"Why do the Catholics and Protestants fight, Mama?" Fortune asked her parent. "Do we not all worship the same God?"

"Aye, poppet, we do," Jasmine answered, "but the churches have become bases of power for men very much like governments and kings are bases of power. Unfortunately power is never quite enough. Men who have it always want more. To have power you must have a hold on the hearts and minds of the people. God is a most powerful weapon. The churches use that weapon to intimidate the people. Each wants his way of worship to be the right way, the only way. So they fight each other, killing, they believe, in God's name, convinced that they are right because they do.

"My father, your grandfather, the Grande Mughal Akbar, long ago brought representatives of all the world's religions into his court. For years they argued with one another about the nature of God, the proper way to worship, and why each was right in his thinking, and the others all wrong. While my father tolerated them, and listened to them with much interest, in the end he founded his own personal religion, but no one other than he was asked to follow it. Faith, my dearest, is a matter between you and God alone. Let no one tell you otherwise."

"So men use God to pursue their own ends, Mama," Fortune said thoughtfully. "I think it very wicked."

"It is," came the reply. "I have raised you to be tolerant of all people and faiths, poppet. Do not allow anyone to change you," Jasmine advised her daughter.

"I won't," Fortune said firmly.

"If you fall in love, you may be influenced by your lover," her mother said.

"I will never fall in love, then," Fortune replied quietly. "Most men today are not, from my small observation, like my stepfather. He respects you, and listens to your counsel. That is the kind of man I would marry, Mama. I hope William Devers is like that."