“That’s the theater,” he said of a spattered white stone building as they made their way through the concession. “They took up a subscription to raise it five years ago, and now they’re very proud, say it’s just as good as the one in London.” He shrugged. “It’s not. I don’t know why they try.”
“It looks very grand to me.” It looked steep and imposing and extremely muddy. Were all the buildings she saw in woodcuts of London this muddy? Was the cleanliness all an artist’s trick?
Benedict simply gestured to his right. “Over there’s the horse track. It’s a source of constant argument. Is it viable amusement? Is gambling a vice?” He grinned at her. “The argument itself provides half the diversion.”
He kept this discussion going as they trekked along muddy paths lined by blocky Western-style buildings—banks and social clubs and residences. In Fuzhou, what she had thought of as Western buildings were made of stone and brick—long, windowed structures of one or two stories. Here, the stone was carved into curlicues and built up into ornate structures of three, four, even occasionally five stories high. Amelia had seen prints of buildings like this in books about London or Paris. It was her first time seeing something this grand in real life.
But neither Benedict nor Captain Hunter seemed to think their surroundings particularly imposing.
“This property we are going to,” Benedict said, “was obtained with great finesse after the First Opium War.” He frowned. “I’m told that Captain Hunter’s great-great-uncle—Uncle Henry, you’ll have heard of him—did the negotiations back in the forties. We don’t really own it.”
She glanced back at Captain Hunter.
“You’ll have to get Captain Hunter to tell you about his uncle Henry,” Benedict said. “Him and uncle John—they founded Lord Traders. Everyone is quite in awe of them. From what I hear, uncle John was the visionary and uncle Henry was…”
Benedict trailed off, glancing behind them at Captain Hunter who had raised an eyebrow.
“Are you planning to delve into the entire family history?” Captain Hunter asked.
“Yes,” Benedict said. “As Mrs. Smith’s official liaison, I am providing orientation and conversation.”
Captain Hunter shook his head.
“People do it when they want to be friendly,” Benedict went on. “You do it too. Why are you being so forbidding and scary all of a sudden?”
Captain Hunter sighed. “It’s late. I’m tired.”
Amelia could understand that. “What were you saying about the place where we are headed, Benedict?” Amelia suggested. “You don’t own the building?”
Benedict flushed. “Well, I don’t own anything at all! My understanding is that it’s a lease from the original owners.”
“And will I be allowed to stay here? I had thought that under the treaty, Chinese people were not allowed in the foreign concessions. And I have not seen any.”
Benedict waved a hand. “Ehh. That’s technically true. But that particular bit is not enforced at present.”
“No?”
“After the Taiping Rebellion, there were too many refugees to keep them all out. There’s some grumbling about it, but so far, no need to worry. Didn’t your mother register you as a British citizen anyway?”
“I have citizenship through my prior marriage.”
Captain Hunter huffed and looked away.
“We’re here,” Benedict said.
Amelia looked up. The stone building they had stopped before was a blocky, angular structure lacking entirely in courtyards. It was two stories tall with wide windows everywhere. She’d been traveling all day. After the bewildering cacophony of customs followed by the walk here, she was already exhausted.
But there was no time for exhaustion. Captain Hunter came forward and conducted her on a tour of the building, introducing her to the head of his staff, Geoffrey Wyatt. He showed her an office, told her it was hers, introduced the others working there—
Her head was spinning.
“Benedict will be your liaison for the first few months,” Captain Hunter said.
Amelia looked at him in mute entreaty. She had known he had cable to lay. (Cable. To lay. She blushed and made herself think of regular cable.)
“I’ve business here for the next three days,” he said, as if he’d heard her silent protest. “Settle in, start working. I’ll talk to you as I can.”
It had all been theoretical up until this point. Having an office and a desk made her future telegraphic work seem real. It was now Amelia’s job to allow half a billion people to communicate via telegraph.
Whatever had she been thinking to imagine she could accomplish that?
“Benedict will help you find a place to live. Jump in,” he told her, as if he understood her hesitation. “It won’t get any easier for putting it off. It will just make you dread the work more.”
She squelched all her fears into a tiny ball in the pit of her stomach. “Right. Where should I start?”
“Mrs. Smith.” Captain Hunter looked her directly in the eyes. “Do you remember what I told you on board the Celerity?”
“Um.” There had been so many things. “Which thing?”
“I have to let you loose on the world.” She wasn’t sure if the smile he gave her was kind or cruel. “That means you’re going to have to let yourself loose as well.”
But where do I start? She managed to pull in this whining complaint, managed to smile at him and nod as if that wasn’t a string of gibberish that bounced in her head the way all the words in the customs hall had.
“Right.” She nodded. “Perfect. Absolutely. Understood.” She had no idea what she was even saying anymore.
Maybe she didn’t sound as certain as she’d tried to be, because he huffed. “I’ll see you again before I’m off. But for now—I’ve a meeting.”
He nodded to her, once, and then decamped.
The room he abandoned seemed very empty. Just her, a desk, a window over a city that should have been familiar but which felt incredibly, increasingly foreign. Her and the boy who had been assigned as her liaison, and they were supposed to change the world?
“Whew.” Benedict whistled beside her. “What are you going to do now?”
What else was there to do? “Find a place to sleep.” She let out a long breath. “And then, I suppose, jump in.”
Amelia saw Captain Hunter regularly over the next handful of days.
“How is it going?” he asked her the next afternoon, when she’d only had the chance to review the folders of project needs and the absolute chaos that had been the prior attempts to encode the Chinese language. “Any questions?”
“No!” She’d smiled at him brightly, hiding the fear that roiled in her gut. “It’s all very clear!”
She saw him again at noon the next day.
“Everything’s fine!” she reassured herself in his direction. “Just fine!”
And then again that evening: “I’m off to a smashing start!”
She thought about that “smashing start”—ha—through the wee hours of the night. Smashing, yes. It was all smashing right into her. She had steeled herself to give him another cheery and insubstantial reply when she saw him the next morning. But somehow when he walked in and saw her at her desk, with her stack of notes where she’d doodled various exclamations of doom in the margin, she realized that he would be leaving within a day.