The compound in the basin would never have killed an adult elk outright, which was the entire reason somebody had chosen it. It thinned blood slowly, so a bull would run half a mile from any pressure before his legs stopped answering him.
Vell closed the read and looked at the two bulls still standing over water they refused to drink. Ivory had not come here to poach a herd, since poaching left carcasses that inspectors counted.
"They want the herd weak rather than dead," he said, "because a dead herd is a crime and a weak herd is only bad luck."
"Ivory sells bad luck," Jia answered from the basin lip, "then sells the recovery contract to whoever owns the ground afterward."
Yenna had already found the inflow seam where the spring entered the basin, working her sleeve back past the cut on her forearm. Everything crossing into that water had to pass one narrow throat of stone, which made the poisoning solvable rather than permanent.
