The dragon twitched her foot back, very nearly knocking Thymara over. She examined her claws herself and then responded with a reserved, ‘Perhaps.’

‘Stand up and stretch out, please. I need to check you for dirt and parasites.’

The dragon rumbled a protest but slowly obeyed. Thymara walked slowly around her. She hadn’t imagined the changes. Sintara had lost weight, but gained muscle. The constant immersion in river water was not good for her scales, but walking against the current was strengthening the dragon. ‘Open your wings, please,’ Thymara requested.

‘I’d rather not,’ Sintara replied primly.

‘Do you want to shelter parasites in their folds?’

The dragon rumbled again, but gave her wings a shudder and then unfolded them. The skin clung together like a parasol stored too long in the damp, and smelled unpleasant. Her scales looked unhealthy, the feathery edges showing white, like layers of leaves going to mould.

‘This is not good,’ Thymara exclaimed in dismay. ‘Don’t you ever wash them? Or shake them out and exercise them? Your skin needs sunlight. And a good scrubbing.’

‘They’re not so bad,’ the dragon hissed.

‘No. They’re damp in the folds and smelly. At least leave them unfolded to air while I go get something to help your claws.’ Heedless of Sintara’s dignity, she seized the tip of one of the dragon’s finger-ribs and pulled the wing out straight. The dragon tried to close her wing but Thymara held on stubbornly. It was entirely too easy for her to hold the wing open. The dragon’s muscles should have been stronger. She tried to think of the right word for it. Atrophy. Sintara’s wing muscles were atrophying from disuse. ‘Sintara, if you don’t listen to me and take care of your wings, soon you won’t be able to move them at all.’

‘Don’t even think such a thing!’ the dragon hissed at her. She gave a violent flap and Thymara lost her grip and fell to her knees in the mud. She looked up at the dragon as she began indignantly to fold her wings again.

‘Wait. Wait, what’s that? Sintara, open your wing again. Let me look under it. That looked like a rasp snake under there!’

The dragon halted. ‘What’s a rasp snake?’

‘They live in the canopy. They’re skinny as twigs but long. They’re really fast when they strike, and they have a tooth, like an egg tooth, on their snouts. They bite and hold on, and dig their heads in. And then they just hang there and feed. I’ve seen monkeys with so many on them that they look like they have a hundred tails. Usually the animal gets an infection around the head and dies from that. They’re nasty. Unfold your wing. Let me look.’

It hung from high under the wing, a long nasty snake-like body. When Thymara braved herself to touch it, the dangling thing suddenly lashed about angrily and Sintara gave a startled chirp of pain. ‘What it is? Get it off me!’ the dragon exclaimed and thrust her head under her wing and seized the parasite.

‘Stop! Don’t bite it, don’t pull on it. If you rip it off you, the head will tear free and stay inside and make a terrible infection. Let go, Sintara. Let go of it and let me deal with it!’

Sintara’s eyes glittered, copper disks whirling, but she obeyed. ‘Get it off me.’ The dragon spoke in a tight, furious voice and Thymara was jolted to feel, beneath Sintara’s anger, her fear. An instant later, Sintara added in a low hiss. ‘Hurry. I can feel it moving. It’s trying to dig deeper into me. To hide inside my body.’

‘Sa save us all!’ Thymara exclaimed. Her gorge rose in revulsion and she tried to recall how her father had said one got rid of a little rasp snake. ‘Not fire, no. They dig deeper if you put fire to them. There was something else.’ She searched her memory desperately, and then had it. ‘Whisky. I have to go see if Captain Leftrin has whisky. Don’t move.’

‘Hurry,’ Sintara pleaded.

Thymara ran towards the barge, then caught sight of the captain and Alise strolling together. She changed her course and raced towards them, shouting, ‘Captain Leftrin! Captain Leftrin, I need your help!’

At her cries, both the captain and Alise turned and hurried towards her. She was out of breath by the time they reached each other, and to Leftrin’s worried, ‘What’s wrong, girl?’ she could only reply, ‘Rasp snake. On Sintara. Biggest I’ve ever seen. Going into her chest, under her wing.’

‘Those damned things!’ he exclaimed and Thymara could only feel gratitude that she didn’t have to explain it.

She caught a gasping breath. ‘My father used liquor to make them back out.’

‘Yes, well, tereben oil works better. Trust me on that. Had to get one out of my own leg once. Come on, girl. I’ve got some on board. Alise! If one dragon has a rasp snake, chances are the others do, too. Tell the keepers to check their animals. And that brown one, the one that’s down? Check her, too. Look on her underbelly. They’ll go for a soft place for an easy bite and then dig in.’

Alise felt a surge of purpose as Leftrin turned away from her and headed back towards the barge. She hastened down the beach, going from keeper to keeper, giving the warning. Greft almost immediately found one dangling from Kalo’s belly, concealed by one of his hind legs. There were three fastened to Sestican; she’d thought for a moment that his keeper, Lecter, was going to faint when he discovered three short ends of snakes poking out from his dragon’s nether regions. She spoke to him sharply to jolt him from his panic, directing him to take his dragon over to where Sintara was and to wait for Leftrin there. The boy seemed shocked that she could speak so severely. He gave a gulp, recovered himself and obeyed her.

She swallowed her own shock at that and hurried on. When she came to Sylve and the golden dragon guarding the dirty brown one, she had to pause and rebuild her courage for a moment. She did not want to confront him; she wanted nothing more than to turn and hasten away. It took her a moment to convince herself that what she felt was not her own cowardice, but the dragon’s efforts to repulse her. She squared her shoulders and marched up to him and his keeper.

‘I’m here to check the brown dragon for parasites. Some of the other dragons have been attacked by rasp snakes. Your keeper should check you over while I look at the brown dragon.’

For a time the gold just stared at her. How could solid black eyes glitter so bleakly? ‘Rasp snakes?’

‘A parasitic burrowing creature. Thymara says she knows of them from the canopy. But these, she thinks, come from the river. They are much larger. It’s a snake that bites and eats its way in, to live off your flesh.’

‘Disgusting!’ Mercor declared. The gold immediately stood and spread his wings. ‘It makes me itch to think of it. Sylve, check me for those creatures immediately’

‘I groomed you completely today, Mercor. I do not think I would have missed such a thing. But I will check you.’

‘And I must look at the brown dragon to see if he has any,’ Alise asserted firmly.

She had expected Mercor to oppose her. Instead, he seemed completely distracted by the thought that he himself might have such a parasite.

Alise ventured towards the impassive copper dragon. She was crumpled on the ground in a way that was going to make inspecting her underbelly difficult if not impossible. And Sylve was right. The coating of mud on the dragon was so even that it almost looked deliberate. It was going to have to come off before she could tell much of anything about the creature.

She glanced helplessly towards Sylve, but the small girl had her hands full with Mercor. An instant later, her first impulse shamed her. What had she thought to do? Summon the Rain Wild child to have her clean the dragon so that Alise could inspect her without getting her hands dirty? How arrogant a thought was that? For years, she had been claiming she was an expert on dragons, yet at her first opportunity to tend to one, she quailed at a bit of mud? No. Not Alise Kincarron.