Frost had gathered in the lower corners of the window glass, where the citadel stone held the cold longest. Beyond the walls, the scrubland had lost the last traces of seasonal color. The grey-brown terrain stretched south in an unbroken horizon until it reached the agricultural zone. Nothing out there moved. Winter's first hard frosts lay over everything.
Smoke from the industrial district's foundries rose straight upward in the still air. No wind pushed it aside. Above, the sky carried the flat grey clarity that came with winter. The Scar hung over the citadel's roofline, unusually visible now that the cold had stripped the haze from the air.
Beorn studied it for a moment, found nothing different, then shifted his attention back to the district below.
