• When the sun started to peek up over the city, we packed what was left of the night catch in one of Jackknife's old stained sacks, and Fallacy swung it over his shoulder. What was left of the girl made a wet kind of thump--we'd had an order for bones put in this time, her skull and fingerbones in particular, and you had to sort of peel things away when you were going in for bones. It made a pretty mess, let me tell you, but at least what was left over went in the sack easier. We took the catacombs home, so as to avoid the streets. It wasn't the sixth bell, yet, but people would already be awake and moving and watching. This city's got eyes that don't ever sleep.
    I carried the girl's heart, and her big cow-brown eyes. Most of the organs can just be wrapped up with any old bit of string and leather, but there are rules about hearts and eyes and blood and bone. You respect those bits, and you carry them in a proper reliquary, made out of ivory if you've got the cash to throw around and made out of apple wood if you don't.
    We got back to Cinderfall Bridge within the hour. One of our customers was already waiting--a bloodwitch by the name of Ingrid Hesskval, who was a foreigner from the northern lands. She was the type of bloodwitch they grow up telling you stories about--had inspired some of the new stories, so I heard, in the few years that she'd been here. Looked the part, too. Nobody knew how old she was, but depending on the lighting she could've been fifteen years out of the womb, or twice that. She was a petite little thing, with bright gold braids wound about her head and skin like snow and milk and summer-sky eyes. Pretty, I would've called her. But she had a bloodwitch's lips, same as all the rest. Scarlet, redder than any cosmetic could produce, like someone'd taken a knife to her face and she hadn't finished bleeding yet. She smiled at me when we came in--smiled, more like, at the reliquary I was carrying, 'cause I know I ain't much of a looker.
    Jackknife and the bloodwitch both went into the back room, and I put the girl's heart and eyes into the reliquary Ingrid had brought along for herself. Bertok had the bones rolled up in silk, and put them beside the reliquary for Ingrid to find when she came out before he disappeared. Bertok doesn't like bloodwitches--he'll work for them, but his dam got taken by the corpse-ushers when he wasn't any bigger than a widow's crippled heart, and his sire went missing long before that. When something like this happens, we take in the orphan and train him or her up right; most of 'em don't blame us for what we do. It's a trade, if not exactly an honest one. But they don't harbor any love for the bloodwitches.
    When Jackknife and Ingrid Hesskval came out, they were wearing smiles that looked less like smiles than they did dogs baring their teeth at one another. Ingrid didn't like Jackknife; Jackknife didn't like women, period, and there weren't no fancy tricks she could use on him to get him to lower his price, not for her bright gold braids nor all the summer-sky eyes in the world. She handed over a bag, and he poured it out on the table and counted it in front of all of us, while Fallacy gave her the hairy eyeball with mustard. After a moment, he gave her a tight little nod, and she took her bones and her reliquary and left.
    Bertok had disappeared, and Fallacy can't be hardly trusted outside without a leash, so it fell to me to run the packages to their buyers along with Jackknife, who's better about haggling than I am but won't carry the organs on account of his pride. We left Misericorde behind to watch Fallacy and to make certain nobody that we didn't want came poking around under the bridge, and then we took to the catacombs.