The Citadel bisected the sun-blazed, azure sky with alabaster, but its shadow was so big, so absolute, that the Armory approached in a shaft of dusk. The street opened into a wide, cobbled thoroughfare as the last village buildings fell away and Dagger called a halt.

She turned to Pitch.

"I want clear, sharp and fast."

"They apothecary had a few interesting compounds," Pitch said. He shook a vial hard until the liquid glowed. He uncorked it and cupped his hand around the mouth, huffed from the fumes, then handed it around. The rest of the Armory took several strong, snorting inhales. The air brightened and even the Citadel's oppressive shadow lightened.

Dagger shivered appreciatively. "Oh, yes."

Her muscles, knotted and sore from the fight with the demons, unpicked as golden, cleansing fire pulsed up and down her spine. Even Vice's perpetual scowl lifted a degree or two.

"And now," Dagger said through deliciously gritted teeth, "this bullshit."

Six long flights of stairs with five wide-open landings led to the Citadel's massive iron doors. On each landing stood a pair of guards. On the first were two hulking figures draped in sheets of steel and leather. Each held a halberd big enough to behead the moon.

"The first two are mine," Dagger said from the fire in her belly.

"Aye, captain," Powder said, checking and re-checking the brace of loaded pistols strapped around her torso.

Pitch squinted past the first two guards. "Boss, wait a moment."

But Dagger ignored him, and left the rest of the band had no choice but to form up behind her as she marched up the first set of stairs. As they climbed, the tower swallowed the sky and became a frozen, stone wave poised to crash over them.

Dagger stepped onto the landing and the sentinels faced her with the creak and screech of leather and steel. Each was half again as tall as her and twice as broad. She hefted her hammer and waited to see which of the two steel-clad hulks would swing first. In her leathers she'd be faster. She eyed their glinting shoulders. Well, she thought, I did tell Saber to wait until we were sent to kill giants.

Something sailed over her head and shattered against the first of the two guards. Its armor smoked as acid ate through the metal and leather. If there was a living thing beneath the steel, it did not scream, but fell with a crash, thrashing as its armor was planed away to whatever lay beneath. The other guardian only watched. Perhaps it was afraid of touching the corrosive chemicals, or perhaps it was only a detached curiosity. When the first had stopped moving, the second turned to face Dagger. It lifted its halberd and was about to swing when a gunshot cracked and a hole punched through its chest plate. It staggered as the slug ripped out through its back. It did not bleed. There was a moment of delay, then the guardian lurched as if it had swallowed something the wrong way.

It shivered.

It fell.

Dagger spun to face her crew, her expression livid.

"What did I say?" she grated through bared teeth.

Pitch stepped right up to her, his face in her sternum and his chin jutted up at her pugnaciously. "And what's with this single combat shit? Since when do we solve problems like that?"

"I solve problems like that all the time," Saber said mildly.

"Saber," Pitch yelled, "you fight idiots on fields and in alleys who assume you carry that many blades because you're overcompensating."

"Well, no. It's because variety is the spi—"

"I know, Saber," Pitch interrupted, "I see your variety leaving every inn we stay at."

"Oh. Do they look satisfied?"

"Yes, and vaguely ashamed of themselves. Anyway," Pitch continued, "since when do we fight fair, boss?

"I lead, Pitch," Dagger said in a dangerous tone. She leaned down until she and the alchemist were nose to nose. "I take the first risk."

"Or maybe I just put too much fire crystal in that vial!" Pitch shouted.

Dagger's anger dipped. She fought to keep it there. "Did you?"

"I'm yelling at you, aren't I?!"

Dagger clenched her teeth. "Fuck's sake, Pitch."

"I figured we'd need a little more aggression since we were going to face the tower of fucking doom, or whatever this overgrown pile of rock is! And clearly, I fucking overdid it!"

Dagger frowned. "You going to stop yelling?"

