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Much as I didn’t want a protracted eyeful of his private parts, I quickly figured out that if the point was not to make a mess, I did have to watch the whole time, to make sure the jar didn’t tip and wasn’t getting too full for its current angle—yeah. Well.

When he seemed done I tried to imitate the little shake I’d seen men do to knock off any remaining droplets, but my inexperience handling flaccid penises made me clumsy and I narrowly avoided spilling the jar outright. I quickly decided it wasn't the end of the world if he got a drop or two of urine on his pajamas. I got him put away again in his trousers and ran to empty the jar in the privy so it couldn’t get spilled.

“Mag,” I said when I returned, “can I get you up just enough to take some more medicine?” He grumbled a little at that, but eventually let me coax him up enough to take another couple spoons of the syrup. I had decided his meandering nonsense talk meant it was time I had to get the fever down like the book described. “I have to do a little more before I can let you sleep,” I said apologetically, but he wasn’t listening anyway, so I put a cup of willow tea on to steep and then went to the room just off the garden and found a small, clean, enameled pail that Nan used for a watering can sometimes.

Curry was huddled under the covers, making that awful wheezing sound again, and I couldn’t get him to sit up for the willow tea, because of something to do with the fucking Mivians and their ranged infantry, so I gave up on that and set the tea on the bed stand so I could get started trying to cut his fever the brute **** way.

Curry made an uncooperative sound when I pulled the covers off, but wasn’t coordinated enough to stop me. “Sorry,” I told him, cringing inwardly. If he was cold now, stripping him down and sponging his skin with cool water was going to be fucking awful. But there was nothing for it. I unbuttoned his sleep shirt, then realized I couldn't get it off him if he couldn't sit up, and left it. I debated over the trousers for a moment before recalling that he wasn’t wearing undershorts like he would with regular clothes. I would start with his chest and face and see how that went.

“Fuzzy,” he protested when I touched him with the cool sponge. “Stop.” He tried to inch away from me, but was stymied by the pile of wadded up covers I’d thrown off him. Once he realized there was nowhere for him to go, he cracked his eyes open and actually pouted at me. “I don’t like this.”

“I know, Mag,” I said unhappily. “I wish I didn’t have to. But you're pretty sick. Your fever has to come down.”

“I’m not the one who gets sick,” he disagreed.

“This time you were.” I rewet the sponge and passed it over his chest, then pressed it gently to his face and neck in different places, doing my best to ignore how much he disliked that, and eventually he resigned himself enough to settle into an affronted silence.

“Still feel like telling me all about the Mivian army?” I asked after a while, and he made a confused sound.

“Fuzzy?” he said after apparently failing to make sense of my asking after Mivians. “I think you had a point after all. I don't think I feel well enough to work today.”

No shit? I didn’t reply. “I know,” I said instead, setting the sponge down and stroking his hair. “I went to the kiosk in the night and sent the captain a message that we wouldn't be on duty.”

“Thanks for staying here with me,” he said after a moment.

“Of course,” I said, moving to button his sleep shirt back up. “Do you think if I put some pillows behind you, you could manage some willow tea? I’m trying to keep your fever down.”

“Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll try.”

“Thanks. It’ll give me some peace of mind. I think you were hallucinating a bit ago—I was a little worried when you started talking about all sorts of stuff that wasn’t real.”

I used a kitchen mitt to hold the kettle while I poured new boiling water into the mug with his cooling willow tea, then added more willow and a bit of honey to it before replacing the kettle over the fire.

“I was?” he sounded puzzled. “Like what?”

I decided to skirt the whole helping-you-pee-in-a-jar thing. “I guess you thought Mivia had the city under siege. You had a lot of opinions about their ranged infantry. And harbor blockades. And a lot of other shit.”

Curry thought that was pretty funny, until laughing over it sent him into a violent coughing fit.

“Do you want another spoon of the cough remedy?” I asked when he managed to get it calmed down maybe a minute later.

