The various reds bled into each other like an open wound. Searingly bright at the center, before darkening into a sickly rust color at the outer edges. Against the stark white canvas, it was the final, gurgling scream of a man drowning in his own blood. Captured in pigment and a swirling mix of acrylics.

  All the paintings along this wall were in a similar vein. Didn’t depict any recognizable subject, at least to my eyes. But something about them provoked a visceral, almost violent reaction.

  At the bottom, the name ‘Dilnaz’ was scrawled in jagged strokes. As if the artist had been forced, under duress, to claim responsibility for his work.

  Couldn’t blame him. I was no art connoisseur, but had I created such visual atrocities, I wouldn’t willingly put my name on them, either.

  Behind me, the door clicked open.

  “Don’t recall seeing this one before,” I said without turning my head. “New addition? I still don’t get your fascination with his work.” I rapped a knuckle against the painting’s frame. “Easily one of the most unsettling things I’ve had the misfortune to gaze upon. And from me, that’s saying something.”

  “They remind me of you,” Leena said, footsteps soft as she came up to stand behind me. “A constant reminder of what happens to those who stubbornly walk his path. Deaf to the pleas of those who love them, blind to the tears they leave in their wake.”

  “Very dramatic.”

  “Say that to your guards when you’re raving alone in a padded cell,” she snapped. “Keep this up, and you’ll die like Dilnaz. Alone and forgotten in some suburban psych ward.” Her slim fingers clamped onto my shoulder, turning me around to face her. “You look halfway there already. Like three-day-old roadkill.”

  There was irritation in her voice, but beneath it, something closer to fear. “If life weighs that heavily on you, there are simpler ways to end it. Surely you know that.” She released me. “Go wash your face. I’ll get your pills.”

  Obediently, I made my way to the washroom.

  Leena’s office, at the headquarters of the Hastinar Nationalist Party, was spacious but had none of the sleek, corporate polish of the Zintra offices I’d just left.

  The walls were a dull, utilitarian beige. The furniture, though solid wood, was old and uninspired. A sturdy desk sat at the center, holding a laptop and a pen-stand affixed with a Hastinari flag.

  The only striking feature of the room was the back wall, where seven framed paintings by Dilnaz hung in a neat row. You could tell they were all his because each one left the same hollow, gnawing sensation in the pit of your stomach. As if a black hole were expanding inside you.

  For all Leena claimed Dilnaz’s work reminded her of me, he’d been her favorite artist for decades before I was born. And for good reason. She had more in common with him than I did.

  There were, of course, the obvious similarities between us. Me and Dilnaz. The first being that he had died on my birthday, forty years before I was born. And true to character, he’d made his exit with dramatic flair. Swallowing a burning piece of coal from the fireplace, at the asylum nestled in the mountains of Hilya where he spent his last days.

  The second? We were both seers.

  But that’s where the similarities ended. In my twenty-five years, I’d had a grand total of three visions. Two of them decidedly against my will.

  Dilnaz’s name, on the other hand, had become pretty much a euphemism for seers who overextended their abilities. Pushed their limits too far, spiraling into madness or death. Typically both, and in quick succession.

  One of the most prolific seers in recorded history, Dilnaz had had 18 known visions over the course of his life. Second only to Soni Vardi.

  He turned his visions into art – haunting, visceral.

  Disturbing, if you asked me. Or any other sane citizen of Hastinar.

  And no wonder, since each piece captured the raw violence, terror and despair of one of his visions.

  For Dilnaz, art and visions had become a cycle. He needed the visions to create.

  But most seers have two to five visions in their lifetime – not nearly enough to sustain a career.

  So he forced it. Frequenting hospitals and prisons to deliberately trigger visions. People died painful deaths in the hospital every day, and many experienced terrible violence in prison. No dearth of intense, turbulent emotion there. So of course, conjuring a vision was easier in those places than anywhere else.

  And the more visions he had, the more they ate away at his mind and body.

  To nobody’s surprise, he began unraveling by his late-thirties. Descended into self-destruction and eventually took his own life at 43.

  The last, unfinished piece he was working on before his death became one of the most famous artworks in the world. It sold for millions multiple times, until finally landing in the national gallery half a decade ago.

  And it was Leena who shared Dilnaz’s love for the dramatic and the macabre. As well as his single-minded obsession with his work.

  Not me.

  I was sometimes cynical, but never morbid.

