"That's why he's never seen a gun," Pitch said. "They hadn't been invented yet."

"Then..." Powder said.

"They must be among the first hired to destroy the Citadel," Pitch answered. "If not the first."

"Temker's Clock?" Dagger asked and Pitch nodded.

"The Citadel has removed itself from time," Vice said. "Only the gods are capable of such artifice."

"Apparently not," Pitch said.

"Lets keep moving," Dagger said.

"Up or down, captain?" Powder asked. She walked over to one of the constantly drilling spiral staircases, and peered up. The staircase, now that she was close to it, wasn't actually moving up and down but perpetually curling its way up into the next floor of the tower. It appeared to be endless. "Nevermind, captain. Only one option."

"Unless we want to follow those guys," Saber said, thumbing at the doorway the four warriors had disappeared into.

"They're not our problem," Dagger said. "Vice?"

"Yes?" The monk was standing off to the side, staring at nothing. Of all of them, he seemed the least fascinated with their surroundings.

"Can the Vigil's servants move us through time?"

"Possibly."

"Can you ask?"

"I have been trying to reach them."

"And?"

Vice shook his head.

"What are you orders, captain?" Powder asked.

"Forward. Always forward. We have a job to do."

"Wait," Saber said, "what if we just work our way back to first room? The queen said agents of the Citadel were able to go in and out. There must be a way back. Powder can bomb the clock thing into oblivion. Boom. Done."

Pitch thought about it. "You know, Saber, that's not a bad idea."

"Don't sound so shocked."

"One problem."

"Of course there is," the swordsman muttered.

"We can't be sure how long we've been here. If we simply destroy the clock, we might find ourselves only minutes from when we left, or decades. Centuries. We could exit the citadel at a time hundreds of years past our own."

"We'll save that as a last ditch option," Dagger said. "Pitch, do you have any paper?"

"Of course," Pitch said, producing a notebook and charcoal pencil.

"Start charting our way through here, best you can."

Pitch took a moment and sketched their path through the citadel thus far. As maps went, it looked more like a stack of river stones. Pitch shook his head.

"Is that going to be any use?" Saber asked.

"Probably not," Pitch said.

The Armory moved to the revolving staircase near Powder, stepped aboard, and rode its slow revolutions up, up, up into the next floor of the Citadel of Stairs...

...and emerged under a dark sky filled with stars.

"You weren't kidding about the time," Saber said. "It was noon an hour ago."

"This is bullshit," Powder said. "That's not how stairs or buildings work."

"Maybe it's the roof," Saber suggested.

"It's definitely not the roof," Dagger said.

They stood on one of hundreds of overlapping, uneven steel platforms that had been riveted haphazardly attached to one another, overlapping treacherously and with gaps between as if they'd been installed as the workers went. Their steps were hollow on the metal, as if the very air around them was swallowing the sound. In every direction was endless black expanse decorated with the glinting lights of distant stars. They steel floor stretched away ahead of them, longer than it was wide. It ended to either side perhaps a hundred feet in both directions. Behind them was the edge of it, and where the staircase should have been, was more steel floor.

"No backtracking," Dagger said.

Pitch was looking up at the black sky.

"These aren't our stars," he said finally.

"What do you mean?" Dagger asked, "Stars are stars."

"These aren't the stars we see in our sky. I have never seen these constellations," Pitch said and pulled a loose rivet out of the floor. He walked to the edge of the platform and hurled the bit of steel. It flew for a moment, but paused with a hiccup and then drifted at a much slower pace. It floated slowly out of sight. Pitch walked to the edge of the platform and peered over the side.

"You'd all better have a look at this," he said.

Dagger knelt near him. "Well, that's interesting."

The plates they walked across had been nailed into massive bones. Beneath them was the curve of a single rib the size of a building that bent below them and vanished into more darkness that, just like what they perceived as the sky above, was also full of stars. Behind them was the curve of a skull, bigger than a manor house and stripped of any trace of flesh. Ahead, the ribs ticked off distance and far away a pelvis curved. They were walking along the back of a skeleton interred in the sky.

"We're going to lose our fucking minds in here," Saber said.

"Where's the stonecold duelist and despoiler of bedchambers we all know and love?" Powder asked.

"I haven't cracked yet, Powder. But come on."

"You won't," Dagger said. "We can't afford it. Pitch how're we doing?"

