A Trade Without Mysteries

Greel is an easy city to be a thief-taker in, because in Greel, stolen things want to be found. Bind an object to its owner and it will pull, faintly, toward home, forever. A thief-taker is really just a person who knows how to feel that pull and follow it down the right alley. Halvard had followed the pull down a great many alleys. Thirty years of them. He was good, which in his trade meant patient, and he had reached the age where patience was mostly what he had left. His work was honest and dull. A merchant's ring. A guildmaster's seal. He found the thing, he found the thief, he collected his fee, he went home to a cat that tolerated him. There were no mysteries in it. The magic did not allow for mysteries. That was the whole point of the magic. So when the woman in the expensive coat sat down across from him and described an object that had been stolen, and bound, and yet pulled toward nowhere at all — a bound thing with no direction — Halvard set down his drink, and felt, for the first time in years, the small cold thrill of not understanding something.