Now that everybody looks at what's going down, and examines the surroundings, a few things are immediately noticeable.
It's quiet. Very quiet. There's a gentle spring breeze blowing off the lake nearby, but that is nearly the only sound from the environment. No gulls wheeling above the harbor, no sounds of the city... your voices sound absurdly loud in your own ears. Near the gate, the dwarf Muoghan and the elf Epau are tending to the sobbing Heira. The others of that group are speaking quietly with one another some distance away, but from the snippets of conversation you can pick up, it's obvious that they too heard things when traveling through the wards.
There are abandoned camps along the street to the harbor, where people trapped outside the wards once squatted, hoping to be allowed inside. The remains of tents, a crude lean-to here and there, campfires and so forth. There are even some remains of bodies: some people apparently would rather have starved and died here than return to wherever they fled.
At the harbor, a short walk downhill from here, there are a number of boats that could be taken across the lake. Low buildings, many of them fallen into disrepair, dominate the land around the harbor. This district was always a little bit lawless before the wards, the closely spaced buildings and tight alleyways together with the comings and goings of merchants and lakeboat traffic combining for activities of questionable legality. The main road down to the harbor proper, however, is wide and open. Respectable. Or at least, it used to be.