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Start giftingA Hired Blade
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreA sellsword’s bargain.
A burgeoning desire.
A future balanced on the point of a blade.
Sellsword Des is traveling alone in a dry and dusty southern land after a spectacular bust-up with her best friend. She’s running low on coin, so when a former client, Karina, offers her a job leading her caravan’s security through brigand country, it feels like a gift.
Des has done the route before, but she isn’t sure about leading solo. She recommends Cap, a rugged old mercenary, to head up the crew. Maybe she’ll even learn a thing or two about how to lead in between the delightful distraction of Karina’s flirtations and keeping the marauders at bay.
As they head off on their long trip across Rescalin, though, the wheels start to come off Des’s plan. The crew is drinking too much, even on duty, and Cap is dismissive of the dangers she identifies. Des worries she’s made the wrong call by putting Cap as the lead, and Karina is in her ear, wanting her to take over.
As brigands close in, will Des back the merc she put in charge? Or will she take over—and risk the caravan’s safety resting on her blade alone?
If you enjoy badass, sword-wielding women, Australian-inspired settings, sapphic fantasies, and untrustworthy mercenaries, pick up A Hired Blade today and join Des on her journey.
J.C. Rycroft is a fantasy author living on unceded Wadawurrung land. Their work draws on high and epic fantasy tropes, mixed with a dollop of queer romance, humour, and wit, flawed-but-fabulous feminist heroes, and diverse-in-all-the-ways characters—liberally sprinkled with philosophical concepts—brought to life. She loves bringing together the apparent contradictions: high theory and silly humour, profound political concerns with a rollicking good story, and ordinary people with unexpected demands to heroism that somehow only they can answer.
Katherine Littrell is a Sydney-based audiobook narrator who studied English literature at Bryn Mawr College. She has lived in the United States and the U.K. but is glad to be back home in Australia, where she enjoys knitting, making furniture, and talking out loud to herself in small spaces.