Beneath the table, Eliana found Arabeth and felt a little better as her fingers wrapped around the dagger’s hilt.
The chill across her shoulders became a sharp pang of warning.
She forced up her gaze.
The woman who’d been sitting alone, frowning over her drink, was gone. Her ale lay spilled on the tabletop, dripping onto the ground. Her mug rolled to a stop under the chair in which she had been sitting.
But she could have simply left the table.
Mouth dry, heart pounding, Eliana quickly ran back over the path of people she had been observing only a few seconds earlier, before the world had changed.
The woman with the black braids was gone. The man who had been sitting next to her slapped her empty chair, wiping tears from his eyes as one of the drinkers vomited.
And the man and woman who had been finishing off their stew—the man now sat alone, his head in his bowl as he slurped up the last drops of his meal. The woman’s bowl hit the ground and shattered; the man looked up, frowning in bewilderment, then craned his neck to peer through the crowd.
Three women, all gone in a matter of seconds.
Three women, gone like her mother.
Eliana licked her lips, her blood hot and humming. She unsheathed Arabeth and rose to her feet.
They were here. Fidelia.
They come in the night. They come every seven days.
Eliana rose, slipped through the crowd as quickly as possible without drawing attention, scanned the room. She let her eyes unfocus.
There.
To her right, a dark, hooded figure moved swiftly across the room. Eliana thought she saw another person at its side. The woman who had been drinking alone? But as soon as Eliana tried to focus on that particular shape, her vision tilted.
She leaned hard against a nearby pillar—sticky and caked with filth—as a wave of nausea ripped through her. She gritted her teeth, pushing through it. The figure had been moving toward the eastern wall. If she didn’t move quickly, she’d lose the trail.
A hand caught her wrist. “Going somewhere?”
Eliana turned to glare at Simon. “Let me go, or I’ll lose them.”
“Who?” Beside Simon, Navi peered out from under her hood. “What’s happening?”
“One moment these women were there, right there in front of me, and the next—” Eliana staggered against Simon as the sick feeling returned. He caught her around the waist, kept her from falling. “God, that’s annoying,” she bit out, tears smarting in her eyes. “I can’t think for two seconds without feeling sick. What are these people doing to me?”
Simon peered closely at her face. “Who? Someone’s hurting you?”
“Fidelia.” She leaned against the solid length of his torso, suddenly glad he was there. If he hadn’t come, she would have been a pile on the floor. “Camille said they take women, and girls, just like the people in Orline. At least, I think they’re all the same. Angel-worshippers, Camille said. Every seven days. I was going to help her find this girl who worked for her. Then…they came. They’re here. They took three women in a matter of seconds. I don’t understand it.”
Simon’s piercing blue gaze was intent on her face. “You said they’re doing something to you. Explain.”
She struggled weakly to break free of him. “Too much to explain, have to find them.”
“Wrong. We’re going back to Camille’s, and after I dismember her for sending you out here, I’m locking you in the safest room I can find, possibly forever.”
“Touch her,” she mumbled, “and I’ll dismember you.” It was becoming increasingly difficult to organize her thoughts. “What are you two doing here together, even?” She took unsteady step after unsteady step, frowning at the floor.
“Navi and I met outside your room,” Simon said. “We discovered you gone, and she insisted on coming with me to find you.”
“Why were you both there?” Eliana brought a hand to her throbbing temple. “That’s rather odd, isn’t it?”
“Well, I wanted to look in on you, make sure you’d managed to sleep,” Navi said, her voice light. “Simon?” She looked guilelessly up at him. “Why were you at Eliana’s door in the middle of the night?”
Simon’s mouth thinned. “This is not the time for—”
“Not a chance in the Deep that I’m leaving here without finding Fidelia,” Eliana muttered, “and slitting throat after throat until they tell me where my mother is.”