From that day forward, when I was not attending to Thieves Guild business, I was searching for the rest of the Stones of Barenziah.

I searched every single house I broke into, carefully taking note of dressers or shelves, hoping to find a few more on display. This yielded only one more - when I had staked out the living quarters of Jorrvaskr under the guise of joining the Companions. This I grabbed and stuffed into my hip purse when Kodlak turned his back for just a moment. I had been terrified to be discovered, as there was something quite off-putting about those guys.

After all of that, I only had two gems to show for my troubles. So what next?

I obviously wasn't thinking big enough, I reasoned as I laid on my bed in the Thieves Guild one night, staring at the damp ceiling and counting the drips of water. These gems were beautiful and even though they weren't part of a set, they were still sort of semi-precious on their own.

Who would want such a beautiful item that was mostly worthless - if nothing more than just to have?

Then it hit me.

I threw off my blankets, pulled on my boots - taking care not to wake anyone else - and quietly crept to the passageway leading up to the surface. Keeping to the shadows, I dodged a few guards and stopped in front of Mistveil Keep, my heart pounding.

If I were caught, this could go so badly for me. It was one thing to break into the Jarl's palace, it was another thing entirely to be caught carrying something out of there.

However, my intuition had proved right: one of the unusual gems sat upon a bedroom end table in the Jarl's room and I took it right from under her nose while she slept peacefully on.

Despite the risk, I had the most fun sneaking through the other palaces of the Jarls searching for these gems: Dragonsreach, the Palace of the Kings, Understone Keep, and the Blue Palace - locating my prizes among undergarments in dressers or displayed proudly on shelves. I even grabbed a coin purse or two on the way out.

Even the Treasury House in Markarth, the College of Winterhold, and the Black-Briar Lodge were searched, too. Much to my delight, I discovered three more gems which joined the others safely beneath the loose brick under my bed back at the Ratway.

After finding my tenth unusual gem, I sat on the wall surrounding Riften drinking some Skooma in celebration and looking out into the darkness, the weight of the very first unusual gem in my pocket motivating me to keep up the hunt.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where to search next.