Footsteps in Red
In the divided mountain city of Aster-Szem, where humans and muira live uneasily side by side, a high-ranking foreign councilor is murdered in the streets during a tense royal parade. As nations along the Mantes Mountains threaten to mobilize, an aging muira bountyman is brought in to find the killer, paired with a quiet Border Agency guide who knows the city’s alleys and underbelly. Their hunt leads through chanter academies, abandoned grain works, and lantern-lit cisterns, while diplomats trade ultimatums in marble offices above. Around them, neighbors burn their possessions in the dry riverbed, a muira lockbreaker raises her son between two cultures, and the city’s old treaties begin to fracture under the weight of new threats.
Chapter 1 - The Slaying
A Border Agency guide and a foreign explorer cross paths with a wandering philosopher in the mountain town of Aster-Szem, just as a tense political parade through the streets erupts in violence.
Chapter 2 - Odden
The Barthan ambassador navigates a charged diplomatic meeting as foreign delegates argue over jurisdiction and demand a neutral investigator be appointed to track down those responsible for the previous day's attack.
Chapter 3 - Widow Vabdas
A muira lockbreaker is wrongly accused of housebreaking in the streets of Aster-Szem, then returns home to convince a hesitant friend why he must accept the politically charged assignment he has just refused.
Chapter 4 - Echoes and Wax
Beneath the Longclasp Bridge, an old goldneedle dealer is approached by a hooded stranger asking pointed questions and demanding access to a hidden contact who enters the city through the cisterns.
Chapter 5 - Bountyman; Agent
A muira investigator and his local guide survey the parade route, interview reluctant witnesses, and visit a chanter's academy as they piece together the methods behind a recent killing in the streets of Szem.
Chapter 6 - Presented Arms
Hearn and Ostok question a grieving sister at a Teironian noble's manor, where a small slip of formal etiquette pulls one of them into a duel under arbiter rules with a royal cousin.
Chapter 7 - The Longclasp
As muira families burn their possessions in the dry riverbed, two diplomats from opposing sides walk the banks toward the bridge, exchanging careful words about treaties, ultimatums, and what each nation might do next.
Chapter 8 - Call a Lockbreaker
Following directions to an abandoned hearth in old Szem, Hearn and Ostok hire a lockbreaker to crack the door, then comb the empty house for signs of the conspirators they have been chasing.
Chapter 9 - Kratocles Speaks
The Tyrant of Teiron delivers a sharp wartime address to a roiling crowd while a hooded woman threads through the audience, striking up an unsettling conversation with a tradesman beside her.
Chapter 10 - Siltstack
Hearn and Ostok break into an abandoned grain processing facility at night, hoping to find evidence of the conspirators, and instead find themselves trapped as fire spreads through the old wooden floors.
Chapter 11 - The Gorvoid
A volatile foreign diplomat barges into Odden's office with accusations and threats of mobilization, while Odden tries to keep the region from sliding any closer to open war.
Chapter 12 - Confession
Irenna prepares to leave the city as the muira quarter is corralled, and a long-buried secret from Hearn's past finally comes to the surface in her hearthroom.
Chapter 13 - The Funeral
From two embassy verandas, the diplomat Odden and the bountyman Ostok each watch the funeral procession cross the bridge, while Ostok lays out a sharper theory about where the assassin will run next.
Chapter 14 - Footsteps in Red
Hearn and Ostok wait in the dark of the cisterns to ambush their suspect, but the night does not unfold the way they planned, and larger forces close in around the city.
Chapter 15 - The Chimes
Ambassador Odden burns the Barthan embassy's records as a muira elder arrives with grim news, and across the city, broken bells toll an unintended farewell.
Chapter 16 - Epilogue
Outside the southern gate of Aster-Szem, the bountyman and his guide part ways amid a flood of evacuees, and the road south stretches forward into uncertain country.