This is a gift for @ladylingua on the occasion of her nuptials. I was going to write something brand new, but I rediscovered an AU I’d been writing where Thom survived Lioness Rampant, and one of those snippets seems right up your alley.
Or, Trickster’s Choice in Shield’s Thom Lives AU
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Now there was her uncle.
Aly knew from experiments run the instant he realized she possessed a new variant of the Sight that his glamours were powerful enough that maybe six people in the world could see through them, all of them black robes, Sighted, or part of his extremely small circle. And since there were not any known mages in the Copper Isles more powerful than a mid-tier red robe and he was dressed in the clothes of an itinerant scholar rather than the majestic robes of Lord Thom of Trebond, black robe and chancellor of King Jonathan’s Council of Mages, he was here for her.
Aly settled in her bones, the serpent in her shifting in anticipation. Her uncle appreciated bluntness and was never shy about using it himself, but to get the answers she wanted, she had to play his game. And Aly had played Thom’s verbal chess since learning the word “knife” and demanding one of her own.
“How’d you find me?” she began. Nothing like the easy questions to throw a mark for a loop.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I set a hook in your core the day you and your brother were born.”
Only her uncle could sound blasé about an ethics violation so immense it would have had her university friends collapsing in hysterics.
He noted Aly’s raised eyebrow and shrugged. “Your mother never would have approved, so I didn’t tell her.”
Yeah. Uncle Thom, everybody.
“Does she know you’re here?”
He shook his head, a fringe of silver-reddish hair flopping into his eyes. “That conversation would have gotten—messy. And don’t worry, your mother has never done anything of the sort to you. I wouldn’t have let her.”
It paid to play people’s games sometimes, Aly thought with satisfaction and not a little bit of relief. This was important. So hostile territory and a limited timeframe notwithstanding, she pushed the game a little further. “Why would you stop her?”
“Because I knew Alanna would eventually give in to her nosiness and you would pay the price.”
“And you are different how?”
“I care about you – about all three of you – but I don’t care about you.”
Aly found herself nodding, her lips moving up of their own accord. To anyone outside their family, he would have sounded cruel, but Aly knew the difference. Her uncle would have plunged into Chaos itself to protect them, but their normal-person squabbles and day-to-day dramas had never interested him, and what he had put up with he’d complained dramatically about (except Cora - he could muster the bare minimum and no more when it came to his apprentice and favorite niece, and everybody knew it).
He shrugged again. “I put the trace in for instances like this, and I can’t bring myself to regret it.”
He rolled his neck and stood with a little more of the command she saw him wear at court functions. “Now. What do you need?”
Aly quirked an eyebrow. “You’re not here to carry me back like a damsel in a Players’ romance?”
“Of course not. I learned the hard way not to stand between Alanna’s spawn and what they want.”
Aly smiled brightly. It was so nice to be understood. “I’ll need money in a variety of coin values, then hairpins, knives, and thigh sheaths. And I need you to reassure my mother I’m not dying or in danger-- at least no more than usual.”
Thom’s grin was as sharp as the first day he helped her pull a swift one over on her mother.
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An anonymous wooden box was on her bedroll six nights later. And when she unloaded the contents, Aly found herself laughing long and hard.
Beneath the knives of various thicknesses, the hairpins, the colorful hairbands, and the small pouches of Copper Island, Yamani, and Tortallan coins, was coiled a small toy snake of many wooden links.
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Hope you liked it!! May God grant you many years, my love <3
P.S. The toy snake at the end is a quick, miniature version of the one he carved for her when she was a baby. That’s why it’s such a surprise for her. Junai is also judging her hard for being a crazy white lady.
