Reached

sun and moon. They could only see part of the rock and part of the man as he rolled the stone along to the top of the hill.
    One of the children became curious. So, one day, the child walked up the hill. As she drew closer, she was surprised to see that the stone was carved with names and dates and places.
    “What are all these words?” the child asked.
    “The sorrows of the world,” the man told her. “I pilot them up the hill over and over again.”
    “You are using them to wear out the hill,” the child said, noticing the long deep groove worn where the stone had turned.
    “I am making something,” the man said. “When I am finished, it will be your turn to take my place.”
    The child was not afraid. “What are you making?”
    “A river,” the man said.
    The child went back down the hill, puzzling at how one could make a river. But not long after, when the rains came and the flood flashed through the long trough and washed the man somewhere far away, the child saw that the man had been right, and she took her place pushing the stone and piloting the sorrows of the world.
    This is how the Pilot came to be.
    The Pilot is a man who pushed a stone and washed away in the water. It is a woman who crossed the river and looked to the sky. The Pilot is old and young and has eyes of every color and hair of every shade; lives in deserts, islands, forests, mountains, and plains.
    The Pilot leads the Rising—the rebellion against the Society—and the Pilot never dies. When one Pilot’s time has finished, another comes to lead.
    And so it goes on, over and over like a stone rolling.
    In a place past the edge of the Society’s map, the Pilot will always live and move.

PART ONE
    PILOT

CHAPTER 1
    XANDER
    E
very morning, the sun comes up and turns the earth red, and I think: This could be the day when everything changes. Maybe today the Society will fall. Then night comes again and we’re all still waiting. But I know the Pilot’s real.
    Three Officials walk up to the door of a little house at sunset. The house looks like all of the others on the street: two shutters on each of its three forward-facing windows, five steps up to the door, and one small, spiky bush planted to the right of the path.
    The oldest of the Officials, a man with gray hair, raises his hand to knock.
    One. Two. Three.
    The Officials stand close enough to the glass that I can see the circle-shaped insignia sewn on the right pocket of the youngest Official’s uniform. The circle is bright red and looks like a drop of blood.
    I smile and he does, too. Because the Official: is me.
    In the past, the Official Ceremony was a big occasion at City Hall. The Society held a formal dinner and you could bring your parents and your Match with you. But the Official Ceremony isn’t one of the three big ceremonies—Welcoming Day, the Match Banquet, and the Final Celebration—and so it’s not what it used to be. The Society has started to cut corners where they can, and they assume Officials are loyal enough not to complain about their ceremony losing some of its trimmings.
    I stood there with four others, all of us in new white uniforms. The head Official pinned the insignia on my pocket: the red circle representing the Medical Department. And then, with our voices echoing under the dome of the mostly empty Hall, we all committed to the Society and pledged to achieve our Society-designated potential. That was all. I didn’t care that the ceremony wasn’t anything special. Because I’m not
really
an Official. I mean, I am, but my true loyalty is to the Rising.
    A girl wearing a violet dress hurries along the sidewalk behind us. I see her reflection in the window. She’s got her head down like she’s hoping we won’t notice her. Her parents follow behind, all three of them heading toward the nearest air-train stop. It’s the fifteenth, so the Match Banquet is tonight. It hasn’t even been a year since I walked up the stairs of City Hall with Cassia. We’re both far away from Oria now.
    A woman opens the door of the house. She’s holding her new baby, the one we’re here to name. “Please come in,” she tells us. “We’ve been expecting you.” She looks tired, even on what should be one of the happiest days of her life. The Society doesn’t talk about it much, but things are harder in the Border Provinces. The resources seem to start in Central and then bleed outward. Everything here in Camas Province is kind of dirty and worn