A Register of Beauties

In a palace, someone keeps a register of beauties the way other officials keep grain: names, ranks, and uses. Servants, consorts, and lovers move through the book while ministers pretend the pages are only etiquette. An affair in that house is never only private. It changes who stands near the throne. / The people written in the register can feel the pen. One of them may be done being an entry. If the book is opened in the wrong room, marriages, alliances, and a few careful reputations will not survive the reading.