Having gained a little extra time by Mialla's help, Marian briefly let her out to the yard after they had finished setting the table, and pointed out a few buildings to her, the temple, the barracks, the building between temple and outer wall where the clerics made their home, the small houses were some of the staff and craftsmen lived, before bringing her to the stable in the southwestern corner of the keep. A steep, wooden, outside stair led up to the hayloft, allowing access without going through the actual stable and disturbing the horses below. As the grooms were just bringing in the horses again, after their time outside, Marian didn't want to linger and get in anyone's way, but at least now Mialla knew where she would be staying, and that had to be enough for the moment.<br/><br/>Back in the kitchen the passage of time was difficult to judge, little daylight trickling in through the wooden shutters closed to the winter weather outside, torches and fireplaces providing a constant illumination that made it almost impossible to judge what time it was. It was only the arrival of a young man who entered from the door to the hall that marked a change in the kitchen's pace. Clearly his arrival had been expected, as Petrus and his son Edric began to make everything ready for the serving of dinner.<br/><br/>"You must be Mialla," the young man addressed the bard. "I'm Giles. Giles Fletcher." It took him a second to realize that the name would mean very little to her, so he added, "the baroness's squire. Once dinner is served you should come into the hall. M'lady says you should just play or sing whatever you know best." He was fairly tall, perhaps a little over twenty years of age, and dressed in good, but unremarkable wool in brown and tan. Curly, dark-brown hair framed a clean-shaven face that made no attempt to hide some curiousness  about the new arrival. A long slim dagger in a simple brown leather sheet was attached to the wide belt that girdled his cotte.<br/><br/>Giles gave a short, formal nod by way of a goodbye and picked up two pitchers of wine from a table by the door, making his way back into the hall. Soon after, the kitchen staff followed him, carrying trays of food to the tables, and when they returned, it was Petrus, the cook, who said "they are ready for you now."<br/><br/>Inside the main hall, there was a businesslike atmosphere, people having a meal together instead of a grand feast or an altogether formal occasion, people were dressed in their everyday clothes, and even the baroness had made little attempt to dress up for supper, having only added a silver necklace adorned with polished but uncut semi-precious stones to the clothes Mialla has seen her in before.<br/><br/>Everyone dressed in more or less the same style it was difficult to tell who was who, but a few things Marian had mentioned while setting the tables helped identify Eluard, an older human sitting at the baroness's left, and Ilani, the highest-ranking of the sergeants, sitting next to him. Eluard was an unremarkable man who looked the part of a scribe or clerk very well, while the sergeant was a tall and slender human of middle years, with short-cropped black hair and short, economical movements that wasted no energy. The cherubic woman on the baroness's right hand was the sergeants opposite in more ways than one, except for the age they perhaps shared closely. Given her place at the high table she had to be the highest-ranking of the priests, and the golden ribbon she had braided into her brown hair marked her as a follower of Sif.<br/><br/>Of the people at the low tables only a few stood out, mostly because of their race in a room dominated by humans. The two dwarves present could have been related at first glance, but on closer observation the similarities were reduced to just features shared by their race and not anything that might be shared by close blood. But next to the half orc the dwarves appeared rather average. Even without the milky white right eye and the old scar running across half his face, from the middle of his forehead down to his right cheek, he would have stood out, thanks to his greenish skin that hid his human ancestry and made him appear more orc than anything civilized.<br/><br/>"Everyone, this here is Mialla," the baroness introduced her with a small gesture to the space between the tables. "She is our guest and welcome at my court. Would you sing us a song, please?"<br/><hr/>OOC: I don't have images for many of the NPCs, but lets go with #8 here (https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/47/MaleNPCsJPG.jpg) for Giles.