“Alice,” Sasha chided, almost parental. “I’ve imposed well beyond my welcome and now I’ve all but assaulted you. Do I seem like someone who makes appointments?” 

Without waiting for her to respond, he adjusted his grip so that he had better leverage over her waist and arms. Then, with one hefty swing, Sasha lifted Alice up off the floor, and then even higher, settling her meager weight up on his shoulder. Holding her fast with one arm, now freeing the other, he began to search the shop for something suitable for his needs.

“Look, I’m really not a bad person,” he assured her, beginning to sound mildly exhausted. He carried her across the shop, toward rolls of linens. “If I was, I would have been dead long ago. Most of my mates ended up just so for being bastards. But this is important, and I can’t take chances.”

Attracted to a thick roll of patterned cloth, sporting a gold hexagonal design over a backdrop of deep red, Sasha moved up and began to put the fabric free, bunching it up in his hands to serve as bindings. Already he had begun wrapping Alice’s calves together to restrict their movement.

“[i]Listen[/i]! I n—” Sasha sighed, sounding genuinely remorseful. “I need this. Alright? At the end, I promise you can go free. You can even tell the authorities all about me, where I am, all that. They won’t find me anyway. But I need to help my father.” He paused a moment and added, “Alasdair, your ancestor.”

Sasha offloaded the girl onto her feet, now wrapped up to her knees, but he still kept drawing fabric. He kept hold of one of her wrists and seemed prepared to bind her arms as well.

“The door lock is broken, you won’t show up for work tomorrow. I’ll topple some things.” Sasha shrugged, pulling fabric taut between his hands. “No one will blame you for not doing your job. They’ll just assume you’ve been kidnapped by some brute who broke in.”

He tilted his head.

“Suppose they’d be right, come to think of it.”