Thymara was appalled at the girl’s gullibility. ‘Sylve, we don’t even know if Kelsingra still exists. It’s probably buried in the mud like the other Elderling cities. I never really believed we’d get to Kelsingra. I think the best we can really hope for is to find a place suitable for the dragons to live.’

  ‘And then what?’ Sylve demanded. ‘We leave them there and go back home, back to Trehaug? And do what? Go back to living in shadows and shame, apologizing for existing? I won’t do it, Thymara. A lot of the keepers have said they won’t do it. Wherever our dragons settle, that’s where we’re staying, too. So there will be a new place for us. And new rules.’

  A loud snapping sound distracted Thymara. She and Sylve both turned to see Mercor stretching. He had lifted his golden wings and extended them to their full length. Thymara was surprised to see not only the size of them but that they were marked with eyes like a peacock’s feathers. As she watched, he flapped them again, sharply, gusting wind and the scent of dragon at her. She watched him refold them awkwardly, as if moving them were an unfamiliar task. He snugged them firmly to his back again and resumed his watchful stance over the brown dragon.

  Thymara was suddenly aware that a communication had passed between Mercor and Sylve. The dragon had not made a sound, but she had sensed something even if Thymara were not a party to it. Sylve gave her an apologetic look and asked, ‘Are you going hunting today?’

  ‘I might. It doesn’t look as if we’re going to do any travelling today.’ She tried not to think of the obvious; that until the brown died they were all stuck here.

  ‘If you do and you get fresh meat…’

  ‘I’ll share what I can,’ Thymara replied instantly. She tried not to regret the promise. Meat for Sintara, and meat for the sickly copper and the dim-witted silver dragon. Why had she ever volunteered to help care for them? She couldn’t even keep Sintara well fed. And now she had just said she’d try to bring meat for Sylve’s golden dragon Mercor. She hoped the hunters were going out as well.

  In the days since the dragons had made their first kill, they had learned to do some hunting and fishing for themselves. None of them were exceptional predators. Dragons were meant to hunt on the wing, not lumber after prey on the ground. Nonetheless, all of them had enjoyed some success. The change in diet to freshly-killed meat and fish seemed to have affected almost all of them. They were thinner, but more muscular. As she strode past some of the dragons, she looked at them critically. With surprise, she realized that they now more closely resembled the depictions of dragons she had seen in various Elderling artefacts. She halted where she was to watch them for a moment.

  Arbuc, a silver-green male, was splashing along in the shallows. Every now and then he thrust his whole head into the water, much to the amusement of Alum, his keeper. Alum waded alongside, fish spear at the ready, even as his frolicking dragon drove off any possible game. As she watched, Arbuc spread his wings. They were ridiculously long for him, but he beat them anyway, battering water up and showering Alum with it. His keeper yelled his disapproval and the dragon stopped and stood puzzled, his arched wings dripping. She looked at him and wondered.

  Abruptly, she turned her steps and went looking for Sintara. Sintara, not Skymaw, she reminded herself moodily. Why had it injured her pride so much to learn that some of the dragons had never concealed their true names from their keepers? Jerd had probably known her dragon’s name since the first day. Sylve had. She clenched her teeth. Sintara was more beautiful than any of them. Why did she have to have such a difficult temperament?

  She found the blue dragon sprawled disconsolately on a patch of muddy reeds and grasses. The dragon rested her head on her front paws and stared out at the moving water. She didn’t lift her head or give any indication she was aware of Thymara until she spoke. ‘We should be moving, not waiting here. There are not many days left before the winter rains, and when they come, the river will run deeper and swifter. We should be using this time to seek for Kelsingra.’

  ‘Then you think we should leave the brown dragon?’

  ‘Relpda,’ Sintara replied, a vindictive note creeping into her thoughts. ‘Why should her true name remain unknown while mine is not?’ Sintara lifted her head and suddenly stretched out her front feet and extended her claws. ‘And she would be copper, not brown, if proper care were given to her. Look here. I’ve split a claw end. It’s from too much walking in the water over rock. I want you to get twine and bind it for me. Coat it with some of that tar you used on the silver’s tail.’

  ‘Let me see.’ The claw was frayed and softened from too much time in water. It had begun to split at the end, but luckily it hadn’t reached the quick yet. ‘I’ll go ask Captain Leftrin if he has twine and tar to spare. While we’re at it, let’s look at the rest of you. Are your other claws all right?’

  ‘They’re all getting a bit soft,’ Sintara admitted. She stretched her other front foot towards Thymara and spread her toes, extending her claws. Thymara bit her lip as she checked them; they were all slightly frayed at the ends, like hard driftwood finally surrendering to damp. Thinking of wood gave her a possible solution. ‘I wonder if we could oil them. Or varnish them to keep the water away.’

  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.

  Not far from where the copper dragon sprawled, part of a bank of coarse reeds remained untrampled, their tasselled heads standing half again as tall as Alise. She drew her little belt knife, cut half a dozen of them, folded them into a coarse cushion of reeds and returning to the dragon, began to give her a good scrubbing with it, starting at the creature’s upper shoulder.

