Sister (Mimir's Story - Part I)

[Author's note: My brain is pretty fried from the huge alpha build update this month, so I had to split this story up into two parts: Part II will be posted next month! 💀 And for now, I'm placing Some Kind of Virus on hiatus while I work through my writer's block on that: I know exactly what's going to happen for that story and how, but I don't currently have the motivation or interest to actually write it! Letting it rest will let me work on other things until the inspiration returns. In the meantime... Mimir! If this story feels fast-paced, it's intentionally so, to mirror the breakneck disorientation of Mimir's general situation. And I would be shocked if anyone predicts which surprise character is going to pop up in Part II...

Also, this story is marginally more enjoyable if you read one of Blade's stories, Quicksilver, first, though it isn't necessary! And for anyone wondering, Helvar is a small fiefdom south of Orlop!] 

Everyone in town was whispering about the fortune-teller, but no one actually dared to approach her tent.

Initially, Anneth was too busy to pay much attention to the gossip. She was never inclined to socialize much with people outside of the castle to begin with, but this sennight, she’d hardly had time to exchange even a muttered hello with the florist and the butcher. Her master and the lord of Helvar, Tristram Agrane, was in one of his infamous tempers, and Anneth’s sister Casserah was running her ragged trying to appease him. Whenever Tristram Agrane was displeased, someone else suffered—and the new lord had much to be displeased about. Casserah, who was Lord Tristram’s head cook, was determined that tonight’s banquet would gentle his mood: his favorite foods, the holiday celebrations for St. Caphriel’s feast, and the annual arrival of the traveling theater troupe of which Tristram was a patron all seemed to be promising signs of a milder temper. But all of that also meant that Anneth was too tired, footsore, and hot from scurrying all over town on errands to pay much mind to the rumors and speculation about Helvar’s newest arrival.

Her ears only pricked up when she came into view of the shabby purple tent, little better than a large lean-to of cloth draped clumsily against the town square’s central tree. There was a pair of teenagers observing the lean-to from afar, arms crossed and discussing the matter as gravely as if they were heads of state at a political assembly.

“I heard Dame Ambau went to speak to her, and left the tent looking white as a sheet. Apparently the old bat won’t say what she heard in there.”

“Probably she got told that she’s going to drop dead at any moment, but I could have told you that—Ambau’s already almost dust and bones!” After a quiet laugh, the shorter of the youths lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know what I heard? They say that the seer is mad andblind: she did it to herself so she wouldn’t have to look at the horrors of the future.”

“That’s rubbish. How’d she set up the tent, if she’s blind?”

“I don’t know, but it’s true. Rafe told me.”

“How would Rafe know? No one else has gone in there, so how would anyone know?”

“People have gone in. Look at the collection plate outside of her tent. It’s full of coins.”

“I think they were trying to pay her to go away, not for her services. You know magic is illegal, don’t you? If the Inquisitors ever caught wind of her being here, or if they heard of anyone actually paying her coin to use magic on them…”

“Tch.” A dismissive gesture. “The Inquisitors never come here.”

“You can’t always see them in plain sight,” the taller one cautioned. “And you never know: all that trouble with the lord and his sister—wouldn’t surprise me if the Autarch’s people showed up here someday soon, and woe to that fortune-teller, and anyone who’s visited her, if she’s still around.”

That sent a chill down Anneth’s spine. Cautiously, she made her way across the town square and towards the purple tent, hanging her vegetable-laden basket from the crook of her elbow. The tent flap was stirring a little in the drowsy noonday heat: summer in Helvar had come unusually dry and dusty this year, another worry to sour Lord Tristram’s mood when he read over reports of the fiefdom’s crop yields and taxes. When she stooped to peek inside the tent, she saw a very thin, very frail-looking young woman in tattered clothes sitting cross-legged on the ground, a kind of opaque veil draped over her head and face, so that she looked like a gauze-swathed mummy or shimmering ghost. Anneth couldn’t see much of her features, other than that she had blankly-staring silver eyes and long, wavy black hair, but she did see that the fortune-teller was deep in contemplation over a pile of small bones and dice scattered on the ground before her. She didn’t look up even when Anneth drew aside the tent flap and let the noon light in.

