44
Half-Medvedev
Jesse had told Esmerelda about the pull. Although he had no magic in him, he supposed it might be something akin to magic, or even something deeper, innate. A sense that he was being summoned home. Esmerelda had said that as half-Medvedev there was no chance he was without magic entirely, and he’d gone quiet after that, because there was a truth in her words that he’d tried hard to bury.
If he was half-Medvedev, then where was this half of him? He’d grown his talents at the hearth, raised under the instruction of his buccaneer father. He’d taken to the trade well enough. Better than Ryan, who struggled to settle his attention on one thing for long. But they were Strongs, and there was no other future for them. Their value to their Reach, to their lord, lay in these ance
