Liesse was almost too pretty to be a real city.

The walls circling the city were forty feet high, a concession to the invasions that had plagued Callow since its inception, but they were also white or pale tan stone, with ornate crenellation sculpted to look like mated pairs of swans. That was the city's unofficial name, among Callowans: Liesse, City of Swans.

...

A third of the city stood outside the gates, mostly trades like tanners and dyers that would have stained the pretty inside with their stink and mess. Poorer folk had shacks too, though, those who couldn't afford the stone houses of the city proper.

- Book 2, Chapter 39: Countdown