They seemed, all things considered, to work well together: Leander and the naer. It was a surprising realisation, one which Leo would not comment on outloud… lest Rozkia thought it acceptable to him, because it was anything but. Still, he silently admired her nature, her willingness to get involved, her willingness to get on with a job and just see it through rather than shying from hard work. Dudley and Norman were next to useless, Immortals only knew what their purpose was here really - when push came to shove they weren’t all that helpful.
Leander, looking away and focusing on his experiments, did not notice the change in countenance for Norman. He felt Dudley join him at the table before he heard Rookie’s biting words directing him to help Leander. The chemist wasn’t sure how helpful the farmer would be but two heads were always better than one. Engrossed in his work, Leander paid no attention to the fact that half of the party were leaving the barn - Rozkia motioning Norman out silently. Without awareness, he could not hear the conversation they had outside.
For his part, Leander worked to mix in a reagent with the chyme - the contents that leave the stomach and enter the small intestine. The aim was to see if there was any chemical reaction from something which would indicate that these cows had been poisoned and what they had been poisoned with (not exactly but it would give them an idea of the chemical family. If Leander was a betting man (and he was), his money would be on an anticoagulant.
With a small amount of the chyme moved onto another plate, he added the reagent and waited. The process would take seconds, and his hunch was almost immediately proven to be right. He watched bubbles appear and a high-pitched but low-volume hissing as the contents took on a little of a blueish tinge. Stepping back in satisfaction, Leander nodded down at it and turned to Dudley, “It looks like the cows were poisoned, specifically by an anticoagulant. The question is why. With more time and more equipment, I could probably identify the specific poison, and could hazard a guess as to where the poison came from - if it is from the city of Rharne, that is. But I would need to take some samples back to my workshop. Bottom line, though, is that it seems that the dying crops and the poisoned cows are… well they may be related, but the ruined crops did not poison the cows.”
Turning, Leander’s eye caught Rozkia, who was just reentering the barn, Norman following a few steps behind. He raised a brow but made no comment - he was, hand on heart, completely uninterested in Rozkia’s comings and goings. If she had something better to do Leander really didn’t give one whit. She asked if there were results and Leander nodded, repeating what he had just told the farmer. “The colouration indicates a reaction has taken place,” he answered slowly and clearly, “It tells us that there is something in the cows that shouldn’t be there: poison.”
Leander turned to Dudley, waiting for him to speak about next steps, but the farmer never said anything, still staring dumbly at his beloved cow, cut open and defiled on the table across the other side of the barn. The chemist sighed and took lead, once again looking to Rozkia as she was the second most useful member of their little ragtag group, “I will take some of this chyme back to my workshop to examine it further. Perhaps then we can identify from where, or from whom, it came from. Until we have that information we cannot point fingers.”
Turning back to Dudley, Leo shrugged his shoulders in a defeated manner, “For now, I would recommend purging all current livestock feed and buying fresh. Buy little and often rather than in bulk. Keep tabs on where you get food and monitor your cattle for further illness. Unfortunately poisoned cattle cannot be sold as meat. I know these measures are going to be hard on your coin pouch but they are necessary. I hope to have answers for you in a trial or two, and we will involve the authorities when we know more.”
Dudley, a defeated expression on his face, sighed and nodded in agreement. “Thank be to you, Leander, Rozkia, Norman. This has been a tryin’ time for farmers, and made worse by this shi’storm. We’ll just… have to deal with it. Let me know if you find out anything more to help catch the bastards.”
