The Orphanage of the Citadel was as far from the river as Quinze’s city limits allowed. Gone were the marshy smells and buzzing water insects I was used to. There was no more fishing for dinner and no more bedtime stories. The orphanage was located on the far East side of Quinze, the native side. Officially, when a city becomes a part of the Empire, all become citizens and the city is united as one. However, human beings have long excelled at separating themselves into groups all on their own. I did not see any traditional imperials most days, though I saw them much more often than I saw anyone who looked like me. The Quinzen were a late conquest and had required little military force. They were a people dedicated to knowledge, history, and the recording of the world’s events for the benefit of future generations. It was always rumored that their famous library was the primary reason for the Empire’s interest in Quinze in the first place. It did not offer much else, but a muddy river and marshland for miles in every direction.

But the new Capitol was made. The marshes were filled in or dug out. Canals were built. The library was the crown jewel of the city and was renamed The King's Library. The royal palace was nowhere near the library, but built far on the North side, away from the river and on the firmest ground. If King Raphael II, Edouard’s great great great grandfather had been able to move the library, I’m sure he would have. By the time I came along to the East side, little had changed. Segregation was still the practice if not the rule. The streets were cobblestoned, and the marsh was only on the furthest edges of town, filled with refuse and junk of the capital city’s expanding citizenry. My strongest memory of the orphanage is dust. No matter how much we swept and cleaned, dust swirled at every breath, every laugh, and every inevitable cough. The dust was from the building itself. Built early in the Empire’s reign in Quinze, it was constructed from bricks made of cured marsh mud.

Once removed from the dampness of the river and the marshlands, marsh mud becomes well…dust. So we fought against our own dwelling day in and day out. Those were our duties outside of learning. We were required to get an education. Most of my teachers and fellow orphans were Quinzen, though there was the occasional imperial castoff thrown in. Those inevitably arrived with a complex. They were parted from such notions of superiority with haste by the reality of their situation. We were a ragged band, but my time there was not one of horror and mutilation. I did not learn of the reputation of orphanages throughout the Empire’s history until I read about it in the library as an adult. I felt my situation was bad enough as it was, though I had a few friends, and of course Febril’s children, my “cousins.”

My life changed in my third year at the orphanage when we took a trip to the library. It was only a short walk from the orphanage, and it was free, even for orphans. Our carers herded us through the morning streets, I gave a half-hearted wave when we passed Febril’s stand and saw him frown as I turned my shoulder; the embarrassments of youth do not pass by orphans. In the atrium, we were given a welcome speech by the head scholar in those days, a towering man in silk robes called Aquin. It was when we were set free to look around for ourselves that the magic happened. I had spent my entire life reading the same few books of my father’s and had been happy in it, but this place was filled to bursting.

“You’ve some dust on your cloak,” a voice said, causing me to jump.

“Pardon?”

I looked up. I was slumped with my back against a stack, a book open in my lap, and three on the floor beside me. I had not seen or heard the old man appear. He was stooped and held a cane in his right hand.

“Just there,” he said, pointing with his cane.

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I brushed myself off as best I could and returned to my reading, but the old man did not walk away.

“A history, a novel, a farming manual, and my old eyes can’t make out the last. Quite a lot you’ve pulled out there.”

“I’ll put them back,” I said. “I know where they go.”

He chuckled and his laugh was phlegmy. He coughed into his shoulder, but when he’d recovered he was smiling at me.

“I’m sure you do.”

“Thank you,” I said. “About the dust. Telling me, I mean. It’s our house. Marsh bricks.”

“Perfectly alright. The dust is my job.”

He sat down next to me on the stone floor with great effort, his cane flexing with effort and his other hand bracing against the wall. His breath was heavy for several moments before he spoke again.

“I keep the books clean.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Necessary? Oh yes. It is necessary. Do you know what happens when books are left untouched for a long time?”

I did not. And so he told me. He told me how books left alone began to decay. The accumulated detritus of human skin and oils became dust and spines began to split open.

“The Quinzen believe words make immortality, but as many noble things as that tribe has contributed to the empire, I’m afraid they are wrong,” he said.

Growing up among them, I knew this about the Quinzen already and in fact, had taken it up as my own personal philosophy, only for this stooped man to evaporate it. No, he told me. Immortality in books is only a pleasant dream many cultures have had over the spans of time. Without other men to take care of the written words, they too will be lost. Larvae, he explained, would take root in those split spines and once hatched, the little creatures would begin to eat.

“Can you imagine?” he said, his eyes shining. “Can you just imagine? A larvae. A tiny, insignificant thing, just born into this world, can consume the words of a once mighty ruler who thought to make himself immortal. I will have the whole of history know of my conquests and destruction, he thought. And a creature destined to live no longer than a few weeks can take that away for its breakfast.”

He was radiant, the old man, alive with the storytelling in a way I had not seen since my father departed from this plane. He slapped his knee in delight.

“The cheek of the larvae!”

“So what happens then?” I asked.

“That’s where I come in. I make sure that doesn’t happen. I protect the books by keeping them clean, taking them off the shelves, shaking the pages if necessary. There are a great many important people with important thoughts in their heads who work in this library. They busy themselves in the clouds, their heads brushing near the sun, only coming back down to eat and sleep. But their ilk would not exist without mine,” he said, tapping his chest. There was an audible thump on his bird-like figure. “I keep this place from tumbling to the ground.”

With that, the old man stood up with surprising swiftness, shooting up from his cane and resuming his hunched posture over me. He pointed the cane at me.

“Come back any time,” he said.

I never saw the stooped old man again. On subsequent trips to the library I did make contact with scholars and librarians, and the occasional duster making their way through the stacks, but the old man never appeared again. I never learned his name and he never asked mine. When we returned to the orphanage, everyone was buzzing with the grandeur of the building, the scholars they had seen cloistered with their studies, noses to scrolls, hand hovering over an inkpot with quill. The library had an effect on all of us whose daily existence was so different and yet so nearby. We were allowed to attend the library on our own during our free time once we turned thirteen and I made sure to take advantage of it. I never really stopped looking for that stooped old man. Even as an adult, dusting the books myself, I sometimes felt he was nearby and that when I turned down the next row of the stacks he would be there, leaning on his cane, eyes shining with joy at his luck, that he should get to be the protector of the books.