‘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.’