Lys Vane proposed it on a Tuesday, in the assembly, in the humblest words anyone had ever used to build a throne.
She did not say queen. She did not say ruler, or crown, or any of the words the city had buried a war to be rid of. She stood up in Sable's loud sprawling forum — invited, welcomed, a reasonable woman with a reasonable face — and she said that the city had a problem, which was true, and that the problem was that it kept solving its hardest disputes through a thirteen-year-old girl with no title, no schedule, and no protection, which was also true, and that this was, if you thought about it, rather shabby of them.