“Sure,” he wheezed, dragging in a cautious, painfully tender-sounding ragged breath. “That would be good.”

“How do you feel right now?” I asked, trying not to act fretful about it. “You don’t sound so good, Mag.”

“Fucking terrible,” he said at almost a whisper. “You’re not wrong.”

“What hurts?”

“Everything,” he said, closing his eyes while I positioned pillows at the head of the bed. “My eyeballs ache. And my teeth? Not that I know how to explain that. And every time you’re not talking to drown it out I hear this awful buzzing, ringing sound that makes me think I’ll go mad.”

The book had mentioned this ear-ringing as an effect of head congestion in some patients. “Then I’ll try to keep talking,” I said, stroking his hair, since he seemed to find that comforting. “Can you scoot up a little bit? I’ll try to help you sit up.”

Together we managed to get him partly up, enough at least to sip from a cup of tea, and I got the covers repositioned, removed the hot-water flasks from where they’d been lost in all the bedding, and got him the cup of willow tea.

“I’ve been using a book I found in the pantry and from that I’m pretty sure you have the grippe,” I told him as he sipped at the tea, for something to say. “It’s very interesting in places. For grippe, it says I have to wash my hands every time after I touch you, to keep from getting sick myself.”

“That’s true,” he wheezed. “Good you’re doing that.”

“Yeah?” I said with interest. “I guess you knew then—the book says it’s because of germs. No wonder people get so sick from the grippe, though, if its germs are bad enough to get at you through your hands.” I had a very dim grasp on what exactly germs were, beyond the occasional horrified sense of them as infectious agents that apparently burrowed their way into one’s body.

Curry smiled wearily. “Not just for the grippe,” he whispered. “Nan learned about it from working with the hospital of Rava. It’s not that they get through your hands. But since people touch their mouths and noses a lot without thinking about it, that’s how it gets you sick, if your hands aren’t clean.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling rather stupid at the obviousness of it, now that this was pointed out. “You’d think that’s something more people ought to know about.”

“I think it’s a newer advancement.” Curry gave me another wan, tired smile, then took a drink of the tea. “That cough remedy tastes better than most,” he remarked, changing the topic. “Did you get it from Mrs. Fang-Li? I can’t think of a single other chemist open such odd hours.”

“I made it,” I couldn’t help bragging, marking happily how impressed he was at this. “From a receipt in one of Nan’s books.”

“I shouldn’t have given you hassle about your mending before,” Curry said. “You really are all right at household things. I was just messing you about and being kind of a shit about it.”

“Aah, it’s all right,” I told him, moved to generosity by how normal this exchange felt compared with earlier.

Curry finished his tea, and before he could even do anything I had already hopped up to take the cup from him. “Are you tired? Do you want to sleep? Or want more to drink? The book says to make you sip lots of warm, soothing drinks.”

It was an enormous relief, for Curry to share some of this burden of making decisions about this unfamiliar circumstance, and for the comforting reassurance that he was obviously one of those people who pulled through such things relatively unscathed. It made sense, anyway. As he’d pointed out, I was the one who tended to fall ill, not him.

“Sleep now, I think,” he said. “But if you wanted to read to me, or something, I wouldn’t mind. It helps the ringing sound.”

“I will. What do you want to hear?”

“You choose,” he said, already beginning to slide downward in the bed to make himself more comfortable. “Doesn’t really even matter. You could read a dictionary and I’d just be grateful to hear your voice.”

I set the cup down. “How about another slug of that cough medicine?”

“Sure,” he agreed, and I fetched the bottle and carefully poured more of the syrupy liquid for him. This time he was well enough to take it from me and dose himself, which struck me a very promising sign. I took the spoon back and recorked the bottle, then helped him arrange the covers.

“I’m going to go find us something to read,” I told him. “And fair warning, I’ll probably wake you in a couple hours to take something more to drink. They said in the book that’s very important, to have a lot of liquids.”

Curry nodded vaguely, already fading. “Promise I’ll try not to be too disagreeable.”