"One of the vanishingly few upsides of spending seventeen years locked away in a pocket dimension," Mendanbar said as he led Cimorene down the second-left cellar stairs toward the dairy room and its delivery door, "is that I hardly need to bother with disguises anymore. Either people have completely forgotten what I look like, or they still expect to see a handsome young idiot rather than a tired, middle-aged man with graying hair and wrinkles."

He grinned at Cimorene and added, "Getting people to overlook you, on the other hand, takes a lot more work."