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had no word to indicate it’s imperiled.”
    Valentine sniffed. “A time of truce would seem to me to be the best time to attempt an assassination.”
    â€œThat is not Saladin’s way,” Constantine argued.
    â€œNo,” Adrian said, a hint of his old bitterness creeping into his words. “He would rather torture his enemies slowly.”
    The silence grew thick again for a moment.
    Victor cleared his throat. “Why did she seek you, Roman?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Roman shook his head. “Perhaps she feels I owe her a debt and she has no one else she can trust. That night in Damascus, it almost seemed as though she was taking revenge against someone by helping me. Perhaps one of the higher-up generals?”
    Adrian pulled a face but said nothing. Constantine regarded the table once more.
    Valentine leaned forward, one arm along the edge of the table. “She wishes you to travel all the way back to Syria, you, who would be the most conspicuous of us all, in order to warn Baldwin that—in a time of war, mind you—someone at some time might try to kill him?”
    Roman opened his mouth but then closed it again. His thoughts were tied up in knots. At last he said, “I don’t know what she wants, Val.”
    â€œIt sounds like a trick to me,” Valentine said, relaxing back in his seat. “Though why should we care if it is true? Baldwin is a leper. His days are already numbered. Adrian is too well-known, as are you, Stan. I certainly will no leave my women to save the life of a rotting man who has done nothing for those who sought to preserve his fortress. In fact, he would likely try to kill any one of you himself at first sight. Let him die, I say, by whatever means befall him.”
    Roman caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned to the left, he was shocked to see Constantine nodding.
    â€œI agree, Valentine.”
    Adrian’s brows raised. “What?”
    â€œBaldwin would never believe any of us.” Constantine kept his eyes on the tabletop as he explained his reasoning. “He thinks us traitors, when in his heart, he should know the three of us would be the last men on earth to ever betray him.”
    â€œTo betray Chastellet,” Adrian added with a wistful tone in his voice that made Roman’s heart flinch. He’d loved that fortress as much as Roman.
    â€œKind of you to exclude me.” Valentine sniffed and waved a hand toward Roman. “I have only been made a criminal by this business, when I had no part in it save to help a man out of the goodness of my heart.”
    That at least made Adrian grin. “You were a criminal long before you met us.”
    â€œAnd I had to give you a sack of gold in order for you to help me,” Roman added.
    But Constantine was having no part of the attempt to lighten the mood. “I was to have already left Chastellet,” he said pensively. “The day of the siege, I should have been on the Mediterranean, en route to Benningsgate. But Baldwin beseeched me stay, look over Chastellet in his absence. Only a short journey. He said he trusted Glayer Felsteppe not, and would rather have him under his thumb.” He paused. “Had I died in the final battle, perhaps he would have thought otherwise. But instead, I am here, and my family are dead. My home lost.”
    It was as if the room had been surrounded by a thick, dank cloud of despair, humid with sorrow and regret. No one spoke, for none of the men could refute what the general had said.
    Then Constantine stood up from his chair and all the men looked at him: his rumpled clothing, his wild hair, his red-rimmed eyes.
    â€œLet him die,” Stan repeated. “The woman, too. We cannot let her leave now that she has discovered our identities and our location.”
    Constantine stepped away from the table and began walking toward the door, and Roman’s head was spinning too much to