- Doing it a different way
- There’s probably a better way
- Avoiding a fight you would lose
There’s a better way to do this than the obvious one, and I’d go looking for it.
The traditional reading here is lying, cheating and stealing, and I’ll name it and then set it aside, because I don’t think that’s what’s happening. He’s sneaking away from this army in the background and he’s stealing those swords so they can’t go to war with him. He isn’t a thief, he’s a strategist getting himself out of a fight he’d lose. From there it generalizes into the most useful line on the card, which is that basically everything we do, there’s probably a better way to do it. It’s also a golden card, and golden cards are meant to be positive no matter what. It goes hand in hand with the Two of Swords, both being about finding the option nobody else is looking at.
You found the better way and avoided a fight you would have lost.