"Maybe. Yes," Pitch said, mastering his tone with some effort. "Anyway, there's something odd here."

"There's something odd everywhere," Dagger said. "Everything we do is odd."

"Yeah, but... just show her, Powder."

Powder handed a telescope to Dagger and then reloaded her rifle.

"Look at each of the landings, boss," Pitch said.

Dagger put the glass to her eye. On the next landing was a pair of lithe swordsmen. After that was a pair of thickset, shirtless fighters, their fists wrapped in chains and their faces covered by steel masks. Beyond them were two men behind a barricade with a series of bottles and jars balanced across the top. And far past them, on elevated stone perches above the doors to the Citadel, were two sharpshooters. Their rifles were already trained on the Armory.

"What the fuck?" Dagger muttered, riding above the waves of chemical rage in her chest.

"What does all that look like to you?" Pitch asked.

"Like shitty versions of us," Dagger admitted.

"Almost like we're expected," Pitch said.

"Any idea how that's even possible?" Dagger asked.

"In a larger sense? No," Pitch said. "But as to what to do about this? That seems obvious."

"What do you suggest?" Dagger said, fighting to unclench her teeth.

"Ooh, I have an idea," Powder said and took aim at the distant barricade with the men that looked like they could have been Pitch's colleagues. She fired. One of the jars atop the barricade shattered and burst into flames. In rapid succession the other bottles burst in a technicolor conflagration that swallowed guards and barricade both.

"That was a very good idea," Powder said as she reloaded.

"What about the gunners? We don't want to get much closer," Dagger asked her, her augmented temper now fully under her thumb.

"We're out of range," Powder said.

"Of rifles? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure we're out of range of their rifles," Powder said with a wink.

As if to argue with Powder, one of the snipers fired. Something bounced and careened down the stairs past Dagger and whacked into Vice's shin. He growled in annoyance and looked down at his greave. He bent and plucked a deformed lead slug from the hard leather. "Ow," he muttered.

"See? Out of range," Powder said. "they clearly don't know how to compensate for bullet drop or muzzle velocity. Anyway, their barrels are too short. It's like somebody taught them to shoot yesterday."

But even that small attack on one of her people sent the fire thundering in Dagger's blood once more. She controlled it with effort. "Let's go. Saber, Vice. Take lead on the swordsmen."

"Be our pleasure," Saber said and turned to the gnarled monk. "Oh, I'm sorry, Vice. You probably don't plan to enjoy it, do you?"

"My shin hurts," Vice growled.

"Well, you got shot. Kinda."

Vice and Saber rushed up the stairs with the others close behind, and the waiting swordsmen drew their blades to meet them.

One of them swung at Vice, but the monk of the dead god caught the blade and struck it with his other fist, snapping it off near the hilt. He kicked the swordsman's legs out from under him, dragged the man to the ground and stomped him into the stone. Saber parried a thrust meant for Vice's back and forced the second swordsman back. They danced with their blades for a step or two, the edges glinting, until Saber closed the distance and forced the grapple, their hilts tangling. The guard shoved Saber back, but the duelist danced to the side, spun around the confused guard and then stepped back with his sword pointed at the man's eyes in a stylized pose.

With a crack, half the guard's head vanished in a puff of red mist.

"I had him!" Saber shouted at Powder.

"And?" Powder said, reloading her pistol.

"How come you didn't shoot Vice's guy?"

Powder shrugged. "Vice did his job. You were fucking around. If I wanted to watch you have fun, I'd peek through your keyhole at night."

"I hate you."

Powder blew him a kiss.

"These guards are not good," Vice said.

"No," Dagger said. "They aren't. Powder did say it was like the sharpshooters were given their guns yesterday."

"Correction, sharpshooter. Singular," Powder said, shouldered her rifle and fired. A limp shadow slumped from its perch to land in a heap before the great doors. Powder sighted again and swore.

"What?" Dagger asked.

