The others went to school with some members of the Star Clan which helped Zoey out quite a bit. The response had been formal and not warm, but it wasn't a no.
They took the rail north out of the city and then a hired car for the last stretch. Three hours total that went faster than it felt. Nobody talked much. The countryside north of Luminaurora was different from Krey. Wider and Quieter.
The Star Clan estate sat at the end of a private road off the main route. Stone walls, old ones, the kind that had been added to over generations rather than built at once. The gate was iron, with mahna flowing off of it, presumably some kind of trap for anyone thinking about coming in uninvited.
A young man in the clan's uniform, dark robes with silver trim, was waiting at the gate when they arrived. He looked at the group until his eyes landed on Zoey.
"Zoey Winters," he said. Not a question. Not a greeting.
"That's me."
He opened the gate without further conversation and led them in.
The grounds were well-kept. Old trees, stone paths worn smooth by generations of feet. A main building that was substantial without being richy richy.
'Old money type shit.' Inner Zoey said.
'Different from the Sinclairs. Probably older.'
'Old money versus new money.'
'Maybe.' Zoey didn't know the Sinclair family history like that. Even though her nephew or niece was going to be part of it.
They were brought to a receiving room off the main entrance. High ceilings, a herbal smell throughout the place. Seats for the whole group. Nobody offered tea.
They waited maybe ten minutes.
Then Daniel Star came in.
Zoey recognized him. He'd been at her trial, at the Council table, looking down at her with that old judgemental face. Same face now. Silver hair still long, still neat, traditional robes with Star Clan patterns etched into it. Bright eyes that had never once been kind to her. He'd aged visibly since Luminaurora. The war had fucked them all up even some of her friends. In Daniel Star, it looked like he was already one foot and a half in the grave.
Behind him walked two clan members.
Zoey glanced over at them.
One of them was Selena Star.
Shadow-black hair loose over the shoulders of her business suit. Fencing sword at her hip. Her eyes moved over the group with arrogance, and when they landed on Zoey they went still.
She knew.
Of course she knew. The last time they'd shared a room, Selena had lunged at Zoey as a personal warden and caught a rising uppercut that shattered every tooth in her mouth. Then she'd come back down face-first and had her bones broken one by one while Zoey dragged her by the hair. You didn't forget a face after that. You probably had nightmares about it.
Zoey held her gaze for one second. Then looked at Daniel Star.
'Ooh shit… That's the bitch we fucked up at the trial.' Inner Zoey said.
'We're fucked.' Zoey could already smell it.
'Super duper fucked.'
'Tiffany is rubbing off on us… I have never said the fucking word duper in my life.'
'She's fun for sure.'
Daniel sat. His two members stood. Selena didn't look away from Zoey.
"Winters," Daniel said.
"Star Clan." Zoey kept it plain. "Thanks for showing up, I guess. I wasn't expecting the head."
"I agreed to hear your request." He folded his hands. "That is all I agreed to."
"Yep, I understand." She didn't dress it up. "My mother is in a coma. Forty-six days now. A daemon king attacked her in our home. Poison, the First-Grade daemon, slit her throat and flooded the wound with her poisonous magji. My mom's a regular person, no magji, no connection to this world. Her doctors are doing everything they can. The Sinclair family is working on helping her. But neither of them have experience with this. Poisonous magji from a daemon king in a regular person's body isn't something that shows up in regular medicine." She paused. "I was told the Star Clan's healing knowledge goes further than anyone else's. If there's something that can help her, I figured you'd be the ones to know about it."
Daniel Star said nothing for a moment.
"Your mother," he said.
"Yeah."
"A gully."
There it was.
"She doesn't have magji," Zoey said. "She never had anything to do with this world."
"Yet here you are asking our world to fix her." That was the man standing to Daniel's left, not Daniel himself. Zoey didn't know his name. "Eight of our healers died at Luminaurora. Four more cannot practice. Five remain functional. You want us to spend what we have left on a gully because she happened to raise someone who got herself mixed up in daemon affairs."
"I'm asking if you know how to help her," Zoey said. "Not demanding anything."
"The answer is no." He said it the way you said something obvious to someone too slow to see it themselves.
Daniel raised one hand slightly and the man went quiet.
"It is not precisely that simple," Daniel said, in the tone of someone about to explain why the answer was still no. "What you describe is a complex case requiring significant investment from a healer who has very little left to give. Our clan is in recovery. The priority of that recovery is our own people." He looked at her with those eyes that looked kind and weren't. "Whatever your mother has suffered, it falls outside our community. We are not in a position to extend our resources outside our community right now. Perhaps when we have recovered more fully, a case like this might be reconsidered. But not today."
"She's been in a coma for forty-six days."
