Katsa goes to the archery range to work out her annoyance. 

Then she drove arrow after arrow into the knees of her targets. Then the thighs, then the elbows, then the shoulders, until she’d emptied her quiver. She could disarm or disable any man with this bow

*sigh*

Guys.  Stop it.  Just stop.

Do you have any idea what an ARROW THROUGH THE KNEE will do to a person?  Look at your knee.  Look at it right now.  Bend it.  Move your lower leg in a circle.  That is a fascinating knee with a lot of moving parts that can do amazing things only because it is precisely put together.  Now imagine an arrow going right through the middle of it.

You can yank that arrow out if you want, but you’re knee isn’t going to work right ever again.  And since this is pseudo-medieval times we’re talking about, yanking the arrow out and hoping is about the best you can do.  (You can’t pray, because we’ve yet to see any sign of religion in this world.)

So congratulations, Katsa.  You’ve ‘disabled’ someone by quite literally disabling them.  They can now look forward to a life as a one-legged person in a pre-industrial society where most jobs (including the job of guard or soldier that they used to have) requires two legs.  Sure hope they have an artisan skill or are good at begging, otherwise they’re about to starve to death.  They’ll also most likely be in pain forever from damaged bones and nerves.  And that’s IF they survive the inevitable infections that come from having an open wound in a time before people understood germs.

In other words, Katsa, you’re still killing people, you’re just picking a slower method so that you don’t have to actually watch them die. 

She’d lost her temper at dinner, and for no reason.

…she stood up, said ‘excuse me,’ and walked out of the room.

Prince Pretty Eyes show up.

“Can you kill with an arrow? Or do you only ever wound?”

“Can you hit a specific target, or can you only ever hit this other specific target?”

She didn’t turn to him. She simply took two arrows from her quiver, notched them together, pulled, and released. One flew to her target’s head, and the other to its chest.

That’s it.  Fuck it.  We’re in a comic book.

Prince Pretty Eyes remains uncowed and is instead merely impressed, talks to her easily and jovially, and they compare the particulars of their respective magic.  I rather like this introduction to him.  Nice and low-key.

Afterwards they talk about Prince Old Kidnappee, but they dance around the subject because neither one is quite sure what the other knows.  Which, while okay in principle, is really fucking annoying to me because I know what’s going on.  Sure, if we weren’t certain of Po’s (I’m sick of writing out epithets) motives, that would be one thing.  Then this conversation would be about sussing out his loyalties and such.  But no, we’ve been straight up told that he’s looking for his grandfather.  There’s no mystery here!  There’s just a lot of pointless dancing around things the reader is already fully aware of.

Katsa gets flustered and tries to leave, and Po FINALLY comes out and says “give me my granddaddie.”  This…makes Katsa decide to punch him, and so they get into a brawl.

She took the blow, just to see how well he hit, and then wished she hadn’t. This wasn’t one of the king’s soldiers, whose blows hardly touched her, even with ten of them on her at once.

…WHY?  Is part of his magic the fact that he can punch through her magic?  Is part of his magic that he’s super strong.  (I know the answer to both those questions is no.)  If she’s just standing there and taking it on purpose, why would the other soldiers WHO’S ENTIRE JOB IS FIGHTING not be able to hit as hard?

They fight for a while and find that they’re pretty evenly matched.  She’s better at offense, he’s better and defense, but overall they’re not really getting anywhere.  But they’re both having a good time and it turns into a competition more than an upset sort of fighting.

When they have to call it quits instead of having a real winner, Po asks to see his grandfather and points out that he trusted her back at the break-out at Murgon’s place, so she gives in and takes him along.