"The other one's hiding. I can't get a clear shot," she said, fired again and cursed. The sharpshooter popped up and fired back. It whined past them like a big mosquito and then plinked down the rest of the stairs. Powder returned a shot. "We get any closer," she said, "and that prick might get lucky."

"Fuck's sake," Dagger said and ducked slightly as another shot whined past them.

On the next landing, the masked figures with chain-wrapped hands waited patiently. Powder fired and there came a little puff of dust from the stone above the sharpshooter's perch.

"This is fucking stupid," Dagger said. "And boring. Fall back."

They returned to the first landing where they were firmly out of killing range.

"Sorry, captain," Powder said.

Dagger looked at the armored giant guard Powder had shot. She knelt by the body and prodded among the armor plates with a short knife. She grunted, cut a pair of straps and lifted off the guard's chest plate. She lifted it by the straps and held it like a shield. It was nearly as big as she was if she moved in a crouch.

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"Behind me," she ordered.

They advanced behind Dagger and her breastplate barricade. Bullets plinked off the steel, and Dagger grunted and shifted as the bullets' impact grew with every step she took.

As they mounted the steps to the landing with the masked brawlers, they shuffled forward, their hands out to grapple. They went straight to the shield as if they thought it had come to life, and started idiotically pounding at it with both hands like they were driving railroad spikes. Dagger pushed back, swore and growled under her breath. "Somebody do something about these idiots."

Vice stepped out to meet them, but Saber and Pitch dragged him back behind the breastplate. Powder peeked out with a pistol and fired twice. The brawlers fell and the Armory advanced past the two newest corpses.

They climbed the next set of stairs to where the barricade was still burning with chemical fire. Sweat poured down Dagger's face. The sharpshooter fired again and punched through the metal. Dagger grunted and dropped to a knee. Her grip slipped and the breastplate tipped forward. Saber lunged and grabbed one of straps, but it was too heavy. As it fell, he was catapulted swearing over the top, up the last set of stairs and into the Citadel doors with a hollow bang. Powder stood tall and fired both pistols at the sharpshooter's position to force them behind cover as Pitch and Vice dragged Dagger up to the door by her leathers. Powder peppered the sniper with covering fire until they all stood beneath the protection of a stone overhang. Saber lay in a dazed heap.

"Saber, get up," Vice muttered.

"Dagger?" Saber groaned as he rolled over and felt his face for breaks. He spat out a gobbet of blood.

"I'm fine," Dagger grated. "Just pissed off. The steel slowed the bullet. It didn't get through," she picked the flattened metal slug from her armor and threw it disdainfully down the stairs. As Pitch prodded at her ribs, the sniper continued to fire down, bullets cracking ineffectually against the stone a few feet away.

Dagger gently shoved the alchemist back. "Pitch, I'm fine."

Pitch scowled. "You would say that if you were crawling up here lubricated by your own blood."

"What do you want to do about him," Saber asked Powder as she reloaded her pistols.

"Maybe Dagger can set up the shield again to toss you up there," she grinned.

"Very funny."

"It really was."

"We don't have to kill everyone," Dagger said.

"Out of character for us," Powder said.

"We're at the door already," Dagger said. "Who cares? Let them waste the bullets."

"What if he warns somebody we're here?" Saber asked.

Pitch shrugged. "We just fought past guards tailor made for us. I'd say surprise isn't on our side.

Dagger nodded. "Pitch is right. But when we're inside, we'll find a way up to that perch. Then I'm going to beat that shitty gunner to death with one of my boots."

The doors to the Citadel towered over them on steel hinges bigger than Dagger. She set her hands against one of the doors, took a deep breath and shoved.

It swung open as if it weighed nothing at all.

The Armory slunk into a central hall so large its edges vanished into shadow. The only light came from a low stone monument on a dais at the center of the hall, covered in spiraling patterns of too-bright candles. Along the curved wall to their left was a gradual set of stairs that circled the room and rose up beyond the reach of the monument's light.

