Chapter 172: The Church Found My Bullet Before It Found Me

Lunch was quiet.

Strangely quiet.

They chose an inn that Raven considered reasonably priced and Valeria considered suspiciously cheap, which probably meant it was acceptable. Roland ordered beer. Raven didn’t.

Inevitably, the conversation returned to the rifle.

"How many rounds do we have left?" Roland asked.

Raven finished cutting a piece of meat. "Enough."

"That isn’t a number."

Valeria smiled. "Now you know how I feel."

Raven looked at both of them. "I don’t need to announce how much ammunition I’m carrying inside an inn."

Roland leaned forward. "Nobody’s listening."

Three people at nearby tables appeared to be doing exactly that.

Raven looked at Roland.

Roland glanced around the room, noticed them, and leaned back again. "Fine. Fair point."

Valeria reached across the table and took a piece of bread from Raven’s plate. He watched her do it. She ate it anyway.

This time, Raven didn’t argue.

Somehow, that seemed worse.

Roland noticed too. "You’ve accepted that now?"

"I chose not to waste energy."

Valeria smiled. "Progress."

Raven ignored her and returned to the actual problem. "We need enough material for at least two more batches before we continue."

Roland grimaced. "More money."

"Yes."

"I thought the Wyvern paid well."

"Getting paid well doesn’t mean spending badly."

"I didn’t say badly. I said the weapon eats money."

Valeria took a drink. "That part is true."

Raven pulled out a small notebook and reviewed the expenses he had already recorded: steel, processing, tools, oil, lodging, horses, food, Mercenary House fees. A portion of the Wyvern bounty had already turned into supplies.

That wasn’t alarming. It simply meant the Mk.I couldn’t become something Raven fired whenever it was convenient.

He still liked that.

Limits forced decisions.

Valeria glanced at the notebook. "How much did you spend this morning?"

Raven gave her the figure.

Roland slowly lowered his mug. "On metal?"

"And tools."

"I’m going to start charging you every time I have to look at the rifle."

"You can look for free."

"How generous."

"Touching it costs extra."

Valeria raised an eyebrow. "Interesting policy."

Raven looked at her.

She was smiling.

"No."

"I didn’t say anything."

"I know you too well."

"That is also progress."

Raven closed the notebook.

---

Several days away, Elise Veyra was wiping mud from a child’s face.

She hadn’t planned to stop, but that had stopped mattering the moment she saw the overturned wagon.

The eastern road passed through several small villages and agricultural stretches that rarely received much attention from the Church outside festivals and tithes. Elise traveled with a priest named Brother Halven, two packhorses, and no military escort.

That decision had generated objections.

Elise had ignored them.

She wasn’t hunting an army. She was trying to find one person, and if she needed thirty soldiers just to speak with a mercenary, she would already have failed before meeting him.

The wagon sat half off the road, one wheel broken and part of the axle buried in mud left by the previous night’s rain. The family traveling in it had been less fortunate: the father had a fractured wrist, the mother several minor cuts, while the child had escaped with little more than a small wound on his forehead.

Elise finished wiping away the blood.

"Look at me."

The boy did.

"Do you see double?"

"No."

"Dizzy?"

He shook his head.

Elise placed two fingers against his forehead. A faint golden light appeared, nothing dramatic or intense. It didn’t need to be.

The cut slowly began to close.

The boy’s eyes widened. "Are you a Saint?"

Elise smiled. "That’s what people say."

"My mother says Saints can heal anything."

Her smile faded slightly. "Your mother was trying to make sure you weren’t afraid."

"So you can’t?"

"Not everything."

The boy looked disappointed.

Elise finished closing the wound. "But this, yes."

He touched the spot. "It doesn’t hurt."

"Good. Don’t reopen it by touching it."

His hand immediately dropped.

Brother Halven was several meters away, helping the boy’s father stabilize his wrist. When Elise finished, she checked the mother as well and found nothing serious.

Then she looked toward the wagon.

"We can help get it out."

Halven glanced up. "That will delay us."

"One hour."

"Saint Veyra, the file—"

Elise looked at him.

That was enough.

Halven sighed. "One hour."

She smiled. "Thank you."

"Don’t thank me for something you had already decided."

"Then we’re learning to work together."

Halven didn’t look convinced.

For the next hour, a woman whose name appeared in Church records beside titles far too grand for the situation found herself pushing a mud-covered wagon while a farmer tried to repair the broken wheel.

She didn’t use magic for everything.

She could have.

But some problems didn’t require miracles.

Only hands.

When the family was finally able to continue, the mother tried to pay her. Elise refused, though Halven did manage to convince them to take some food from the Church supplies before they resumed their journey east.

Raven Ashford’s file remained inside a white satchel secured to Elise’s saddle.

She hadn’t opened it since morning.

She had already memorized enough.

---

Arven Crossing had a small Mercenary House office, but it was better supplied than Kharad’s.

Raven spent most of the afternoon there, not looking for a contract this time, but for information: routes first, then materials, and finally rumors.

The clerk didn’t recognize his name when he handed over his license.

That lasted until she read the registration.

"Raven Ashford."

She paused, looked up, then glanced toward the long case he carried.

Raven already knew where this was going.

"Yes."

"Kharad."

"That too."

Roland leaned against the counter. "This is going to happen a lot now, isn’t it?"

Valeria stood behind them, reading through the contract board. "A great deal."

The clerk made a visible effort to remain professional. "There is an update attached to your registration."

Raven hadn’t expected that.

"What kind?"

She searched through several papers. "Regional bounty validation for the Skygrave Wyvern. Already processed. There is also a pending classification note regarding the weapon used."

Raven went still. "Classification from whom?"

"The House has no category for it."

"That wasn’t what I asked."

She checked the record again. "The report was forwarded to regional artificery. After that, there’s a request for a copy from the Church of Eternal Light."

Valeria stopped reading the board.

Roland stopped smiling.

Raven kept his voice neutral. "When?"

"Three days ago."

That placed it shortly after they had left Kharad.

The Church already knew.

Not necessarily everything, but enough to start asking questions.

"Reason?"

"Unidentified magical residue found on one of the projectiles recovered from the Wyvern."

Raven thought about the corpse and the second shot. The projectile had probably remained inside until the bounty inspectors examined the body.

That was all it took.

Inspection.

Evidence recovery.

Classification.

Forwarding.

No conspiracy was required.

Only bureaucracy functioning correctly.

Sometimes that was worse.

Valeria approached the counter. "Any order attached?"

The clerk recognized her now.

More precisely, her eyes dropped toward the insignia of House Nacht.

"No, my lady."

"Capture order?"

"No."

"Interrogation request?"

"Nothing in our system."

Raven took the document from her.

There was no warrant.

No accusation.

Only a single annotation.

[External Ecclesiastical Inquiry Filed.]

It wasn’t an immediate threat, but it changed the situation.

They could no longer assume Elise—or any other part of the Church—would need weeks to hear about him.