His reaction is just so fun. Tanidio should spend all his time being wrecked, actually. It's great.

Finally he shudders and comes and barely even notices given the intensity of everything else.

He's made Tanidio come! Proof that this is a thing he can actually achieve!

He finishes quickly afterwards. Partly because he's trying to, because Tanidio is wrecked enough and he doesn't want to be unfair to him. Partly because Tanidio coming around his dick and knowing he caused it is the hottest thing he has extended experienced in his life.

...He is going to collapse on the bed a minute. Non-pathetically. 

Well, he's going to have company in being collapsed.

He kisses him. "Thank you." 

"Thank you," he says, and then starts putting his clothes back on.

"Surely you could stay for a minute?"

"I should really check the wards. And you should get breakfast."

Mmm that's annoyingly reasonable.

Cheek kiss. "I'll be back with breakfast."

Instead of checking the wards, Tanidio goes to talk to the girl. She's asleep, but he roughly shakes her awake.

"Yes?" she says blearily.

Detect Thoughts. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"My name's Imelda. I was hungry, I passed out--"

She has jumbled memories of being kicked and cuffed by shopkeepers, being hungry, wandering out of the city because she was pretty sure that that was where food grew and therefore there would be food there, and eventually collapsing on the Duke's doorstep. 

Well, isn't that lucky of her.

"Where are your parents?"

"I don't have any." A flash of fear-- it's not safe to let an adult know you don't have parents, the orphanages sell kids to the highest bidder, at least you're free on the streets, if they sell you you have to do what your owner says and you have to work from sunup to after sundown and they don't even feed you.

She doesn't remember any parents at all, except a vague blurry recollection that there was someone who hugged her once. 

He has nothing but contempt for people who don't want to be useful. They'd just put her to work. It's not like she's a baby and going to wind up used to practice Acid Splash. 

...he is also beginning to form an idea. 

"What do you know about Asmodeus?"

"He's the god people worship, and then if you follow the rules you go to Hell if you die? And that's good?" Imelda is pretty sure that she breaks too many rules to go to Hell. She is also almost entirely ignorant of theology. 

"...Tell me about a time you told a clever lie."

"I don't-- I don't know--"

But Tanidio doesn't care what she's thinking, he's looking for the half-formed memories running through her surface thoughts, small scams run on merchants and distracting rich people so her friend can pickpocket them--

She's a good liar. Most street kids are.

She's very smart. She could be a wizard, if she had had parents who had cared about her. She could have hit seventh circle if she were at the Worldwound and didn't die. Maybe eighth. 

"--do kids get hit at school?"

"Yes? No? I don't know?"

This is a very strange adult.

A normal Security wizard with Tanidio's odd murder impairment would have Suggested that Imelda leave. It's a safe thing to do. You never get in trouble for Suggesting that people who have entered the area you're guarding, and don't have a reason to be there, should instead be somewhere else. If you do, it's for not killing them. 

Tanidio has spent the past two years being mentored by Inquisitor Chrisor, and Inquisitor Chrisor does not produce normal Security wizards. He produces wizards with initiative. Wizards who take risks. With Chrisor, you get in trouble for doing the thing no one ever gets in trouble for doing 

"I have a deal for you."

"Yes?"

"You stumbled onto a secret government project. I should kill you, but I think I have a use for you. For as long as you can convince Bun to let you stay here, you're going to get a warm bed and three meals a day. In exchange, whenever you are around Bun, you have to act like criminals aren't tortured and halflings are free-- serf free, not a higher kind of free. If you fuck up, I'll kill you. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, sir."