" Sybilla said, ‘I wish you would explain something you said. That there was something formidable in that household of Sevigny?’

‘Ah,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘It does not lend itself truly to words. But you know, perhaps, you, Lord Culter and you, Blacklock, the alla sanguigna, the blue-red shimmer of a sword when it is drawn from the flesh? That is what it was like: the alla sanguigna, burning behind all the politenesses. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)