The Adventures of Benjamin Skyhammer by Nicole Sheldrake

curt thanks.
    "We're entering the Bay of Biscuits."
    Skyhammer tore his eyes away from her slate and looked ahead. The port was just ahead, embraced by two headlands lined with dark, mussel-covered rocks. Floatilla loomed overhead.
    Higgins brought the ship down into the water next to a dock. The airships matched their movements, staying in exact formation around them.
    A bolt of fire sizzled overhead and struck a shield above them, creating a huge shower of sparks. Skyhammer started.
    What he had thought was traffic in the air above them now converged into an all-out attack. Forty or fifty carpets hovered above them. Each spell that struck the shield burst into sparks. Encapsulated in a sphere of light and noise, Skyhammer couldn't see beyond the tight circle of airships that held the King's Guard.
    "Are they strong enough?" Skyhammer shouted to Higgins.
    She laughed. "They're Mage level magicians! They do this for a living! And they've trained together. They can hold off pretty much anything, especially a rag-tag bunch of humans."
    "Captain Higgins!" one of the guards shouted.
    Higgins and Skyhammer hurried over to him.
    "We're getting you off this ship and onto one of ours for the rest of the journey. You have one minute to gather your things. We'll take care of your ship while you're gone."
    They raced down to their quarters and grabbed their backpacks. Noise from the exploding spells made conversation almost impossible. It seemed to be getting worse.
    When they arrived back on deck, the guard had unrolled a carpet.
    "This will take you to our Captain's ship over there." He pointed to an airship hovering about one hundred feet off the bow of Higgins' ship. "I've spelled it with shields and directions. Get on."
    A second after they stepped on, the carpet leapt into the air.
    Clutching his backpack, Skyhammer fell to his knees and closed his eyes. "I hate the Royal Circle," he groaned. All this Nasuchu-damned flying.
    Skyhammer opened his eyes only when he felt the carpet touch down on the airship's deck. A pair of boots barred the front of the carpet.
    "Glad you could join us, Captain Higgins. Please come this way." Acidophilous. The boots marched towards the command deck.
    Overhead, spells continued to bombard the shields. Most of the ship's main deck was covered by seated troops, slates in hand. Maintaining the shields, Skyhammer supposed. There were two rows of ten guards. He strolled behind Higgins and Acidophilous.
    "We have orders not to harm any citizens, so we are attempting to bring them down to the ground," Acidophilous explained. "They are not amenable." The group paused to watch two of Acidophilous's troops cast a spell at an attacker and force her carpet down to the docks. "They have had a chance to blow off some steam though, so that should help."
    When they reached the command deck, Acidophilous pointed to two chairs with a good view of the ship. "Please have a seat. We are leaving for the Palace." He called movement orders out to his commanders and the guard magicians.
    All but two airships began to rise.
    The attackers' spells stopped coming for a brief moment, and Skyhammer caught a glimpse of the people who had so much hatred for him. Most of them, now looking confused, sat cross-legged in the middle of single- or double-person carpets. They looked like ordinary men and women and an interesting mixture of rich and poor.
    Who was the Retrograph Sorcerer who had turned humans into panic-stricken and angry citizens? One person with more power than all the King's Guards put together, that's who. It was not who the Sorcerer was, but what he or she had done. Performed magic on a Relic. It took great confidence or arrogance to change a Retrograph, to change so many people's Retrographs. And to give the impression that they were going to sabotage the ceremony! Skyhammer knew the Sorcerer had to be higher than Wizard level to affect a Relic; he had sold Relics to collectors whose first action after buying was to