  Dilnaz’s brand of gruesome, in-your-face morbidity, which Leena found so appealing, simply made me uncomfortable. It always had.

  I braced myself against the ceramic washbasin in Leena’s bathroom, fingers curling around its smooth edges. The water ran pleasantly hot, the pressure just right.

  I stared into the mirror above the basin, trying to gauge the accuracy of Leena’s assessment.

  Three-day-old roadkill.

  Quite the exaggeration. But I couldn’t deny she had some basis for it. I looked wrecked.

  And no wonder.

  Not sleeping, barely eating. Too wired to rest in the days leading up to – why not just call it what it was?

  Theft in broad daylight.

  Corporate espionage sounded too polished, too subtle and refined for what I’d just pulled off at Zintra.

  And then the vision.

  Just thinking about it made my stomach roil, bile climbing my throat. I splashed water on my face, forcing it back down.

  Would be less-than-polite to clog Leena’s pipes with half-digested vada pav, after barging into her office uninvited.

  A gaunt face with hollowed cheeks – bones jutting sharper than usual – stared back at me from the mirror. My already large eyes practically bulged against the sharp angles of my face, bloodshot veins creeping through the whites like cracked porcelain. My lips were ashen. And shadows clung to the bags under my eyes.

  I looked like one of those tragic youths from an old arthouse film, fading away in the throes of some unnamed, wasting disease.

  At least they always had the grace to die young and pretty. Beauty untarnished by whatever conveniently-vague illness claimed their life.

  Unfortunately, real life wasn’t filmed in elegant black and white. And my complexion was a distinct shade of green that made it clear I was one wrong move away from losing my breakfast.

  I spared a moment to thank my guardian deity that Ammi wasn’t here now. She might try to seize the opportunity for a spring collection photoshoot. Because apparently, half-starved and at death’s door was the trending aesthetic at the moment.

  And with Ammi, it was always a coin toss – whether her maternal instincts would prevail over her mercantile ones, or vice versa.

  Patting my face dry, I quickly cleaned and bandaged my hand. The last thing I needed was for Leena to catch a proper look at the gash, freaking out even more than she already had.

  The adrenaline that had kept me upright thus far was slipping away, leaving me only half-aware of my surroundings. Time dragged as I tried to pull myself back together. Well, as together as I currently felt capable of being pulled, which wasn’t much.

  Soon, I sat at Leena’s desk, swallowing the multicolored pills she handed me and trying to brush off her questions about my bandaged hand.

  “We’re shorting Zintra,” I cut in, as much to deflect her queries as from my own sense of urgency. “And we’re doing it yesterday. Palika’s going to throw himself off that balcony, but I don’t know when. Could be any day – between tomorrow and April. We need to act fast.”

  Leena studied me, fingers drumming lightly on her wooden desk. “You didn’t sense the weather? During the…” she sighed. “During your vision?”

  “I could only sense what he sensed. What he felt. And he felt a lot.” I stifled a shudder, the chaos of Palika’s mind in his final moments still too vivid. “The weather was the last thing on his mind, so it was the last thing on mine. I just remember it was nighttime. And-and it wasn’t raining; I’d have noticed that.”

  “Well, that doesn’t narrow it down at all,” Leena said. “Three months. That’s a long time. So much could happen between now and April—”

  “I’ll tell you something that will happen between now and April,” I interrupted, impatient. “Sumedh Palika will jump from his fifteenth-floor office. Providing us with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cash in on Zintra’s inevitable free fall – sure to be one of the biggest market shocks of the decade.”

  “There’ll be allegations of conflict-of-interest,” Leena countered. “Zintra’s backing of the HPA is hardly a secret.”

  “Use your people.” It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. “Have your minions handle it. Who says it has to be done under your name? As long as I get my cut, I don’t care if it’s Sugar Pixie’s name on the transaction.”

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  “Who’s Sugar Pixie?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.” I pulled out the flash drive, set it on the table in front of her. “987 files worth of evidence, Leena. Of gross negligence, if not deliberate adulteration. Need I remind you there are dead children involved? Once this hits the press, nobody’s going to care who profited from Zintra’s well-earned downfall. Hell, they’d cheer you on.”

  “And how’s it going to ‘hit the press’?” Picking up the flash drive between her index and middle fingers, she examined it skeptically. “Besides, this ‘evidence’ won’t hold up in court.”