"So. Up?" Powder asked, training her rifle on the place where the first bend of stairs became a blind spot.

"It is a tower," Dagger said and took point upon the stairs.

As they climbed, they couldn't help but stare at the blazing monument. As the dark reaches of the tower revolved and they climbed gradually higher, their attention shrank to that single luminous point. The floor filled with shadows like water in a well and the ever more distant light seemed to grow brighter. They lost perspective. Was the floor falling or was ceiling lowering to meet them? Or were they just spinning around the light endlessly?

But eventually, the Armory reached the top and Dagger climbed the final steps onto a walkway with the rest close behind her. At the end was a doorway filled with a perfect blackness. When Vice — who had brought up the rear of the climb — stepped off the stairs, the room lurched like a carriage brought to a stop too fast, and the Armory rocked with the aggressive tilt and clutched the wall for balance.

"What the fuck was that?" Dagger asked.

Vice muttered a prayer under his breath. Powder and Saber looked around as if they could shoot or stab physics. Pitch tapped Powder on the shoulder.

"Your glass?"

Wordlessly, Powder handed over the telescope and Pitch trained it on the glaring blaze of the monument far below.

"There's runework on the monument," Pitch said. "I can't quite read it, but there's no mistaking the patterns."

"What's that mean for us?" Dagger asked.

"I don't know. Yet. There's something familiar about it, but I can't quite place it. I should climb back down and check."

"Vice, go with him," Dagger said. "Powder, Saber, we'll hold the doorway."

As Pitch and Vice turned to descend, the steps rose to meet them, rolling over and over each other in a wave of stasis that went nowhere. The alchemist and the monk looked like trick dancers walking in place.

"Fuck," Pitch said.

"What the hell is happening?" Dagger asked.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Fuck what, Pitch?" Dagger asked.

Pitch threw up his hands in disbelief. "I've never seen it except in books. It's supposed to be bullshit."

"What is?" Dagger said. "Pitch, you keeping us in suspense? And stop trying to walk down the stairs, you're giving me a headache."

Pitch and Vice stepped back to flat ground.

"It's Temker's Clock," Pitch said, his voice a bit shrill. "I've only ever seen diagrams, but it's just a fucking theory! It's never been done before."

"What's Timmy's Crock?" Saber asked.

"Temker's. Clock," Pitch said. "It's an alchemical concept. From when the craft was more closely allied with magic, before the schism away from faith toward science. Temker was a disgraced priest from a religion that used labyrinths as a form of ritual meditation. He was obsessed with clocks. In his drift from faith, he blended those mystic practices with alchemy. He posited that light and timed revolutions in the right repeating patterns could break one free from time."

"Free from time?" Dagger asked.

"The stairs, think about how slow they ascended. Their angle. Even their width and their number. All of it was part of Temker's Clock. Every step we took, we were winding it."

"And you didn't think to mention that?"

"I didn't see it!" Pitch said, as angry with himself as the situation. "It's not supposed to be real. Temker was an even shittier alchemist than a priest. At the academy, they taught it as a cautionary tale not to allow one's preconceptions to pervert the search for truth."

"So, what does that mean for us?" Powder asked.

"It means there's only forward," Vice said. "There is always and ever forward. No other directions exist."

"Vice is mostly right," Pitch admitted, "if Temker's Clock was successfully applied here, which it looks like it was, it means the Citadel exists outside time, or at least everything inside it does. If that's the only entrance, it means whatever enters and climbs the stairs is broken free from time. Every living thing, maybe even every object, permanently in a state of timelessness."

"So?" Saber asked.

"While we are in the clock's grip, time won't pass. Not for us."

"So?" Saber repeated. "That's good, right?"

"No, Saber. It's not good," Pitch said, looking defeated. "We've been in here for half an hour. Maybe. By our reckoning. Meanwhile, the outside world could have marched along by years already. Decades. And if the Citadel itself isn't affected..."

