1. Corporate Property #2
The crate sails across the wet cobblestones and smashes directly in front of him. Pine splinters scatter over the stones and strike the toes of his polished boots.
The crowd surges forward at once, and a dockworker shouts something obscene about the eviction notice. The security guards reach for their batons. At the front, the gargoyles brace themselves with a grinding scrape of stone.
Marta reaches toward another crate, but I catch her wrist before she can grab it. She jerks against my grip once, then stops when I refuse to let go.
On the pallets, the merman lowers his megaphone and raises one webbed hand toward the harbor. The water beside the quay rises with him.
A shimmering sheet of magic tears upward from the waves and curves over the dock. Gray daylight catches in bands of blue and green across its surface. Then the spell snaps shut above us, and my ears pop hard enough to hurt.
The waves and gulls disappear at once. So does the wind battering the quay, leaving only the shouting trapped beneath the dome with us. Marta is still yelling beside me, and somewhere behind her a dockworker bellows at the security guards.
The bubble seals us beneath a thin iridescent barrier while pressure settles unpleasantly behind my ears. Outside it, the corporate crew simply goes back to work.
One man walks toward the next crane with another eviction notice while somebody else tears off a strip of tape. Our shouting may as well not exist to them.
I push through the crowd toward the edge of the spell and press both palms against it. The surface feels cool and slick, yielding slightly before pushing my hands back.
“You cannot legally serve an eviction notice without a municipal judge’s signature,” I shout. “This is a public port.”
My words reach the barrier and stop there. The merman watches my lips for a moment, but his answer comes through the dome perfectly clearly.
“Section Four, Paragraph Two. As of yesterday morning, Eiriksson Maritime owns this whole town.” He glances down at his clipboard. “Technically, you’re standing on corporate property.”
For several seconds, I just stare at him. Behind his shoulder, another laminated notice goes up on the loading crane.
“This is absurd,” I shout, pressing harder against the barrier. “Saltweather is our home. You can’t do this.”
The merman’s expression doesn’t change. He touches the small earpiece tucked into his collar and glances toward the rest of the crew.
“Take it up with the CEO,” he says, the words coming through the magic without distortion. Then his attention returns to me. “If you can get an appointment.”
He turns away and tells the crew to finish the postings. I leave my hands against the barrier for another moment and stare at the Eiriksson Maritime logo.
At least now I have somewhere to start. I’m going to find the person above them who can explain what is happening to my town.
The refrigerator hums behind me while rain ticks against the kitchen windows. I sit at my grandmother’s scarred table with my laptop open beside two maritime books from the library. I’m still wearing the same trousers I nearly got trampled in at the quay.
Eiriksson Maritime dominates the first page of search results. It takes me three menus and a badly designed corporate directory to find the one thing I actually want.
The directory gives me a name in bold letters: SIGURD EIRIKSSON — CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. I click it, expecting another page of legal language. Instead, a photograph fills the top half of the screen.
For a moment, I forget to scroll. Sigurd Eiriksson is a kraken, which I already knew from the articles. The word did not prepare me particularly well for the man looking back at me.
His skin is a deep gray-blue, darker along the hard line of his jaw. His shoulders nearly fill the photograph despite the severe black suit somebody has put him in.
His eyes glow an impossible blue without any visible pupils. They should be unsettling, but I don’t find them unsettling at all. That is inconvenient.
There is no practiced CEO smile, either. He looks straight into the camera with a calm, unreadable expression. Posing for the photograph already seems like more cooperation than anyone should expect from him.
I lean a little closer before catching myself. “You bought my town.”
The reminder helps, so I scroll down. His biography is brief and remarkably unhelpful.
Eiriksson Maritime controls deep-water shipping routes, commercial fleets, and enough ocean territory to make the word maritime feel modest. Sigurd himself has apparently been running some version of the company for centuries.
“So you’re the CEO,” I murmur. “Good. Now all I need is a way to complain to you.”
That part proves harder. There is no direct number for his office, and the only public line offers cargo claims, port access, and investor relations.
“You don’t just own the ocean without having a receptionist,” I mutter, hanging up before the options repeat. I try his name with Saltweather instead.
The results give me the acquisition notice and several older records. Eiriksson Maritime owns shipping rights, harbor facilities, and deep-water access all over the world. I cannot find another case where the company bought an inhabited human town.
I check one of the maritime books to make sure I’m not missing an obvious precedent. Ten minutes later, I’m still finding oceans and ports, but no towns.
Companies this old tend to have habits. Whatever Sigurd Eiriksson is doing to Saltweather does not look like one of his.