"Oh little Cheng, you certainly know how to pick your moments!" Lan Chang gasped out as she pulled herself back up to sit properly with the other two children.
Both of the children with her looked adorably confused as A-Yuan looked crossly down at the map, trying to ignore how he had come across another problem that he couldn't solve, and her son looked as if she had transformed into a completely different person and had spontaneously sprouted an extra head with three eyes.
The boy had chosen now, of all moments, to tell her the truth of his illiteracy when it had been blindingly obvious right from the beginning that he didn't know much of anything in terms of skill.
It was technically true that she had been waiting for him to come to her whenever he needed something, and that, at least until he had been properly settled in, she had decided to not broach the topic of a proper, formal education for the sake of not bombarding him with everything all at once and having him join one of the temple run schools that would provide a basic understanding of most subjects.
But the fact that her sweet little, quiet, observant son would approach her with the desire to learn here and now, after they had broken the laws of theft and were huddling a window trying to solve a medical mystery, had to be the most tension breaking and hilarious thing that she had heard all day, and she had to fill in for one of the delivery servants today to deliver meals to an official who had a prostitute under his desk that he was desperate to hide.
It then occurred to Lan Chang that a career change would probably benefit her and Ming Cheng, considering that even they were servants, they were still expendable enough if one day, some coup or another was launched, particularly during the ambassador's incoming trip to the palace.
The pay between them both was certainly enough to keep them afloat from month to month while allowing a little spending and a little saving, but it still wasn't enough to justify serving a bunch of mostly incompetent buffoons.
The Emperor was a completely different matter.
His 'main' appointed personal cook and circle of servants had gossiped about his own strange habits of sometimes sealing himself up in his rooms for days at a time, and apparently talking to people who neither entered or left his personal chambers, but he at least competently did his paperwork and responded to incidents in his kingdom adequately enough for no other revolts to occur, other than the ones that broke out when he received the crown within his first year of the throne.
He was good, the others were... not so much.
Even if he did prefer the general cooking staff's fare rather than his own appointed chef for some strange reason, with the man kept on the payroll to cook for the concubines rather than his majesty.