An hour after Klara had left the Warrior Guild, she found herself approaching Kosgrad’s airship dock. The dock sat thirty feet above her, resting on the roof of a massive warehouse that jutted from the city wall. The dock was a huge platform made of hundreds of panels of uzhasgart, a black metal-like substance that the Alchemist Guild wrought.

  She crossed the street which ran east to west past the warehouse. To the west, huge roller doors stood open. The street intersected with a wide driveway that led through the roller doors and into the warehouse. Steam carts chugged in and out, loaded down with cargo to load onto the airships and wares to deliver to Kosgrad.

  Klara, however, aimed for a small side entrance guarded by a single Warrior. She nodded to the woman and stepped inside. The roar of steam carts and the yells of their drivers faded as she made her way through the dimly lit room. Bare concrete walls surrounded her, and ahead sat a large brass cage. Cables trailed through a square hole in the ceiling above it.

  A man in a mottled, beige Service Guild coat stood inside the cage, he smiled at her as she stepped in.

  “The dock,” Klara said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man said as he shut the gate and pulled a lever.

  The cage shuddered, and a distant grind of gears echoed down through the hole as the cage rose.

  Klara kept her eyes fixed ahead, her hands clenched to hide their shaking. The shake only due in part to being stuck in a metal cage supported by a few flimsy wires. She still couldn’t believe that her father had forbidden her from going to Katavsk. He hadn’t even given her a chance.

  The cage jerked to a halt, and the man yanked the gate open.

  Grateful to be free, Klara hurried from the cage and into a small, concrete room with a few paintings of airships and mountains decorating one wall. To the left, a chest-high counter divided the room. Behind it, two women in Merchant Guild coats sat, sorting paperwork and chatting to a man from the Harvester Guild lounging against the counter.

  None of them paid Klara any heed as she walked to the one door in the room, pulled it open, and stepped out onto the dock.

  The black platform was easily a hundred yards long, and perhaps four hundred wide. Despite the size—and her distance from the edges—Klara’s stomach lurched as she stared at the unbroken line of sky beyond the railless edge of the dock. The dock extended perhaps twenty yards beyond the edge of the city wall. A wall Klara knew bordered a hundred foot cliff. To the east, the wall wound along the cliff which bordered the entire south-eastern perimeter of the city.

  Klara dragged her eyes away from the skyline and scanned the dozen giant airships tethered to the platform. She recognised many of the emblems emblazoned on the side of their mainframes. The Orlov Trading Company, the Loban Trading Company and finally, at the far end of the dock, a small airship with the Trubnikov Trading Company emblem.

  Uncle Yuri was here. Klara breathed a sigh of relief; she hadn’t been sure he’d be in Kosgrad today. She hurried across the platform, steering clear of the airship crews loading crates onto wide carts—carts they then shunted to a brass platform similar to the one Klara rode up on. Except for the fact that it had no rails. And it was nearly big enough to hold one of the airships.

  A thunderous roar sent Klara’s hearts racing, and she glared at the offending noise. One of the Lobans’ airships had started its six engines. She hurried on as the crew cleared the surrounding ground and cast ropes off. A minute later, the monster rose into the clear, blue sky.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  As Klara drew near her uncle’s airship, she saw the name scrawled across the mainframe: Vera’s Revenge. An ache, many years old, tugged at Klara at the sight of her mother’s name. A woman loved by her father, but never known by Klara.

  Crew bustled up and down the narrow ramp protruding from the back of Vera’s Revenge’s gondola, following the yelled orders of a short, broad-shouldered man. His face was little more than a network of scars—injuries earned away from the luxury of healing extracts.

  Uncle Yuri.

  Yuri’s eyebrows rose when he spotted Klara. A long, creative string of swearing—questioning the mating habits of his crew—cleared the ramp and Klara strode up, returning the cheerful nods and hat tips from several of the scruffy men and women.

  “Klara!” Yuri said, reaching up to clap her on the back as she stepped into the dim hold of the gondola. “What brings you to my world?”

  “The need of a strong drink.”

  The smile slipped from Yuri’s face. “Sergei again?” Without waiting for a response, he ushered her through the hold and up a rickety stairwell into the bowels of Vera’s Revenge.

  A minute later, they reclined at a table before sweeping windows that wrapped around half of the large room—thankfully barred by brass railings. Through the windows, Klara could see over the edge of the dock to the wide expanse of tundra that stretched away from Kosgrad. The Zmeya River twisted through the landscape, the border between Serovnya and South Serovnya.

  Klara could just see the border of the greenhouse fields from her vantage point. The fields, hundreds of acres of farmland encased in glass and uzhasgart, were the source of all Kosgrad’s fresh fruit and vegetables.

  “So,” Yuri said, as he filled two glasses and slid one across the table to Klara. “What has my esteemed brother-in-law done today?”

  Before answering, Klara took the glass and knocked the vloysh back. “Ledavsk.”

  “Ledavsk isn’t all bad. It’s a bit windy though.”

  “Not that bad?” Klara exclaimed. “Only second-rate Sentinels get sent there! My father might as well have told my comrades I’m a failure. Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to get to Katavsk?”

  “Hard enough to deserve a place there.”

  “Exactly.”

  They lapsed into silence for a moment, then Yuri said, “Klara, you know Sergei just don’t want to lose anyone else. He already lost Vera and Lokteva, you’re all that’s left of his old life, his better life.”

  “I lost them too, and I have the right to honour them in my own way. Lok and I swore to each other that when the other died, we’d avenge them.”

  “A life lived for vengeance is not a life lived.”

  “Oh really? Is that why you named this ship Vera’s Revenge?”

  Yuri barked out a laugh. “Once, yes. Now it’s a daily reminder of years lost to bitterness and hate.”

  “So you feel I should pretend a Nishkuk didn’t steal Lokteva’s life? Just forget it?”

  “You’ll never forget it. It’ll live with you, a black pit in your hearts until the day you die. Nothing you can do will ever completely rid you of that pit.” Yuri fixed her with a hard-eyed gaze. “Think on this, girl: no amount of bloodshed can ease your pain. It risks only adding guilt and remorse.”

  “And I suppose you think I’ll feel guilty killing a monster like a Nishkuk?”

  Yuri dropped his gaze, staring instead into his empty glass. “No. It’s what you might do to get there that can destroy you.”

  Klara pushed back from the table. Coming here had been a mistake. “Thanks for the drink, Uncle, I’ll see myself out.”

  “Klara,” Yuri said as she reached the door. She hesitated. “Remember that your family loves you. As a Sentinel, you’ll swear to protect your family—the family that lives. Not the ones already dead.”

  “I know what the code demands,” Klara shot back. “If anyone threatens my family, they best be wary.” With that, she left.