“Well met,” Anneth said cautiously, in the customary greeting of the locals of Helvar. She made an effort to enunciate clearly: Casserah was always nagging her about being too soft-spoken and hard to hear, which put her in danger of annoying Lord Tristram. Still, the fortune-teller did not react to the sound of her voice. “Er—may I ask how long you plan on staying here? The guards in our town are slothful and lazy, but I worry that they may come along to oust you if you linger here so visibly.” And if not them, then the Inquisitors. Because those teenagers are right—however far from civilization we are, however long it takes, they will be here eventually.

The fortune-teller continued to stare down at her dice and bones. Anneth shifted uncomfortably, feeling the weight of the basket handle digging into the soft skin of her arm, and wondered if she should simply let the tent flap fall and turn around to mind her own business. She glanced at the battered tin collection plate positioned just outside of the tent entrance—filled with chunky copper bits and even a few silver lyss—and said helpfully, “You have plenty of coin here. Enough to rent a room at the inn. Do you need me to show you where it is?” If the fortune-teller was blind, was she even aware that she had money in the plate?

Finally, the woman in the tent stirred, looked up, and then blinked, very slowly and languidly, as if dazzled by the sunlight now streaming into the tent. She stared for a moment at Anneth, as if she recognized her face but couldn’t quite place her, before she said in a soft, melting voice even quieter than Anneth’s own: “Anneth?”

Anneth felt a stab of fear go through her heart; it was as if her chest had been pierced by an icicle. But then she told herself, She’s a fortune-teller, so I suppose it’s her business to know names and read minds and all that, so no point losing your head over it. So instead she answered, trying to keep her voice steady, “Yes?”

The fortune-teller blinked at her again, almost seeming befuddled, though her face looked fairly expressionless under the veil. “You’re not afraid of me,” she said.

“Well, I suppose I don’t have any reason to be,” Anneth returned carefully, setting her basket down on the ground so that she could kneel properly and arrange her skirts. “Do I?”

The fortune-teller thought about it for a moment. “No.”

“Forgive me for my bluntness, but you don’t seem as if you could hurt a fly, and if you say anything upsetting, I suppose I could just ignore it,” Anneth continued, not quite knowing why she was saying all of this. “And my sweetheart—he’s one of Lord Tristram’s guards, up at the big castle—he has Ket blood, so I’m not afraid of Diminished folk, not like some others here. In fact, I’m quite used to them. So you needn’t worry about me.”

The fortune-teller had tilted her head to one side, as if listening to some faraway song that Anneth couldn’t hear. “Sweetheart?” she repeated, as if she didn’t know the word. “The man with orange hair?” She continued to listen in silence for a moment. “Junoth?”

Anneth’s heart bucked again, and for a moment she felt quite dizzy and faint. But she managed to croak, knowing she was in too deep to walk away now: “Yes, that’s him.”

The fortune-teller nodded sagely. “You will have healthy children together. In almost all paths that I can see. Though sometimes they’re twins, and sometimes they come one at a time, first a boy, then a girl. The girl has your hair.”

God in Heaven, either I’ve gone completely mad or she has, Anneth thought. She said desperately, “Yes—well—thank you. I’ve always wanted children, so it’s a relief…” She trailed off, very much at a loss for words, before she said, “I don’t have any coin left to pay you: I spent it all on all of these leeks and turnips for the feast tonight. But”—oh, Casserah was going to kill her—“perhaps you could come with me back to the castle. If you won’t—if you can’t stay in an inn, perhaps it would be safer to spend the night in the root cellar. No one ever goes down there, so they’ll never know. And my sister is the cook for Lord Tristram, so we can make you a hot meal or two until you’re ready to go on your way. Unless you plan to stay in Helvar more permanently?” Please say you don’t intend on staying. It’s not safe here, not for the likes of you.

The fortune-teller shook her head. “I can’t stay,” she murmured. “I have to find my sisters, and one other person, too. The gods have urged it.”

“Oh, well, that sounds very important,” Anneth said in a rush of relief. She rose, picking up her basket, and said, “Then let’s go up to the castle. We can pack up your tent and be on our way before the town guard decide to stir themselves.”

The fortune-teller nodded and rose to her bare—dusty, Anneth realized with even more horror than she had felt about the soothsaying—feet with surprising grace, murmuring her thanks. Anneth helped her pack her things in an astonishingly compact pack—someone had fashioned it for the fortune-teller, she suspected, to make her travel as easy as possible—before she thought to ask, “What’s your name, anyway?”

