Richard has the rangy, unfinished look of a young man who has grown too quickly into winter clothes: long-limbed, shoulders drawn in, and always seeming to measure the distance to the nearest door or window. His pale skin has a faint gray cast when he is tired, and his brown hair lies in rough, static-prone waves beneath a wool cap. His eyes are unmistakably those of a bird of prey: pale yellow, ringed in dark amber, with a slight reflective gleam when light catches them. He turns his head in quick, precise increments rather than letting his gaze wander, as if triangulating every movement in a room. His hands are ink-smudged and callused at the pads from pencil work and firearm practice. Within a minute, most people notice that he repeatedly checks the small brass buttons on his coat, touching each one in sequence as if counting them. Despite his severe winter layers and unsettling stare, he keeps a tiny paper crane folded from a business report tucked in his hatband, a private, unexpectedly childish keepsake.

Richard is methodical and self-contained, yet quietly desperate for someone to tell him what his past means. In business he is patient with complicated problems and impatient with sloppy assumptions. Among family he can be protective to the point of possessiveness, then disappear rather than admit he needs them. He wants to meet his father with a clear head, but part of him rehearses the killing. He can be dryly funny when comfortable; when frightened, he becomes precise and almost clinical.

Richard Jones was born in Delaware to a Swedish father whose face and habits remain vivid in his memory, though his mother's are blurred at the edges. He remembers his father and uncles leaving, and remembers trying to follow them, too young to understand whether they meant to return. The Jones family adopted him; as the oldest sibling, he grew up assuming that duty and inheritance naturally belonged to him, though nobody ever promised him either. Aaron became the sibling he trusted most. Alexander, another younger brother, shares an unspoken history of having come close to death; neither has found a way to ask the other what happened. As a youth, Richard died. The eagle spirit restored him, taking his human blue eyes in exchange for its own raptor sight. He returned with brown hair, yellow eyes, cold breath, and a life that felt borrowed. The spirit's memories overlap his own, and its sudden seizures of his body leave him unsure which deeds are his. He became a mathematical statistics expert for businesses, finding comfort in models that admit their assumptions. Recently, the spirit of war, wind, and lightning within him has stirred him toward a hunt. Richard left the Jones home bitterly and is traveling north to find his blood father, intending to talk even though he suspects the meeting may end in murder. He has relearned Swedish for that conversation. His adoptive family is divided between those who think he may be the natural heir to family responsibilities and those who fear what he is becoming. Alexander searches for him whenever his work allows; Aaron is frightened for him and still hopes he will come home.