The best kind of thievery left your target uncertain whether anything had happened at all. Getting away with the prize was all well and good, but it didn’t mean much if the city guard came pounding on your door the next day. He’d rather escape with half as many boxings, but the confidence that his trickery wouldn’t be discovered for weeks to come.

And the real trophy was to pull off a heist so clever, the target didn’t ever discover you’d taken something from them.

Each “night” the caravan made camp in an anxious little cluster of bedrolls around a campfire much like the one in Kelsier’s pack. The ancients got out jars of light, drinking and restoring the luminance to their skin. They didn’t chat much; these people seemed less like friends and more like a group of noblemen who considered one another allies by necessity.

Soon after their meal each night, the ancients retired to their bedrolls. They set guards, but didn’t sleep in tents. Why would you need a tent out here? There was no rain to keep off, and practically no wind to block. Just darkness, rustling plants, and a dead man.

Unfortunately, Kelsier couldn’t figure out a way to get to the weapon. Alonoe slept with her satchel in her hands, watched over by two guards. Each morning she checked to make sure the weapon was still there. Kelsier managed to get a glimpse of it one morning, and saw the glowing light inside, making him reasonably certain her satchel wasn’t a decoy.

Well, that would come. His first step was to sow a little misdirection. He waited for an appropriate night, then pushed himself down into the ground, sinking his essence beneath the surface. Then he pulled himself through the rock. It was like swimming through very thick liquid dirt.

He came up near where Alonoe had just settled down to sleep, and stuck only his lips out of the ground. Dox would have had a fit of laughter seeing this, Kelsier thought. Well, Kelsier was far too arrogant to worry about his pride.

“So,” he whispered to Alonoe in her own language, “you presume to hold Preservation’s power. You think you’ll fare better than he did at resisting me?”

He then pulled himself down under the ground. It was black as night under there, but he could hear the thumping of feet and the cries of shock from what he’d said. He swam out a distance, then lifted an ear from the ground.

“It was Ruin!” Alonoe was saying. “I swear, it must have been his Vessel. Speaking to me.”

“So he does know,” said another of the ancient ones. Kelsier thought it was Elrao, the man who had challenged her back in the fortress.

“Your wards were supposed to prevent this!” Alonoe said. “You told me they’d stop him from sensing the device!”