The fortune-teller had to think about it for a moment. “Mimir,” she said finally, plainly. “And yours?”

What? “I’m Anneth. You named me just a few minutes ago.”

“Oh.” Mimir frowned absently, then looked away. “I suppose I forgot.”

#

Mimir sat quietly on a stool in Lord Tristram’s kitchen as a full-out war seemed to rage on around her. The slight young woman with vivid red hair—Anneth, Mimir told herself, her name was Anneth—and the sturdy, strident-voiced blonde continued to argue with each other even as they dashed and ducked all around the kitchen, dodging the flurry of helpers, servants, bakers, larderers, kitchen maids, and scullions scurrying around with well-practiced ease. The blonde—Anneth’s older sister, Casserah—took a moment to set a steaming bowl of fish soup in front of Mimir, then turned and promptly threatened to beat her sister to death with a rolling pin.

“You always do this, Anneth, you always take in strays and runaways, this is just like that vagrant you picked up outside of town, and that cat you thought could be the kitchen mouser—”

“She seemed like she needed help! Everyone in the square was staring at her, and you know it was only a matter of time before she was thrown in the town jail, and I thought she was blind—”

“—you see something helpless and you can’t just leave well enough alone! And tonight of all nights—you know how important it is that the evening goes off without a hitch—”

“She isn’t going to bother a soul, I promise you. She’ll stay in the root cellar, Steward Thelme need never know, and then she’ll be on her way once she’s fed and a little stronger.”

“You always say that, too!” Casserah suddenly turned sharply to Mimir. “How long has it been since you last had a good meal?”

Mimir, who had been staring fixedly down at the soup, raised her eyes to meet Casserah’s. “I don’t remember.” Had it been Heth Macoll? Orlop? Or—no, she hadn’t been to Orlop yet, had she, Helvar was somewhere south of there, she was going to go there next, or had she come from there? And wasn’t Heth Macoll years ago?

Casserah looked pointedly at Anneth, who said in an exasperated voice: “She means it literally, Cass, not figuratively. She probably doesn’t actually remember. I think the poor thing has some sort of memory problem—”

“Oh, wonderful! So is she going to forget that she’s supposed to stay out of sight and wander into the middle of Lord Trist—Lord Helvar’s feast?”

Casserah stands behind her, looking at something off to the side, red-faced and weeping. “Please don’t let them hurt her, take me, I’ll do it in her stead, I pushed her into it—”

“No, no, Junoth and I can keep an eye on her. But, Cass, she did something pretty remarkable earlier—”

“Yes, you mentioned it already. She guessed the name of that orange-haired dolt you call a lover and said that you would have two babies? Well, Lettie predicted that Old John’s horse would have two foals over the winter, andthat one of them would be spotted, and you don’t see her charging money in the town square.”

A scullery maid sidled up to the corner table that Mimir was perched at and set down a hunk of bread, and Mimir saw the spectral blur of three of her futures before she shut her eyes against them, the taste of the fish soup still greasy on her lips. Too many faces in here, too many voices, everything too bright and populated, a multitude of folds and phantoms all clamoring for her attention—

“Sorry for all of the chaos,” the scullery maid said in a friendly, conspiring whisper. “You came here at a bad time, you see. Our lord and master, Tristram Agrane, he recently inherited the fiefdom after the old lord passed. And if that wasn’t already hard enough, his sister, Lady Cythera, well, she had some kind of outburst during his enthronement ceremony at court, in front of all of the other nobles and powerful lords. She’s always been a bit odd, Lady Cythera, but once her brother took control, she became quite unmanageable. Had a lot of very strange religious ideas and beliefs. Very passionate and unruly. Anyway, no one here quite knows what she actually said, but apparently it was very shocking and scandalous, and all of Lord Tristram’s rivals paid witness to it. He was so disgraced that he had to send Lady Cythera off to a convent a long ways away to become a nun and live in seclusion, though a maid I know from the Lockwood fiefdom wrote and said that she heard Lord Lockwood saying she ought to have gone to prison, not a convent. Imagine! Well, Lord Tristram loves his sister dearly, so of course it pained him to do it, and he’s been in a foul temper ever since. But what else could he have done? He had to protect his household and reputation from the shame. Anyway, tonight Casserah thinks she can make everything better by throwing the lord a grand feast while this theater troupe performs for him, though everyone knows that Junoth—that’s Anneth’s man, he’s one of Tristram’s guards—he thinks the three of them should leave the household altogether and be done with it, though he won’t say why. But Casserah always says that if they’re going to afford a wedding for the two of them and provide for all of Junoth’s little brothers, they can’t chance finding work elsewhere…”

“Sosie,” Casserah barked. “What did I tell you about telling tales? Did you finish descaling that fish?”

