The Scar and Dining Etiquette

On the run again. The latest powerful enemies this time consisted of a false aeromancer, the village elders who bought into her scam, and the local magistrate who deflected the official investigators from looking into the disappearances too closely.
 
Suffice it to say, Wupo's sense of justice refused to let that rest. She could have stopped at saving the sacrificial maiden, but no - she had to send the false aeromancer into the river's depths as "replacement bride of the River God" instead. Then she sent the magistrate's lieutenant in, and one of the elders too, before the rest fearfully agreed to stop the barbaric irrational sacrifices.
 
"A moral victory" was how Wupo called it. But for Xiayan, tasked with spotting the signs of an ambush, or fending off the assailants, this met every factor of "strategic defeat".
 
One such attack came on the road to Gujiang - three against two, and late in the day. Fortunately, Xiayan sent them packing with bruised ribs and shouted curses.
 
It was a diversion - she should have seen that in retrospect. Sent to lull her into a false sense that the worst was over.
 
The real attack came at the winehouse. They had only one seat left - the one facing away from the door, so Wupo took it, with Xiayan sitting on the floor to the side. Luckily, before the assassins could muster to the room, a fat merchant got up and left another seat empty. A quick glare from the six-foot amazon silenced the rest of the folk on the floor, and she took her seat.
 
Xiayan couldn't quite tell you what it was that tipped her off, but the next time the wine girl came around, she rose and changed places with Wupo.
 
After a welcome cup of yellow spirits, Xiayan was sluggish and didn't quite notice the doors opening. By the time the assassin was on her, trying to slit her throat, she barely had the presence of mind to dip her chin to her breast, fighting back with elbows and kicking away from the table.
 
The assassin's blade, coming over her right shoulder, met her left cheek and opened her face down to her chin, instead of opening her throat. Better still, it went wide of Wupo - its original target, for whom the assassin had mistaken her.
 
Xiayan didn't even feel the pain until well after the fight was over, and the assassin lay dead by his own blade. The scar reminds her daily of the treachery of her fellow humans - and the danger that her Wupo willingly courted in her quixotic insistence on justice.