Stealing The Sun

The thief had been calculating, cold, and precise. Most of all, he'd been well-prepared. Looking at the room, one would hardly have noted that any larceny had taken place. Everything was still in order, nothing upturned, nothing broken, nothing out of place. He knew precisely what he wanted. The only indication that anything was amiss was a single open drawer in an ill-regarded armoire- and this was only open because the inspector had opened it himself, to observe the absence of something crucial to the scene...

The Baron had been vain, true enough. He dressed his wife in fineries, put her on display. And when his wife tired of a thing he troubled to put it on display elsewhere in the estate to assure his hard-spent resources did not go to waste. He'd had the necklace placed in a leaded glass case in a side chamber of the estate's master ballroom, ad when he entertained guests he was keen to show them a sampling of one of the greatest gifts he'd bestowed so graciously on his beloved wife.

It was a beautiful piece, the necklace. Studded with a great many precious and semi-precious gems, any one of which was worth a serf's life savings. But the crowning stone- the one that outshined the rest- was an iridescent fire opal. A fluke of nature, and yet stunning in it's perfection, the gem had a shifting radiant core- perhaps only a consequence of how the light was refracted among it's various facets, but beautiful to behold nonetheless. Having the stone cut alone cost a king's ransom. The stone was not set in the necklace in the traditional way, either. Instead the setting was an englamored one, ensuring that the gem could not be separated from it's housing.

The Baron had been vain, true enough, but he wasn't entirely a fool...