The still solitude of night breathed life into troublesome thoughts. From the confines of the cypress chest, those pages Thais had written whispered until the dawn. Her chamber touched with weak light, unable to stand the turbulent company of paranoia and doubt, Yalira dressed and called to be taken to the new altar.

She carried the heavy box in her arms, Thais's pages absent. She had tucked them away beneath her bed cushions and then scrubbed her hands clean. Invisible, the stain of truth still marked the pink skin.

One betrayal at a time, Yalira decided. Surrounded by the pieces of her own shattered heart and the ghost of spent tears, she would not destroy each one of her priestesses's. Like forming a callus, she would inoculate them with each new heartbreak, piece by piece.

For the pain would be inevitable. Yalira wrested with the words and her own bleeding spirit through the night. Though she had tried to convince herself that this truth was forgery, logic smothered the sparks of her hopefulness.

Seductive denial tempted with suffocating waters. Perhaps the show of dragging the chest to Semyra was manufactured, perhaps Andar had taken the time to create these elaborate forgeries and seal them away, perhaps he had planted the seeds of doubt early. One more deception to add to the ever growing number that polluted Semyra.

Icy-breathed truth stung but kept her from sinking. Thais's spirit seared from the pages, her anger and strength. Even if Yalira pretended that Andar forged the papers written by her mentor, the pages and pages of scripted prophecies would not be denied. Their secret words burned into her memory—a throbbing brand—no outsider would have been able to know them so intimately.

The hand that inked each prophecy differed. Sloped, hasty letters. Cramped scribbles. Straight and careful. Bold with ink splatters. Different hands from different priestesses, she had decided before drifting into uneasy dreams.

It was that realization that spurred Yalira to the new altar with the first breath of dawn. Her feet were swift in the early light, even with the heavy load. As blasphemous as the chest felt in her arms, as much as the truth would wound her sisters, she knew the pages belonged to Antala. Only her priestesses could guard their goddess's wisdom. Or at least what the world would think was the goddess's wisdom.

Except for the one that bears my name. Those words are my own, even if they're not Antala's.

Voicing the thought, in the privacy of the silent cart ride into the slums, gave them a wicked life. The doubt and guilt and self-loathing surged and retreated, ebbed and escaped. Yalira had prayed the secrets of the cypress chest would give her a path toward redemption, toward freedom, toward Antalis.

Liar. Doubter. Murderer.

As the wheels slowed before her destination, only questions remained, new threads to unravel. Why had this generation of priestesses been left illiterate? What was the ugly history of Antalis? Why had she not been included in the subterfuge?

I am not an herb-addled girl. The fierceness of her thoughts, that fleeting roar of her own spirit, surprised Yalira. She had not learned the twisting-tongue of the old language, not bled herself in moonlight, not crawled into the depths of the earth to be thrown aside as a puppet oracle. Her pride refused to kneel before the hideous truth she'd unburied.

Drawing herself up, balancing the chest in her arms, Yalira nodded to the guard posted at the door. Young, just like Cato and his friends. The morning sunlight, gray in its youth, cast his bronze armor with a dull sheen. The earthiness of it made him seem softer. A defender with spindly limbs, new guardian of Antalis.

She gifted him with a soft smile. The same that had won over the warriors on the journey from Antalis. He slid the door open for her, but did not return the greeting, blushingly refusing to meet her eyes.

"High Priestess!"

The surprise turned into a cacophony of voices. Yalira addressed them all, but their cheerful reception was short-lived before they returned to morning chores. Though the day was but newly born, the priestesses had been at their tasks since first light. A scrubbed hearth, a swept floor, a pile of fresh linens beside each bed.

In the beds, a few patients slept fitfully or vacantly stared at the cracked ceiling.

In a habit that was another's before it was hers, Yalira set down the chest to trail a finger across the bedside tables for dust. All of her senses sharp with curiosity, she checked each herb and vial. Medicine prepared by a careless hand was poison. Only the priestesses who carefully learned to balance confidence and humility moved on in their training to treat the sick and dying. Yalira wondered if another record contained Antala's antidotes and remedies, preserved on vellum.

