(225 words.)
Billie takes every bonecharm she finds, stitching the useful ones into the lining of her coat, where their subtle, singing powers can seep into her, and selling everything else in the back markets for heavy handfuls of coin. They have clear value; it's an easy choice to make, grabbing charms over gold and jewels.
Runes, though…
She can feel the touch of the Void on them, a softer, stranger song than the bonecharms sing, but she gains nothing but unease and restless dreams by holding onto them. They fetch a lower price, too, a hard sell to all but the most devoutly heretical.
But they hold value to Daud. She's seen him carefully storing them away in a trunk in his rooms, even more carefully than he stashes coin or good weapons.
Her target today has many riches and finery but also a hidden room behind a dark curtain, shards of bone and splashes of oil and ink littering the floor around the worktable where the new rune hums with skull-rattling magic.
Billie thinks of the flicker of a smile across Daud's face, the pleased sound he makes at the back of his throat whenever they find one resting at the base of a haphazard shrine, and she empties one pocket of its gold and pearls to slip the useless hunk of whalebone in instead.