The scullery maid pouted, but she moved away, taking her ghostly reflections with her. Still, the inside of Mimir’s head swayed, even though she kept her eyes mostly shut. Flickers and flashes of silver light still crept under her eyelids. She had lost her veil somewhere and couldn’t remember when she’d last seen it.

The butler waits for a saucier to prepare gravy for the silver tureen, the eighty-year-old version of him standing and waiting for his grandchild to dutifully ladle him soup from a humble stove. The dishwasher weeps over a bleeding wound in his palm. Anneth pores over a book, roundly pregnant, and asks aloud, “But is Kinley any better than Orlop?” Junoth stares at a dark-haired man as if he’s seen a demon. Ashen-faced, he says, “Are you here to kill me?” A familiar face with keen, iladrin-glowing eyes and an aura blazing with spectral power smiles as a tall Hunter with piercings in his ears jokes, “The Hero of Haven wants to spend time with me?”

“…Mimir? Mimir, are you all right?”

A hand on her shoulder, shaking her lightly. Anneth. Mimir bent again towards her soup, reaching for the spoon with a trembling hand, and didn’t reply. Nausea and dull confusion churned in her skull, but food helped. Anneth pulled up another stool and watched her eat for a moment, then leaned forward and said softly, “Casserah didn’t believe me when I told her about your—trade. I thought perhaps you could tell her something—something small—but if it makes you ill, or it’s too difficult, you needn’t bother.”

Mimir continued to plow through her meal, staring stolidly at the table, while someone else—an eavesdropping silver-polisher, perhaps—hissed, “You’d better not, Annie. You’ll get in mighty trouble if the lord finds out you’ve had a Mage working magic in his kitchen.”

“Not so,” the butler whom Mimir had glimpsed as an old man scoffed. He had a very lofty, worldly air, like a well-traveled scholar talking to a bunch of village rubes. “I don’t think fortune-telling is actually illegal, not like the other Mage arts are. There are plenty of hedgewitches and shamans who do it at the horse fair in Kinley, in plain view of the Vice Guard, and no one ever seems bothered: I suppose because it can’t harm anyone.”

Casserah shot Anneth a meaningful look, as if to say, So does that mean you brought her here for nothing?

The high-handed butler continued, “And besides, Lord Tristram has always been more lax about such things than other lords. Magic and Diminished things have always amused him: it was the one thing that he and Lady Cythera clashed repeatedly on. Don’t you remember the year he had those fire-breathers perform for his birthday? She called him blasphemous and threatened to report him for heresy, and old Lord Helvar slapped her for it.” He paused significantly, allowing everyone to take this in, then added smugly, “And besides, with everything else he’s been up to, some charlatan hedgewitch in the kitchen is the least of his lordship’s concerns.”

This created an uproar as everyone within earshot pressed him over what that could mean—the butler seemed to insinuate he was privy to very sensitive information without actually saying so—and Mimir, unable to bear the sudden blaring of noise, said abruptly, “The theater troupe isn’t coming tonight. They’ll say it was because their leader fell ill, but it will be because they fear the negative attention Tristram has received and they want to avoid becoming embroiled in any potential scandal, since they tour and visit other lords throughout the year. Casserah might break her ankle picking mushrooms and will be bed-ridden for a winter, though I don’t know when. And you”—this she addressed to the butler, whose eyes had turned as round as a child’s—“you usually marry a woman named Lyda, if you marry anyone at all.”

The room fell completely silent.

Mimir still heard and felt the thunder of a dozen potential reflections shouting at her—That’s unnatural—That can’t be—You see? I told you!—How did she do that?—I don’t love Lyda—but for one blessed moment, the occupants of the room could only stare at her in shocked, wordless silence. She let the quiet wash over her like a balm.