It would be more useful than a trunk of meaningless prophecies. She shook the sour thought from her head and, with a practiced hand, wafted the scent of the tincture toward her.

"Nightshade and ginger." Yalira turned to the woman-child tending the emaciated man. Another herb pricked at her nose. "Stinging nettle?"

"Yes, High Priestess." The priestess placed her palm against his feverish brow. Her frown burrowed wrinkles into her young face. "There's been a purging sickness in the slums. Fever. Vomiting. Diarrhea. The lucky ones are dying quickly."

Yalira's mind prickled as it worked through the problem. "From dehydration or the sickness itself?"

The priestess grimaced as she lifted away the bedding to reveal a pallet soaked with sweat and feculence. Another set of hands joined to help change the linens and bathe the fevered skin.

"Dehydration, then," Yalira murmured. "Halve the nightshade. Too much will raise the fever. Add salt. And crushed fig." She frowned. A city where queens ate honied fruits should not also have men who wasted into nothing. "I'll have some sent from the palace. And perhaps the diversion of fresh water to the area will help stop the spread."

"But when will that be, Yalira?"

Tala's hard voice cut through the room. Yalira grimaced. The time had not softened their last parting.

"Soon, I've been told." Though she spoke with that trained inflection, Yalira wished her answer was stronger, more specific. This now marked the second time Tala forwent Yalira's title, the second time her name used to diminish her. The elders would have taken a switch to her skin for the impertinence.

They were the keepers of tradition, but their voices had been silenced. Tongues cut out and sent away. Eyes fell to Yalira, to Tala, to the conflict between. Before Yalira attempted to correct it, Tala's venom dripped further.

"I imagine time moves very differently up in the high city."

The priestesses in the room suddenly busied their hands with work, but Yalira recognized their strained posture as an intent audience.

This division will weaken us, Yalira's heart cried just as quickly as it bristled in defense.

"I cannot fight for us if I am here, Tala," she answered. Yalira tried to mimic the dry, unflinching voice of Thais. The voice that had killed her prying questions and driven her curiosity into obedience. Yalira tried not to think of the implication, of the chest near her feet.

"You asked us to stay here, to serve Antala," Tala continued with a fire that Yalira had never expected from her lips. Draped in cream robes, hair piled high and styled with greenery, Tala was tall with resolve. "We are here, but how can we serve at a crumbling altar? You've sent us the barest supplies and asked us to bend perfectly to your hidden purpose."

Tala brandished a list of needs—written in a childish hand—that they lacked. Yalira only had eyes for the details, the sharp-edged passion.

Yalira had dressed herself with hastiness. In that moment, it felt like a horrible mistake. Her dress was also soft cream, a color of the full moon, but her simple braid, her earthy shawl screamed otherness in this room of ivory-draped priestesses. Their resemblance once again striking, Yalira and Tala were conflicting mirrors.

But I am not the one who looks like the High Priestess.

The thought sent a flurrying fear into her throat.

I will remind them.

The burning desire to wrest control back, Yalira raced through the options before her. Her power to save Antalis tipped from its precarious position. Her spirit breathed a desperate apology.

"You question Antala's wisdom, Tala?" The words fell before she finished thinking. The query implied Yalira's direct communication with the goddess. Powerful and unknown. She braced for their fragile falsehood to shatter on the floor. No cries followed.

Despite their devotion to Antala, these priestesses did not taste oleander as Yalira once had, they were novices in detecting lies and they could not expect it from Yalira. It made them easy to deceive. With careful intonation, she added, "The goddess speaks with my voice: this is the path."

Tala flinched. Even she did not question the words. The rush of power that followed sent a wave of nauseating guilt through Yalira.

"We can barely fend for ourselves! We—"

"Enough, Tala."

A public reprimand was not her plan, but there were no choices left. The fracture between could not grow any deeper. If they were to survive Semyra, they needed to stand together.