  “It’ll hold up in the court of public opinion. For our purposes, that’s more than sufficient.”

  “You didn’t answer my first question.” Her sharp gaze pinned me in place.

  Leena was barely five-four. But what she lacked in height, she more than made up for in presence – an aura of authority she wore like a cloak at all times.

  Shoulder-length black hair, streaked with silver, framed her oval face. The fine lines around her eyes and mouth only accentuated her delicate features.

  From a purely objective viewpoint, Leena was pretty. But she’d been born with the visage of a perpetually disappointed headmistress. And that disappointment only grew more intense with every successive year she spent on this planet.

  “I’ll leak it myself.” I met her gaze as I answered. “Make sure it lands in the inbox of every major news editor and channel executive in the country. A few international ones too, if I can swing it.”

  “Let me see if I understand you correctly, Lekh.” Leena’s voice was icy. “You plan to leak evidence of adulteration in Zintra’s products. Evidence you stole from Palika's secure system, let’s not sugarcoat it. Driving Palika to suicide and sending Zintra’s stock into free fall. So you can then cash in on the collapse?”

  “The suicide wasn’t part of the plan,” I assured her. “That was the vision. But it only confirmed what I was already 90% sure of, anyway. As for the rest of it,” I shrugged. “Yes. Exactly what you said, pretty much.”

  “And this doesn’t strike you as unethical, perhaps? Vicious and bloodthirsty, to be more precise?”

  “No?” I spread my hands. “It was a vision, Leena. It’s going to happen. Whether I leak the files or sit in the corner sucking my thumb, Palika will throw himself off that balcony sometime in the next three months. It’s inevitable. And since we know that, we might as well put the knowledge to good use.

  “Me feeling sorry for Palika – and sitting on the evidence – won’t save him. So why bother?”

  Leena’s eyes bored into me. “Was it inevitable if you played a role in making it happen?”

  “Are you responsible for the role you played,” I countered, lips twitching. “If what happened as a result was inevitable anyway?” I let my gaze slip past Leena to the paintings lining the wall behind her. “That’s the kind of circular thinking that drove Dilnaz over the edge, I’ll bet. You can be a seer, or you can be a philosopher. Never both.”

  Every fiber of Leena’s petite frame bristled against the idea. I could see it on her face.

  But I could also see the calculation in her eyes. She hadn’t become the general secretary of Hastinar’s second-largest party by letting abstract ethics outweigh concrete practical considerations.

  She understood perfectly the implications of the plan I’d laid out for her.

  If Zintra went under, Vance Industries would take a serious hit. Forcing them to halt political donations, at least temporarily.

  At least until the Fadani elections were over.

  Cutting off the HPA’s biggest funding source on the eve of the election. Right when they could least afford such a loss.

  All but guaranteeing their defeat, and clearing the path for the HNP to reclaim power in Fadan.

  For all her ethical hand-wringing, Leena understood the basics of Foresight as well as the next person. No matter what we did or didn’t do, there was no stopping Palika’s suicide.

  A vision, once seen, couldn’t be prevented. It would unfold exactly as witnessed, between 24 hours and three months after. Throughout history, every attempt to prevent a vision from coming true had failed. Only making the situation worse; amplifying the scale of the disaster.

  We couldn’t prevent the inevitable, but there was something we could do to turn the aftermath in our favor. Make some money, form a government, block Vance’s expansion in Fadan.

  And most importantly, take whatever small shot we could at Darpan Naag – my dearest Papa.

  “Very well,” Leena said heavily. “We’ll short Zintra. But I need you to give me your word, Lekh. Promise me you won’t try to conjure a vision again this year. No matter what’s at stake, no matter how tempting it is. Promise me you won’t do it, no matter how Darpan tries to strong-arm you.”

  “Strongarm me?” I chuckled. “He hasn’t tried that in years. Hasn’t pulled it off in nearly twenty. Beating a vision out of a seven-year-old is one thing, but I haven’t been seven in a very long time.” A thought struck me. “Funny you bring that up, though. Shehak said something similar, earlier today. That people might say Papa’s turning me into a modern Soni Vardi, for his own political ends… I wonder what he meant by that.”

  “I hope he remembers how Soni Vardi’s story ended,” Leena quipped.

  How it ended?

  Soni Vardi – the most prolific seer in history. Twenty recorded visions over the course of his life. Some say the real number was closer to twenty-five.

