26 5.4

It took several hours, two maids, a particularly well-muscled serving-man, and three near breakdowns before my room had been cleaned and straightened to a standard they found acceptable. Both of them had nearly fainted when they saw the state my rooms were in, and one nearly fainted again when she saw how many cobwebs were hidden by the clutter. The other was occupied enough by her work that she couldn't do much more than organize the chaos of our cleaning process but insisted on making sure my room was cleaned properly nonetheless.

According to her, the fact that my room had been allowed to get to this level of disrepair was completely unforgivable. If her irritated mumblings were anything to judge by, the matron in charge would be informed at how severely the girl in charge of maintaining my rooms had neglected her work.

I was stiffly informed that my orders on the matter should have been ignored as a matter of principle. The rules that are given to the maids from their first day clearly stated that every occupied room should be cleaned to the highest standard possible, and nothing the occupant said should change that. It should never have been allowed to get this far.

With their help, all of my belongings were removed to the hallway with the exception of my bed. Most of my furniture was replaced, despite my protests to the contrary, and my books quite nearly suffered a similar fate. This, I could not allow. I refused to go any further until they sent a messenger to the queen, who quickly sent back an edict that allowed me to keep any book that hadn't been damaged beyond repair.

Anyone who reads as much as I did knows that books were precious objects that could only be discarded if there was no hope of repair. It was a criminal act to destroy one, and sacrilegious to suggest getting rid of such irreplaceable treasures for small flaws like dust, ripped pages, and ink stains. I would never allow them to discard even the most damaged of tomes like they meant nothing, and no one would ever be able to change my mind on this. I felt that the maids likely got that message after they both spent almost an hour trying to make me narrow down my collection.

In the end, all four bookshelves were not enough to contain everything I wanted to keep. I required the use of two more, and even after that shelves had to be added to my walls to hold the non-essential items that I insisted I would eventually use. My new desk had enough room in the drawers to fit all of the papers and nonsense that I needed to file at some point in the distant future, and that combined with a nice rug down the center, paintings on the walls and the faint scent of vanilla in the air made a gorgeous tableau. I even had a neat little table next to my bed to set a book when I wanted to read before I slept, and I loved it all.

I had managed to keep myself surrounded by books, but this way wasn't hazardous to my health or anyone else's. My floor was no longer a death trap, my desk was clear and stain-free, and keeping everything in its place no longer seemed like an impossible dream. It also helped that the maids informed me that they would make sure the girl who cleaned my room was replaced with someone who would actually do her job.

We would have to see the results of the other conditions that the queen had put forth, but if they were all this easy my quest would begin in no time at all.