With a groan, Maxwell jerked awake.

He was in the room he had rented - or at least one that looked a far sight like it. It was fairly sparse: two futons on the floor, a single window, a desk and chair... not much else. More notably, his hands were bound above his head to the ceiling by some kind of rope, forcing him to stand on the balls of his feet to keep his shoulders at peace. He couldn't do anything about the aching pain in the back of his head, though. He was still mostly clothed, though his jacket was missing... because it was thrown on the desk behind Alexandra, as she stood flicking through some kind of book.

"H-hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Alexandra turned around and glanced at him once before she turned her back to him again. She moved the chair and sat in it, facing him.

"That's mine!"

She'd been reading what he recognized as his personal logbook, where he kept records of all kinds of things he didn't trust to his mind.

"Oh, don't worry," she replied. "I'm just borrowing it."

The friendly Texan accent had disappeared, replaced by something not American, that was for certain. British, almost? British, with a slight hint of French? Whatever it was, it was cold. "So, magus, well... why are you really here? Sure as hell ain't a job offer from the Russians."

He was flabbergasted for a second. Who the hell was this? Association, Church, some kind of rival of his? Deciding on his best route, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

She let him run his voice out, unamused. "By Jingo, I thought you were terrible, but this is especially terrible. Didn't notice me, and now you didn't notice the door."

Glancing over, he saw what she meant. The door had a silvery sequence of runes floating on it, seemingly right off its surface.

"Yeah, sorry, rest of the inn can't hear shit from inside. So, wazzis, uh..." She flipped a page in his book. "Grail War thing you here for?"

He spat on the floor. "Cut me loose and go to hell, you don't fucking know who you're dealing wiaaaa-"

Alexandra snapped her fingers, cutting the end of his sentence off as he screamed in pain. The rope around his hands, already thin, suddenly turned razor sharp, biting into his wrists like some kind of great beast. Another snap returned it to normal, but the thin length was no longer just uncomfortable - it dug into and worsened new wounds.

"Well, I know I'm dealing with a former naval officer by the name of Maxwell, Union, magus, looking for a Grail, and... oh yes, tied up and at my mercy, so I wouldn't talk too big. What's going on here that ain't-" she held up the book "-in here."

Maxwell started to protest again. Alexandra raised her other hand, fingers ready to snap.

He spilled the beans. The details of the Grail War that he knew, the fact that the Russian was actually a Russian prince, a Mage's Association Lord who tipped him off to the war, expecting to receive a cut of the spoils, everything. Listening and nodding, she let him finish. Then she walked up to him and ripped open his shirt. Her hand, still in a thick leather glove, traced a pattern on his exposed chest, some kind of inscription that gleamed a dull red.

"So, where's your workshop? I see in your little book that you've arrived a few days ago, so you would have set one up by now."

He opened his mouth, only to be abruptly stopped. "On second thought, don't tell me, just take me there."

Alexandra reached up, pulled, and released the rope, which Maxwell now saw was a vicious black whip. She coiled it and hung it from her side, under her long jacket. She threw the top part of his suit at him. "Look right, at least."

Maxwell obediently arranged it to cover his chest and bleeding wrists. "I wouldn't try and split," she added. "The runes on your chest will kill you if you try to run up your Crest or get fifteen feet away from me."

Followed by Alexandra, Maxwell shuffled out of the room and down the stairs, through the now mostly empty inn common room and into a cold night. The prisoner magus led his gaoler through various winding streets and down to the harbor.

His workshop turned out to be a disarmed warship, a leftover of the Confederate Navy that his Russian associate had bought from the Union and then lent to him.

Alexandra snorted at that. "What'd you call it?"

Bristling, Maxwell replied, "He calls it the Aleksandr."

The response he got was a grunt. "Oh so fitting for Lords, to grant a ship the name of an emperor. Lead us in."

The inside of the ship was rather well laid out and distinctly Russian in flavor. Cyrillic alphabet, artwork that looked vaguely Rus, all of it would fit the story of it being Russian-owned. "Where's the crew?"

"Ashore," Maxwell replied. "They're supposed to take time off and not return for twenty days. It was determined that that would be enough."

He led Alexandra deeper, into the main cabin of the prince himself, repurposed as Maxwell's workshop. You could tell that it was fitted for royalty: glass fixtures in the ceiling, thick carpets, a massive bed...

However, it had been taken over by piles of books, clothes, all sorts of things in preparation for a mage's war. Of particular note was a casket of iron at the center of the mess. After a uick glance, Alexandra turned Maxwell around and forced him out of the room. She had a different destination in mind.

Deep inside the ship would be the brig, something she knew from previous experience. She found it without much trouble: a few dark chambers at the bottom of the boat, right on top of the keel. Unlike the rest of the ship, it seemed to not have been refitted: it was still musty and old. Presumably there was no reason to do much to it. Alexandra took the keys off a hook on the wall and pushed Maxwell into one of the cells before stepping in with him.

After shackling his wrists and ankles, she pulled a knife from the small of her back. She cut open Maxwell's jacket. The red runes dismissed themselves at her touch and with a few short movements were replaced by a bright green set directly over his heart.

"I won't kill you, if that's what you're thinking. Though... you may very well not like this." She took the shackles on his wrists in her hands and traced more green lines into them, then repeated the procedure on the chains on his feet as she created a system over his body.

Maxwell stayed silent the whole time. An odd Lord, she thought. Seemingly, one who believed that he ought to die like a gentleman.

She stepped out, locked the door behind her, and applied a little twitch of prana to her Crest to activate a spell.

Mouth twisted, Maxwell fell to the floor, gasping for breath. He looked up at her as he realized what she had done, why he lacked power in his limbs.

The rune system, the green carved over his body, was draining his prana stores and physical energy, leaving him weak as a babe. Not dead, as she said, but he was reduced to a battery, to be drained for additional power at will.

With a bounce in her step, Alexandra walked away.