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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 toward 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 tasseled heads standing half 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 worknever 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.