Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air by Melissa Scott, Jo Graham

you could tell she knew what she was doing. And I called her on it, and she named her lodge, and she said she was cursed. That it had ruined a job she had been hired for, and that she brought nothing but ruin.”
    Jerry blinked. It wasn’t impossible, but it was hardly common; on the other hand, a drunken woman who talked about curses in a Honolulu bar was more the stuff of pulp magazines and B movies. Before he could say anything, George’s eyes shifted, the disillusioned stare of a man who knew himself disbelieved, and he quickly filled another glass.
    “Do me a favor, will you, Ballard? Take this to my wife.”
    “Of course,” Jerry said, and turned carefully away.
    Jerry made his way across the room, cane hooked over his arm, and smiled politely at Bea. The Irishwoman stood with her, luckily with a full drink already in her hand, and Jerry included her in his nod. “Your husband sent this over, Mrs. Patton.”
    Bea’s smile deepened. “That was nice of him. Did you meet Margaret earlier?”
    “I didn’t have the pleasure,” Jerry said. “Though I think someone pointed you out as the author of tonight’s piece?”
    She smiled. “I was.”
    “It was very well done,” Jerry said.
    “I’m glad you think so,” Margaret said. She held out her hand, and Jerry took it. “It’s Dr. Ballard, isn’t it? Peter’s told me about your dig. I hope it’s going well.”
    “Margaret is Peter’s wife,” Beatrice said. “Margaret Buck.”
    Jerry hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face or in his handshake. “We’re very much in the preliminary stages. And of course it’s a tremendous long shot that we’d find anything.”
    “So he said. But still — you may be lucky.” Margaret smiled. “Sometimes one is.”
    “We can hope so,” Jerry said. Behind her Bea had a warning look on her face, and so he finished with more than his usual warmth. “I appreciate your good wishes.”
    “I hope you’ll come to dinner some night,” Margaret said. “And Dr. Radke, of course, if you think he’d be willing.”
    Jerry couldn’t help flinching a little at that — he knew perfectly well what she was worried about, and felt a little guilty for having stayed so determinedly off politics with Willi. “I’d be delighted,” he said, and felt like crossing his fingers like a child. “And I’m sure Dr. Radke would be, too.”
    Both she and Bea gave him a look that suggested they had heard the evasion, but appreciated the effort. “We’ll have to find a suitable evening,” Margaret said.
    “I’m entirely at your disposal,” Jerry answered, and she moved away, leaving him and Beatrice by the lanai doors. She looked at him as if he’d passed some test more significant than any in the ritual, and he knew perfectly well what it was. “I don’t disapprove,” he said. “I’ve just never met a racially mixed couple before.”
    “Unsurprising, since there isn’t a state in the Union where they could marry,” Beatrice said tartly. “Fortunately, New Zealand is more — lenient.”
    He suspected she had been going to say reasonable. “I’m glad for them,” he said. He was certainly aware of the dangers, couldn’t help wondering how they had managed during their year at Yale. When he had first roomed with Iskinder in his own college years, he’d observed the care with which Iskinder interacted with other students, friendly and personable and outgoing with the men, but entirely abstracted and cool to women. He’d wondered — hoped, as he got to know Iskinder better — if Iskinder simply didn’t like women much. And then he’d realized that it had nothing to do with that, but was rather that any kind of friendship with a white woman was a minefield. It could so easily become a disaster for her, the kind of thing that ruined one’s reputation and prospects for life, and for him — well, it probably wouldn’t have been lethal within the bounds of Harvard College, especially not when he was a prince of