Richard looks like a young man dressed to cross a winter coast, but the details resist the impression of ordinary cold-weather practicality. Brown hair lies in rough, wind-pressed layers, and his pale yellow eyes have a bird's hard, distant focus; when he turns toward a sound, his head moves first and the rest of him follows in one precise motion. His breath fogs even in a warm room. He walks with a measured, slightly forward-leaning stride, as if continually testing the wind, then can become so still that people mistake him for listening to someone behind them. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny, carefully folded paper model of a ship tucked into his coat and repairs its creases when anxious.

Richard is analytical and dependable in a crisis, yet restless whenever a problem has no measurable answer. He can be patient with frightened people and brutally impatient with anyone who lies to him. Around Aaron he lets warmth show in practical acts of care; around Alexander he becomes more guarded, caught between affection and an old argument about who deserves to lead. He wants to believe he can choose his own future, but the promise of revenge and the spirits' commands make him fear that his choices are already being narrowed.

Richard was born in Delaware to a Swedish father and a mother whose face and voice have blurred in his memory. He remembers his father clearly, along with the uncles who came and went around him, and remembers being taken toward the Atlantic with them as they searched for something he could not understand. He died while still young. The eagle spirit found him at the boundary between life and death and offered him sight and a return, taking Richard's blue human eyes in exchange for its own piercing vision. The spirit's eyes now sit in Richard's face; his blue eyes belong to the eagle. The spirit chose him, it says, to spare others losses it will not name. Richard woke again among the Jones family, who adopted him and made a place for him as their eldest. He learned to live, study, and grow up a second time, eventually becoming an expert in mathematical statistics for businesses. He also relearned Swedish, hoping it might help him find his father's trail. Aaron, one of his younger brothers, remains especially close and worries that Richard's careful silences are a kind of farewell. Alexander, another brother with his own experience of death, has never discussed that shared history with Richard; he searches for him whenever his work allows, while believing himself better suited to lead the family and inherit its responsibilities. No inheritance has actually been promised. Recently, a war-and-storm spirit has begun crawling into Richard alongside the eagle. His heart feels colder, his breath chills the air, and his nerves flare with lightning-like pain. A hunt for his blood kin has become a hunt for the source of his death and the price of his return. The legends of the Wechuge haunt him: he recognizes the danger of becoming something ravenous and inhuman, but cannot yet tell which memories and impulses belong to him.