Coquray Sound is the western inlet of Turquish Bay, a long, narrow body of water that reaches deep into the coastline west of Droughd Sound. It has sheltered water and a defensible mouth, the makings of a fine harbor, and yet it holds no permanent settlement. The usual explanations for that emptiness never quite cover it.
Geography
The sound runs roughly twenty miles inland, narrower than Droughd Sound but deeper, its water reaching sixty feet in places. The shore is rocky, with steep cliffs along the eastern edge and lower, marshy ground to the west where the sound nears Sestros territory. Its mouth opens to Turquish Bay between two prominent headlands. In theory this makes an ideal harbor, deep enough for large vessels and sheltered from storms. In practice no one has built there.
Why it's empty
The currents are unpredictable, shifting direction without warning. Ships anchored overnight have been dragged toward the cliffs despite secure moorings, and sailors who know the water call it treacherous and stay clear. Fishermen say the sound is deeper than the charts admit, that a sounding line sometimes finds no bottom where the map shows forty feet, and there are the usual unprovable stories of something moving down in the dark. Sestros claims the sound as territorial water but has never built or anchored there. One story holds that the kingdom keeps it empty on purpose, a place its fleet could gather unseen, though if that is the reason the fleet has never once used it so.
The plainest answer is that Coquray Sound leads nowhere worth the trouble. No river feeds it, no inland resource sits behind it, and Droughd Sound to the east already does everything a harbor here would do. Empty land stays empty where there is no profit in filling it.
Current use
The sound sees occasional traffic. Ships ride out a storm here, smugglers come for the privacy, and fishermen work water their competitors avoid. None stay long. The place has a reputation, deserved or not, and reputation shapes behavior. Sestros patrols at irregular intervals, asserting a claim no one contests because no one cares enough to contest it. The patrols report nothing unusual, the sound stays empty, and nobody seems moved to change that.