Watching the citadel drop away, and knowing that it was carrying both Petra and Anika*, was the worst moment of my life. I had this terrible and unexpected urge to throw myself off the edge, even though I knew the fall would kill me. I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t really want to die and I’ve never felt anything like it before.

Since then I’ve met a few people who had similar moments on that day. I think it might have been a moment of complete desperation. It felt like the world was shifting. Everything was changing so quickly, it was so confusing and here was so much uncertainty.

Once I’d gotten over wanting to throw myself over the edge I wanted to get out of the city but the Gondola stations were all smoking ruins and the city was full of Ostian uniforms so I went back to our old apartment.

Once I was there I realised that I had to plan for getting out of the city. I went through all our gear, imagining that I might have to make a run for it with only what I could carry I repacked my walking pack with that in mind. While I was doing that I found our map of all the things we’d found working for the Mayor and I decided that there was no way I was letting the Ostians see that. I made a copy of the map by embroidering it onto a kerchief. Then I embroidered a few decoy symbols for good measure and tacked it into the collar of my jerkin. I used it to pad out that bit of the collar where it rubs when I’ve got a heavy pack on. Then I destroyed the original paper map.

After that there was nothing to do but wait. I wanted to be doing something useful but I didn’t know what the Ostians were up to so I didn’t know how to help anyone.

###

Early the next day the Ostians started dragging people off for questioning. They had some sonic amplifier devices and they sent those around the city. Some horrible little twerp shouting at people to stay indoors unless told otherwise and to co-operate if they were asked to attend an interview.

I wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing but I also didn’t want to get shot on the first day of the occupation so I got to know everyone else left in the building. They were mostly scholars but there were a couple of Apprentices from the guild of Plumber and Engineers, Hoorst Brooman and Seppo Gilder

I wasn’t planning anything back then, just getting to know people, but almost as soon as I met them I knew that they could help me to do something to get people out of Moonstone.

###

It took days for the Ostians to get to me. By the time they finally pulled me in for questioning they’d started allowing people to leave their homes to engage in “economic activity” and some people were distributing food but everyone was still on edge.

I got a knock at the door and there were three of them in uniform there to “accompany me to their Headquarters”.

They’d had difficulty finding somewhere to take over as their base. All the impressive, high status, civic buildings left with the Citadel or got destroyed when they took out the Gondola network. The building they picked was very imposing and elegant but I remembered it from before, back when it was a finishing school for the daughters of the rich, when I’d been employed to cut back some of the shade trees in the formal garden. They ran classes on how to manage large estates, throw tasteful parties and hire reliable staff.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The Ostians had a bunch of information about me, which I expected, so I just answered their questions as truthfully as I could without actually being helpful. When they eventually asked me about the mysterious job that the Mayor kept posting, I told them about the compact and I apologised for not being able to say anything about it.

I did worry that they might not believe me but they did some spell and I started glowing and apparently that was all the proof they needed. They let me go but put some sort of locator enchantment on me so they could track me. I was careful to stay close to home. Hoorst and Seppo visited me regularly so I could stay in touch with their guild.

After a few more days of waiting the Ostians escorted me to the finishing school again. They walked me through the process of creating my own compact so I could make one with them and tell them about the job. They were very thorough.

So I explained the job. I was very careful that everything I said was true but I did leave some things out and I allowed them to make certain assumptions. This may have given them the impression that the Mayor was in the habit of organising the wholesale stripping of the interiors of abandoned homes in the city just as soon as the owners stopped checking on them. Which was what I assumed when I first heard about the job.

I even drew them a map. A map of big abandoned houses that I knew still had some salvageable stuff inside but that didn’t connect to any of the caves or to the deeper levels of the city.

They were so impressed by my helpfulness that they thanked me for my efforts and removed the locator enchantment. I could practically see the coins dancing in their eyes.

Then I went back home and used everything they’d taught me to create a new compact with Hoorst and Seppo so I could draw them a map of the houses that linked into the deeper cave network. That was the beginning of the Moonstone Underground.

###

We built the Underground using a cell structure. Each cell was three of four people bound by a compact. We passed along the knowledge of how to make compacts and conceal the maps.

Once the guild of Weavers and Fibre Arts got involved they started making their own kerchief maps that had a visible decorative map of the city with the cave entrances marked with hidden knots that had to be detected with the fingertips. They started selling the basic design without the hidden knots as souvenirs. Mostly to Ostian soldiers to send back home as gifts.

The Underground spread out across the city, mainly via the guilds. Once we had the guild of Navigators working with the guild of Plumbers and Engineers and some of the remaining Arcane Scholars it was just a matter of time before we had our own secret Gondolas and that was when people started leaving the city.

The Ostians had reopened the city for trade and they said in public that people could come and go as they chose but that wasn’t really true. You couldn’t leave without the right kind of travel documents and the only people who could get those were people who were leaving relatives behind in the city as collateral.

One wealthy trader made a run for it anyway and the Ostians publicly executed his wife. They would have executed his kids too, but they were both in the guild of Navigators and the guild dorm where they were staying “mysteriously” burned down with them in it. The Ostians didn’t believe it but they weren’t willing to go against a local branch of a continent-wide guild based on suspicion alone. It did put more heat on the Navigators but the Ostians were already watching them pretty closely so it didn’t change our plans much.

Our plan was to evacuate as many people as possible, firstly to the caves under the city and then out of the city using our secret Gondolas.