He shook himself back to sense. All right, so Malick was dead. The Malick. The one and only big, bad Malick. Okay. And he'd been ordered to deliver the message to the high council.

But that's not my job.

Executioners talked to the high council, not guards. And, since they refused to make him an Executioner, despite his myriad qualifications. Ian could just handle it.

He didn't know Ian's den number off the top of his head, so he had to look it up on the computer. ...