"I can armor you with a spell, but that runs into the same question of whether my spells can be seen. 

...the colors of the force I served in, back home, were red and black, but I don't know if that has negative associations, here, you seem to have run through a lot of entities that could create negative associations." Including Asmodeus Himself, supposedly.

"I wouldn't be much of a fighter if I were helpless without armor.  It takes me down two-thirds of a rank, in which opponents I can face, but that's all."

"Red and black works for me.  Works for most boys, honestly.  It's not going to stand out much, but you probably don't want to?"

"I would indeed prefer not to stand out at this time. I suspect we can get peoples' attention if we have cause to. Shall I wait here until you come back with more suitable clothes for this disguise?"

"Your will, my liege."

"- do you have some other style of address I should be using, or a name by which I should think of you."

"'Your liege' suits me fine. I think I'll wait a while longer to pick the name I want to be known by here, and if I aspire to any fancier titles I think I want to go out and get them."

"Works for me.  I tentatively estimate two hours for the tasks set me, and when I return I will be male and wearing red-black.  I'll endeavor to stop by and give signal if it's to be longer than three hours for cause of some delay.  Any more time with no sign of me, and something has gone wrong."

"Shall I?"

"Go on."

...Carissa's going to burn through Haste and Gaseous Form and then re-hang them, repeatedly, for several hours, thinking LOUDLY while she does so that this is just the kind of thing Carissae can do and the universe shouldn't be so finicky as to make her prepare the spell all over again.

Okay, sorry, but if you're doing something that weird, and not even fighting anybody desperately with your life and world on the line, it may take the universe a while to pick up on the pattern.

...it'll get easier to hang the spells.  Possibly that's just regular practice?  Carissa is smart, after all, and most wizards don't get to burn and re-hang just those two spells while focusing on just that.

She'll take it. 

(Her life and world totally ARE on the line, but admittedly it doesn't viscerally feel that way right now, sitting here in her Rope Trick playing with magic.)

One and three-quarter hours later, somebody climbs up into the Rope Trick, and promptly kneels.

She does pretty well as a boy! ...Carissa is not going to say that, that's unprofessional. 

"Very good," she does say, which is arguably just as unprofessional. (And Detect Thoughts, so she can know if this is the first step in a betrayal of some kind, though at this point she really bets it isn't.)

Almys is expecting to have his mind read.  He did think about betraying her, once he was out of range of the Rope Trick.  He decided it was relatively improbable that she was following him invisibly and reading his mind, especially as he went past advanced-looking mages on his journey.  He could probably have gotten away with betraying her, if he'd felt like that.  He is guessing that her magic can't kill him from a distance based just on detecting the decision, going on a purely intuitive sense of which things she can and can't apparently do with her unaspected mana; especially if that magic might've been visible resting on him.

This left the obvious point that Almys doesn't want to kill the Summoned Hero and have the world end; and any course of betrayal that didn't end that way, would leave the Summoned Hero alive and powerful and pissed at him.  It definitely seems preferable to end up as the near-immortal queen of a country instead.  This continued to seem pretty obvious while he was sure nobody was reading his mind.

Sounds like a perfect foundation for a healthy relationship. "Did you bring me clothes as well?"

He's feeling weirdly more embarrassed about doing this as a male - it was easier to be confident about how this suggestion would be taken when he was a woman.  It doesn't help that she's probably still reading his mind about this fact.

Well, she's the liege, if she wants to say anything about it, she can, and otherwise he can not say anything out loud, and this works perfectly for him.

Have some relatively trashy clothes, loose/drapeable rather than tight because he did not have exact measurements on his liege.  They're not visibly torn or dirty, but they're definitely not expensive, and will hopefully signal that this is a person not to bother looking much at.

She'll change.

It's not that she likes being barely-not-a-prostitute, but it seems like in fact the best plan to not die, and she really likes not dying. Later on she can have a castle and people tremble before her and so on.  "Ready when you are, then."

"Can you possibly radiate a little less keen-eyed intelligence, my liege?"

"How's this? What's your name? What's my name? Where are we going?"

"...gives the impression of somebody trying to play a role with unusually poor Social Skills, but not in a way where somebody would find that very anomalous and interesting, just in a way where it looks like you had trouble picking up a standard Skill.  I think it works, but we should still minimize social interactions for now, because I bet you do get the Skill very soon and then there's a visible difference."

"I'm Kramsi, you're Groya, next stop is an inn and then you... disappear into this private space again and I go find you books?  Where my understanding of your will, my liege, was that we should not seek 'spellsilver' for you right away."

"There are social Skills? As distinct from people getting better at things with practice?"

"People have been trying to deceive each other and see through deceptions for as long as the world has existed, I'd guess, because we can't just read minds here.  It's worn very deep ruts in reality."

"Are the Skills comparable across people? Is it coherent to say that some people are exactly as good at lying as others are at seeing through lies, and if they got just one more Skill at lying then they'd always beat the other?"

"There's not exactly explicit contests and rankings about it.  Just - an ancient pattern we're all stuck inside, at the same time that we use it, and some people win and some people lose and afterwards we say the winners were better at the game."

"Ugh.  I don't usually talk like this.  Every time I go male I'm reminded why I don't usually go male."

"Huh, does it change your personality? Disguising myself male doesn't but I've never taken a potion." She climbs out of the Rope Trick and dismisses it. 

"In my case, yes.  I don't know if it's truly innate, or just that I look different and my mind thinks that means I ought to talk like the boy I end up looking like.  - We should maybe not talk about revealing topics until we're in your private space again."

He follows her down.

Groya will follow along quietly, not looking overawed at the city and not casting any spells at all. 

(There's a spell for spying on a whole city, right, she doesn't have it but she's heard of it, she should try to rederive it so they have a bit of warning if rumors are spreading about the Summoned Hero.)