  The dried mud was river silt and it came away surprisingly easily. Alise’s coarse brush bared coppery scales that quickly took on a lovely sheen as she worked on the poor creature. Relpda did not make a sound, yet Alise thought she sensed a dim gratitude from the prostrate dragon. She redoubled her efforts, moving her scrubbing rushes down the dragon’s spine. As she worked, the size of a dragon was forcibly impressed on, not just her mind, but her muscles. The area of skin to be cleaned suddenly reminded her of the routine work of the crew scrubbing the barge’s deck. And this was a small dragon. She glanced over her shoulder at the gleaming gold of Mercor’s scaled hide and mentally compared it to the small pink-scalped girl who tended him. How much of each evening did the girl devote to her task?

  As if Sylve had sensed her gaze, she turned to Alise. ‘He’s clean, every inch of him. No snakes on him. I’ll help you with Relpda now.’

  Her pride made Alise want to say she had her task well in hand. Instead she heard herself say, ‘Thank you’ with utter gratitude. The girl smiled at her, and for an instant her lips caught a glint of light from the sun. Was her mouth scaled, too? Alise jerked her stare away and renewed her scrubbing efforts, sending a cascade of fine silt from Relpda’s hip to the damp earth below her. Sylve had not seemed so scaly when she’d first seen the girl. Was she changing as much as the dragons were?

  Sylve came to join her, carrying a coarse reed ‘brush’ of her own. ‘This is a really good idea. I’ve been using evergreen boughs when I can get them, and handfuls of leaves when I can’t. But this works much better.’

  ‘If I’d had the time to weave the stems and leaves together, I think it would work even better. But this will get the job done, I think.’ Alise had a hard time speaking and scrubbing at the same time. Her years in Hest’s house had softened her. As a girl, she’d always helped with the household cleaning; her family had not been able to afford many servants. Now she could feel sweat damping her back and blisters starting to form on her hands. Her shoulder already ached. Well, so be it! A little hard work never hurt anyone. And when she looked back over the area of dragon that she had cleaned, she felt a rush of pride.

  ‘What’s this? What’s this? Is this a snake hole?’ The fear and distress in Sylve’s voice seemed to infect her dragon. Mercor came lumbering over and swung his large head down to snort at a spot on the copper dragon’s neck.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Alise asked, leery of coming closer while the golden was so intent.

  ‘A raw spot. The dirt around it was damp, maybe with blood. She’s not bleeding now, but…’

  ‘Something jabbed her there,’ Mercor opined. ‘But it’s not a “snake hole” my dear. Still, the blood smell is strong, so she bled quite a bit.’

  Alise found her wits. ‘I don’t think the snakes make a hole and crawl inside. I think they only stick their heads in and drink blood.’

  Mercor stood absolutely still, his head still hanging over the copper dragon. His eyes were black on shining black; still Alise had a sense of that colour slowly swirling in them. He seemed to go away from them for a time. Then he shuddered his coat, rippling his scales in a way that reminded her more of a cat than a reptile. An instant later, she felt again the presence of his mind, and marvelled. If he had not briefly left them, she would never have recognized how strongly he affected her when he was focused on them.

  ‘I do not know about snakes called rasp snakes. These things you describe, I have heard of, long ago, and then they were called burrowers. They dug in deep. They may be more dangerous than the rasp snakes the other keeper spoke about.’

  ‘Sa have mercy,’ Sylve said quietly. She stood silently a moment, her rush scrubber still in her hands. Then she abruptly walked around the dragon and pushed her. ‘Relpda!’ she shouted, as if to penetrate the dragon’s stupor. ‘Roll over. I want to see your belly. Roll over!’

  To Alise’s astonishment, the sickly dragon stirred. She moved her hind legs feebly against the mud she sprawled in. She lifted a wobbly head, unlidded her eyes, and then let her head drop back to the earth. ‘Move away,’ Mercor directed them roughly, and both women obeyed him promptly, jumping back to be clear of the prone dragon. Mercor lowered his head, thrust his muzzle under Relpda and tried to turn her over. She rumbled a feeble protest and scrabbled her legs as if the motion pained her.

  ‘Is he eating her? I don’t think she’s dead!’ The protest came from another dragon keeper who had suddenly joined him. Rapskal, Alise thought to herself. Was that his name? He was a handsome lad, despite his Rain Wild strangeness. His thick dark hair and black clawed hands contrasted oddly with his pale blue eyes and angelic smile. His dragon was with him, a dumpy red creature with stumpy legs and a brilliant sheen to his scales. When Rapskal stopped to stare, the small dragon leaned his head affectionately against his young keeper, nearly knocking him over. ‘Stop it, Heeby. You’re bigger and stronger than you know! Stand up on your own feet.’ There was more affection than rebuke in his voice. He gave his dragon a shove and she playfully nudged him back.