Angol
For thirty one years, a country has been kept at peace by its children. When the civil war ended, nine warlords sat at one long table in the snow and swapped their heirs, so that no ruler would ever dare start the next war. Beneath them, eleven thousand ordinary children were traded the same way, for licences, for trucks, for a stall in a market. Dev and Arjun Varma were two of them. Their parents gave them away for two truck licences. Now the brothers are the most dangerous men in Vayragh. Dev, the quiet one, has never killed anyone, and every ruler fears him. Arjun, the loud one, will break any man in the country, but he will never touch a child. Together they have a plan to bring every hostage heir home and tear the old peace down. A homecoming on a mountain in front of ten thousand silent miners. A fight in total darkness, a kilometre underground. A trial by candlelight in the hall where the peace was signed, where the rulers' phones lie face down on the table and every one of them is about to light up. But somebody has been filing every child in the country for thirty one years. And he has always known exactly where the brothers would go. The Pledge is the first book of The Iron Dynasty, a cinematic crime saga of brothers, fathers, loyalty and the price of peace. Illustrated throughout.
