Thievery, Alain had found, demanded a peculiar mix of patience and committed impulse. Whether it was picking pockets, lifting goods at the market, or breaking and entering, there was always the need to wait for just the right moment to act – and then to do so without hesitation.

Even on the larger scale, picking exactly which job he was going to undertake took much the same discipline.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have taken this one. Everyone knew Lord Halvian’s vault was impenetrable, and his guards showed no mercy to any thief they caught.

But everyone knew it was impenetrable – even the guards. There hadn’t been word of an attempt in months because of just that reputation. And in this case, not only was the money too good to pass up, but Halvian wouldn’t dare make too much noise about just what it was that would be getting stolen. The proper and morally-upstanding Jeralt Halvian, frantic to retrieve a statuette of a Red Temple priestess? He’d be a laughingstock.

So Alain had spent the last few weeks, between his smaller jobs, learning about Halvian’s estate. The layout, the daily routines, even the guard schedule – a whisper here, a snippet there, and in time the whole thing came together. He even learned who’d made the lock for Halvian’s vault, and was ready for that locksmith’s special tricks.

There were gaps in his knowledge, of course. There always were. But even the patterns of those gaps could tell him what he needed to know.

So, when the word was that Halvian was visiting his lands in the countryside, and had taken some of his guard contingent with him, Alain seized the moment and put his plans in motion.

He knew roughly, if not exactly, how many guards would accompany the baron on his journey, and from there he could guess how the guard shifts might be shuffled around at the estate. Again, not exact, but Alain knew people, and he knew how guards worked.

It was enough. The outer walls were no trouble at all; the gardens were almost vacant. It was almost frighteningly easy to get from the ground to a second-floor window and in within a minute of a guard passing by.

From there, he had the advantage. Inside, there was cover aplenty. With the lord gone, only the most essential places were lit, and that dimly, to save candles and oil. So long as he ignored his impulse to scurry along and be done, and thus kept his footfalls soft and quiet, there were plenty of places he could duck in where a bored guard wouldn’t think to look for a man’s shape.

The vault had all the tricks he expected, and if he hadn’t planned for them he might have got a pick stuck. As it was, he let himself in as smoothly and calmly as though he’d used the key.

Halvian’s lands were not all that extensive, so there wasn’t all that much to search in his vault. It should have been easy to find a nine-inch-tall bronze figure of a scantily-clad woman caught in mid-step of a whirling dance.

Except that it wasn’t there.

In his increasingly frantic bid to find something to make the trip worthwhile, he found a bill of sale for the Lady of Moonlight – stipulating that it be delivered to Countess Gallen’s estate.

The cursed thing had never been here at all.