The Rebel Assassin

Chapter 21: The Ageless

"You," I said disbelievingly. "You're Emorial's Guardian?"

Ari made a short, annoyed sound. "We have our own name — the antiquorum. You might translate it to 'the old ones' in Solangian, although having thought about it, I think 'the ageless' is truer to our nature and, frankly..." she gave a small smile. "...sounds cooler."

I cursed quietly and fell back in my chair. "So those creepy carvings outside the library, and those paintings in the entry hall... those were antiquarum. That's your thing. You don't age." Remembering one of her earlier comments, I bolted back up. "What did you mean, I was wrong about how old you are?"

She looked almost smug. "I'm not younger than you."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"I'm sixty-three years old."

I looked at her face, the complete lack of humor or wrinkles. "Please never tell me that again."

She closed her book with the weary air of someone being pulled from their leisure time against their will. "I would have thought you of all people would be able to take this in stride."

"Because I'm a Guardian? We're just good at doing stuff, not at defying the laws of nature."

"Oh, of course, falling into magical sleeps full of predictive dreams and causing destruction when you're murdered," she bit out, "there's definitely nothing strange about your kind."

I felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe that hadn't been the diplomatic way to put my shock. I'd never liked it when people acted as if me and Nemia weren't even human, just because we had marks on our shoulders. The feeling of shame deepened as I realized there was no difference between the disgusted glances of nobles catching sight of me and what I'd said to Ari.

She moved on too quickly to apologize. "Anyway, you didn't give me time to explain. We're not exactly ageless. We just don't age the way other people do, so it sort of seems as if we stand still in time."

I hesitated, trying to work out the math. "You're sixty-three? You look more like sixteen. So you're basically aging at a quarter of the rate of norm— uh, other people. Are your lifespans four times as long?"

"Something like that. You didn't take into account that we spend about as much time as a baby, toddler, and young child as other people. It's about age twelve when things slow down."

"Ah. Puberty for four times as long. That's fun."

The look on her face was so distasteful I almost couldn't contain my laugh. "You can't imagine. And that's not even taking into account the indignity of people you learned to read with growing up to treat you like a child when you're the same age." She paused, tracing the words on the cover of her book. "Sorry. You probably don't want to hear about that."

"I would have wondered about it if you didn't say, and then you'd have to deal with me muddling through whether to ask you."

"I'm known you for about an hour put together, Morane, and I already know you wouldn't have to think about it. You'd just shove your foot in your mouth and ask."

I snickered. "You're probably right. Since you already expect it, can I keep asking?"

"I hope you'll be as accommodating when I starting making you clarify whether each individual sentence in that book on Guardians is true, so yes, you may ask anything within reason."

Groaning internally at the prospect, I asked, "Are you a sixty-year-old on the inside?"

"You mean my maturity? Unclear. I'm certainly more... evolved than teenagers of the age I look, but I don't know if that's from having a sixty-year-old mind or simply the life experience to keep me from pulling dumb stunts the way they do."