“Glad you’ll suffer the market for us, baby,” I said, tasked with a plum jar that Somyellia’d handed me. “They’d just come up with some new rule, say I violated it,” the reluctant lid opened and spun, “and jail my ass.”

Snier was quick to agree. “You are worse than what they got in the dungeon downtown,” he said. “Sommy, let me tell you, having bumped into your menacing hunk here—while working his trade, no less—hell, I would have called the Ward. Bite marks, scars, clothing of nothing but black and questionable greens—well, let’s just say that raven hair of yours, Seasmil, doesn’t always look as charming.”

I saw that the effeminate thief wasn’t the only one looking me up and down. Work had taken Somyellia on the road for almost a week. I watched as she fondled our bone wind chimes.

Like most domiciles on the Avenue of Red Wolf, our place was coffin-like and smelled sour from an unfindable leak in the sewer pipes.

For me though, it was perfect. Although fewer than in my teen years, my dissections hadn’t stopped. I’d made a pact with myself that I’d proudly kept: I never once took a human life in order to collect my materials. I came perilously close once, but two of my cohorts beat me to it. Their lust for inflicting pain and their general bristling nature, I had opted to view in quiet disdain, but that night I was grateful. Our assignment had tried to rise from his bed to cast some hex on us, and by the looks of his gaunt and soulless slaves, he was far too dangerous to be shown mercy. I’d left that night with one of his slave’s arms tucked into my belt. Her limb had been meant to serve as a premiere piece to cut open and inspect, but its ceaseless twitching forced me to give up and throw it away.

This rule that I’d self-imposed may have been more difficult to honor if I hadn’t been a grave robber. When taking my work home with me made a stack too high, our tiny but high-walled backyard took care of the surplus. Like jagged teeth, towering slums hung over our yard, appearing in opium-induced stirs as looming onlookers. In the queer hours of morning, I would bury all that was to be buried. Snier, like a good neighbor, admitted once that it lullabied him, the soft digs of the shovel.

The three of us reclaimed our stoop and I packed the pipe. The steps were still warm, but it would be night soon. Somyellia sidled onto my lap. It was easy to forget how fiercely she’d blossomed into full womanhood when she gave me her girlish smile. My gratitude had remained two-fold. This beauty wasn’t just cause for erections all over Nilghorde, but because of her beauty our rent was still usually paid.

“The witch’s bosom still gives milk, Snier.” The cloud of smoke that burst from my mouth ate Somyellia like a wedding veil.