Needs must

It was cool out when I opened the side door that led to the walk, so I ducked back inside and got my cloak from where Curry had left it on the settee, then shut the door behind me and set out walking, buttoning it around my shoulders as I went. The guard kiosk was only a ten minute walk or so, and staffed by a tired-looking patrol guard officer named Amini. “Almost didn’t recognize you without Curry,” he said, then seemed to take in my messy hair and sleep-deprived eyes. “You good?”

I shook my head. “I have to send a message to Captain Blanks that we’re going to miss our shift today. I think Curry’s got the grippe. Magda's gone visiting so I’m staying home with him till he isn’t quite so poorly.”

Amini was already taking out a pencil and writing it out for me. “My shift ends at four and the captain doesn’t live too far from me, so I’ll take it myself when I get relieved.”

“Thanks. I felt bad with it being short notice.”

“That’s how it goes, I guess.” Amini folded the note in two and tucked it into the breast pocket of his uniform jacket. “Make sure to get some sleep any little moment you can,” he advised. “My daughter had the grippe a couple years ago and even taking care of her in shifts my wife and I hardly got any rest. By the end we were about as exhausted as her.”

I was home again at about four, and tossed my cloak on the settee before going straight upstairs. Curry’s cough seemed to have eased a little, subsided to an intermittent, protracted throat clearing. His room had a comfortable armchair in the corner, which would be a good place to sit while I read further in Mother's Remedies, so I dragged it over to the side of his bed and curled up in that before opening up the book. I hadn’t gotten very far, though, by the time I started to feel drowsy. I'd meant to ready a few more things just in case they were needed, such as finding a suitable basin to hold water for cooling him off if his fever got too high.

But I recalled also Amini’s advice that I should sleep when I could, and right now I was tired. It didn’t seem prudent to go sleep in my own room, so instead I doused the lamp and set the book aside, then got my chaunceyhorse quilt and wrapped it around myself in the chair next to Curry’s bed.

I only managed to doze, and finally stopped trying just around daybreak, because I was getting concerned over the wheezy quality which had set in with Curry’s breathing. I rose from the chair and folded back the covers where he huddled underneath them, so I could have a better look. Curry shrank away from the intrusion, muttering indistinctly. “What did you say, Mag?” I asked, leaning in closer to hear.

“Have to pee,” he said without opening his eyes.

“Can you stand to get to the privy, or do I need to go get something for you to pee into?”

“I can just piss off the city wall,” he said.

“Huh?” I didn’t know what in the hells that meant.

“Bet the Mivians didn’t think of that,” Curry rumbled wheezily. “What if all the city turned out to piss on them?” He still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Mivians?” I asked, but instead of explaining himself he just shook his head.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, affecting a tone he probably thought was soothing. “They can’t keep this up. Not without a harbor blockade. Stupid really.” He lapsed into another nasty coughing fit. “You’ll see,” he said once it subsided. “There’s a reason nobody ever successfully besieged Semprisport.”

I stared at him as I slowly began to grasp that for him to talk such nonsense must mean that fever had set in over the last few hours.

At least if he thought he was standing on the city wall pissing onto an enemy siege ****, he probably wouldn’t make a lot of fuss insisting on the privy. Because whether he wanted that or not, I couldn’t possibly get him to the privy if he couldn’t support himself upright—Curry easily outweighed me by sixty pounds or more.

“Um… um…” I said, stalling for what I could possibly use for a bedpan. “Can you hold it for just a minute? Don’t piss on those Mivians just yet—I’ll watch for the best time, and tell you when.”

“Thanks, Fuzzy,” he said, as I dashed from the room and hastened to the kitchen, where my hurried search of the cupboards yielded only a large, wide-mouthed jar of the kind that Nan used for preserving big things like halves of peaches. Right. Well. Needs must, and all that.

I ran upstairs with it and found Curry still holding his pee, rambling aloud semicoherently about the Mivian army and the harbor they couldn’t blockade without sailing their fleet around the whole continent, and then something about supply lines, until I interrupted to remind him that he wanted to piss on those deserving Mivians. “Oh, yeah,” he remembered, and began fumbling with his sleep trousers so clumsily and with such frustration that I realized there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to get himself uncovered and aim for the jar without my help.

He didn’t even know he needed to aim. Curry thought he was just freestyle pissing onto a bunch of armed soldiers who wanted to kill us. Without me this was going to be a much bigger, and probably even more embarrassing, mess.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, then said aloud, “Mag, um—leave off, will you, and let me—uh—your belt’s stuck, I think. Let me unfasten it for you. My hands are smaller,” I said, and obediently he stopped trying to get his clothes undone. Burning with embarrassment for us both, I wedged the jar between his thighs and untied the drawstring that kept his trousers up, then uncovered him enough so that he wouldn’t piss on himself.

Then I held my watch partner’s penis in one hand, and the peach jar in the other, aimed the two at each other the best I knew how, and told him to pee.