wield it.”

“Sounds fun. Can I hold it?”

“Sure. Just don’t touch the handholds.” She tossed it to him, and he fumbled catching it, shocked because it was much heavier than he’d expected. He held it with both hands and slowly rotated it in his palm.

The wooden pole was capped on both ends with copper-colored metallic paddles. It was three centimeters in diameter and nearly two meters in length, and weighed maybe a couple kilos in his grip. The pole itself seemed to be made of oak wood, or at least had the color of such, but he could’ve been wrong on that score.

Between the two paddles, two blue-tinged, gel-made handholds with clearly defined finger grips were equally spaced apart. He resisted the urge to touch them, as she’d ordered.

“What’s with the handholds?”

“Throw it back.” He did, and she caught it between the two handholds, then threw it up into the air again and this time caught it on the handholds.

One paddle hissed, shimmered iridescent blue, and then a blade that would’ve looked better on a medieval Terran spear shot out of the paddle end. The blade started with five centimeters at the base, and climbed like a pyramid to a single sharp tip; the blade was approximately twenty centimeters in length.

“The handholds control which blade comes out, depending on how you press on them,” Rhiain explained, demonstrating the different grips that caused one blade to detract and another to slide out of its copper-covered sheath. About seven blades in all, each different in length and shape.

He stared, fascinated. “Seems easy to use.”

“Not really,” she countered. “It takes years to learn how to press the ‘holds correctly to get the blade you want. I’ve known quite a few people who managed to get a finger or another part of their anatomy severed because they were careless.”

He winced. “How long have you practiced with the cleen?”

“Since I was a child of four. And it’s cleon.” She grinned at the wry face he made and continued. “I know it’s heavier than it looks - it all depends on the person’s own weight and the weight of the blades. They’re quite light, even if they seem menacing.”

“Ceremonial weapon?”

Rhiain nodded. “Mostly, anyway,” she said. “When I left C’heras for the first time, I brought mine along to continue practicing with it, for old times’ sake. But it seems to have come in handy on some missions.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Primitive inhabitants mistook me for a goddess most of the time.”

“I knew that hair of yours would come in handy.”

She laughed and pressed on a ‘hold, watching the last blade retract. “There are also a number of ‘combat dances’ that we learned. They’re really a pattern of maneuvers we memorized for different situations.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Did those dances help on the same primitive worlds where you were a goddess in a GD uniform?”

“Yes.” Rhiain held the pole up vertically like a shepherd’s staff. “And only because I improvised.”

He eyed her with a slight smile. “You’re infamous for improvising.”

She answered with a wolfish smile of her own. “We’re all infamous for something.”

Now his expression turned thoughtful as he continued to watch her. “Indeed.”