I am really new to the game. I accidentally did murder when following a direction pointer to get to the next section of a quest and ran through some spirits that caught up with me when I got into a camp of innocents. In killing the spirits that attacked me, I accidentally cut down one or two of the bystanders. Others witnessed, so I was declared kill on sight. I was at lv 13 and had noticed that counterfeit pardons were on the list of things I would receive at lv 14, so I went to a zombie grinding trail, got to lv 14 and used a pardon. then I went back into a town and was aimmediately killed by a guard and the bounty taken from my inventory.
What does a pardon do? I thought it was to clear up this very thing.