[Ilya]

I have never received a better compliment.

Tongue pressed 'gainst her teeth, Adela's first instinct was to pad back to the kitchens proper, leaving the master and mistress to talk as they would, but something held her to the spot. "Well, I don't believe that for an instant. Minstrelry like yours ought to've been complimented long before now," the words came before she knew she was speaking. Adela hadn't even heard the music clearly, but now it was although cotton had bottled her ears and suddenly they were unstopped. Soft wind brushed the stone and a table spill echoed as it dripped onto the floor. Of itself, a smile came to her face, and, although she ducked her eyes down when the bard and the mason regarded her, she couldn't shake her amusement at the good bard's face as he'd heard his compliment.

"Well," she said, with a quick turn, and bobbed to the cutlery that had been set aside for the feast's seconds, sitting unused. Vyra was a small dwarf, and the lock to her cupboard of 'reserves' was similarly frail and easy to get past. She cradled the squat flagon of rum and one mug on her left arm, two other mugs on her right, and took the last of the pies in her hands. Walking back to the corridor that led to the great hall, Adela didn't quite feel the master of herself. It wasn't her place to sit with finer folk like Vigdis or a bard. Why, then, did she take a mug for herself? Why was she bringing her pie, if not to be at the same table as they? She walked erect, the tap of her step softly thumping on the flagstones. "Absurd," Adela muttered to herself, although whether it was because she hadn't heard the music, or that she was forgoing a warm bed to sit up with strangers, or that she didn't care they were superiors, she couldn't say. Balin was dead, and that was most absurd of all.

Catching sight of where the two dwarves were sitting, Adela piled all the glassware onto the table and uncorked the rum. She hovered for a moment, feeling as though in her stomach there was a knot coming undone, and then tucked herself in a chair while Vigdis began to pour.