Orders from Ambrus
Boyar Ambrus assigns the recipients to draining duties with meticulous instructions: waste no blood — slit each victim's veins only once they are settled above the collection vessels, to hang there a minimum of four hours and drain fully dry.
Each filled barrel gets its measure of leech spittle, is corked, and sent to the storage facilities. Above all, barrels must contain pure blood alone: any batch polluted by other effluvia is to be discarded and the barrel well rinsed before refilling. Diluting blood, or tampering in any other way, is a capital offence.