After everything had been paid out, the camp was in high spirits.

Zaw stood on the front verandah of the masters house, deep in thought.

“What’s the matter?” said Seng Nu walking over to him and as she approached he drew his arm around her waist pulling her in, but kept his eyes forward his expression still serious.

“Where are they going to spend their earnings?” he said in a tone suggesting that the answer was nowhere near.

Seng Nu nuzzled her head into his side. “They won’t go to Blackstone, but there are plenty of other villages” “There are, but the men that Gunthaw brought here with him to the Battle came from those other villages too.” Seng Nu clung to Zaw for a few more silent moments, and then without warning sprang up and ran to the parade ground and whistled loud for attention. She was no longer the quiet mouse that she had been when she first came to Buttersweet.

Pinkwetha came trundling from the north stable at her whistle. He had never regained his sight and Seng Nu had tied a thick strip of red cloth around his head to cover the empty wounds around his eyes. Even she could not heal him. But with his blindness, he had learnt to get around the camp without bumping into anything. His banana leaf ears and his thick vine of a trunk helped him hear and feel his way around. And his nose would always lead him in the direction of freshly snapped sugar cane. Some of the men joked that he must have an extra pair of eyes in his mouth.

Pinkwetha lifted Seng Nu onto his back and then she gave a second whistle, this one for the humans, who soon circled her She held out a pouch. “This is my share of this season’s payment” She said and tipped it up, letting the jade pieces tumble onto the dusty ground. Take it with you when you go to the Valley towns and distribute it among the families of the men who fell at the gate.

This will bring us...” she struggled to find the right word

“Fortune?” ventured someone. “Protection?” came a more cynical voice.

“It will not bring us anything.” Said Zaw.

Some of the eyes in the crowd widened at the site of Zaw of all people openly contradicting Seng Nu who had adopted a puzzled look herself. “It will not bring us anything. Nothing we can hold, nothing we can use. For now at least. But it is the right thing to do” said Zaw, and he took out his own pouch. “I cannot walk far enough to see this done, but take my Jade pieces too and see they are given to the families.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“And what of our families?” said a voice in the crowd. “We have worked hard and now we cannot share our fruit with them?”

“Of course you can” said Seng Nu. “What you do with your jade is up to you. Maybe some of you might give just a little. We have had a good return this year.”

“Those men knew what they were doing when they came here. They knew the risks”. Said Sut, who was in his second year and was not eager to share his prize with anyone. He was only a year younger than Zaw and spoke as though he was eager to prove himself.

“I think you are forgetting that without Seng Nu here you would have had less in your hand than you have now” Said Kon, who looked sternly at the junior.

“Kon is right, Seng Nu took an equal share of Jade, not a master’s portion” Said Dai, doing his best to walk the line between paternal and strict. “With her as master we have more for ourselves than ever.”

Sut tilted his head and let his thick straw hair dangle over his eyes, partly in defiance, partly to avoid having to look either in the eye. “She is not the master here.” He said. “We are all masters, isn’t that what we...” but he let his words fall to the floor as his elders glared at him.

“Wait”. Said Seng Nu. “Dai, thank you, but Sut is right. I am not the master here.” She put a hand on Sut’s shoulder. “Never be afraid to speak your mind.” she said, doing her best to look past his mop of hair to where she thought his eyes were. Then she let go and looked at the rest of the men. “We are all equal here.”

“Then why are you ordering us to give our money to the families of men who tried to kill us?” came another voice. “I’m not ordering you” said Seng Nu, her voice started to waver again. “You can do what you want!”.

Zaw had stepped in again to speak. “None of us have to give a portion of our jade to those men’s families. Seng Nu is not commanding you. Has she ever forced you to do anything? She is making a suggestion. When we ran Gunthaw out of here and took the camp for ourselves, didn’t we say this would be a different place? Or did we just create more Gunthaw’s, hoarding our money close and only looking after our close kin?”

“The boy speaks well,” said Kon. “We must show the Valley we are different, that what we have made here is not just a change in our wealth, but in our hearts too.” and he took out a piece of jade from his shoulder bag and held it up for the camp to see.

Seng Nu interrupted. “Wait. I do not want to see who will give and who will not. No one should feel pressured by the eyes of others. I will leave a bag next to the door of my house. Put your jade in there if you want to.”

Zaw raised a hand. “what if someone steals from the bag?” There were grumbles and expressions of hurt from around the gathering. “Well a crow might stick his beak in!” Zaw protested.

“Like this?” said Jakan who made his fingers rigid and snapped them towards Zaw’s nose. The tension of the afternoon broke as everyone else joined in, laughing as they chased each other with their own snapping crow beak hands and wrestled in the dust. Kon stepped aside to speak to Seng Nu.

“I’ll make a lockbox for you with a hole in the top that will let jade in, but stop any hands or beaks from taking it out.” At the end of the week, Seng Nu calculated that just over half of the camp had donated to the families fund.