Then an orange-haired young man—lean, sharp-featured, wiry, and wearing the uniform of a palace guard—came into the kitchen and looked around with startled puzzlement.

“What are you all doing, standing around?” he asked in astonishment. “It’s only an hour until dinnertime—and Lord Corovann’s just arrived!”

That kickstarted the kitchen into a renewed frenzy of activity: servants leapt for trays and dishware, and Casserah resumed charging around the kitchen, bellowing orders like a drill sergeant. Whoever this Lord Corovann was, apparently news of his attendance was even more important than whatever Mimir had just said—or, at least, it left the others no time to dwell on it.

The kitchen’s new visitor looked sidelong at Mimir, like a dog eyeing a suspicious stray cat who had suddenly materialized in his field of view. “Who are you?” he asked with blithe curiosity, leaning his hip up against her table. Though he carried a fearsome mace buckled at his waist, he had a somewhat guileless, artless innocence about him.

Mimir returned to her soup and ignored him. Anneth was going to explain the situation to her lover soon enough. Indeed, out of the corner of her eye, Mimir could see her—or a version of her, a few seconds ahead—standing up to kiss him now.

“A fortune-teller?” Junoth echoed incredulously once Anneth had finished telling him the story, having pulled him into a more secluded corner of the kitchen. Mimir couldn’t quite hear them from where she was sitting, but if she concentrated hard enough, she could listen to the echoes of the words reverberating through all the layers of what they were going to say next. He wrapped an affectionate arm around Anneth’s waist, pulling her closer so he could kiss the crown of her head. “Really, Annie, you pick up the strangest people.”

“Did she tell you your fortune?” he asks.

She squirmed playfully out of his grip. “Like you?” she teased. “I seem to recall finding you in the town square, trying to prove your worth to the town guard by picking fights with random passerby to prove you were strong enough to subdue them. Who was it who went out of her way to bring you up to the castle and find you a job then?”

“You.” Junoth grinned. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help, scarlet—it’s one of the things I like best about you. But Cass must be pretty mad.”

“She is, but she’ll forget she was after tonight’s feast is over.”

“Right.” He glanced over at Mimir, who had drained her bowl and was patiently waiting for someone to come along to refill it. “And did she tell you your fortune?”

Anneth smiles, a little shyly. “She said you and I have twins. A boy and a girl. The girl has my hair.”

“She did, but I’ll tell you about that later. You said Lord Corovann is here?”

Junoth’s lean face sobered. “He is, along with six of those other minor lords.” He lowered his voice then, bending so that their heads were pressed close together. “I have a bad feeling about all of this, Annie. Tristram’s meeting with those men way too often, locking himself in the study with them and talking for hours. I’ve been in noble houses before. That’s not normal. I think he’s up to something.”

Anneth’s brow furrowed. “Hanson alluded to something similar, so I think he shares your suspicions. But you don’t think it’s really—?”

Junoth shook his head. “I don’t know. They talk about mercenaries and keeping things quiet, strategic points of ‘mobilization.’ If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were plotting something… something that the Inquisitors should be investigating. And you know what happened to me and my family. Once the Inquisitors come, it’s not good for anyone.” He straightened to his full height—though he was not much taller than Casserah, he looked positively lanky in comparison to Anneth’s petite stature—and shook his head. “We should leave before that happens. As soon as we can. Tonight, even.”

Blood and fire, fear and screaming, lashes of searing pain and ash in the air and armies on the march—

“We can’t, not with Casserah in charge of the feast. It would be a disaster without her. And what about your brothers?”

“Hiro’s fifteen now, old enough to get an apprenticeship or a job. He wants to. We wouldn’t have to worry so much about them—they’d still be with us, but it wouldn’t be like it has been. Everyone could help pitch in and feed the family. They’re old enough now.”

Little Hiro dead from a bandit raid, Hiro an apprentice harvesting tomatoes on a farm, Anneth coughing into a handkerchief, looking pale and wan as she tends to Casserah’s broken ankle—

Anneth was shaking her head, with the weariness and exhaustion of someone shuffling dutifully into a well-worn argument. “Where would we even go? And wouldn’t Tristram send people after us? His head cook, one of his best guards, and one of his housekeepers all disappearing when he’s up to something he’d want to keep a secret—”

“That’s just a chance we’ll have to take. I’ve outrun people who wanted to find me before.”