"There is purpose to all things. Antalis had to fall to be reborn," Yalira spoke. She kept her words soft enough to tempt the priestesses closer to her side. Just as she craved the justification behind their suffering, her sisters listened with rapt and desperate hopefulness. Even Tala, alight in fury, could not stop the shine of tearful hope from touching the edge of her eyelashes.

"Our goddess seeks that we live with light and life, that we spread her goodness. What better place than in the darkest, foulest corner of this world?"

As the words left her lips and her priestesses smiled with shining devotion, Yalira realized that she hated herself. The untruths that littered her world, the easy willingness to deceive—was there really a moment she had thought herself more than Andar of Tyr? At least his schemes were not dressed in pretty lies.

Sick in the misery of her own self-loathing, Yalira could not bear to be in their presence. She could not bear to be in her own skin. Her mouth twisted with more words, seeking escape.

"We have been charged with protecting this, the secrets of Antala." She gestured to the cypress chest, ignoring the pounding of her pulse at the confused murmurings. A few of the priestesses placed their hands to the smooth surface, reverent, as if at the feet of the goddess herself. Tala's eyes flashed.

"I leave it in your protection," Yalira said. The fevered moans of the dying men in the room pierced the hallowed silence. "We must tread carefully in Semyra, sisters. There is more sickness to come."

Though the proclamation echoed with darkness, the priestesses rose with light purpose. Faith could overcome struggle.

Even misplaced faith. Yalira pushed away the thought. Her deception would save them. The death of her spirit, the dark vines around her heart—they were small prices to pay. It did not matter how nauseated she felt: the wrong words were the right course. She would not let her people crumble as easily as did the temple walls.

"Will you stand with us tonight, High Priestess?"

Tala's voice was hesitant, seeking. Yalira pulled her into her arms, pressed her palms to Tala's cheek. If the truth would not shatter them into pieces, Yalira would share each detail, each piece of her growing plan. They were safer this way.

"We will not bleed this moon, sisters. We need courage for what is coming."

"Goddess, grant us strength."

Their chorus echoed like distant music, a silver thread in a bleak tapestry. The comfort of tradition, the simple words, seemed to warm them.

As two of the priestesses took the chest away, to sit behind the altar's glow, Yalira watched their faces. Kept so long in a shroud of fear, they grew towards the weak sunbeam of hope. Trapped in their longing heartbeats, Yalira knew they would not question her.

All of Antala's priestesses had been raised to follow their High Priestess. They were sculpted, formed, and fired into obedient pieces of a greater puzzle. There was an ugly truth of Antalis, a deeper purpose Yalira did not yet understand.

To save Antalis and the power it holds, I willingly embrace the unknown.

Thais might have walked blindly, but Yalira glowed with the embers of her own determination. She would embrace nothing.

Yalira spoke blessings over each of them, took the list of their needs and promised its fulfillment, saw to the needs of each of their dying patients. Bleeding into unconsciousness—aglow in sharp moonlight—would mean nothing except another submission to a goddess who let their temple fall.

She would not let them crumble. She would kick and claw and lie until she found the key to their freedom. She would do whatever it took.

And tongues made lose by debauchery and wine just might be the first step. 

A/N:

No serious historical insights here, but I had a lot of fun researching how I would have treated diseases without manufactured medicines. I stretched some of the uses of herbs here, but if you're curious: 

Nightshade -- contains a crazy number of alkaloids including scopolamine which can reduce nausea and vomiting. Their anticholinergic properties can also help decrease diarrhea. But because they decrease sweating, a fever might get too hot to manage. There better medicines than anticholingics for vomiting/diarrhea but even today, our management is mostly focused on rehydration.

Ginger -- we still use ginger tablets for nausea and vomiting (especially in pregnant patients)

Stinging nettle -- used as a folk remedy for rheumatism, urtica dioica has very irritating histmines that provoke local inflammation. But when cooked, the herb is rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium.

Salt -- modern oral rehydration solutions are basically just fancy salt and water

Fig -- figs are rich in potassium. Since diarrhea has a nasty habit of rapidly depleting potassium, I wanted to add some repletion through this famous fruit of antiquity  

Do I spent too much time researching details that don't narratively matter? You decide!