"I've enough for several more doses."

"Then we move forward. There's something ahead. Maybe it's another door."

"I don't think so," Powder said, her glass up to her eye. "unless doors move."

"Have you not been paying attention?" Saber asked. "This place follows the rules even less than we do."

They picked their way over the plates, keeping their eyes firmly down and on the path ahead. Each of them learned the hard way that staring up into the winking, diamond-studded expanse of the black sky created a feeling of vertigo as if one would, at any minute, fall up into it forever. The plates beneath their feet were rusty and pitted, like they'd been stolen from someplace that had rain, or even wind.

"Blood," Vice noted and pointed down at their feet. Under their boots were dark brown streaks.

"Looks like something was dragged across this."

"Heading in the same direction we are," Dagger said.

"Wonderful," Saber muttered.

As they neared the distant shadow that was not a door, it took shape in the starry halflight. Something was moving busily around a structure no larger than a country shack. It looked like a very tall man in a cloak. Chains dragged the ground behind it as it moved. They closed in, and Dagger had them hold their position. Whatever it was hadn't noticed them yet, though there was no cover. The figure had arranged a pile of corpses, their armored parts interlinked in what could only be called patterns. Limbs seemed to form language, though not any that could be spoken. Heads were arranged in trinities, balanced upon tripods of legs bound together by wire, string and even intestines. One of the steel plates from the makeshift decking under their feet had been driven into the mass embrace of the dead.

It looked like nothing so much as an altar.

The figure tending it turned its cloaked head to regard them and the chains clinked behind it as it walked. It did not behave as if it felt threatened. It bound an arm and hand missing most of its fingers into place, stepped back to gaze critically at its work and then turned to face the Armory, its face still hidden inside its hood. The cloak had been made with a patchwork of skin and cloth, stitched together with stolen sinew. It lifted something small and organic looking from inside its cloak and raised it to the shadow of its hood.

"Ah, you've come to add to my work," it said in the light voice of a young male human. It's tone was cheery, friendly and unmarred. "Welcome. Welcome."

"Who are you?" Dagger asked.

"You could not speak my name if I told it to you, just as I could not speak yours before I made my translator. You may call me the Craftsman, if you'd like, though that too is not accurate. You could think of me as a traveler, if the distances I go could be conceived of by your minds."

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to make a... phone call," the craftsman said. Below its cloak its body moved and rippled, though still partially concealed by the drape of the patchwork, it seemed as if it had more arms or legs than could be seen. It shoved a length of chain out of its way. The far end of it had a steel plate that had been twisted free of something.

"A phone call?" Dagger asked.

"Mmm. A word from your world, yes? Do you not understand it?"

"No," Dagger said, "not really."

"Hmm. I am forced to work with the language I learned from the medium of my work," it said, gesturing to the pile of arranged corpse parts, "perhaps... yes. Yes. You would prefer an older word. Very well, though it will be less accurate. I am trying to send a telegraph."

Dagger shook her head.

"Still no? Older then. I am trying to send a letter."

"With corpses?" Dagger asked.

"How else?" The Craftsman said.

"Is this an altar to your god," Vice asked, stepping forward.

"God. Yes. This word. My medium used it as well, though with less reverance than you. In fact all of my medium used it in the moments before, when they still walked and made the noises I now make with my device. This I have learned in those moments... before. You believe you are aided by beings more powerful than yourselves, yes? A strange idea. My medium called for one named Jesus Christ. Another for Allah. Still another begged for something it called basic human decency. Decency. Do you know any of these words?"

"No," Dagger said in a dull voice, eyes fixed on the piled dead.

The Craftsman lowered its hand and began to walk around the device, its chains dragging behind it. It reached out to adjust and move the pieces. It tightened twines of wire and tried to force the limp parts to balance differently. The patterns in the pile shifted as it did, and the jointed parts formed new, strange glyphs. The Craftsman looked as if it was wearing armor, or that it was built of armor. Its fingers were like needles of glass.

"It is frustrating," the creature said. "Your kind are too soft for me to work with properly. My kind. My kind holds its integrity after... death. If I could work with my kind, I would already have made contact. I would already be going home."

"Sorry to hear that," Dagger said. "Have you a seen a way out of here?"

"There is a door at the far end," the Craftsman said. "Near one of the feet. The... left. Left is the word my device suggests I use. Feet. Door. Your language takes a long time to convey even a single idea."

