diff --git a/luxon/utils/http.py b/luxon/utils/http.py
index b257d96..e3c0aaa 100644
--- a/luxon/utils/http.py
+++ b/luxon/utils/http.py
@@ -568,7 +568,7 @@ def request(client, method, url, params={},
             _cache_engine = None
 
         for kwarg in kwargs:
-            headers[kwarg] = kwargs
+            headers[kwarg] = kwargs[kwarg]
 
         if data is not None:
             if hasattr(data, 'json'):
diff --git a/luxon/utils/sharding.py b/luxon/utils/sharding.py
index d0e7630..1c937cc 100644
--- a/luxon/utils/sharding.py
+++ b/luxon/utils/sharding.py
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
 
 def shard(string):
     hashed = 0
+    string = if_unicode_to_bytes(string)
     for h in hashlib.md5(string).digest():
         hashed += h
 
@@ -80,3 +81,8 @@ def __str__(self):
     def __repr__(self):
         return repr(self._partitions)
 
+    def __getitem__(self, item):
+        try:
+            return self._partitions[item]
+        except IndexError:
+            return []