The Seascape Tattoo by Larry Niven Read Free Book Online Page A

considering him favorably, especially compared with the clutch of dandified suitors who had descended upon her mother’s kingdom drinking and eating up her substance like locusts, riding around the capital kingdom with their squads of bodyguards like clowns on parade at the circus.
    Her choice of one of those egotistical young bravos or languid balladeers would end one phase of her life and begin another. New alliances. New resources. New trade agreements. All to produce, in years to come, a new brood of trading tokens to be married to seal future alliances.
    She wasn’t a human being. Peasants had it better, she thought. They could marry for love. Or at least lust.
    Love …
    Odd how, when she thought that word, her heart sped up, just a bit, and her skin felt the way she felt that time a picnic had been interrupted by a lightning storm, and she’d been much too close to an actual strike. The air hummed. And her skin did as well.
    She remembered her cousin’s face when she looked at the face of her paramour. That was not the face of the girl Tahlia had played dolls with in childhood; it was the face of a woman who knew more about her body than Tahlia did. A woman who knew what it was to be a woman .
    Tahlia looked out across the ocean, dark but for slivers of moonlight dancing on the crescent waves. Restless, eternally in motion. Almost invisible. Like a woman’s heart. Who did she want to take her to that distant land? In whose hands could she entrust her heart? Any of those rough or effete and pampered boys seeking fortune? Ah, some of them were pretty enough, but none of them bottled the lightning …
    Draz had said something, quiet, but the softness itself had caught Tahlia’s attention. “What? I didn’t hear you.”
    â€œI said that the mermaid’s eyes are open.” The voice was cool, a little withdrawn. There was something in it.
    Princess Tahlia looked over the side of the ship. The figurehead faced the sea ahead. How could Drasilljah see the eyes?
    â€œI feel it,” she said, answering the unspoken query.
    â€œI thought the eyes were always open. In fact, when we came aboard, I saw that the statue’s eyes were open.”
    Draz wagged her head. “Not the wooden eyes,” she said. “The royal ships have figureheads carved from driftwood and blessed with the souls of Merfolk. We bond their spirits into the figureheads, and they give us protection.”
    â€œHow do they do this wondrous thing?”
    â€œHumans are not the only ones who work magic. We weird sisters have friends among the magical folk. When they age or sicken, if their lives cannot be saved, they sometimes benefit their clans by offering to bind their spirits into the carvings. Centaurs may become travel wagons. Weremice bond to household totems.”
    Tahlia nodded. She was actually a bit surprised that she’d never asked the question. “So the eyes…” She looked along the side of the ship and could see the back of the mermaid’s head and part of the tail, but nothing of the face. It was not surprising that Drasilljah could, however. Drasilljah could do many things.
    And right now Draz’s tension was becoming alarm. Princess Tahlia looked up at the sky. Dark, long hours from dawn, rain clouds threaded with lightning, the distant roll of thunder mere echoes … but no hint of danger. What of the ocean? When the clouds parted enough for the moonlight to splash upon the waves, she could see nothing, but hers was not a sailor’s practiced gaze, able to detect the masts of a pirate vessel bobbing at the horizon.
    But still …
    There  … a patch of ocean to the north was silvered with moonlight. Nothing. Was she expecting a kraken?
    â€œLook,” Drasilljah pointed.
    Tahlia tried to look along that finger, squinted, unsure if her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, or if she was merely imagining a hint of outline. There did