"Thanks," Dagger said. "We'll just be on our way. Good luck getting home."

"No," the Craftsman said. "I need you to stay. To help me send my letter. Will you help me?"

"Not that way," Dagger said, gesturing to the pile with her hammer.

"No. You will... fight is the word. A strange concept that my medium also believed in. Conflict. One suggested we would go to war. What is war? Is it also one of your powerful helpers?"

"Yes," Dagger said. "We can show you."

"You are not agitated. You are... calm," the Craftsman said. "Why is this? My medium was afraid. They made loud noises. They made... threats in the moments before they joined my work. They did not even talk as we do now. Will you do the same? You do not behave as they did. Why?"

"Chemistry," Pitch answered.

"Chemistry," the Craftsman almost seemed to taste the word. "A framework of reason pressed upon the chaos of the world to give it shape, meaning. Yes."

"Wait," Powder said, stepping forward past Dagger's warding arm. "It's fine, captain."

Powder took something from her belt and approached the Craftsman, who towered over her in its shabby cloak. "This will let you signal somebody far away. If it works, will you let us pass?"

"Pehraps. How does it work?"

"It uses light."

"Light. That is clever. I have not tried light. There is not much light here."

"Just from the stars," Powder said.

"Stars. You see them as lights, but they are distant worlds. How does your device work?"

"I have to light it. With fire."

"Fire. Yes," The Craftsman asked.

"It's a way that we make light and warmth."

"Yes. My medium was very warm once. I could feel them as I could feel you. You are also warm. Your world must be very cold."

"Sometimes," Powder said and again gestured for the Craftsman to take what she held. It reached out one segmented arm. It ended in something that might have been a hand, but was instead a bundle of delicate little appendages of different shapes, sizes and perhaps purposes. Powder placed what she held in it. A thin, steel tube with a short fuse dangling from it. Powder took out her striker and flicked it, sparks dancing against the end of the fuse until it caught. The Craftsman flinched.

"That is very bright. It has been a long time since I have seen something so bright," it said, its hood turned to the hissing fuse as it burned.

"Yeah," Powder said, "very bright."

The fuse reached the metal tube. Powder shut and covered her eyes.

"Why are you..." the Craftsman said as the device burst into a thousand sudden sunrises.

The Craftsman reared back, covering its cowl with one arm. The device it spoke through fell to the ground. Powder, eyes still shut and sighting by ear, dropped her hands to her belt and popped up her twin scatterguns. She cut loose with both into what might have been Craftsman's chest. The Craftsman flexed the body within the cloak, but made no sound. Dagger rushed behind Powder, throwing her back out of reach of the Craftsman's flailing arms. Several more had burst from its cloak. She swung her hammer low, and it crushed its way through what Dagger hoped was a leg and ripped away the Craftsman's cloak.

Revealed, the Craftsman looked like a collection of limbs and razors. Something like an insect without a thorax, and Dagger was glad of Pitch's emotion-deadening chemicals. She backed off and the rest of the Armory formed up around her. The Craftsman's face, if that was even accurate, was a blank ovoid somewhere near the top of the its collected spindles, and was blank except for dozens of tiny holes. It spread its limbs and gestured at the Armory in what might have been a battle cry, but it was silent. Chains dangled from its arms and legs, each ending in the same metal fasteners.

The Armory circled. The Craftsman spun its sharp limbs, and the chains attached to them flailed dangerously. The only sound it made was the skittering of sharpness upon the metal floor and the rattle of metal. Pitch heaved a jar, and the Craftsman smashed it from the air, but the acid inside splashed its limbs and ate several of them down to nubs. The Craftsman hunched and tucked the crippled appendages close, replacing them with others. Vice and Saber moved in, Vice caught scalpeled strikes upon his gaunlets, but still picking up a dozen razor cuts as he trapped limb after limb and smashed them between his fists. Saber fared better, his entire craft based on moving between sharp bits of metal, but even he was bleeding in several places while he tried to find a soft target for his estoc. He struck true again and again. There seemed to be nothing of the Craftsman but limbs, and its strange eyeless "head" towered out of reach. Finally, Vice and Saber coordinated their attacks, occupying one half of the limbs each between them and dividing the Craftsman's attention. Dagger rushed between them, getting stabbed twice as she swung her hammer at the center where its limbs met and let the weight of her hammer carry her forward with total abandon. The heavy weapon struck the center of the Craftsman with a sound like cracking ice. Her hammer continued and half-pinned the Craftsman to the metal floor with its weight. The Craftsman lay there, its limbs flailing as it tried to remove the heavy lump of steel.

