Legit the easiest and smartest thing for him to do
Find out how they make the wine and maybe even ask them to help start wine farms in other areas
Very contrived and downright stupid arc imo. Did the author wanna stall for time for some reason?
They did not however legally (at least if all the merchants and nobles that gave the church that money say so to guards) acquire those loan contracts and the church could easily make that argument in the modern day to a court with the rich people as witnesses/victims to get the thugs loan...
It also just doesnt really make sense from what we've seen of the econonic and security bits of the capital.
There's guards everywhere and most of the nobility in the area would prob have some link back to the Monarchs so it'd be easy to strong-arm the guards into arresting anyone that even...
i'd hope the guy she killed wasn't JUST a slave or something so that it's less...horrible
but she does seem like the kind of person to kill a bunch of innocent people for no TRULY justifiable reason.