A Table Set for Six

On the last night of the year, by a custom she invented on the spot and attributed to her grandmother, Lieutenant Yeon Seol had her officers to dinner. Six places: the commander, the sergeant, Ho Dan, the signal-boy — promoted to the table over the sergeant's objections — and the surgeon, who came late and smelling of pine smoke.

It was not much of a feast. Barley, river fish, the garrison's harsh wine, and a jar of southern plums that had arrived with the last carts, sent by a sister who wrote: the cutting goes north with the first thaw. Do not let it die, Seol. It is the tree you used to climb.

In her first life she had spent this night alone with the maps, and every year-end night after it, four decades of them, and it had felt like discipline. It had only been fear, wearing discipline's coat. The maps could spare her an evening. The war would still be there in the morning — she could personally guarantee it for thirty-nine more years, though she was beginning, cautiously, to hope she was wrong about that.

Ho Dan proposed a toast to the cleanest ledgers on the wall. The signal-boy proposed a toast to the bell. The surgeon proposed they eat the plums before the wine was gone, and carried the motion. Outside, the snow came down on the Frost Gate, on the granary, full, and the north stair, standing, and the first winter — her hundredth winter — turned quietly toward spring.