“You shouldn’t go,” Mimir murmured to her empty bowl. “You should stay.” But of course, no one heard her.

The butler from before, Hanson, suddenly burst into the kitchen again, looking wild-eyed and frantic. He pointed a shaking, gloved finger Mimir’s way, and a few people standing closest to him—Junoth and Anneth included—fell still at the look on his face.

“She was right,” Hanson babbled, looking positively terrified. His sleek hair, previously gelled as tightly to his scalp as a beetle-black helmet, was now slightly mussed and askew. “She was right, she was right, and his lordship is completely beside himself—”

“What are you talking about?” Anneth asked, her voice quiet but as sharp as her older sister’s. “Right about what?”

“A message just came for Lord Tristram. The acting troupe—the Syanese Players—sent a letter saying exactly what she—” He pointed at Mimir for emphasis. “—said they would say. That they can’t come tonight, after all; their leader’s fallen ill and they send their regrets, but they would never dream of risking bringing infection to the house of a great lord like Lord Tristram.” He looked at Mimir as if she had sprouted two more heads. “She really can tell the future.”

Before anyone could respond, Casserah gave a kind of strangled scream from the far side of the kitchen.

“What do you mean, they’re not coming?” she fumed, slamming an enormous pot of a red, spiced broth down onto a counter; although it sloshed and wobbled dangerously, it never spilled a drop. “They can’t just—to send a message—it’s an hour before dinner! They were expected to be here this morning, I have a meal fit for forty people already partway cooked with the first course ready to be served, and they send a message? Don’t they know what an insult that is to Lord Tristram?”

“I think they know,” Hanson said grimly, while Junoth muttered to Anneth, “That can’t be good for his temper. He’s been counting on their performance ever since he sent Cythera away, and this is an additional slight on his honor.”

“They must not expect him to be around long enough to exact revenge,” Anneth murmured back. “Could they have heard something on their travels on the road, or at the other lords’ courts?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Casserah snapped, shoving six large wads of raw bread dough into the central stone hearth as her assistants continued to mill and scamper around her like industrious mice. “What matters is that we find some way to replace them before those other lords leave. Tristram won’t take it out on any of us until everyone else is gone. If we can find some other form of entertainment before then, perhaps we can avert his gaze from any of us.”

“How are we going to find someone to replace an entire troupe of actors and players in less than an hour?” Anneth asked, exasperated. “Helvar doesn’t exactly have many performers.”

“There must be someone who could amuse his lordship. What about Athan the Younger? He can juggle, can’t he?”

“Barely,” Junoth scoffed. “And he’s more likely to get his head cut off than make Lord Tristram laugh. What about that new innkeeper, the one down at the Hound’s Tooth? I hear he can do card tricks.”

“What if we fetch them both and make them a combined act?” Casserah snarled. “It’s at least something. And Junoth, if you can do your axe-throwing—”

“I’ll do it,” Mimir said.

“You said I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore.”

“Well, obviously I’m changing my mind—”

“What was that, Mimir?” Anneth asked.

Red hair, chains, heat and sweat and silk—

If you leave now, you’ll die—

Lady Cythera’s jewelry, no one will ever know—

Brightburner—kithma—the watcher in the night—

“I’ll do it,” Mimir repeated. “I’ll be the lord’s entertainment for tonight.”

Again, the hot, crowded kitchen went completely and utterly still. Even the ghosts of the future paused, standing like jurors in a silent gallery, observing the movements of the person they had meant to condemn. Then, with the immediate future determined, marked, and set, they vanished before Mimir’s eyes like blown-out candle flames.

She blinked against the sudden clarity and hush of the world.

“Are you completely mad?” Junoth was asking her in an awed voice.

Mimir rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand; her veil, she realized with sudden pleasant surprise, was still draped partly across the top of her head, only folded back so she could eat.

“No,” she told him calmly, looking down at her refilled bowl of soup. “I am Mimir, and I am a Sister of the Silver Eye.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she knows what she’s talking about,” Anneth said, shaking herself out of her stupor when Mimir didn’t reply. “And, I suppose, it means Lord Tristram will like her.”