"I understand."
"You don't have a timeline that works for her?"
He didn't say anything to that.
Selena Star spoke.
"You dragged a gully woman into a daemon's path and now you're here asking us to fix it." Her voice was the same as it had been in the courtroom. She'd had a lot of healing done since then. Everything looked back to normal and perfectly healed. How envious. "Poison targeted your family because of what you are. Your mother paid for your choices. That is the consequence of raising a child who walks into our world uninvited and refuses to leave."
The room was very quiet.
'Should we kill this bitch?'
'No. Relax.'
'Mom is lying in that bed because of this world. Because of daemons and magji and all of it. And this bitch is going to sit here and tell you she deserved it.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'And we're not gonna punch a hole through this bitch's chest?!'
'No, we're not.'
'WHY ARE WE NOT KILLING ALL OF THEM!?'
'Because they might know a way or some magji tool that could possibly help mom. If I kill them, I'll never know and mom might never wake up.'
Something moved to her right. Jacky was on her feet before Zoey could fully register it, bat drawn ready to crack some skulls.
"Jacky," Zoey said.
"These people just-"
"Jacky. It's okay. Thank you."
A pause that was about three times longer than it should have been. Then Jacky sat down. Her hand stayed where it was.
Caroline's eyes were closed. Her lips were moving slightly. Her personal mantra muttering underneath her breath. Joseph had gone very still, he could probably see her other self filled with anger, rage, and the intent to murder everyone in this clan. Lindsay had her fist clenched. Alexander was starting to feel sorry for ever even thinking that the Star Clan could help Zoey, knowing their traditional ways.
Zoey looked at Daniel Star.
"Thank you for nothing," she said.
She stood up. Her friends stood up around her. She walked out of the receiving room, across the stone floor of the entrance, out the front door into the afternoon air. Down the path to the gate, which the young man opened without being asked because he had read the room correctly.
She got in the car.
Nobody said anything.
Then Jacky said: "What the actual FUCK!"
Nobody responded to that. She took it as permission to continue.
"Old wrinkly bitch with his dumb sparkly eyes and his gay robes sitting there telling you your mom deserved it. Your MOM. Who wasn't even- she wasn't even there! She's never been there! She's never done anything to any of these people! She's just some woman lying in a bed right now because a daemon decided to walk into her house, and this piece of shit in his fancy clan compound is sitting there telling you she brought it on herself by- by what? Having a daughter? That's it? That's the whole thing?" She was gripping the bat with both hands without seeming to notice. "And that other woman- the one with the sword. Don't even get me started! I-"
"Jacky," Alexander said.
"I'M NOT DONE!" She turned to the window. "Fucking Star Clan. Famous healers. Amazing reputation. Won't heal a regular woman because she's not magji enough. Oh sorry, we're too depleted, we only have five healers left, we simply cannot spare a single one of our precious five healers for some gully-" She spat the word like it had personally insulted her. "You know what? Good. Good that half of them died at Luminaurora. Good. I said it."
"Jacky." Lindsay, very quiet.
"I said what I said." She crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. "If any of them ever comes to me for a case I'm charging triple. Triple. Up front. No exceptions. They can bleed out while I watch."
She stopped.
The car was quiet.
"Okay," Jacky said, at a different volume. "Okay. I'm done."
It was, somehow, slightly better in here.
"Learned Faction archives," Lindsay said. Her voice had gone somewhere quiet -- anger finding a use for itself. "There is probably something in there we could find. Not many but they exist. I can probably read up on those records tomorrow." She said,
"Daemonic artifacts," Joseph said. "Things with healing properties that operate differently from connate magji. I know people who know people. Black market mostly but the objects are real." He paused. "Also, and I know this is a longer shot, there are other clans. Smaller ones, less famous. The Star Clan are the biggest but they're not the only magjistars with healing knowledge. They're just the ones who've made the biggest deal of themselves about it."
"My masters," Caroline said. She'd been quiet the whole time they were in that room. The quiet she had when something had gotten past her training and she was working to get it back. "The Four Monks. Are pretty famous, they might know people." She looked at Zoey. "I should have suggested this first. I apologize."
"It's okay. I appreciate you all trying to help me."
Alexander said: "Tell me what you need."
Tiffany hadn't said anything. She was looking out the window, watching the estate disappear behind the tree line as they pulled away.
Zoey looked at her.
Tiffany looked back. She smiled.
"We'll find something," she said.
"Yeah," Zoey said.
The car kept moving south. Zoey watched the countryside flatten out around them. The Star Clan had its own dead and its own grief and it had decided that grief was an argument for why someone else's mother could wait. Fine. That was fine. She already knew the magji world worked like this.
She was still looking.