Among Thieves

"I had said I could not find out who made the item, which is true. What I can do however, is try to find out how they made it. There are only so many ways to gather magic and weave it into something like this."
"And how does knowing how it was made help us?" I said.
Jelem opened his eyes and regarded me with the same expression he might use for a pheasant that had asked why it was being eaten. "'How' tells us which style of magic the maker used," he explained. "'How' tells us what degree of ability the maker had. 'How' tells us how much, roughly, someone is willing to spend on killing you. And 'how' tells me — maybe — how to make more of these charming little baubles ." He tapped the rope. "The magic is keyed to the runes. They ought to make it easier to unravel."

Whipjacks did "turn around" thefts — stealing from one person, selling to another, then stealing it back again and returning it to the original owner once a reward had been offered. The idea was that, besides making twice the profit off a single piece of swag, the Whipjack couldn`t be caught with the valuables in hand since he moved it between marks so fast.
Fedim must have been this Whipjack`s middleman, selling the swag and then leading the thief back when it was time to steal it again. It was a relationship that required trust on both ends; either man could sell the other out for a quick profit. And trust, I`ve found, breeds reliance, which leads to shared confidences. It was those confidences I needed to know about.