Winter in Kirkwall was about as unpleasant as anything else in Kirkwall. It had a scrubby, grasping character, and if it had been a person it would have been a bent old man, steely-haired, dressed in rags, and in possession of a lengthy bankroll which he would neither evidence nor share. In such a manner did the flowers sleep under the begrudging snow around the city; secret, miserly, and invisible.

( It was, in a word, absolutely miserable hunting. )