"Why did that work?" Saber asked, looking down at the struggling creature.

"It's got no weight of its own," Dagger said. "No mass."

"One second, captain," Powder said and dashed around the flailing limbs to the head, stood out of reach, and aimed at the Craftsman's pocked face with a pistol. The gun barked, and the Craftsman's head caved in along one side. The Craftsman spasmed and went still, silvor ichor pouring from the wound.

"So that was it's head after all," Dagger muttered, cautiously lifting her hammer off the creature. It did not stir.

"Either that or it carries its brain and heart in its ass," Saber said. He went to the device the Craftsman had been speaking through and picked it up with a face. "It's damp," he said.

"Let me see that," Pitch said, taking the contraption from Saber, who wiped his hand on his thigh. Pitch turned the device over and over in his hands. The bulk of it was made from a hollowed out human femur. Stretched over one side was a veil of organic strings or fringe. Pitch peered at them. "Ah. Interesting."

"What is it, Pitch?" Dagger asked.

"Vocal chords," Pitch said and gestured to the pile of bodies. "Probably from one of them. So it could speak, I would guess."

"This thing could make a bugle out of a neck, but couldn't find a way out of here?" Saber asked.

"I'd argue the "he" designation, Saber, but yes. It seems that way," Pitch said.

"Well, we're fucked," Saber said wryly.

"He didn't say he couldn't get out of here," Powder said. "He said he wanted to go home. That he was trying to contact home. It's not the same thing."

Pitch was examining the altar. The metal plate that formed the central shelf had a head on it. Powder picked up one of the weapons that had been discarded near the pile. It looked like a kind of rifle. The helmets on the disembodied human heads that formed the base of the altar had glass visors instead of steel.

"I've never seen a rifle like this before," Powder said, and manipulated a lever around the gun's trigger. A glass tube popped out of the side and skittered away, lost forever between gaps in the metal floor. Around them space and stars revolved. There was not even wind to disturb the quiet and their voices all sounded too loud. Without meaning to, they whispered. Powder turned away, sighted down the rifle's barrel and pulled the trigger. A beam of light shot from the end without even a hint of recoil. Another glass tube popped out of the side.

"I'm keeping this," Powder muttered.

"Leave it," Dagger said. "It'll be dead weight when it runs out of ammunition."

"You're no fun, captain."

Saber removed the human head from the altar shelf and then went to the body of the Craftsman. Kneeling, he drew a cleaver from his belt and severed the ovoid head. He picked it up, dripping silver across the ground, and placed it on the altar.

"Why did you do that?" Pitch asked.

"Don't know," Saber said, "seems poetic. Didn't he say if he could use his own kind he would have already made contact?"

"Your leaps of reason occasionally shock me, Saber," Pitch said. "It's like you do it without thinking."

"Thanks, Pitch. I think."

"It said there was a door by the left foot," Dagger said. "Lets go."

They moved down the wide expanse of steel plates to the place where it forked and turned left, moving with care along this narrow path. At the end of it was a shimmer in the air, a heat-wave like disturbance in the blackness of the space around them. As they neared it, Powder turned to look behind them.

"Captain," Powder said in a tense voice.

The Armory turned.

Something had appeared in the starry void of the sky, a negative blackness that blotted out the starlight where it sat. It nearly filled that side of the sky and was made of sharp angles. It moved closer, and some of its planes glittered in the dim bouncing starlight.

"What the fuck is that?" Saber asked.

"It could almost be called a ship," Pitch said, "if it had sails."

"Or if there was wind to move it," Powder noted.

They watched it get closer.

"Time to go," Dagger said, and turned to Saber. "I think Saber's little leap of reason worked too well."

"That happens sometimes," Saber said.

The ship was growing closer.

"Go. Through the door. Now!" Dagger grated, shoving her team one at a time through the portal until only she was left standing on the metal plated skeleton in the voice of benighted space. She looked a moment or two longer at the vast ship in the sky. It was close enough that she could guess its size was much larger than the skeleton she stood on.

"Go then. Collect your dead," Dagger muttered and ducked through the door.