The canal network solves several problems at once.
That’s why Gosie heads west.
Not dramatically west — not mountains, not coast — but into the slow industrial veins of the Midlands, where things still move quietly if nobody is in a hurry to ask questions.
After Rye, Gosie realises the adversary’s system depends on:
- movement that looks ordinary
- timing hidden inside routine
- infrastructure people mentally filter out
Canals are perfect for that.
No scanners.
No urgency.
No attention.
Things disappear into the landscape at four miles an hour.
More importantly, canal culture has its own rules:
- people notice outsiders
- but ignore continuity
- boats drift in and out
- cargo changes hands quietly
- everyone assumes everyone else has some practical reason for being there
That’s ideal for distributed transfer.
Especially for small, valuable objects moving in fragments.
Which leads Gosie to @Hedgehogforshort.
Hedgehog is aboard a narrowboat somewhere in the Midlands network — not hidden, exactly, but difficult to pin down because narrowboats exist in a strange state between residence and movement.
Gosie suspects Hedgehog has seen:
- repeated boat patterns
- unusual cargo swaps
- and perhaps specific vessels appearing near key transfer windows
Possibly without realising their significance.
But Hedgehog is not giving information away for free.
Not because she’s secretive.
Because she has standards.
And one of those standards is:
- if someone arrives at dinner time asking questions about suspicious canal traffic, they are making supper first.
Entirely fair.
So Gosie finds herself in the deeply unfamiliar position of having to earn intelligence via galley cooking aboard a narrowboat barely wider than a corridor.
This is not her natural environment.
She is used to:
- archives
- marinas
- tractors
- covert logistics networks
Not:
- balancing pans while the boat rocks slightly
- locating onions in cupboards that are somehow also stairs
- or being supervised by Hedgehog with the calm intensity of someone judging both technique and character simultaneously.
And yet, Gosie understands immediately that this matters.
Because canals are not about speed.
They are about continuity.
If the adversary network truly spans:
- sea
- agriculture
- marinas
- rural corridors
…then canals may be the glue between them.
The unnoticed middle layer.
And if Hedgehog talks, Gosie may finally learn not just
where the pieces move —
—but how the network stays connected when nobody appears to be in charge.
Gosie wishes she had Maud's training in haute cuisine but has learned a thing or two about catering from the Bluestocking gerbils. She's hoping she can meet Hedgehog's standards.