"It still doesn't sound that bad," Saber said, "we'll wrap up this job quickly and get out of here."

"Saber, everything you do is governed by your perception of time. Everything. Every heartbeat. Every blink. Every memory. Worse, if the structure of the Citadel itself is not outside time, but everything inside it is, then it could crumble to dust over decades, but to us it would seem like five minutes. The floor you're standing on could vanish before you take your next step."

"Feels pretty solid to me," Saber said, stomping on the floor with both feet.

Pitch glared at Saber. "Why do you even have ears?"

"For nibbles," Saber said.

"Do you think about nothing else?"

"Stabbing."

"I give up."

Dagger gave them both a level stare. "If you two could talk this place to death, it would already be rubble. Worry about next when next happens."

They stepped through the doorway and into a glow that had been invisible from the other side, and they blinked as their eyes adjusted. The doorway vanished behind them, and when they turned again, they were in a long corridor. Guttering torches lined the walls and broken, twisted doors with barred windows lay on the stone floor. Pitch grabbed an empty torch sconce and the metal snapped free from the time-degraded stone and nearly dissolved in his hands.

"This is what I meant," he showed the others his handful of rust, "not everything in here is affected by the clock, perhaps just living things. This is eons of neglect."

"It looks like a dungeon or a jail," Powder said, nudging one of the fallen doors with the toe of her boot.

Dagger walked into the nearest cell. Against the far wall was a bucket and a low table. Mounted to the wall was a snarl of rusty chain restraints, decorated with several manacles at intervals among the links. The chains were woven through with wires that led to a leaking metal box with a hand-crank.

"Something was imprisoned here," Dagger said and lifted up one of the manacle-studded chains. Rust gave way and a manacle fell to the ground and broke. "Something with a lot of arms."

"Something they had to shock keep under control," Pitch said, pointing to the leaking device with the hand-crank. "That's an electrostatic generator. Diagram perfect. But like Temker's Clock it's just a theory. A way to produce low current electricity."

"Torture?" Saber said.

Pitch shook his head. "The current wouldn't be high enough for that. But either way, whatever or whoever they had here, time set it free. All it had to do was wait."

"So, where's the jailer?" Dagger mused. "Who was maintaining this place?"

"Nobody has for years, looks like," Pitch said. "Perhaps they're dead."

They left the cell and continued down the corridor. As they passed door after door, they saw that not all were shattered open. Some still had occupants. In one was a glass case filled with some viscous liquid. In others, humans and creatures they did not recognize met the Armory's curiosity with hopeless, dull eyes that suggested, even if the mercenaries had swung wide every door and offered them their freedom, they would still not escape.

At the end of the hall were metal double doors, streaked with rust and buckling bands of steel. The lock had been burned out by something. The bravos opened the doors on screeching hinges onto a hall the same size as the one through which they'd entered.

And heard the sounds of fighting and machinery.

"Oh good," Saber said, "some shit that isn't dead."

"Hold," Dagger muttered, and raised up a hand.

The hall held scattered pockets of glowing light with no visible source, as if there had been others but they'd gone out. The floor was crumbling and had given way in some places to large pits, and Dagger edged forward to peer into one of these drops. Below the floor were whirling gears, their teeth gritting together and stuttering as they turned. They whined and slowed down as they got stuck for a moment on some unseen debris, and then cracked free and spun back up. Several spiral staircases at the far end of the hall moved, spinning up into the ceiling perpetually like drills. At the center of the room, four human warriors fought with ten figures carved from some rough-hewn timber, as if the Citadel's firewood pile had come awake with a grievance about the forest it had been stolen from.

The human warriors were panting. Fatigue was slowing them down.

"Go," growled Dagger. "Keep the human ones alive. They may have answers."

