“Oh, so you can take care of business? And what have you been doing about our vengeance?” she spat out defiantly.

They argued long and hard, yelling at the tops of their voices until the old people trying to sleep upstairs started hammering on the floor. Even then, they ignored the complaint and just went on arguing.

When they finally sank into sullen silence, having reached no agreement. Rani felt only contempt for her brother. He was trying to compensate for his own inadequacy by belittling her, using every shred of emotional blackmail he could dig up. Anand, their father, would not have wished her to do what she was doing, he said. The family would be ashamed of her, being out all night and up to no good. Such conduct would be shameless from any Indian girl, but from an ork it could destroy any hope of a satisfactory arranged marriage. She had deserted her brothers and failed in her duties in the house. She was a Bad Girl.

When the argument flared again after midnight, Rani was in no mood for further antagonism. She turned on her heel, told Imran to rakk off and die, and stomped up the stairs to her room. When he banged on the door. demanding an apology, she jammed a chair underneath the door handle and merely told him again to rakk off.

In the morning she didn’t bother with breakfast, but simply headed straight down the stairs with the bag shed packed. She had a wad of notes, people to see, and business to conduct. She could eat on the hoof. When she got downstairs Sanjay was waiting for her.

“You heard Imran last night,” he said, sorrowful eyes averted, but with his body determinedly barring her way to the front door. “You stay here.”

“If you don’t get out of my sodding way, I’ll kick you so hard you’ll never be able to rub any white trash again,” she yelled. She advanced upon him. He just managed to avoid her knee striking home, but the kick numbed his leg enough to prevent him from stopping her from scrambling out the door.

Monday morning was freezing fog and a shopping list of missions. Precious hours were spent putting the word out for Mohinder, dispensing small change to get some local street kids to earn what they could by scurrying around Fenchurch Street, and then visiting the first Mary Kelly on her list.

The nobleman had found only four women by that name in Rani’s patch, so the figured she could check them out personally. This one lived just off Brick Lane itself-or at least she once had, The squinting, rat-faced landlord told Rani that Mary Kelly didn’t live here anymore, and his toothless grin said she’d have to dispense some money to learn anything else.

A handful of notes got her access to Mary Kelly’s old room in this rancid dump ol’ a flophouse, hut the chamber yielded no sign of its former tenant, A vacant-eyed, anorexic trancer stared unseeingly at Rani from the single rickety chair in the almost lightless shoebox of a room. What she finally learned was that Mary Kelly Number One had died on the streets a couple of months back, choked on her own vomit most likely. She had been a wino so hopeless that even this landlord had kicked her out onto the streets.

Rani got her first break in the middle of the afternoon, while sipping her coffee at Beigel’s Bake. An ork contact who looked at her with the respect money brings told her quietly that the pimps had cleaned up a mess at their place and dumped some unidentified stuff into the river. One of them had bought enough disinfectant to swab down the public baths. Since Rani hadn’t told the ork about the murder, she thought it very likely he was telling her the truth. As expected, the pimps had gotten rid of the evidence and virtually no one knew about the cruel midnight slaying. Life was cheap hereabouts, and nobody wanted the baggies knocking at their door. Especially if it was the door to a brothel.

The ork was eager in the way he talked, hoping for a good payoff. She looked at his disintegrating plastic shoes, the trousers with more patches than original cloth, and she remembered having seen him out shivering in the cold in his thin jacket and dirty, discolored vest. She gave him two hundred and fifty and he looked at her like she was some Indian goddess sent down from the heavens.

“This buys silence, right?’ Rani said sternly. “Don’t tell anyone about it. I’ve got others on the payroll who’ll know who to box if you get so much as a touch of the gators about this. You know what I mean?” He shrank back in fear, pleading his trustworthiness over and over. She looked at him more kindly.

“Okay, Merreck, I’ll trust you. Maybe I’ll have something else you might be interested in a week or two from now. I’ll know where to find you?”

He was pathetically eager, promising anything she could possibly want. Two-fifty was more than he’d see in a month. He shuffled out the door and dreamed of real American jeans. First, though, he’d get some hot food into his grumbling belly. A really fat, juicy burger stuffed full of onions and chemicals. The kids would also be getting their first decent meal in a week, so it wouldn’t hurt if they had to wait a bit longer.

Rani realized the power money gave her and for a time she reveled in it. But she kept cool, knowing not to advertise her wealth. The notes were safely stashed in the locked money belt. Anyone who wanted them would have to kill her first.

Next she phoned Mohsin and arranged to visit London Hospital after work the next evening. She was on a roll, and needed to get her hands on some meaty hardware to keep that good feeling going.

Finally back home that night, having capped a fairly successful day by picking up a good lead on where Mohinder might be the next morning, she found a reception committee in all its splendor waiting for her. There was Imran and Sanjay, of course, and a handful of male cousins as well, all gathered in the front room. In the back room she could see the swirl of saris.

Oh. here we go, she thought. The men are going to put me in my place and then the women are going to tell me how good it is to be there. Stuff this!

Anger boiled up inside her as her cousin Dilip began a placatory speech to which she wasn’t even listening. She was livid. How dare they? I’m growing up and I know what I want. Well, maybe I don’t, but I like being on the streets. I like talking to the people in Beigel’s, I like putting some money the way of street people who need it and who look at me with real respect. Rakk it all, I’m becoming a samurai, I know I am. I’ve got rich friends who trust me with their money. And I believe they like me. I remember what that funny-speaking nobleman said when I was leaving. If I was just a nobody, he wouldn’t have told me about that. I mean something.

“Rakk off!” she shouted at the men before her. “I’ve got my own life. I’m not going to be a good little girl. Be like them?” She pointed to the back room. “Tied to the sink and allowed, honored, to pander to every wish of my menfolk when they care to come home? That is, when they aren’t rubbing white girls like Sanjay does, or if they aren’t spineless slints like my own brother, doing nothing to avenge dead family.”

“As for you, Dilip, why don’t you tell Kriss there how you cheated him on those chip deals last March? Kriss, those chips weren’t worth half what you paid for them, and Dilip and lmran had a really good laugh about that. I wasn’t supposed to hear because I was in the kitchen cooking supper like a good little girl. We women can't hear anything in the kitchen, right? They were too steaming to care anyway. So who are you to lecture me? Honor and duty? There isn’t one of you who wouldn’t kill the other to save sixpence, and you bloody well know it!”

The men were thunderstruck. Kriss looked at Dilip, who tried to avoid his gaze. Her revelation had set the men against each other, while Imran was looking away from everyone in shame. Silence descended on them. She seized the initiative and delivered a parting shot.