Amelia felt so many things that it was impossible to feel them all, as if her hope, her tears, her sorrow, her excitement were all very far away, receding into blue haze the way her childhood home was. She felt, most of all, an inexplicable relief.
Captain Hunter came up beside her. “Is everything well?”
She nodded. The first time she had left Fuzhou, she had been newly married. She had been seventeen; she had scarcely known her husband, but she had been full of hope and imagination.
She’d been told to wait in the cabin for the departure. Mr. Smith had not stayed with her. She had become sick with the ship’s jerking motion immediately.
On board the Lenity, she’d been asked only to stay out of the way. The crew worked around her—a mix of Black and Chinese sailors speaking a polyglot cacophony of Cantonese and English with a few words mixed in that she didn’t recognize in any language.
The captain of the ship—another Hunter, which made it very easy to remember his name—stood at the bow.
Her stomach felt a little queasy, but if she concentrated on the far horizon, that feeling was manageable. An ancient pagoda of white stone stood in the middle of the river on an island. They passed it, the structure as high as the ship’s chimneys, before it too began to recede.
“I first came to Fuzhou when I was seven,” she said. “I don’t remember much before we arrived. But my mother prevailed upon Mr. Acheson to provide a permanent home in the East once she took in me and Leland. This was the place they chose.”
He didn’t say anything in response to that. What was there to say?
Finally: “You call him Mr. Acheson and not father?”
She shook her head. “He’s around so rarely. He’s quite busy, you know; I saw him maybe two months out of the year when we were younger, and even less now.”
He did not say anything, so Amelia continued. “He referred to me and Leland as his wife’s strays a few times. I’m sure he wishes he had children of his own instead of us, but I gather that was an early sticking point in their marriage.” She shook her head; she hadn’t meant to discuss her mother’s personal affairs. “But never mind. I suppose this is my childhood home; I don’t recall much of anything before I came here.”
Dust. A promise.
A string of ships was escaping Fuzhou on the high tide, threaded out both before and behind them. Mrs. Flappert was aboard one of them. They were all deep in the water, heavily laden.
She frowned. “Isn’t it dangerous to load ships so much? We’re heading out to sea. Won’t we be in greater danger of sinking under waves and things like that?”
He shook his head. “Precisely the opposite. Cold water, up to a point, is more buoyant than warm. And salt water is more buoyant than fresh.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Then a sea voyage over many climes must require a great deal of calculation. I had not realized.”
“It’s done via load line.”
She turned to look at him.
“Ships have lines drawn on them to represent what they can carry and in which seas. That way, you never forget that a ship that shows no difficulty in one harbor may flounder in a different sea. All carrying capacity varies with circumstance.”
“Can you see the Lenity’s load lines from here?”
“If you don’t mind falling overboard.” He grinned at her. “If you’re interested, have someone show you in Hong Kong.”
Amelia exhaled into the wind. The clouds hung low overhead, but the oppressive humidity from earlier had fled. The wind ruffled against her, flapping the collar of her gown. Seabirds called overhead, and she turned from where she stood at the stern to look forward.
The sea was ahead, wide and blue and so close that she hadn’t realized they were upon it. A gap in the clouds lit the waters, painting them in blues and greens and white frothing wave caps.
“Oh,” she said softly. “It applies to people too.”
She’d expected him to make some sarcastic comment, demanding to know what nonsense she was spouting.
Instead, he just looked at her with those dark brown eyes and smiled. “Feeling buoyant, are you?”
She didn’t understand why she was feeling such relief. She hadn’t realized until she left that the world she’d been in had exerted such force on her. It felt strange and odd and open. Her heart lifted inside her.
“Captain Hunter.” She turned to him. “I have just realized a thing.”
“Have you now?” He sounded amused. “What is it?”
“I have just realized that I hated my late husband. It seems so unreasonable to have done so; he didn’t do anything. But he took me to India and just expected me to manage everything. It never occurred to him that I had to expend effort to learn a new language. That I was doing that, and trying to keep his house, and everything. The only time he noticed me was when I failed to do something, at which point I earned his annoyance. He never thought about my load. He never thought of me at all.”
Captain Hunter was watching her with a raised eyebrow.
Amelia sighed. “It’s a stupid reason to hate someone. And he’s dead, so it seems ungrateful in addition. And yet. I had been dreading the concept of another Mr. Smith for so long that I didn’t realize how much room my dread was taking up. I feel…” She whirled around, laughing. “I feel amazing.”
“I did tell you.” Captain Hunter’s lip quirked up. “I didn’t need to threaten you. If you’re enjoying yourself now, wait until the Daily Disoccupation.”
“The daily what?”
“You’ll see.” He smiled. “It’s a Lord Traders tradition. Almost a century old. We’ve pushed it off a bit because of the launch, but it will be time soon.”
“All of this.” She smiled back at him. “And I’m getting a dog in Shanghai. Why didn’t I find someone to employ me before?”
He very gallantly did not mention how many days he had needed to employ her here.
Instead, he straightened, holding up a finger. “Speaking of which. Wait here.”
He disappeared, leaving her at the railing. Ships stretched out behind them, dots painted in whites and blacks and grays breaking up the greenish waters of the Min. Her old home blended into a hazy backdrop of navy hills and snow-capped mountains beyond.
In front of her, the ocean made a dark blue glittering horizon in the sunlight, beckoning her forward. The wind was picking up, crisp and cool against her cheeks, and with it came the sharp scent of salt and the sound of seabirds overhead, crying out.
Her feelings were as yet unsorted, but a few leaped to the forefront now. Expectation, sharp and heady. Delight in the feel of the sun on her face, the wind going by. Adventure. She was going on an adventure, and she was getting paid fifty dollars per annum to do so.
Captain Hunter came up the ladder, carrying a small, crumpled blanket. He walked up to her and set the blanket on the deck. The fabric wriggled, moving…
“You mentioned the Flemings at the mercantile? There are of course dogs in Shanghai, but I realized after you’d left to fetch your things that you were under a misapprehension.”
Her heart leaped in her throat. She leaned down, peeling the fabric back. Inside was a small yellow puppy, eyes blinking in confusion, as if it had just been jolted from a nap.