The Armor rushed out onto the floor, taking care to avoid the yawning pits. The floor cracked and gave way under Pitch, who would have fallen if Vice hadn't grabbed him by the collar and dragged him clear. Once upright, Pitch hurled a clay sphere at the nearest wooden soldier and the ceramic shattered. The human warrior it had been fighting shied away as the wooden man caught fire, blazing and spinning. The wooden fighter bumped into two of its fellows and sent them tumbling to the ground. Dagger swung her hammer down onto one of the fallen golem's chests, cracking it in half. Vice leaned away from a golem's swing, grabbed the wooden limb and turned, sticking out his foot. As he spun with the golem's momentum, he pulled hard. The wooden soldier was too heavy and clumsy to stop itself, and it tripped over his foot and stumbled past him. Its feet clunked on the stone and it fell into one of the holes where it met the gears beneath with a grinding noise. One of the spiral staircases stuttered, stopped for a moment and then began to revolve again as the golem was ground to sawdust.

The human warriors rallied at the Armory's aid and leapt back into the fight. Two of them tackled one golem and bore it to the ground. They severed its arms and legs, using their swords and axes like pry bars. Saber chopped and danced around another, but while his estoc kept him elegantly out of range, it did little more than chip and glance off the wood. With an angry swear he dropped the slender, thrusting weapon and drew his cleavers. When the golem lunged, he ducked and hacked its legs at the knees, rolling clear as it dropped. It fell and immediately began to crawl after him, but he jumped over it, spun in the air and landed on its back to ride it as he chopped away its head and arms at their joints.

Powder fired from a distance, staggering the wooden men as Dagger, Vice and the other warriors ganged up on the rest and dismembered them, tossing their hewn pieces through the holes in the floor. More gears stopped and choked, jammed with bits of wooden warrior and one of the staircases ceased to spin with a coughing grind.

Saber swore as he picked up his dropped estoc. "Poor baby, look what they did to your point."

"Next time we'll let you cower in the background," Powder said.

"But that's your job," the duelist said, sheathing the weapon.

"Shut up," Powder said and knelt by a wooden golem's torso. She began digging her bullets out of its knotty flesh.

The wounded, exhausted human warriors stood panting, and eyed the Armory warily.

"Who are you?" Dagger asked.

"That double dealing bitch," the lead warrior said, still trying to catch his breath. "She told us we had the contract."

"The queen?" Dagger asked.

"Yes."

"That's the way with rulers. Don't take it personally."

"Don't get in our way."

"Or save your asses again?" Dagger said. "Don't worry. Next time we'll just watch you lose a fight to some tree stumps."

One of the other warriors whispered in their leader's ear.

"He wants to know what that is," the man said, pointing at Powder.

"That's a woman," Saber said, "though I can understand your confusion."

Powder whipped a deformed bullet through the air. It hit Saber in the side of the head with a solid sound.

"Ow!" he yelled and rubbed his head. "Don't waste those! We might be in here a while."

"Worth it!" Powder crowed.

"No," the warrior said, "her weapon. The one that shoots fire."

Dagger turned to look at Powder with a raised eyebrow. "You mean the gun?"

The warriors looked at each other. "Where do such strange weapons come from?"

Dagger frowned. "Everywhere. You've never seen a gun?"

"Let me handle this, boss," Pitch said. "Tell me," he asked the warriors, "what year is it?"

"1194. It is always summer in these lands, but it is the Season of Frost in the Kingdom of Karlwhyte."

"I see," Pitch said. "Thank you."

"We do thank you," the warrior said. "but we'll go our separate ways. If we meet again, well, the contract is ours to complete," the warrior saluted with his sword and led his band away through a side doorway.

"Pitch, what was that about?" Dagger asked. "You know what the year is, and it's not 1194."

"The exact answer doesn't matter much anyway," Pitch said. "The Karlwhyte Empire's ruler was idiot who forced his people to use a calendar that began with the day of his coronation."

"Where's Karlwhyte," Saber asked, "I've never heard of it."

"That's because it's barely a footnote in history," Pitch said. "Karlwhyte fell two hundred years ago."