Deadly Quicksilver Lies by Glen Cook Page A

lifted my head to scope out an escape route. I kept seeing two of things when I could see through the water in my eyes. I got my feet under me again and practiced standing up till I could do it with no hands.
    My chosen escape route did not become overgrown while I was catching my breath. I shoved off the wall and started staggering. There was a stairwell door straight ahead, out in the remote distance, on the far horizon, about twenty feet away. All kinds of racket came from behind it, as though thunder-lizards were mating in the stairwell. I didn’t pay the racket any mind. I didn’t have any mind left over. What I had was busy thinking “out.”
    I was chugging right along, hardly ever falling down, when she of the glorious gams intercepted me. “What are you trying to do? I told you... Oh!”
    I grinned my winningest grin. “Oh-oh.”
    “Oh, my god!”
    “Hey, no. I’m just a regular guy.”
    Maybe she had trouble hearing over the racket from the stairwell. Or maybe she had trouble hearing over the uproar from the hall and ward. She sure didn’t get my message. She whooped and hollered like she thought she was going to get carried off by a lunatic or something.
    I grabbed a wrist, mostly to keep from falling down. I noticed that she was blond and recalled that that was one of my favorites but I didn’t have oomph enough to let her know. The bleeding had stopped a long time ago, but my head wasn’t much better. The smoke hadn’t done me any good, either.
    I hacked out, “Pipe down! We’re going for a walk, sister. I don’t want anybody should get hurt, but that ain’t my top priority. You get the drift? You keep on wailing —”
    She shut up. Blue eyes big and beautiful, she bobbed her head.
    “I’ll cut you loose at the front door. Maybe. If you’re good and I don’t get no more trouble.” Snappy rhetoric, Garrett. Your roots are showing.
    I was getting the edge on the smoke, though. I was ready to bet myself she would be good. A figure like that, it burned. No. Forget fire. Fire means smoke. I just swallowed enough smoke to last forever.
    I leaned on the lady like she was my sweetie. “I need your help.” Rotten to the heart, I am. But this would be our only date.
    She nodded again.
    Then she tripped me, the naughty girl.
    And then my friend Winger blasted through that stairwell door, flinging battered orderlies ahead of her. “Goddamn, Garrett! I bust in here fixing to save your ass and what do I find? You trying to bop some bimbo in front of the whole damned world.” She grabbed my collar, hoisted me away from my latest daydream, who had gone down when I had. Winger set me on my feet, then proceeded to whip the pudding out of a burly, hirsute attendant who meant to object to the irregularity of the way she was checking me out. Between punches she grunted, “You got to get your priorities straight, Garrett.”
    No point mentioning who tripped who. You don’t explain to Winger. She creates her own realities.
    While she was amusing herself with the hairy orderly, I asked the lady doctor, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
    She wouldn’t answer even after I apologized for playing so rough.
    “For heaven’s sake, Garrett, give it a rest,” Winger snapped. “And come on.”
    I went along because she grabbed hold and took off. I grabbed the blonde as we went past. Down those stairs we went, stepping over the occasional moaning attendant. Winger had come through like a natural disaster. I bubbled, “I do hope I haven’t been too much trouble. Unfortunately, I can’t hang around just because somebody out there wants me in here instead of stomping on his toes.” I put on my grim face. “When I catch up with him, I’ll make sure he gives you a big donation. Big enough to cover damages.”
    Winger rolled her eyes. She didn’t slow down and she didn’t let go.
    The lady of the legs said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
    Winger grumbled, “As serious as he