"Who do you propose that we send?" Reiko asked her advisor while the Council Members began to look uncomfortable with the proposal to buy help from a Demon to keep their city safe.
But if the alternative was to have Reiko purge the military of all of their family partisans along with the embedded traitors, then they would have to go along with the idea, at least until the convoy was killed in the Frozen Wastes, and they could return things to the status quo.
They had lost too much influence lately, and the removal of troops from the farms would be the final nail in the coffin for many of their families. They had extorted the farmers to turn over a portion of the crop directly to the Council Families for generations, and it had become the basis of their power in the city.