  The King’s Seer. Tasked with foreseeing the outcomes of wars, raids, and assassination attempts.

  It drove him half mad, by the end.

  His last vision was the one that changed everything – the one that was wrong. It led to the king’s brutal death, the complete destruction of the dynasty.

  Was it a mistake? A hallucination conjured by his exhausted mind that Soni Vardi mistook for a vision?

  Or did he deliberately lead the king to his death? To the massacre of all his heirs, the annihilation of his bloodline?

  Sources varied.

  And even 500 years after his death, people couldn’t stop speculating. Couldn’t stop coming up with conspiracy theories; writing stories and songs and movies about Soni Vardi’s final vision. About what really happened. What the King’s Seer had really wanted, and why.

  The only thing that remained undisputed was the outcome.

  The king was dead, his dynasty wiped out.

  And Soni Vardi was hanged for treason in the town square; scorned by the very people he’d helped protect from countless raids and disasters.

  I was spared from delving further into this analogy of me as Papa’s Soni Vardi…by the door swinging open again, this time with a resounding bang.

  “Why have you been ignoring my calls?” demanded a sharp female voice.

  I barely had time to turn in my chair before Moyna had stormed in, grabbed me by the collar, and yanked me to my feet.

  “Do you know how worried I’ve been? I just spoke to Tara.” She thrust her phone in my face. “She said you left Palika’s office looking like you were on the verge of throwing up or passing out – likely both.” Her eyes flicked over me, scanning every inch. “And I can see exactly what she meant.” Her gaze drifted downward. “What the hell happened to your hand?” She let go of me, expression twisting in irritation. “I've called you at least a dozen times since last night, and you couldn’t be bothered to pick up? Or call me back? Not even once?”

  Moyna had inherited Leena’s natural air of domineering authority, along with Papa’s build and stature. Not a combination to be trifled with.

  At five-foot-nine, she stood as tall as me, just a couple inches shy of Papa. She also had the build of a kickboxing champion, a title she’d held throughout her time in college.

  Eight years older than me, she took that seniority very seriously, fully convinced it was her duty to guide and protect. And to generally meddle in every aspect of my life; letting pass no opportunity to be an overbearing (if occasionally helpful) nuisance.

  “I-I was busy.” I shot Leena a reproachful glance for telling Moyna I was here. She remained placid. “I would’ve called once I got home.” I shifted my focus back to my sister. “And what’re you doing lurking here on a Tuesday afternoon, anyway? Don’t you have work? I thought you lot would be drowning in deadlines, with budget season right around the corner.”

  Moyna worked at the Reserve Bank of Hastinar, following in her mother’s footsteps.

  Leena came from a family of bankers. She’d had an illustrious career in the field herself, capping it off as governor of the reserve bank before retiring seven years ago. After that, she threw herself fully into politics, soon rising to become the general secretary of the HNP.

  Both Moyna and I had Leena to thank for our education (and interest) in finance. She’d mentored us. Shaping our knowledge and nudging us, subtly yet persistently, toward her own field.

  The difference was, Moyna used that training to carve out a respectable career, securing a position at the reserve bank, like her mother before her.

  Whereas I’d never held a steady job in my life. Instead, I used my skills exclusively to raise hell and cause chaos. Picking up one-off projects here and there when my bank account started looking malnourished.

  Moyna frowned. “I was in the area. Will be meeting with the Textile Trade Council—” She narrowed her eyes, reaching out to tug at a strand of my hair. “You need a haircut. Maa told me you just crawled in from Zintra.” Her gaze flicked to Leena, then back. “And what were you doing there, may I ask? Killing time on a Tuesday morning, flirting with unsuspecting receptionists? Have some shame, Lekh.”

  I blinked. “Receptionists?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Tara told me all about your plans for the week.” Her lips quirked slightly. “The Solstice Concert in Mignir, hmm? Not a bad idea for a first date. That is, if I believed for a second you were actually serious about her. Which we both know you are not.”

  I had no idea how to respond to this, so I stayed silent. Moyna took this as an invitation to continue her rant. And continue she did.

  “How many times has Papa tried to set you up with a job at one of his friends’ firms? You could even take the reserve bank exams this year. They’re still six months away. I’d help you study.” She regarded me almost pityingly. “Papa is so worried about you. We all are. And the most frustrating part is that you’ve got the talent, everyone knows that. You just need to put your mind to it. Apply yourself. Sit down and study, for once in your life. It’s just a matter of dedication and effort.”

