There was something about Yarzat that Merelao could not name, no matter how sharp he honed his thoughts, there was a distinct pulse or air that set the city entirely apart from the rest of the south.
It was not merely the architecture, though new colonnades and limestone monuments worthy of ancient Romelia had sprouted across the districts like white mushrooms after a heavy rain since the last time he came.
Nor was it simply the foreign blood, though the streets had turned into a soup of different mixes.
Along his ride, he had spotted pale Romelian scholars, dark-skinned Azanian merchants leading those tall, sinewy desert steeds that made even a connoisseur of horseflesh stare in envy, and even a few shaggy tribesmen moving on the side of the roads keeping well away from where the carts would roll.
It was neither stone nor flesh. It was something in the very air, it was carried in the posture of the common rabble, that usually either carried coin or plague.
