... He's bringing her inside with or without his help. "There's notes in the library if I do die." If his one legacy is handwashing, that's still pretty damn good.

Why has Bun suddenly acquired a spine now of all times. 

Tanidio lifts the girl up and helps carry her inside. Probably Levrolurment can help murder her. 

Thank you Tanidio for helping.

Keeping her warm and keeping an eye on her is probably a good first step.

She shivers. "Wh--"

He gets down to her level. "You're in the Duke's house, and you're safe." ... The problem with asking orienting questions is that he doesn't know what a plausible answer would be. "Are you in any pain?"

"I'm all right. I'm hungry."

Hunger could cause this, definitely. "Do you remember when you last ate?"

"...no."

Okay, time to go get her something bland and easy to digest to solve that problem! The kitchen should have some porridge or something. "I'll be back in a minute with some food for you. Just stay there and rest, okay? I don't want you fainting again."

To the kitchen he goes.

And as soon as Bun leaves:

Tanidio has a Summon Monster III prepped, it's his standard combat spell. He is going to cast it and get a leopard to tear her to bits, and then Bun is going to believe him that the situation is dangerous and stop taking random strangers into the house and Tanidio will have less difficulty sleeping at night. He casts--

--he does not cast. What the hell. 

He has cast Summon Monster III hundreds of times. Why aren't his hands moving. It is not like he doesn't know how to do this. 

Okay. New plan. He is going to cast Sleep, and then he's going to shove her into the Bag of Holding he loaned Levrolurment, and then she is going to suffocate. This is less good at keeping Bun safe than his previous plan but at least he won't suffer from any bizarre sudden-onset aversion to summoning. 

He casts Sleep, opens up the Bag of Holding, begins to shove her in and--

Doesn't.

She's twelve. She's a little kid. He hadn't even qualified as a wizard at her age. She isn't hurting anyone. She isn't a threat to him. He could kill her easily, is going to kill her easily. The gods don't cleric little kids (unless they did, this time, to get him to underestimate her). She was so hungry that she fainted.

(He's been that hungry before.) 

She couldn't be his kid. He only learned to cast Charm Person seven years ago, so his oldest kid is six. And he didn't pick a lover who was so useless that she'd let her own child starve. And he gave her the bonus he got from having a kid, since it wouldn't do Asmodeus any good if the kid died. She doesn't even look like him. Why does he keep thinking that could be my kid when it literally physically couldn't.

He's never met any of his kids anyway. Why would he care about it? 

She's helpless. It's one thing to kill someone who is trying to kill someone and it's another thing to kill someone unconscious--

Except it isn't. That's Good thinking. Unconscious people are the best people to kill because they can't fight back. 

Imelda sleeps on. 

There was a weakness in Tanidio's training. 

It has occurred to Tanidio that he has never, in fact, had to kill a person who wasn't trying to kill him before.

He practiced Acid Splash on an elderly halfling a couple of times in school, sure. He's turned in people to the secret police, and cast Detect Thoughts on people and found traitors, and presumably they were executed. He's thrown a rock at a heretic when he was a kid, everyone's done that. He's killed any number of people who were trying to kill him at the time. 

But if you're not very good at Evocation, and if you got spare halflings instead of spare babies to practice on, and if you mostly do Enchantment and were on a Worldwound tour besides--

It turns out you can get to the age of 27 as a wizard in Cheliax without having to commit a coldblooded murder.

This is stupid. It is stupid and weak and pathetic. All he has to do is put her in the fucking bag.

His hands do not listen to him. 

By the time Bun gets back, Tanidio's almost convinced himself that her dying so soon after he told Bun to let her die would be suspicious and that's why he's taking the calculated risk of letting her be alive a little longer. He can prep a Summon Monster every day from now on. It's fine. Bun was right, a third-circle wizard can in fact kill a little girl. 

He returns, having successfully acquired porridge (and also confused some servants, who did not expect him to be so hands on in this process.) Hopefully the Duke does not mind his dried fruit being raided. It'll do her blood sugar some good.

"She's probably so tired she just passed out as soon as she got somewhere comfortable." Or she could be more messed up than she initially appeared, but there's no reason to worry Tanidio about that.

No unnecessary lies.

"I cast Sleep on her, she looked like she needed it."

"I'm assuming Sleep just does what it sounds like?"

"For six minutes, but if people are already kind of drowsy it can put them to sleep for longer. I have another if you want to wake her." 

"If she's just hungry and tired, letting her sleep somewhere for as long as she wants probably isn't going to do her any harm."

"If you insist on ignoring the advice of your Security I'm going to want to interrogate her under Detect Thoughts at some point."