  “I don’t want a job,” I insisted, shooting Leena a beseeching glance. “I’m not cut out for the nine-to-five grind. How many times have you said that yourself?”

  “You can’t know what you’re cut out for until you try it. That’s all we want you to do. That’s all Papa wants.” Moyna laid a hand on my shoulder. “I know you think he only cares about the family’s reputation. That you not having a ‘respectable’ job reflects badly on the Naag surname.” Her mouth tightened in a slight grimace. “And I won’t deny that Papa can be…image conscious. But it’s more than that.

  “He worries about you, Lekh. About your future. You’re so talented; you have so much to offer the world. Papa just wants you to reach your potential. It’s what he wants for all three of us. He may not always say it the right way, but in the end, he just wants what’s best for his children. Like any parent.”

  I met Leena’s gaze, but neither of us said a word. What was there to be said? Neither she nor I had the heart to shatter Moyna’s sweet illusions about Papa.

  Even at 33, she still looked up to him with an almost childish devotion.

  Part of it was because she’d only been six when Papa divorced Leena to marry my mother. So, most of Moyna’s memories of living under the same roof with him were from that time. And she’d spent all her years, since then, trying to recapture that idyll.

  The other part was that Moyna was, after all, Leena Sen’s daughter. She’d always had her mother as a shield, a buffer between her and Papa.

  She never felt the full force of his… let’s call them personality flaws.

  For all his roaring bluster, he’d never dare treat Leena’s daughter the same way he treated the child of a bar dancer. A dead one, at that.

  A while later, Moyna left, hugging her mother and planting a forceful kiss on my cheek. “Don’t pester him about jobs anymore today, Maa. That’s my responsibility, and I’ve got it covered. You and Papa just leave him be, okay?” She smacked me on the back. “He’ll come around. You’ll see.”

  After a solid five minutes recovering from the whirlwind of Moyna’s visit, Leena turned to me. “She does have a point, you know.”

  I groaned. “You think spending forty hours a week under the watchful eye of one of Papa’s friends,” I stressed the word, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Or spies – will somehow improve my life?”

  “Not that. I mean…” she gazed speculatively at me. “Is there a reason you’re doing all this?” She raised the flash drive, still pinched loosely between her index and middle fingers. “All this risk you’re taking.” Her eyes flicked to my bandaged hand. “What’s the payoff you’re expecting at the end of it all? Do you have a long-term plan for moving against your father?”

  I looked at Leena. At the concern in her eyes, barely concealed behind a thin veneer of wry indifference.

  Why had I always called her that? Just Leena.

  My biological mother, Raya, had been Maa. For as long as she was alive.

  And Farida had been Ammi from the moment she married my father, less than a year after Maa leapt to her death in the mountains of Hilya.

  But of my father’s three wives, Leena had played the biggest role in raising me. Mostly because Farida hadn’t been in the picture for the first six years of my existence. My own mother had spent those years lost in a haze of alcohol. And Papa had been…well, Papa. A cactus would’ve been hard-pressed to survive in his tender care, let alone a child.

  So, Leena was left to handle the practical nitty-gritty of raising me. Albeit she and Papa had been long divorced by the time I was born.

  Yet, she never insisted I call her any version of ‘mother.’

  Always content to simply be ‘Leena’. Never questioning what the word meant to me. If it meant anything at all.

  “No,” I said eventually, lowering my gaze. “There’s no plan. I just enjoy being a thorn in his side. Annoying him, exacting a bit of petty revenge.” I offered her a wry smile. “And you can pretend you don’t enjoy it just as much. But I won’t believe you. If you really didn’t, you’d have kicked me out of this office and into a cubicle at the Reserve Bank before I could get a word in edgewise. The fact I’m still sitting here is proof…that this is where you want me.”

  “I do want you here, Lekh.” She confessed. “But I can’t keep you here. Not forever. You’ll need to outgrow this coop, eventually. Find your own purpose, your own place in the world.”

  “Not if I can find a way to make the coop bigger,” I smirked. “Put you in the prime minister’s chair. Wouldn’t that be the perfect revenge? Insult and injury all rolled into one neat package. His life’s biggest goal, ripped right out from under him. And handed to the very person he cast aside to chase it.”

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